> So, how can we be running out of good investments? It just feels like I'm nutz here. One one hand, we have all this potential energy, but on the other, there is just no where for the kinetic energy to go. Humans aren't just boulders on hill sides, we don't tend to sit still, we get moving on our own.
There's a lot of factors but the big ones I've noticed are healthcare costs/risks and overall income inequality drastically reducing the pool of potential entrepreneurs. It's less a problem for software engineers but it's a significant limiting factor for any venture that's applying software to specific industries (think transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, etc) when founders can't get their heads above water long enough to consider a startup.
Zoning laws are also slowing growth in many cities so a lot of money that would normally be chasing low risk returns in real estate has to move up the ladder. The number of things to invest into without relying on a bubble just can't keep up with the amount of money coming in from fiscal policy and foreign investors.
The US IT industry (as a lay person) is the only one where a startup can feasibly grow quickly enough to justify the investment.
Construction in the US is minimal. The initial costs of any industry with production, manufacturing are immense.
Healthcare is one area where there is space for clear improvement, but being a rigid to change as it is, healthcare startups really struggle to penetrate the industry.
You may invest in the service / food industry, but it doesn't seem to be as hyper-scaling friendly as it used to be. I do not foresee any trend since Starbucks that has been able to take a country by storm.
You can invest in smaller restaurants, but that is more of a small business investment than anything resembling stock, so good luck making it a liquid asset, even if successful.
Also, a lot of investments are mislabeled (often purposely) as tech startups but are actually some thing else. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Coursera, Udacity, Instacart, Juul, WeWork, and the like are to me, products from a different industry all the together. The tech aspect of their business does not influence their success as much as it may seem.
There's a lot of factors but the big ones I've noticed are healthcare costs/risks and overall income inequality drastically reducing the pool of potential entrepreneurs. It's less a problem for software engineers but it's a significant limiting factor for any venture that's applying software to specific industries (think transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, etc) when founders can't get their heads above water long enough to consider a startup.
Zoning laws are also slowing growth in many cities so a lot of money that would normally be chasing low risk returns in real estate has to move up the ladder. The number of things to invest into without relying on a bubble just can't keep up with the amount of money coming in from fiscal policy and foreign investors.