There is *a lot* of software that hasn’t been built across hundreds of industries because our best paid designers and engineers were occupied with building social networks and ad networks.
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." — Jeff Hammerbacher
Meanwhile, huge parts of the physical economy were left running on spreadsheets, email, paper forms, ancient desktop software and enterprise systems installed sometime around 1999. They still use it today.
Construction. Manufacturing. Logistics. Agriculture. Waste management. Energy. Shipping. Maintenance. Laboratories. Local government. Field services. Industrial equipment. Healthcare administration. The list is endless.
A lot of these places were simply too small, too "unsexy" or too expensive to serve with traditional software economics, especially after engineers became one of the best paid career choice.
But small teams can now build specialized tools for markets that previously couldn’t justify the best of the best engineering talent.
And even further, lets not forget about all the terrible enterprise software out there owned by massive corporations who locked in clients since the late 90s and didn't change a single thing since then. All these companies are completely vendor locked due to switching cost, but that switching cost is slowly disappearing.
Maybe I am too optimistic here, but there are entire industries still waiting for their first piece of software that is truly designed for the people using it.
The opportunities right now are endless.
