Software is eating the world
A bold, yet self-evident claim, made by Marc Andreessen in 2011.
Amazon (a software company) is the world’s largest bookseller, and Borders is bankrupt.
Around 2017, I became obsessed with the idea of getting age-old industries (finance, manufacturing, healthcare, contracting) “online.”
Jump right in
As I slogged through legendarily long DC commutes, my mind would wander and fill mental whiteboards with ideas about bringing automated applications to bottlenecked professional services companies.
I was actually on my honeymoon in Belize when I got a phone call about an opportunity to build a suite of automations for a financial services company, including an in-house “eBay” and an instant quote chatbot.
My wife was even more excited than I was because I finally had the opportunity I had been ranting about, so I jumped right in.
Leverage through Tech
It was exhilarating for me to empower the team to continue forward “the way they’ve always done it” while supercharging their operation.
Now that they had a slick digital platform, they were no longer just a services company that could only serve clients during business hours, they were a technology company with products and services available around the clock.
Software is the ultimate permissionless leverage, with a near-zero cost of replication, meaning it provides the same value over and over again without the cost of time or capital.
Naval Ravikant spells this out concisely in the X thread below.
Skills Developed
I unlocked nearly endless amounts of energy when I jumped feet first into software development. The creative process is a rush, and tailor-made products are a win-win; they provide new revenue streams while reducing costs.
And the first step in that process is listening to exactly how these businesses are run on a day-to-day basis, and asking questions about what are the best parts of their days and cycles, and what are the worst.
There is no better feeling than seeing the look on their face when they realize the worst parts of their day that they dreaded are now completely automated.
- Rapid Prototyping (< 2 weeks)
- Product Development
- Software Team Management
Lessons Learned
- Immediately “spike” an ugly, value-generating workflow before adding polish.
- Iterate bite-sized feature development to get feedback as quickly and often as possible, because feedback is the gas that makes the engine run.
- Not all opinions are created equal; ensure the true end-user’s feedback is prioritized.