I was wondering if anybody else had the impression that as Internet-startup-people, most of our ideas are about things that are Internet-related and tend to follow the big trends such as local, social, crowdfunded, gamified and so on? I get the feeling that most startups are competing in a very narrow space, a space that's becoming more and more saturated every day. There are 10 versions of literally everything web/mobile out there. I'm also guessing that this is a natural consequence of businesses being started by "Internet-people", with most of their time and interests coming from the web and tech worlds.
What I'm getting at is that I think there are innumerable fantastic opportunities in fields that aren't pure Internet software, such as biology, energy, materials and others, and yet most of us can't do much about it without the right domain expertise.
On my own, I most likely can't disrupt the legal industry and replace laywers, I can't build the next great indestructible mobile device case material, I can't optimize air traffic control, I can't do anything revolutionary in the field of biology. I could however, if I partnered up with the right person with the right domain expertise who might have a vision for how his industry could be significantly changed through the latest software technologies. I'm suspecting that in fact because non-software industries don't have nearly as many software professionals constantly trying to automate/streamline/evolve everything around them, they have more opportunities for change than they realize.
The challenge is then to come together and achieve something across disciplines, but I'm not seeing much of that happening, not in the SV or HN community at least.
What could we be doing better, both on an individual level, as entrepreneurs, and also on a community level? Is going to other industries to look for disruption opportunities simply a best kept secret that nobody's talking about?
