Plenty of things I'm sure. It seems quite cyclical in that the old products get weighed down by features and stuck, then new ones come along that are slimmer faster and that allows them to explore new ways of working. Its much harder to update the older products.

Example: When Jira was the new kid it was all snazzy and sleek and interesting. Over the last few years a lot of alternatives have appeared. Although Atlassian has made some changes, they can't just bring in what makes those products different unless they write a whole new product, and large companies can't make new products.

Currently I think we're at or just past a high point. The current lineup of Jira alternatives will probably wittle down, the best ones will get bought, made part of some enterprise lineup, that way of working becomes a standard, they'll get big and bloated and unable to innovate. The cycle will get to a low point and then we'll see another explosion of alternatives.

And that's just one niche.

I actually strongly disagree -- the amount of business potential for software that isn't trying to becoming a billion-dollar unicorn is massive, and has been extremely underserved during the past decade as most of the money (and talent) chased after the billion dollar moonshot bets, either in B2C businesses or very generic B2B software (think Atlassian).

It's harder to find the business potential because the opportunities are much more closely coupled to optimizing specific processes in specific industries. But if you can find the right niche, the business opportunities are there.

Isn't the opportunity to make "fuck you money" the motivation for the risk of working as a startup? Without that people are probably better off working at a corp.

Yes and no. Its helpful to see the word "startup" as meaning two distinct things.

The "current" use of the word implies VC capital. As in "I joined a startup and we raised..."

However in the past it referred to literally "starting a business". Someone sees a gap in the market, builds a product, and looks to fill that gap one customer at a time. Since there is no incoming capital, it has to be revenue positive, well enough for the owners to survive.

This sort of business is (somewhat perjorativly) called a "life style" business. In that it provides salaries to some number of people, and provides a (good?) living.

The reasons for starting such a business are numerous, and while maybe some do with the goal of being mega-rich, in reality the successful ones end up being merely "rich".

But there are a _lot_ of upsides other than money. I'll offer a few from personal experience, but really they offer any goal you like.

A) freedom to work on what you want, when you want, where you want, how you want. Yes, of course you are constrained by actually delivering (or you don't get paid) but the mechanics of delivering are up to you.

B) job security. It takes time to get to this point, but once a business is profitable the owner has a job for life. (he is literally the last person to get laid off) [1]

C) a lack of corporate bullshit. No endless layers of managers. No endless meetings. If you need a new PC you go buy a new PC. (equally true, if you report directly to the owner, decisions get made quickly. If you need a new PC you only have to convince one person.)

D) while on the topic, being employed by a small business has huge benefits as well, but to need to move the income needle for the job security.

I could go on but I think you get the point.

[1] ironically when getting person credit, like a mortgage, ticking "self employed" leads me to a lower credit score, despite the fact that 40-odd people get laid off before I do :)

[2] about 5% of new (bootstrapped) businesses make it to 10 years old. I'm not suggesting this route is easy, but it is desirable.

One example. It is my personal belief is that social media is ripe for disruption in ways we have not imagined yet. Clearly centralized, ad-revenue driven psuedo-monopolies are a big problem. I actually believe there is a parallel problem with software engineering that has focused on larger piles of cloud-hosted complexity that has far outstripped the ability of anyone to hold it in their head. These two things are, I believe, deeply intertwined and so the solution will be at both levels too. Of course, I'm not the only one who sees an opportunity here. I love seeing all the ideas in this space; most of them won't work, of course, but that's the nature of experimentation.

> Clearly centralized, ad-revenue driven psuedo-monopolies are a big problem.

Financially, it's the exact opposite of a problem; it's too profitable. There will always be big market for companies that manage to lock up an audience within its walls.

A big problem for society. The algorithm is bad for people's mental health, and bad for democracy. These are the externalities of that great profitability.

I'm not sure why you got downvoted. I'm bullish on ActivityPub and the next wave of decentralization.

I think there is a huge amount of areas that are less visible to technologists that are underserved. I sometimes think about either partnering or purchasing a small business and just automating the shit out of it. You either become dominant die to the advantage or you start selling the software to competitors. This was mostly spawned by observing a friend's struggles with his property management company while we were on vacation together. Everything they fucked up or for which he had to make phone calls to them could have been triviality automated.

I bet there are lots of sectors out there that could be totally disrupted or made more efficient if they got attention from high-caliber developers and UX folks.