3 ms·
Precisely. Markets such as social, search, and cloud were the low hanging fruits because they required relatively small seed capital. The reason why PG is comp
by FD3SA 15y ago
Precisely. Markets such as social, search, and cloud were the low hanging fruits because they required relatively small seed capital.
The reason why PG is complaining about a lack of truly unique startup ideas is because, frankly, many of the low hanging fruits have been picked. The next generation of fields ripe for innovation (AI, robotics, transportation, biomedicine, energy, space, etc) require orders of magnitude more seed capital. Some of these are on Manhattan project scales, requiring billions of dollars invested for a decent probably of an acceptable return on investment.
Some big spenders, such as Peter Thiel, are paving the way forward with their personal initiatives; yet few organic investment communities exist to support such endeavours. I doubt that such an investment community would spring forth without government support.
Unfortunately, government largesse is a critical issue in most developed nations at the moment, so I am pessimistic of government assistance in these sectors. Thus, we are constrained to our narrow fields of low capital startups for the time being.
- ewoodrich 15y agoI think your observation that "social, search and cloud" as you point out, are extremely over-saturated is especially relevant. One of my main draws to programming was the extremely law barrier to entry -- a weekend spent with a Python compsci text and Google was enough to get me started on Django. But even though I have interest in biology, genetics and related fields, I don't see how someone in my position with more time and motivation than money could "break" into the startup world.
- FD3SA 15y agoIndeed. High capital fields such as medicine are the great entrepreneurial challenges of our time. Everyone on HN knows of the decaying behemoth that is academic research. It is an unsustainable system built upon a terrible incentive architecture. Graduate students and postdocs are used as cheap labor in a Ponzi scheme, while Principal Investigators have no incentive to engage in difficult, high risk research due to salary caps and tenure. The market failure of academic research is the primary reason for the grinding pace of progress in fields such as medicine. Again, there are individuals such as Craig Venter who are changing this paradigm, but the sheer magnitude of funding being dumped into the academic research black hole is unfathomable. Our collective tax money is in the government's hands, and as such, only they have the power to dismantle such terribly broken schemes. I'm not holding my breath.