[mindentropy]

What are the chances of having your startup in areas other than web and mobile application development ecosystem?

Do you think starting a company working on compilers, operating systems etc will even work without huge resources and connections?

[sscarduzio]

Yes I think so! The pattern is this: big organisations produce generic solutions to cater 80% of the needs of the 100M people. Your task is to create very specific, expensive solutions for ~500 people.

Not a compilers expert, but I will try to invent a fantasy example:

GCC/clang are ok for compiling generic programs, everyone is more or less happy with them.

One day you read on a HN that SpaceX satellites have to ship with 4 redundant CPUs. Every CPU costs $100K and consume a lot of power, but they are needed to correct errors introduced by cosmic rays.

You decide to create a compiler that creates programs with error correction automatically embedded. Using your compiler, SpaceX saves $100K and can have 20% smaller solar panels because they can ship it with 3 CPUs instead of 4.

1. How much $ do you think you can sell a single license? 2. How many customers will you actually need to be profitable? 3. How much of your time do you need to create a minimal prototype that you can DM to that SpaceX employee and get him/her in a valuable mutual-help feedback loop? 4. How much better can this compiler become in 1 year of refinement?

Chances are you can make as much you currently make in a year with your first 2 customers.