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The only moat left is money?

elliotbonneville.com

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Re: The only moat left is money?

#231

Post by ineedasername »

scoofy wrote: post #184

So, I really felt like more people should be reading Nassim Taleb's Incerto series of books. A lot of the issues that fall out of AI he dealt with in his books like ten years ago. He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. If you do something that isn't really scalable, like being a welder or a tailor, then you only have to comp…

That seems like reasonable advice until you realize you have no idea what will and will not scale in a few years, and there's only so many tailors/plumbers/welders/etc.

What it really comes down to is these options as more work gets automated:

1) New jobs doing different things that weren't done before

2) Same jobs but shorter hours so "full time" with a salary to match starts to look more like 4 days, or 5 hours/day, or something.

3) Lots of unemployment

These can happen in a lot of different combinations, they can come wrapped up in different ways, and unequally for different segments of the workforce, but there's limited elasticity in most areas where additional people piling into the field would create more demand rather than glut the supply to the supplier's detriment.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#232

Post by 52-6F-62 »

ativzzz wrote: post #136
52-6F-62 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. But the line of discussion was about the value of human thought.

If our human thoughts can't be translated to food and shelter, then we'll pick up guns and go steal the food and shelter from someone else.

Noted.

Sometimes what needs translated to food and shelter isn't your thoughts, however. If you nurture and value thoughts regardless, this point will be understandable.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#234

Post by Epa095 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #220
Epa095 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't tailors by and large already outcompeted by cheap new clothes?

cheap new clothes Uh.. I don't mean to be that guy, but tailors aren't even operating in that market. People who use tailors aren't interested in off the rack items. Even when they do purchase off the rack or even secondhand items.. they'll go have some of those items tailored.

> but tailors aren't even operating in that market.

Not anymore.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#235

Post by chatmasta »

Why are HN mods appending a question mark to the original title which is obviously a headline of a blog post, i.e. a thesis of the author, and not an assertion of fact? You may as well suffix every headline with a question mark.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#236

Post by imglorp »

> When someone suggested the answer was marketing: > jUsT dO mOrE mArKeTiNg!!!!!

This is a good point. If there's a problem reaching people because the information channel is saturated, the solution is to increase the information? And then everyone reaches the same conclusion and increases.

This destroys the channel. It's not a zero sum game. If everyone markets, nobody will make the sale because the customer will nope out and see nothing.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#237

Post by a_better_world »

scoofy wrote: post #184

So, I really felt like more people should be reading Nassim Taleb's Incerto series of books. A lot of the issues that fall out of AI he dealt with in his books like ten years ago. He gives one the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: if you are going to do something for a living, make sure it is NOT scalable. If you do something that isn't really scalable, like being a welder or a tailor, then you only have to comp…

how good was Taleb at following his own advice? Had he tested it? As I recall he is pretty big on "skin in the game' as his differentiator.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#238

Post by prmph »

lelanthran wrote: post #230
prmph wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where are the AI clones of MS Office, JetBrains IDEs, Whatsapp, Obsidian, etc. so far?

Obsidian has plenty of clones. The others have money as a moat, which is exactly my point.

Which clones? And why not the others?

Which is my point: it seems easy to clone something that seems conceptually simple, but is the result of all kinds of UI, UX, performance, etc optimizations. The reason someone might choose Obsidian over these so called clones is not just marketing, I assure you. The reason people attempt Obsidian clones is that they think creating todo-list management tools, etc is all it takes to implement a PKM, and that that is easy. It is not.

Right now there are kinds of tools I wished existed, that I would pay for, but AI does not automatically provide the insight, good taste, technical excellence, and grit needed to create these products. I could do them, with AI assisting, but do not have the time. It is not a simple matter of saying: Claude, create or clone X, Y, Z.

Re: The only moat left is money?

#240

Post by soulchild37 »

This article sounds like "I can't make a profitable SaaS, hence others can't too, and those who can, are using absurd amount of money or prior reputation to do so"

I advice to grow up and do some proper research on what problem to solve, and how to build trust with audience before pushing your products.

I dont have much money or prior reputation when starting out, I blogged weekly, then slowly launched technical ebooks, one time utility app, and finally SaaS , took me about 6 years of showing up every day to have a job-replacing income.

Your other post mentioned you gave up and declared failure after 3 weeks of launching your SaaS, I think the timeframe expectation you had might be unrealistic.

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