> Why is it that this argument only seems to apply to software?
Maybe because software has a unique property: a practically zero marginal ("reproduction") cost. Hence software, and services that depend only on software are suitable for the rocket-fuel injection strategy VCs so heavily rely on.
Make no mistake - good software is damn expensive to create, but once it's ready for delivery, creating and selling additional copies (or serving more clients) costs practically nothing.
the distribution costs nothing but six months old software is still six months old software. Pushing half finished products on the entire world is another 'feature' hailed by people like PG. I thought we had all learned how great "move fast and break things" and "when it works you're shipping too late" is for us at this point.
There was a good article on HN recently about 500 year old Japanese family owned businesses. Most hypergrowth software probably doesn't live five. Isn't it interesting that most of the software that actually has lived decades looks more like it's made by people like that rather than VC fuelled companies?
Maybe because software has a unique property: a practically zero marginal ("reproduction") cost. Hence software, and services that depend only on software are suitable for the rocket-fuel injection strategy VCs so heavily rely on.
Make no mistake - good software is damn expensive to create, but once it's ready for delivery, creating and selling additional copies (or serving more clients) costs practically nothing.