I love Patrick's insight here:<p>> Stepping back a bit, problems feel a bit less important to me as time goes on. The world is awash in problems. Problems you care about are just so much more rewarding to work on, and they pull better work out of you. Problems experienced by people you care about quintuply so, because if you start a SaaS business you'll spend much more time talking to customers and getting in their head than you will be on e.g. modeling their workflow in Ruby or optimizing your AWS spend.<p>> So I'd suggest most people asking this question instead ask "How do I find a user population that buys software that I would enjoy having in my life five days a week for 5~10 years?" My answer for that, after a lot of soulsearching, is "I enjoy helping software people a lot more than I enjoy helping undifferentiated professionals. Maybe I should just do that. Maybe no maybe." Your answer may vary.
If the developers of this website are reading this thread:<p>1. I’d rather visit this site after a few days or weeks and read the answers since the UX of this site isn’t conducive to reading right now. I hate those pop ups on newer answers and questions that hide a big portion of the screen on mobile. Why would I switch to viewing another answer or question while I’m busy reading one already (considering many answers are a bit long)?<p>2. The other part of this page I didn’t like is that answers are all expanded by default, which makes getting to the next question and answer cumbersome when the one that’s in view isn’t of interest.<p>I’ll bookmark this and come back much later after (almost) everyone has asked enough questions and Patrick has had a chance to answer the ones he can or wants to.
Interesting, he still sees fixing engineering hiring as the biggest opportunity in SaaS: <a href="https://capiche.com/q/whats-the-biggest-opportunity-for-a-saas-business-that-you-currently-see" rel="nofollow">https://capiche.com/q/whats-the-biggest-opportunity-for-a-sa...</a>
No undue criticism intended, I have never understood patio11's lore and reverence. He built a site that addressed the needs of bingo players- kudos. He built other moderate internet businesses that scratched a B2C itch.<p>Do those credentials warrant the adulation he is granted?
Is this guy Ramit Sethi really someone to recommend? With a book title like "I will teach you to be rich" my bullshit meter automatically goes off :-)
Patrick is obviously smart, but I'm struck by how he's also a pompous know it all. Just look at his answer to someone asking about buying a house with a credit card:<p><a href="https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-2030-will-people-buy-houses-and-cars-online-with-their-credit-card" rel="nofollow">https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-203...</a><p>The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. Someone rich enough to have a $300,000 credit limit probably doesn't want to buy just a $300K house. However... it's easy to imagine the building or construction industry creating a credit card type product for home builders or renovators backed by a credit line sufficient to buy distressed properties.<p>> Will we see people buy houses online? I mean, clearly yes, we will see that. Will it become dominant to do it without meeting one's counterparty and/or broker? That feels unlikely.<p>Has Patrick ever even bought a house? Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. As patio might say, "there already exists a non-zero amount of lawyers executing real estate deals without the physical presence of the actual buyer and or seller". I see no reason for the trend to dissipate.