41–50 of 66 posts
Or you could create a problem to solve! Uber is trying to underprice the taxi industry into bankrupt, then there will no more taxis and only Uber! Capitalism!
That's the problem, haha :P We all got a big bunch of ideas and probably not 1% of them make any money. I mean just look at Twitter ;) The problem are finding people who... ...think I can help them, so they talk to me in the first place ...have problems I can solve ...can formulate their problem ...don't want to own the solution and sell it on their own
Talk to people in your everyday life, your doctor for example and find out what annoys them in their lives, doesn't have to be at work.
What you really want to find are the 25 million dollar problems that you can turn into a monopoly. Sure you won't ever be famous, but you will have a great lifestyle that is 99% of what a billionaire has on the upside with none of the downside.
I mean I can understand you need a 1B company if your going to be building rockets or autonomous cars but I would imagine this doesn't apply to 99% of founders.
What you really want to find are the 25 million dollar problems that you can turn into a monopoly. Sure you won't ever be famous, but you will have a great lifestyle that is 99% of what a billionaire has on the upside with none of the downside.
I'm not really in the tech scene but often wondered just this; Are there really a lot of entrepreneurs with a genuine goal of creating a 1B company? From the venture capitalists perspective of course that makes sense but most engineers I know really just want to design products and have control over the direction of the company. Seems much easier if your content with a 25m (or even less depending on how many partners…
That's the problem, haha :P We all got a big bunch of ideas and probably not 1% of them make any money. I mean just look at Twitter ;) The problem are finding people who... ...think I can help them, so they talk to me in the first place ...have problems I can solve ...can formulate their problem ...don't want to own the solution and sell it on their own
What you really want to find are the 25 million dollar problems that you can turn into a monopoly. Sure you won't ever be famous, but you will have a great lifestyle that is 99% of what a billionaire has on the upside with none of the downside.
Finding anything more than vague ideas requires connections and the other person not knowing the value of being able to describe their problem (otherwise, why wouldn't they just learn programming and build something themselves?).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> turn into a monopoly Sure, but how do you do that? There's lots of textbook stuff (patents/copyright/trademark, consumer habit etc), but in practice, you must continuously improve it, promote it etc, to keep that "monopoly". There's no monopoly; only temporary monopoly. [But I'm interested to hear your thoughts]
The more complex the solution, the easier it is to lock it in permanently. People don't want to learn a new complex thing. Note that this means the minimal complexity (or close to it). If you implement something that could be simple, and you make it complex, someone else will come along and make it simple and kick your ass at market. Imagine you've got a warehouse automation system (this is not an example of a $25 mi…
I understand the point you're trying to make, but that was a terrible example. Even then, I don't agree with the answer. Complexity isn't a deterrent to market, otherwise some company would have locked up international import/export by now. The market's response to complexity isn't typically a monopoly but rather very fragmented hyperspecialization (which is the case for both international import/export and warehouse automation).
What people are suggesting here is very well studied in economics: it's called a natural monopoly. And suggesting that you just focus on building a natural monopoly is about as facile as suggesting you just become a billionaire. Building a natural monopoly takes a mountain of time, money, and expertise. It's way harder to build a natural monopoly than it is to build a $1B business that has to compete.
Or you could create a problem to solve! Uber is trying to underprice the taxi industry into bankrupt, then there will no more taxis and only Uber! Capitalism!
Or Snapchat. Did kids and teenagers have problems connecting with other kids and teenagers before Snapchat existed? I know I didn't. My parents didn't. Their parents didn't and so on. Until Snapchat showed us that we couldn't live without it, nobody had a problem connecting to each other.