[fat0wl]

Yeah I don't want to get too venty because I'm too cynical/pessimistic as it is but..... I'm a professional web engineer now & especially as the cloud hosting universe stabilizes, most stuff seems so trivial. Can still be interesting, but yeah most startup level stuff is solved.

Previously I completed a master's thesis on audio signal processing / machine learning. Trust me, the work I was doing in that world was 1000x more advanced because it was essentially ALL r&d, but you get paid more in today's world to implement CRUD sites at an acceptable flow rate. It's a good way to sharpen some CS skills I was missing, but I think algorithmic development is much more of a dream job.

[Silhouette]

Can still be interesting, but yeah most startup level stuff is solved.

If you'd said that the challenges facing most start-ups don't involve solving a particularly interesting technical challenge on day one, I'd agree that this was likely.

However, if most start-up level stuff more generally were solved, everyone would be running successful start-ups, which clearly most people aren't.

[fat0wl]

My personal (albeit naive) belief is that the limiting factors on most startups is a good idea. Start-ups only work when they are based on real consumer desires.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" but what is the mother of a start-up....? There are few who understand this realistically.

The talent is there but where is the business plan? It's not very often you hear a start-up idea that rattles you. If I heard one I'd hop on board just for some stake in the company. Also founder/managers are a pain... I imagine it must suck to be the engineer-slave of an ivy leaguer who is going out to another bar for a fund-raising meeting that will affect your future salary working on their hair-brained idea.

[tensor]

Technical problems being essentially solved has nothing to do with a startup actually succeeding in the market place.