I think you underestimate the effects of bureaucracy and sclerosis at large companies like Google, and the upcoming crackdown like the EU's DMA and DSA. Just look at how OpenAI basically stole Google's lunch.

Too early to spike the football over that, OpenAI got outfoxed on Dall-E illustratively and ChatGPT's best chance for monetization remains as a feature for MSFT services, not an independent entity.

You could have said the same about google originally when Yahoo was using google to provide their search services.

You could also have said that about Altavista, and you would’ve been right. Like GP said, it’s too early to tell.

Altavista wasn't a startup, it was a spinoff from DEC, a company that had its own issues with sales at the time, which led to their ignominious takeover by HP.

Perhaps there will be higher quality startups… I don’t know, it feels like prior to 2020, the market was in overdrive and everyone’s ideas were getting funding under the hype growth path to monopoly strategy. And during this time, how many Forbes 30 under 30 people have been found to be incredible frauds, some of the biggest economics has seen? With money not as cheap, I do wonder what will happen. The startup “rules” for 2023+ seem a bit different now and hyper growth tactics may not work as well now (or be incentivized as much until late stage growth rounds…but I’m not an investor). Anyway, I’ll now lean back in my arm-chair…

> There was a small universe of people who understood baseline concepts like getting to product market fit, how to measure and implement growth patterns, etc etc.

I'm a PM and I think veeerrrryyy few people understand this, including many of my fellow PMs.

I think it's like reading a book about how to pitch a baseball. Knowledge and application are entirely different. Someone might be able to regurgitate the theory on how to achieve product-market fit, but put them in the driver seat of a real product and lots of people flounder.

One of the most common mistakes is simply delusion - the believe that your product is 'there' when it's not. I believe there's a cognitive dissonance that impacts the product owner - you kinda have to believe (or at least outwardly project) that your product is doing well.

> I'm a PM and I think veeerrrryyy few people understand this, including many of my fellow PMs.

Preach. And the universe of people who can actually do the work to start something and get it to PMF is a pretty small subset of those who understand the concepts in theory.

I would even go further and say that those who don't understand Product Market Fit but still can build, learn PMF by stumbling, falling.

Same sports analogy- it is better to be someone who can play (but doesn't know the rules) than someone who has encyclopedic knowledge on the said sport but cannot play (physical limitations).

Totally agree. Someone who just understands that you need to go talk to customers and actually try to sell whatever you're building ASAP is going to fare way better as a founder than someone who learned what PMF is during their MBA but doesn't want to get out and do the dirty work.

What do you mean by "better"? There's room for lots of people to have jobs off the field. Think about all of the support staff we never see on TV during the game. Or off the field even during the game. The announcer/sports commentator, the coach, the physical therapists and doctors, the people that work the grounds. Stephen Curry doesn't work in vacuum and neither does Jeff Dean.

> there’s a tried and true playbook that large tech companies quickly put to use to capture any remotely adjacent areas

Hum... The reason why large companies have historically been unable to do that is because nobody in them bothers to do it, not because they don't know how.

And one of the consequences of a series of mass layoffs is exactly that people stop caring about things like this.

Or, to put it succinctly - Google took off because Yahoo didnt particularly want to be a search engine.

Oh, Paul Graham (from this site) has a nice history about their ad-selling team in his articles.

There's another set of large players who have sucked all of the air out of what could have otherwise been thriving, competitive categories with many players. Google with search, Amazon with eCommerce, Facebook with social. Yes there are maybe 1-2 counterpoints in each of these spaces, but they've largely been successful at leaving a lot of would be entrepreneurs avoiding these huge spaces because they know they can't compete.

The same feeling of tech 10-15 years ago is what the current AI scene feels like. There's definitely an emphasis on higher education now, but outside of that look at what hackers have been able to accomplish just solo. It's a burgeoning scene with the potential to be as impactful as software was. Except now instead of if/else, it's going to be inscrutable arrays of numbers representing learned programs :D. It seems super fun and the barrier to entry is a lot lower than people think!

Agreed. The type of employee at big tech today is a lot different than what once was. But given the volume perhaps the output will be similar.