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Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#21

Post by Detrus »

dba7dba wrote: post #18
GuiA wrote: post #16

People are giving you the starry-eyed entrepreneur version, which builds its rhetoric on how they're "changing the world", how they're motivated by learning and pushing the boundaries of what's been done and what is possible, and so on and so forth. Here's a counterpart explanation that some may consider a bit more cynical, built after some time in SV working for early stage startups, advising some early stage startu…

"The people who are really bringing in the big bucks are VCs/investors/incubators/etc (with the real estate and media companies coming in in second place)." During the California Gold Rush (1848–1855), few actually got rich from gold. The ones who really got rich were the ones who provided services (bar, housing, food, etc) to the people rushing in to find gold. History does repeat itself.

To continue the analogy, most people chasing gold then did it with little shovels, sifters and human eyes. Today gold is mined with massive machines, extracting invisible specks of dust from hundreds of tons of sand.

The market of visible gold nuggets or quick MVPs may be over-saturated. Gold diggers invest a minimum of thought, equipment, know their chances are getting slimmer and depend mostly on luck.

Very few startup gold diggers can try a different approach, because it's all about starting with minimum capital and preparation. Big capital got mismanaged too often, so there's an over-correction.

Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#22

Post by fataliss »

I have the same feeling, especially in the mobile world. If you look at the App store and the stats about how mobile devs are making money it appears clearly that most of the apps are failures financially speaking. When you have hundred thousands of free games, you better come up with a deadly addictive smart buzz generating game if you want to make any living out of it!

But then there is also an other point: how people see things. Let's take the "To do list" example. None of my friends and coworker are using the same app, they all are die hard fans of their app. That's what happens when everybody comes with it's vision of how the to do list should be done. You end up with hundreds of app doing the exact same thing and they will almost all find their users, because nobody agrees on what should be the standard. That is inherent to software and human nature, lots of the startups are not creating anything new, just re-implementing their version of something they think must be done differently!

That being said, as the number of startup grows and the number of garbage projects/products grow you see also crazy ambitious and life changing stuff emerging. I think the analogy to the gold rush made by an other guy here is very pertinent! While most people are ending up with a handful of dirt, some rare lucky diggers got trucks full of gold! The economical dynamic created by the Startups in SV and everywhere else is bringing wealth to the US like crazy. Eventually everybody benefit of it to some extent. But that's only my opinion.

Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#23

Post by vijayr »

I think the oversupply is only for educated, young professionals with money (just how many photo sharing, project management etc apps do we need?). There are lots of problems that can be solved at least a little, with tech - but they aren't being solved, as there is just no money/glory in them. There was a link on HN some months ago, where the author puts it more clearly, with examples etc. I can't find the link now, will keep looking

Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#24

Post by stretchwithme »

dkyc wrote: post #19

pg weighed in a while ago on this in his essay "Why To Not Not Start A Startup" (March 2007, http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html ). See point 8: "A lot of people look at the ever-increasing number of startups and think "this can't continue." Implicit in their thinking is a fallacy: that there is some limit on the number of startups there could be. But this is false. No one claims there's any limit on the number of peop…

As more and more human labor is automated, its inevitable that companies will get smaller.

Determining what people need and how to fill those needs will never go away. But these organizations will get flatter, as more of their inputs can be purchased in the marketplace instead of needing to be manufactured precisely as the needed for a final product.

Companies that are built on platforms, such as the Internet, these inevitably get simpler and partially more alike as their platform gets richer and easier to use. More will be using AWS, for example, instead of hiring people to build and manage a data center.

And then there's Apple, which has demonstrated that there are still complex products that can be better integrated when you control more of the supply chain. It can switch both hardware and software to a new processor without coordinating with dozens of companies.

Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#25

Post by josephschmoe »

masslessness wrote: post #8
patio11 wrote: post #6

There's only so many consumer eyeballs and wallets in the world, it almost seems the supply of products and services is unimaginably over supplied to a fixed demand? Are you of the impression that the demand for, I don't know, B2C cell phone apps is fixed in 2014 to the same value it was in 2007? If you (sensibly) do not agree that the iPhone failed to change the underlying demand for cell phone applications, conside…

So sure, the demand in and of itself is growing, but it's in contrast to the huge supply that it seems almost fixed. Regards "the tech scene's" narrow focus, what kind of software does the rest of the world need? I mean what problems can software really solve? And to get a better understanding of how we as developers can do anything about it, what is it exactly about software that allows it to do that?

If you wish to know what 50-something suburban southwestern housewives care about, go out and spend time with 50-something suburban southwestern housewives.

When you have a community that is predominately creators, expect all well-known unsolved problems to require some great leap to be solved, because easier ones would be solved already. When you have a community that predominately isn't creators, those regular, common-day problems do go unsolved. So go talk to those housewives already!

Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#26

Post by wikwocket »

masslessness wrote: post #8
patio11 wrote: post #6

There's only so many consumer eyeballs and wallets in the world, it almost seems the supply of products and services is unimaginably over supplied to a fixed demand? Are you of the impression that the demand for, I don't know, B2C cell phone apps is fixed in 2014 to the same value it was in 2007? If you (sensibly) do not agree that the iPhone failed to change the underlying demand for cell phone applications, conside…

So sure, the demand in and of itself is growing, but it's in contrast to the huge supply that it seems almost fixed. Regards "the tech scene's" narrow focus, what kind of software does the rest of the world need? I mean what problems can software really solve? And to get a better understanding of how we as developers can do anything about it, what is it exactly about software that allows it to do that?

> what problems can software really solve?

If you are asking this, perhaps you have not spent a lot of time in industry, especially non-technical industries.

There are approximately a gazillion problems that software can solve in a business setting. Absolutely stupid amounts of goods, services, and money are processed via clunky systems that are begging for software-based improvements.

If you could follow around an arbitrary office worker, factory worker, healthcare professional, paralegal, real estate broker, or retail employee for a week, your head would be positively bursting with ideas for how software could make their businesses more efficient, and improve their employee quality of life.

Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#27

Post by rmc »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #17
masslessness wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sure, the demand in and of itself is growing, but it's in contrast to the huge supply that it seems almost fixed. Regards "the tech scene's" narrow focus, what kind of software does the rest of the world need? I mean what problems can software really solve? And to get a better understanding of how we as developers can do anything about it, what is it exactly about software that allows it to do that?

Don't be fooled by the huge apparent "supply". That's like counting up all the five-paragraph essays and unsold screenplays in the world and concluding that we have an oversupply of great writing. What we have is a huge slush pile, 98% of which will prove worthless in the end except as a practice exercise for its creators. (Which is valuable, of course, just not valuable to the customers.) Because the bottleneck is t…

> What we have is a huge slush pile, 98% of which will prove worthless in the end

Don't forget Sturgeon's Law[1], "90% of anything is crap":

> The phrase was derived from Sturgeon's observation that while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, it could be noted that the majority of examples of works in other fields could equally be seen to be of low quality and that science fiction was thus no different in that regard to other art forms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

Re: Ask HN: Is there an over supply of tech products and services?

#28

Post by porker »

GuiA wrote: post #16

People are giving you the starry-eyed entrepreneur version, which builds its rhetoric on how they're "changing the world", how they're motivated by learning and pushing the boundaries of what's been done and what is possible, and so on and so forth. Here's a counterpart explanation that some may consider a bit more cynical, built after some time in SV working for early stage startups, advising some early stage startu…

> I've seen engineers starting to hit the mid-late 30s, realizing that they're not good enough to make the switch to finance/management or to a larger, more secure company.

Oh dear. I've just seen me.

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