That story from Amy, is super awesome stuff. Not many have made it to that point - 3 years - however.
On the other hand, all this discussion seems more like a silver lining towards disruption in angel investing space too. Sublime for entrepreneurs, disastrous for others may be.
Not many have made it to that point - 3 years - however.
This is true, but there are only 2 reasons I see:
1. Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable." Something I teach against in my class, called Idea Quicksand. My philosophy about this is explained the first 3 free samples available on http://unicornfree.com/30x500
2. Barring "great ideas" which aren't businesses, people give up way too soon. They have no idea that it takes so long, and they don't prepare for it, and they think they've failed when they're really just normal. Which is a huge part of the reason why I blog & show up here.
> Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable."
I think about this a lot. Much like a writer, developers do the best work objectively when they "write what they know". What this means in practice is that the market is flooded with products that are at the union of common developer knowledge. That is why there are so many products for consultants out there. Basecamp, Freckle and Projector are all examples of this. Obviously there's always room for a new product, especially when you have used many of these products and decided exactly why you don't like them so you can come up with a uniquely better product.
But when I get outside of the tech bubble, I see that the majority of the business world has pathetic technical vision, but a lot more money. Now obviously you will never be a Facebook or a Twitter in an established market, but if you can combine some domain knowledge with cutting edge tech skills, there is a lot more low-hanging fruit than fighting over early adopters for the latest tech toy.
I see that the majority of the business world has pathetic technical vision, but a lot more money.
Careful. They may have more money in aggregate, but a lot of them don't buy tech solutions, don't want to change, aren't actually business-minded (e.g. always looking for improvements). This goes double for local biz like bars, restaurants, salons, and stores, and triple for education and nonprofit and NGOs.
I'm also finding hard to motivate myself to make something for people that are very different from me (I have a file sharing solution catered to small businesses in France). I imagine it's easier when you care naturally more about your end users.
When all my friends think this market is super-saturated, what I find out is that most of these small business people are just happy to use emails and the occasional FTP.
I don't mean selling to them, I mean disrupting them. You can steal a lot of people's business right out from under them simply by bringing the efficiency of technology. But you need the domain knowledge, that's the barrier to entry.
On the other hand, all this discussion seems more like a silver lining towards disruption in angel investing space too. Sublime for entrepreneurs, disastrous for others may be.
It's threads like these that make my day at HN :)