Idea · carried by 1 source
Best Companies Are Born in the Worst Environments
Counter-cyclical entrepreneurship: the best companies are created in the worst environments. When everyone tells you it's a bad time to start a company, that's precisely when you should.
Where it comes from
William Hockey, on whether it's a good time to be an entrepreneur in financial services, in highlights/william-hockey-bet-on-yourself (~1:10:27): “Anybody who tells you that it's a bad time to be an entrepreneur, that probably means it's a good time to be an entrepreneur. If you look at all these stats on Twitter... the best companies are created in the worst environments.”
How it works
- Cheaper than ever: “It is cheaper than ever to be an entrepreneur.”
- Least risky time — paradoxically: “It's probably the least risky time to be an entrepreneur.” The safety nets, playbooks, and infrastructure have never been better.
- Also crowded: The flip side is that it's “pretty crowded” — 90%+ of the last YC batch was AI-related.
- The non-AI opportunity: “I think it's actually probably a pretty good time to be a founder in a non AI related place right now. Because there's probably less competition, less smart people.”
- Attack where the dumbest people make the most money: “If you want to be successful you can go look at every single industry and you can say, 'Okay, who is the dumbest people and what makes them most money?' And if you go to attack that area it's probably a pretty good space.”
When the smartest people are all chasing the same thing, the real opportunity is doing something else entirely — preferably in an industry where the incumbents are “the dumbest people making the most money.”