Digital world is over engineered

[caci]

@caljreich As someone who has worked at a start-up, consulting, and 2 multi-national companies. I have my personal take on this.

I think a lot of start-ups are technologically much more than ancient industries. As someone mentioned before, if you shadow a CEO on a multinational company, you'll come up with your own long list of problems to solve.

I'll give you one im currently working on, which amazes me to this day.
2 of the multinational companies I worked at, my departmental revenue exceeds 15 million usd (a team of 20 people), and both of them had their entire databases on several scattered Excel sheets. The start-up I worked at had several engineers manage the backend, and the revenue of that company wasn't even 5 million of the entire company. I had a call with the US lead engineer telling them my frustrations, and they shared the fact that they had started to fix their database issues just last year, and most of the team were working off of excel.
(To be very honest, this still amazes me how a multi-billion dollar revenue company still operates on millions of Excel sheets)

What I'm saying is, the moment you actually look at very large/ancient industries, you start asking yourself, how on earth are they actually functional? Their process sucks so bad.
However, getting to these companies to sell your product isn't exactly easy.

The start-up world needs a combination of great salesmen and product managers to truly understand the problems these companies are struggling with.

We will all say shit about workday (and I absolutely hate it with every cell in by body), but the reason they are doing okay is because they have a great relationship with MNCs.

 

[atheosalio]

@caci I think other way to look at it is if a department of 20 can get over 15 million in revenue without a proper database, is it really a problem?

 

[caci]

@atheosalio Scaling is near impossible without increasing overhead or killing your employees.

Getting proper analytics is non existent.

 

[trying_to_make_it]

@caljreich There's no lack of meaningful problems to be solved. The bigger problem is startups as an asset class have been institutionalized and metrics driven; as a result, there's a chase after the obvious ideas that can yield immediate revenue needed to raise the next round. Most of these opportunities tend to occur in B2B/ devTools hence the rush towards these spaces.

Regrettable? Yes. Unavoidable? Also, yes

 

[carolina8402]

@caljreich I sometimes feel the same way. AI does not solve as many problems as the internet did, but the startup world still pretends it's 1995.
Since it's just a feeling, does anyone have numbers to back that hypothesis?

(And to be fair, some startups have always been closer to ponzi schemes than actual businesses)

 

[richies]

@caljreich you realize we are engineering out humans, right?

the job isn't really done until we have 100% consumption with 0% effort, human labor value goes to $0, only deployed capital makes money.

being snarky, but how I see it, still a lot to do.

in all seriousness, move humans to reactive gatekeeper QC while AI interns sketch proactively nonstop. Now is a time for full throttle. The chessboard is in play.

 

[caljreich]

@richies Are we really engineering out humans? Is that why unemployment rate keeps going down, while job openings increase despite population increasing? There may be some non linear effects going on, but so far it seems to me that we are really good at creating jobs. AGI may change this, but I still have my doubts since we seem to be really good at creating job and convincing ourselves we need those jobs.

 

[ratnakar]

@caljreich If we are so good at creating jobs, then that should mean we have lots of problems to solve. Each of those jobs that you are talking about is a potential business. If it involves even a tiny amount of mental energy to do, it is an opportunity for a software company. Thus all the low hanging fruit is not gone. Or at least all the medium hanging fruit isn't.

 

[nitro2]

@caljreich There are hundreds of problems founders pass up that people suggest they solve instead of their original startup idea. They might be boring or hard but someone else picks those up and solves them. Think about all the founder led startups that find new problems trying to create their core product/service, some might create a workaround but it’s still a problem for someone else. More problems discovered = more startup opportunities.

 

[lyn02]

@caljreich 100% agree

 

[adebayo4545]

@caljreich Well look out reward beware mood yews loves k oh feel more outside wax op green San te aqua da 1006 poncho hfs working

 

[soupy2209]

@caljreich Why do you think b2b saas is useless?

 

[hawklynn]

@caljreich there are benefits to overengineering. it adds redundancy control to systems and variety to the marketplace. it is good to master capability, rather complain about its quality. we live in a world in which we can move mountains by contracting a readily available entity.

people make the market and sales, which means a need was uncovered to satisfy. how you solve a problem might not necessarily be the most optimal solution, nor agreeable to the general population. also, a business is a business. businesses are doing nothing glorious.

 

[gary2]

@caljreich I'm working on fintech/BaaS

 

[613jono]

@caljreich We just launched a startup in the B2B salestech power dialer market. I think we're the 200th+ company to do so. We have a unique play/offering, our plan is to leverage that in our sales process and lead to a quick 7-8 figure exit.

Anyways, I think I just proved your point. Well played.

 

[adebayo4545]

@caljreich Pretty feet pop head saw the pic we z 100 ok

 

[eclipse122778855]

@caljreich lol to this post just as the AI revolution begins.

 

[emwu]

@caljreich Where's the list? I'm curious. I'm not solving for a small problem but a huge problem. But I didn't get in because I'm not a techie and I'm a one person shop. I think BIG! Oh well.... I'm applying to TechStars too and I read an article by the CEO where she didn't necessarily believe in the mantra that you had to at least be a two person shop.