I'm not sure that there's a startup winter at all, it looks like a web browser tech winter to me. AFAIK YC also changed their focus and now are looking for physical things much more - like supersonic jets.
There is only so much you can do with organizing information and entertainment through HTML and JS and make a profit of it. Maybe there will be a nice whiplash gold rush for making the web great again as this pile of garbage doesn't inspire anyone anymore.
That will happen as soon as a new business model alternative to what caused the enshittification appears. Alternatively, maybe a new tech will emerge that will offer freedoms and possibilities similar to the early days of the web.
Yeah I agree. The market for companies that do something in a web browser may be saturated, but outside of that world it feels like there are more opportunities than ever. For example in the space of AI + robotics we’ve barely scratched the surface.
I wonder if part of what’s happening may be a generational shift in how people in and around the startup world view work/life balance. In my limited experience, GenZ folks tend to place a premium on reasonable working hours, so it’s not surprising they would evaluate the trade offs between startups and big tech differently.
I'm biased but I think the most interesting opportunities involve software that interacts with the physical world in some way. These projects will definitely involve some electrical + mechanical engineering, product design etc., but I'd guess that in terms of number of hours worked, they are still more software engineering than any other single discipline. Probably with a very different set of tools than those used on the web.
There is only so much you can do with organizing information and entertainment through HTML and JS and make a profit of it. Maybe there will be a nice whiplash gold rush for making the web great again as this pile of garbage doesn't inspire anyone anymore.
That will happen as soon as a new business model alternative to what caused the enshittification appears. Alternatively, maybe a new tech will emerge that will offer freedoms and possibilities similar to the early days of the web.