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I am under the impression that the optimal strategy, if you have technical skills, is to be constantly on the lookout for new shovels or other tools to sell to

by Bakary 4y ago

I am under the impression that the optimal strategy, if you have technical skills, is to be constantly on the lookout for new shovels or other tools to sell to the prospectors. Build quickly, sell quickly and it doesn't really matter if your idea is truly viable beyond 6 months or so

dominotw 4y ago
interesting. curious if you have any examples of such people. this seems like a path i want to go down.
- Bakary 4y ago
  There's already a user talking about it their success in this very thread, though obviously they are an outlier and probably closer to the prospector than the shovel seller in some ways. I've seen multiple examples on HN and various other communities. Crypto, NFTs, AI, contractor arbitrage, the clients of contractor arbitrage, Spotify track generation, dropshipping, services for social media businesses, ASMR, literally any buzzing hype-train of the past few years. Come to think of it, asking for examples is probably a bad idea because if you've already heard of it for some significant time, the ship has sailed or is dangerously close to. Despite the relative proportion of entrepreneurs being so small, the population is so large that there always will a healthy mass of prospectors forming with the next hype-train. Most will fail. There will also be those who go for the shovel-sales route, and they will be very smart about it, but the prospector market is usually going to be proportionately large enough for everyone who will actually attempt to monetize it. The prospectors are almost certain to spend money in a rush towards the hype. The quality of your product is not necessary as long as there is something marketable there, which is the biggest hurdle. It's not clear if the prospector will find gold. But it's clear that they will need a shovel. Now, why am I talking about this instead of doing it. Well, I mentioned the technical skills earlier...

by Bakary 4y ago

dominotw 4y ago

interesting. curious if you have any examples of such people. this seems like a path i want to go down.

Bakary 4y ago
There's already a user talking about it their success in this very thread, though obviously they are an outlier and probably closer to the prospector than the shovel seller in some ways. I've seen multiple examples on HN and various other communities. Crypto, NFTs, AI, contractor arbitrage, the clients of contractor arbitrage, Spotify track generation, dropshipping, services for social media businesses, ASMR, literally any buzzing hype-train of the past few years. Come to think of it, asking for examples is probably a bad idea because if you've already heard of it for some significant time, the ship has sailed or is dangerously close to. Despite the relative proportion of entrepreneurs being so small, the population is so large that there always will a healthy mass of prospectors forming with the next hype-train. Most will fail. There will also be those who go for the shovel-sales route, and they will be very smart about it, but the prospector market is usually going to be proportionately large enough for everyone who will actually attempt to monetize it. The prospectors are almost certain to spend money in a rush towards the hype. The quality of your product is not necessary as long as there is something marketable there, which is the biggest hurdle. It's not clear if the prospector will find gold. But it's clear that they will need a shovel. Now, why am I talking about this instead of doing it. Well, I mentioned the technical skills earlier...