3 ms·
> Today's startups are solving the most boring problems imaginable. I'm going to focus on this, because to some extent this is a real problem. But it's also o
by saalweachter 5y ago
> Today's startups are solving the most boring problems imaginable.
I'm going to focus on this, because to some extent this is a real problem. But it's also one that can be worked on.
The thing to keep in mind is that most startups are solving problems that a small number of people can handle in a small amount of time. 3-5 people in less than a year for a pre-A MVP sort of project, 50-100 in 2-5 years with funding before you need to have it cracking.
Now think back to every geek's first or third love, the history of physics. Back in the golden age of experimental physics, the guys all of our units were named after were making their discoveries solo using a length of wire and a homemade battery or a handmade telescope. Now, we have hundreds or thousands of researchers collaborating on nation-spanning super colliders or telescope arrays.
Why? Because anything that two people in a garage lab could figure out has already been figured out.
1990's Google was proof-of-concepted by a team of two. But to build a 2020's search engine you need teams of hundreds, if not thousands. Some of your favorite video games of the 80's were the work of, if not one person, a team you could fit in a small room. Modern flagship games have more people working on hair physics.
As time goes on in any field, the easy problems get solved, and it takes more and more people to do interesting work. Raising the bar like that makes it hard for start-ups, with their limited funding and head count, to compete.
But in tech, unlike physics, hope is not lost for new golden ages: new tech comes along and changes what one developer can do.
Take games -- sure, flagship games might have hundreds of developers, but we're in a golden age of indie games, in no small part because modern frameworks and distribution have come together to let small houses do more than they could before while reaching more customers than they previously could.
If you want to promote more startups doing more interesting things, that is the lever to push on. What technologies are too expensive for a small team to develop, that they could use as a springboard? How could you make it easier for tech startups to get paid?