4 ms·

From a technocentric POV it does feel like a lot of the opportunity has faded. Last decade I built a crypto miner for a few grand and that has made me a crazy r

From a technocentric POV it does feel like a lot of the opportunity has faded. Last decade I built a crypto miner for a few grand and that has made me a crazy return over the years. I posted a hack-a-day project and it got so much attention that I could bootstrap a successful hardware company in the fledgeling home automation market. I started a YouTube channel and bam! thousands of subscribers and checks come in from Google. I taught a few tech lectures and was immediately hired as a consultant from an inbound cold-call even though I was barely competent. Software was "eating the world", find a market space and call it {x}ly.com and you're on your way. There was also an optimistic tide you could ride psychologically to motivate you to pursue a new venture. I would like to work on something new in software because the IC shortage and dealing with CM's in China has become challenging. But everything that seems like a niche surprisingly has established competition. I could compete with {x}ly.com when they were first starting out but if they have been in business for 10 years it seems like they will have extracted not just the value from their target market but neighboring niche markets as well. Perhaps this isn't true but given the pervasive pessimism it feels like software has already ate the world and picked it clean.

tablespoon 4y ago
> But everything that seems like a niche surprisingly has established competition. I could compete with {x}ly.com when they were first starting out but if they have been in business for 10 years it seems like they will have extracted not just the value from their target market but neighboring niche markets as well. Perhaps this isn't true but given the pervasive pessimism it feels like software has already ate the world and picked it clean. In school, I recall a professor listed out (I think) 3 types of successful business as an example. The first type was something along the lines of "strong in a national market," but the second was "strong in a local market." I feel like the second kind is becoming more and more nonviable (with globalization, advanced communications), which consequently leads to a lot less opportunity for individuals (even though it may be more "efficient" in some cold and abstract economic sense).
- minsc_and_boo 4y ago
  That's the pessimistic side of the globalization coin (that the article touches on) but on the flip it is that it creates opportunities. New economies, markets, and other demand that has it's own needs for supply that didn't really exist before. For example, national steel mills put local blacksmiths out of work, but they fueled industrialization, new construction, and entirely new market opportunities.
- scohesc 4y ago
  It's been getting like that for decades. At least where I lived - you had mom and pop grocery stores in residential areas (small, family owned grocery stores, where you paid a bit more but it was convenient) - now it's been taken over by massive corporations like Wal-Mart and 7-11, etc. who have contracted out silicon valley companies to pay a pittance to contract workers who deliver you your groceries, when you could not that long ago just shop local, not need to drive, etc. etc. You had many more opportunities to pick which grocer you liked, which butcher you preferred, where to get your fruits and vegetables, but global corporations like (again) - Wal-Mart, Safeway, McDonalds, etc. signing contracts with individual/large farmers - you can't compete as an individual/small business with companies that would be able to pay many times more than you just because of the cost of scale alone. Globalization was a mistake for a _lot_ of things. The west has had it's manufacturing sector absolutely destroyed over the past half-century or more due to corporate interests/espionage/whatever. We rely on other countries to make our crap and ship it to us - how carbon efficient is that _really_? We'll never know because the corporations that own both the news/media and will tell us that it's okay, not to think about the consequences of actions, and to keep spending. "We're not going head-first into a really bad recession! No way!" (/s) The west has basically taken all of our (soft? hard?) power and given it away to other countries (to simply save a buck? to intentionally weaken the western economy over decades by malicious actors? who knows?)
pfisherman 4y ago
I think that opportunity has shifted not necessarily faded. Computers, the internet, and smart phones represented a step change in capability - they allowed people to do things that were just not possible before. The last 50 years has been about finding and developing the most productive / profitable uses of those new capabilities. If you want to find where the opportunities are look at areas where we have recent technological innovations have resulted in large step changes in capability - where new technologies allow us to do things that were not previously possible. Machine learning and biotech (e.g. CRISPR, sequencing, etc) are two such areas.
silicon2401 4y ago
Opportunity does fade. In ancient times you would compete with other people in your village. Over time your competition becomes other villages, other kingdoms, other countries/empires, and now we're at a point where competition is global. Mega-corporations like McDonald's, Amazon, Samsung are everywhere.
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  Maybe it fades, maybe the nature of opportunity changes. A while back I found a reproduction of an old local newspaper from the late 1700s. Lots of interesting stuff, but one of the unexpected things that really hit me was seeing multiple advertisements by shoemakers in a town of maybe a couple thousand people. That small of a town and 2 or 3 folks are focused on making shoes! Of course now the town is much larger and we have 0 shoemakers. But we've got plenty of software engineers working from home, etc. We'll never go back to the days of local shoemakers, just like we'll never go back to the early days of Bitcoin, but something interesting is sure to be around the corner.

tablespoon 4y ago

> But everything that seems like a niche surprisingly has established competition. I could compete with {x}ly.com when they were first starting out but if they have been in business for 10 years it seems like they will have extracted not just the value from their target market but neighboring niche markets as well. Perhaps this isn't true but given the pervasive pessimism it feels like software has already ate the world and picked it clean. In school, I recall a professor listed out (I think) 3 types of successful business as an example. The first type was something along the lines of "strong in a national market," but the second was "strong in a local market." I feel like the second kind is becoming more and more nonviable (with globalization, advanced communications), which consequently leads to a lot less opportunity for individuals (even though it may be more "efficient" in some cold and abstract economic sense).

minsc_and_boo 4y ago
That's the pessimistic side of the globalization coin (that the article touches on) but on the flip it is that it creates opportunities. New economies, markets, and other demand that has it's own needs for supply that didn't really exist before. For example, national steel mills put local blacksmiths out of work, but they fueled industrialization, new construction, and entirely new market opportunities.
scohesc 4y ago
It's been getting like that for decades. At least where I lived - you had mom and pop grocery stores in residential areas (small, family owned grocery stores, where you paid a bit more but it was convenient) - now it's been taken over by massive corporations like Wal-Mart and 7-11, etc. who have contracted out silicon valley companies to pay a pittance to contract workers who deliver you your groceries, when you could not that long ago just shop local, not need to drive, etc. etc. You had many more opportunities to pick which grocer you liked, which butcher you preferred, where to get your fruits and vegetables, but global corporations like (again) - Wal-Mart, Safeway, McDonalds, etc. signing contracts with individual/large farmers - you can't compete as an individual/small business with companies that would be able to pay many times more than you just because of the cost of scale alone. Globalization was a mistake for a _lot_ of things. The west has had it's manufacturing sector absolutely destroyed over the past half-century or more due to corporate interests/espionage/whatever. We rely on other countries to make our crap and ship it to us - how carbon efficient is that _really_? We'll never know because the corporations that own both the news/media and will tell us that it's okay, not to think about the consequences of actions, and to keep spending. "We're not going head-first into a really bad recession! No way!" (/s) The west has basically taken all of our (soft? hard?) power and given it away to other countries (to simply save a buck? to intentionally weaken the western economy over decades by malicious actors? who knows?)

pfisherman 4y ago

I think that opportunity has shifted not necessarily faded. Computers, the internet, and smart phones represented a step change in capability - they allowed people to do things that were just not possible before. The last 50 years has been about finding and developing the most productive / profitable uses of those new capabilities. If you want to find where the opportunities are look at areas where we have recent technological innovations have resulted in large step changes in capability - where new technologies allow us to do things that were not previously possible. Machine learning and biotech (e.g. CRISPR, sequencing, etc) are two such areas.

silicon2401 4y ago

Opportunity does fade. In ancient times you would compete with other people in your village. Over time your competition becomes other villages, other kingdoms, other countries/empires, and now we're at a point where competition is global. Mega-corporations like McDonald's, Amazon, Samsung are everywhere.

lastofthemojito 4y ago
Maybe it fades, maybe the nature of opportunity changes. A while back I found a reproduction of an old local newspaper from the late 1700s. Lots of interesting stuff, but one of the unexpected things that really hit me was seeing multiple advertisements by shoemakers in a town of maybe a couple thousand people. That small of a town and 2 or 3 folks are focused on making shoes! Of course now the town is much larger and we have 0 shoemakers. But we've got plenty of software engineers working from home, etc. We'll never go back to the days of local shoemakers, just like we'll never go back to the early days of Bitcoin, but something interesting is sure to be around the corner.