I think it's more that people outside of tech often also have great ideas that could potentially make a great MRR quickly, but most never even try, then a lot simply fail and you never hear from them too, then there's the ones who actually do learn all the coding required and other skills to make a successful website and actually do become successful, but by then the people you hear of being successful are of course just a small subset of the people who actually had a great idea for a successful business that would make high MRR quickly. So, to me, the idea or the need being solved is the primary driver of what ultimately makes a business successful, even though of course so many skills are required, amongst other things too.

> I do suspect another big factor is that experienced people overthink things a bit, much like a child seems to learn a language faster than an adult but may only be more willing to make silly mistakes.

The term for "failed to implement any kind of authorization in the API" isn't "silly mistakes", it's "professional negligence".

It's unethical to learn 101-level stuff by playing around with a million people's personal information. These guys should turn Hive off and never, ever turn it back on.

All those things could be the case, but I think the most likely is that its just random, and unlikely you'll ever succeed in the first place.

Case in point, why did you first learn programming? Probably because you wanted to build something, maybe because you thought it could be a success. Everybody starts as a non-tech person getting into it with a specific goal, really what makes you a programmer is the fact you failed, and unless you gave up you tried again and learnt and became better at your craft. Not to say that those that succeed the first time don't, but its not as much as natural process.

I started programming, as a lot of people do, because I wanted to make a game (and still do), and like a lot of people that first get into game dev, my first goal was to avoid doing that messy programming work myself and find someone that can do it for me. Again, like many, I tried this for a while, until someone reminded me that everyone who does this got into it for the same reason as me, and if they know what they're doing why would they drop their dream game for mine (unless I was paying).

Overthinking is definately it. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. It feels like the more I know, the more I know I don't know.

In this case, I suspect the biggest factor is simply having the right product at the right time. Twitter goes to hell and you've got a Twitter alternative ready to go? That's the perfect timing for a successful product/service.

It's no surprise that things like Hive, Mastodon and Cohost have exploded in popularity recently.

Of course, whether these products will be the ones that do well in the long run is still an unanswered question. Hive's security issues and temporary shut down came at the exact wrong time, Cohost's invite system is probably crippling it and people are still not 100% sure how to use Mastodon in some cases, so only time will tell which if any takes off.