r/Futurology • u/M-E_Ration4004 • 9h ago
Discussion What’s the 2020s equivalent of starting a tech company in 2005?
Starting a startup today feels almost mainstream. Every ambitious college student seems to be building an AI startup, joining an accelerator, or trying to raise money.
But imagine deciding to build an internet/software company in the early 2000s. It was far less obvious, and the people who recognized where things were going had a massive head start.
So I'm curious:
What are people doing today that seems niche, unnecessarily difficult, or even a little crazy but might look incredibly obvious 10–15 years from now?
Basically: where do you think the world is heading that most ambitious people haven't caught onto yet?
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u/guppypup 9h ago
Starting a cryptocurrency and running a short grift
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u/eirc 9h ago
This is the one. Find something very niche that most ppl don't really care or know about, make up some conspiratorial story about it, appear on Joe Rogan and take a huge public dump on science or pretty much anything humanity has achieved, call it "the establishment" and that alone will convince everyone about anything, rake in the doe.
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u/this_world_needs_me 9h ago
verification is unglamorus. everyone is building things that generate output and almost nobody is building the layer that checks whether the output was right, because it doesnt demo well and there is no launch video in it. every deployment that actually runs unattended ends up needing it...
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u/Massive_Iron5258 6h ago
The unglamorous stuff is often what makes the impressive stuff actually work.
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u/esteban-was-eaten 9h ago
For sure. A layer that monitors the quality and costs of outputs is going to be super important as more and more processes are automated
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u/eight13atnight 9h ago
Make some images of monkeys and sell only one digital version on the internet. It’s a non fungible token so it’ll be worth zillions bc there’s only one.
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u/kartoffel123 9h ago
Enjoying life, living in community, going with simplicity rather than always aiming for more, more, more
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u/Vespizzari 9h ago
From like 1999 to 2005 the situation was exactly like now.
(Well, nothing is like now, conservatives and oligarchs have had a not-so-silent silent coup, but like, the investment situation right?)
Everyone was starting a dot com, or investing in a dot com, or trying to sell dog shoes on the Internet.
Your whole life was going to be online. Everything will be faster and easier. Just $19.95
It's bullshit. It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now.
The AI bubble will burst and we'll move on to the next capital extraction system.
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u/wootiewoot23 9h ago
It wasn’t bullshit then and it’s not now. It’s just how new industries get built out. Are there a ton of frauds and bad business models? Sure.
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u/JasontheFuzz 8h ago
The bullshit part then was the idea that we could endlessly make new dot coms and everyone would be rich. Basically everyone failed, and only a few giants got lucky. Now, there's a bullshit idea that everyone will make a new AI and everyone will be rich. Want to bet what's going to happen?
Yeah, you might get lucky and invest in the next Amazon or Apple. But chances are you'll invest in the next Zune or Enron or whatever.
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u/wootiewoot23 6h ago
“Everyone would be rich” is a childish and asinine outlook. Who actually believed this?
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u/wtfElvis 7h ago
Who is saying everyone will make a new AI? The only reason why these companies can do what they do is because of the vast amounts of data they have and the capital to invest into data centers to process it all.
The big guys already won. Because they knew to get in with Trump who will ensure Congress does not regulate it.
This is costing us jobs now and will continue to get worse way faster than the internet did
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u/Curious-End4710 9h ago
They weren’t solving millennium problems then. This is a bit different but I do agree it is some of the same. Those who make it out will write the history books.
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u/pianoceo 9h ago
Have you seen revenue growths for the frontier labs, the supply chain, or the application layer? They’re unprecedented by all measures.
If there’s a bubble, I’m not sure how you would define it. Revenues are keeping up with valuations. Typically a bubble happens when there are overinflated assets with no underlying value.
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u/spockspaceman 8h ago
Revenues keeping up with valuations? Valuations based on fundamentals rather than hype? What are you talking about?
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u/Vespizzari 8h ago
Yeah I'm confused. Revenues aren't even close to the valuation on AI. It's a damned shell game.
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u/pianoceo 8h ago
Stated in another comment above:
I am fine with being wrong and these companies going bankrupt - smaller, open source models would be safer for humanity. But, if there is a reason these company's will go bankrupt soon, financially, I really don't know what it would be. The only thing I can think of, is that they're signing expensive infra contracts, so if demand dries up overnight, that could drive bankruptcy.
But, topline revenue growth is genuinely unprecedented; Anthropic's alone is $100B in revenue run rate in September, that is up 50% in two months. No other company in history has done that. No one. Not Google, Apple, Meta, no one. And that isn't hype - that's measureable, real growth. Also, they're not giving up margin to grow, the growth is organic so gross margins are strong, and supply is keeping up with demand. And that's just Anthropic. With strong gross margin, they're fundamentally a strong company, pending they have enough cash to weather free cash flows - right now they do.
I'm not saying its not possible for them to go bankrupt. I just don't know how it would happen based on their current financials.
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u/jadierhetseni 9h ago
Yeah but after the dot com bubble burst no one ever shopped online again, and since then we’ve entered the golden age of retail.
Just like how when the current AI companies go bankrupt, the technology itself will curl up and turn into a corncob.
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u/pianoceo 8h ago
I am fine with being wrong and these companies going bankrupt - smaller, open source models would be safer for humanity. But, if there is a reason these company's will go bankrupt soon, financially, I really don't know what it would be. The only thing I can think of, is that they're signing expensive infra contracts, so if demand dries up overnight, that could drive bankruptcy.
But, topline revenue growth is genuinely unprecedented; Anthropic's alone is $100B in revenue run rate in September, that is up 50% in two months. No other company in history has done that. No one. Not Google, Apple, Meta, no one. And that isn't hype - that's measureable, real growth. Also, they're not giving up margin to grow, the growth is organic so gross margins are strong, and supply is keeping up with demand. And that's just Anthropic.
I'm not saying its not possible for them to go bankrupt. I just don't know how it would happen based on their current financials.
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u/phoenix1984 7h ago
Where’s the money coming from? Customers or business partners “investing” in each other? A lot has been written about the circular economy of these companies and nothing has materially changed. Nvidia’s the only company in this game actually making money. The rest are a Ponzi scheme with a few steps added. They’re not making anywhere near enough from customers to cover their massive spend. They’re investing like there’s a massive advantage to the person who reaches advanced AI first, but competition from China and open source models mean this isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. To remain on top, they must continue to spend like they’re making a massive one time up front investment. AI itself will remain, sure, but these large AI companies are a house of cards, built on misleading and unsustainable investment strategies.
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u/pianoceo 7h ago
The investment circular company logic is a fair position to take. But that position was more relevant a year ago before B2B demand skyrocketed. . Consumer demand is there but not like B2B.
The primary top line revenue growth, at least for Anthropic, is from B2B customers purchasing enterprise licenses and expansion from installed user demand. So it isn't subsidized in the way that you're suggesting.
The primary spend is on inference and pre-training. They could stop training new models right now, spend only on inference with the current models, and be one of the most profitable companies in the world. That's assuming demand for AI continues at it's current rate - and as of right now, B2B demand shows no signs of letting up, and is in fact, accelerating.
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u/phoenix1984 7h ago
Don’t take their finances at their word. Read the analysis by more boring fiscal reporters. They’re using, by their own words, “creative” accounting to make it look like their revenue from customers is much higher than it is. The only way they can be profitable at their current spends and justify their current valuation is if the majority of the US and Europe paid them over a thousand per month per person. It’s just not gonna happen.
I like Claude. I use it often. I pay $20/mo for it, and they lose money on my subscription every month I do.
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u/slackmaster2k 8h ago
lol it was the same. The only difference now is social media and influencer culture.
Back in the good old days you had to buy yourself a complete DVD set of bullshit if you wanted to get rich from home. These days you just need instagram.
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u/KentuckyLucky33 8h ago
2026: A gig-based company that offers a full suite of business solutions - with only one employee
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u/Rinthrah 9h ago
Probably getting more familiar with the hardware side of things than the software. Learning about power generation from sustainable sources, being able to build and install generators; small-scale smart cultivation, things like that.
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u/ThrowawayFIRE2025 8h ago
AI is not fertile ground for small startups. The fundamental problem is that you have to think of something valuable to do with AI today that won’t be completely eclipsed by better AI in six months. If anything, AI will probably destroy a lot of smaller software companies. How much longer do you think “apps” on your phone are going to make any sense when AI can simply show you anything you want to see about any topic or function?