[fragmede]

fwiw government tbills give guaranteed returns due to the high interest rate, and are exempt from state taxes.

The popular saying is ti sell shovels, but who do you sell shovels to? If there were no good miners, there'd be no market for shovels.

[swman]

tbf maybe my analogy is wrong but I see there are various players like nvidia and open ai (shovels), vector db and other "infra" type startups (laundromats), and everyone else who is building apps in this ecosystem (miners).

The miners keep coming and going because most of their apps either fall way short of actual enterprise value/expectations, or can be easily incorporated into the big players.

Who exactly benefited during the gold rushes of the 1850s? I think it was everyone else but the miners. Did some miners make a fortune? Sure, but what remains of their legacy today is the foundations laid by the shovel makers and laundromats that allowed california to blossom.

[fragmede]

alright, lets pick apart the analogy. In a gold rush, sell shovels. The meaning of this is that there is business to be had selling shovels to the miners. Being a miner is a lottery ticket. Maybe the claim you made has gold, maybe it doesn't. It's unreliable. You might not make it big. But all of the miners need shovels and Levis, so during the gold rush, it's basically guaranteed that you'll be able to sell shovels, because every miner needs one.

So that is to say, to be a smart business, the company's product should be a tool that the miners need, instead of the tool, because it's seen as more of a sure thing. but this is the real world and there's no such thing as a sure thing. Hearst, Studebaker, Stanford were miners that struck gold. Where the analogy falls apart is that the gold is a bit harder to mine so there are a vast array of shovels with different attachments and gizmos, so you could build a shovel that only catches dirt and lets all the gold run out. To abuse the analogy. Not all shovels are equal, and so eg is AMD a good buy right now.

In this gold rush, Nvidia is the shovel, Supermicro is the handle, Micron is the stick, and TSMC is the atoms those things are made up of. Except for some reason, MU and TSM haven't popped the same way NVDA and SMCI have.

[swman]

So where do we disagree? I said the lottery winners are the software companies mining using the shovels while wearing the Levi’s companies

[fragmede]

> Basically, don’t become the actual gold miner lol.

I was responding to this bit. If nobody is mining and everyone is selling shovels, it's not going to work. We need people to be gold miners as well as selling shovels.

[swman]

Why do we need anything? Ultimately we will find out in time if there is anything of actual value here. Right now we’re at the start of the roller coaster ride.

Obviously I hope to see some cool stuff. But I’m also realistic. We won’t know until we know. But we shouldn’t try to force anything imo. Unless you’re a VC who wants his returns.