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This is about the siliest article in existence. Personally, I never thought a tech god existed. I have witnessed many more companies fail than succeed. In vent
by FrontierPsych 4y ago
This is about the siliest article in existence.
Personally, I never thought a tech god existed. I have witnessed many more companies fail than succeed. In venture capital circles, they have one company succeed out of a hundred, and maybe one unicorn out of a thousand. And this is with people who evaluate companies *professionally.*
How could anyone with half a brain think there are "tech gods."
That the tiniest of a sliver of companies that make it...duh.
But, at least in my estimation, Amazon is not a tech company. It is JC Penny or Sears or Target, just got in with a better ordering system. Apple just built a better music player/phone.
At the risk of someone quoted that patent officer from 1900 or whatever, who I'm paraphrasing, said something to the effect of, "Everything has been invented and there's nothing left to invent."
Well, there's still stuff left to invent, but not as much as there was, and any new stuff will take a LOT more money, unlike the early days. Can a new OS be built and succeed? Hypothetically, yes. But Bill Gates built his with 10 or 20 people, and that sure isn't possible anymore. Google might, *might* be able to replace it with chrome, but that is frucking Google, and not Jack and Mary and Ahmed working in a basement.
It's like the old chestnut about gold in California in 1849. Everyone says they would sell the tools to the miners....yeah, right, except there already is a company doing that. And they have the best location in the biggest boom towns. The buy up all the tools from the tool wholesellers that come into the San Francisco Bay in advance, so all tools go to the existing tool merchants. The tool sellers have relationships with all the tool wholesellers, who are not going to sell to *you* as they are not going to risk their relationship with their biggest customer. As I said, the tool seller already has the best location in the boom town to sell their wares, and it's all about location, location, location. They got to the town early in the boom and own the land for a super cheap price when they bought it, but now with the boom, land is super dooper expensive - how is a one-man business going to even get a shop to sell their tools, if they can even get tools to sell in the first place? If it is even possible, you are going to be way, way, way off the beaten track. Plus, the existing tool seller is going to do everything in their power to put you out of business.
The first miner '49ers could actually pick up gold off the ground, or walk into a stream and pick up gold from the bottom of a stream - they were the first ones there. But after a blink of an eye, all the easy pickings were gone, and then you had to use sluices, start digging, all which was more time-consuming. Plus getting a claim became more and more expensive as time went on. And finally, you have hydrolic water cannons that used water cannons to shred a mountain to nothing but that took big investment from investors back east, and an individual could not compete.
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This is what is happened in the tech world. Being a tech god doesn't matter. The people who started unicorns got lucky. There were a lot of gold nuggets lying around on the ground. But they have been picked over.
Is it possible for another unicorn? Sure. But not like the old days. Unless someone is really, really lucky. Even in San Francisco gold rush, as it became more corporate, some lone dude could still find a vein of gold. It's just that the statistical odds were abysmal by that time.
The "tech gods" were about an extremely small number of men who found nuggets lying on the ground, but idiots ascribed them to be geniuses because they leaned over at the waist and picked the gold nugget off the ground.