Ask YC: Will there really always be room for more successful web startups?

I've heard the argument (also made by PG) that there will always be room for more successful web startups. Do you think it's true?

Sometimes I get the feeling that the internet has gotten too crowded. Every idea I think of, someone else has done.

But it's more than that. I also sometimes think that mainstream users have a finite number of needs that web applications can satisfy. I think of web applications are like kitchen appliances. Once you have the essentials -- a microwave, a fridge, an oven, a toaster, a coffee maker, and a blender -- new appliances you get have decreasing marginal utility. Sure, you can always get new ones for increasingly esoteric needs, but they are just not as useful as the important ones that almost everyone has.

I read about all the new startups on TechCrunch and YC news, and although I think many of them are cool, I don't use 99% of them. Why? Because although they may solve some problem I may or may not have, incorporating them into my life introduces mental overhead. It's like PG's essay about stuff. Having less stuff keeps your head clear. So does using fewer webapps. I'd rather use 5-10 really useful apps than 40-50 marginally useful ones. Although the total utility I can get from the marginally useful apps is greater than zero, this utility doesn't outweigh the disadvantage of having to think about them. They solve some problem, but they also add (virtual) clutter to my life. As a user (which is different from an entrepreneur in the same field) I'd rather not think about them.

Will there really be the next big search engine or the next big social networking site? (By big I mean bigger than the entrenched players.) I'm not convinced. Some industries mature and their barriers to entry become too high. (How many new car companies have been started in the last couple of decades? Not many.) Furthermore, after every adoption of a new product, users have a smaller reason to switch. I don't care if ask.com is sometimes better than Google or if some social networking site is slighly less creepy than Facebook. I still use Facebook and Google. They are wired too deep in my cortex. Trying out a competing product just isn't worth the work.

I'm sure there will always be technology startups. And there will always be new marginally successful webapps that cater to small niches (I just thought of one: a hot-or-not for pets app that runs on the iPhone! Maybe that's my ticket to riches!) But will there always be the next world-changing web startup?

What do you think?

The way I see it, there will always be something that takes us (the users) to the next level. Maybe you have all the racks and detergents, then you discover the dishwasher. Maybe some day we'll get an oven+fridge all in one. It might be hard to think about it but there is definitely room for growth. It might not be growing upwards, it might be sideways, or even abstract it to a different dimension.

For the last 100 hundred years there has been a constant introduction of new paper based magazines and newspapers. After the introduction of the web, that has changed and now the web is where most new media is introduced and will continue to be introduced.

I wouldn't worry about doing things that have been done. I would worry about doing it better than what's already been done.

Viewing the web as a kitchen is quite limiting. There are thousands of products in your house...many are for entertainment (TV, DVDs, CDs, ipod, etc.), some are for news and education (TV, radio, magazines, newspaper), some are for communication (phone, mailbox), and on and on...Software and web applications can be involved in all of those things in one way or another.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb if I say that I think changes will come much more rapidly in the future than they have in the past. So, while the telephone has been around for over 100 years, I don't think Skype will last out the next seven years. Facebook will be lucky if it gets five years at the top (if it ever bests MySpace and makes it to the top). I don't think a better "social network" will dethrone Facebook...I think a whole other class of product will take its place (actually a dozen or more classes of products, probably, since people do so many different things with Facebook). Your job, as a technology innovator is to spot those trends and build the products that enable them.

And keep in mind that little web applications aren't the only problem worth solving. There's a lot of software that runs inside the firewall at businesses--and a lot of it is moving to web-based variants. There are many worlds to change, not just the world Facebook is addressing.

That said, there aren't many opportunities to make something as big and world-altering as Google. There's only so many problems on the web that touch every single human being that uses the web (that's a big customer-base). Search is actually the only one I can think of. Email, perhaps.