Software Ate All the Easy Shit - by Andrew Rea - AR

Software is still eating the world. But chasing sexy opportunities or low-hanging fruit is a losing proposition for most of us. Rather than pursuing high-status, cool ideas, more founders should start companies that solve unsexy problems and compete in unsexy industries. It’s been almost 12 years since Marc Andreesen’s essay “Why Software is Eating the World” was published. In the decade+ since, we’ve seen that Andreesen was by and large right. Software companies and products have proliferated. AWS drove the cost to build software exponentially lower. Zoom made it easier to connect with anyone, anywhere, about anything. Smartphones and the app store drove a massive wave of new consumer internet companies — Uber, Snapchat, Spotify, Airbnb, etc. E-commerce became ubiquitous. Today, there’s a massive ecosystem of digitally native brands and software companies that support them. (For a visual illustration see the market maps below.) In B2B, the cloud arrived and has largely been adopted ac

Software is still eating the world. But chasing sexy opportunities or low-hanging fruit is a losing proposition for most of us. Rather than pursuing high-status, cool ideas, more founders should start companies that solve unsexy problems and compete in unsexy industries. It’s been almost 12 years since Marc Andreesen’s essay “Why Software is Eating the World” was published. In the decade+ since, we’ve seen that Andreesen was by and large right. Software companies and products have proliferated. AWS drove the cost to build software exponentially lower. Zoom made it easier to connect with anyone