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Comment by nif2ee | Hacker News Reader

let's see what happens if he starts today all over again. He forgot to mention the most important thing, that he was at the right place and right time. No matter how you come up with a 1000x better Shopify today, you most probably won't go anywhere. Many clunky business projects that were started with the rise of social media (around 2004-2013) made their owners kings ONLY because they were at the right place and time. The free ride is over. His argument is mostly bullshit for anyone starting today, the internet is much more centralized and you can't go viral unless you spend a fortune assuming having a superior product. It's a billion times harder today to succeed with a great product today than with a barely average one 15 years ago.

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I don't think that argument holds at all. The low hanging fruit from 10 years ago has been picked. But in a lot of ways we only see it as low hanging fruit in hindsight. Today there are new business opportunities that in 10 years will seem like they were low hanging fruit. There are new technologies today that will enable new businesses that wouldn't have been feasible before.

Even then, there are only going to be but so many companies that get to the kind of scale of Shopify and that was true 15 years ago, and it's true today. But there is plenty of room for new small and medium sized companies to make millions of dollars. Success doesn't always have to be at the 3 comma level.

I get your argument and I appreciate it. But the nature of those low hanging fruit are more complicated today. For example, you can't just recreate Twitter, Facebook, Reddit today in your home with a couple of friends with no solid experience. You similarly can't start most successful SaaS ideas that were started in 2010-2014. Most successful YouTubers started their channels around 2008-2011. This was a time when you could make a very successful venture relying on the viral marketing by social media and Google search. Nowadays, this is over. You can go and try this same hippie way for starting a small business today but your chances of success are 1000x lower. The internet is much bigger, and it's much more centralized and concentrated and the competition is much more harsher.

Snapchat was founded in 2011 when people thought there couldn't be any other successful social media company. On the other hand, Salesforce, an epitome of SAAS, was founded in 1999. I believe there are always business opportunities and I'd argue there are more opportunities today because the space is more complicated and the cost of starting a company is much lower than before.

I don't necessarily disagree with your argument, but Snapchat might not be the best example. Snap has never posted a profit and their stock, even after a rise of almost 275% this calendar year, is still 42% below its IPO price.

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