I know we are at ground zero here on HN, and ironically HN is pretty good evidence of this, but

The pros of software are so OP that it hard to justify investing in anything else. Software has incredibly low cap-ex and incredibly high margins. Five humans with five laptops can create a lawn maintenance app worth tens of millions.

To get that same value from, say, building lawn mowers, you need a factory...annnd already the value prop is "nope".

Take note that there is no hardware version of Hackernews. There is no hardware/manufacturing VC scene. Hell even the hardware that is produced today is just a vessel to sell a $19.99/mo software subscription to use the product. Look at what Tesla did, they are getting a reality check on their cars, but Ah!, Tesla is now a software company developing a software package that turns hardware (their cars) into reoccurring profit machines!

Software has eaten the first world, and this is what is looks like. A hyper inflated tech scene where all innovation is happening, and a totally anemic everything-else scene (except finance, that's huge too).

>Five humans with five laptops can create a lawn maintenance app worth tens of millions.

And

>totally anemic everything-else scene

A lot of the 'growth' we've seen seems to be consolidation and bilking of the consumer by rents. If we look at other countries with actual competition in manufacturing like China we see tons of brands with quality everywhere from use once and throw away to actually really good products. The profit chasing will eventually kill us as we have nothing that will produce actual value.

(Also I love how you're getting voted down for pointing out the obvious).

My bet is that there is a hardware Hacker News, but it's in Mandarin.

Note that while five humans with five laptops may create an app about lawn maintenance, the app won't actually maintain your lawn. We'd expect apps to have less value than they do.

I agree with this to some extent, but I honestly believe the capital markets would look VASTLY different had the Fed not rescued them with unprecedented money printing in 2002-3, 2008-15 and 2020-1. Yes, software is important and changing the economy, but it doesn't rewrite the basic rules of finance and valuation. The Fed did that.

The hardware HN is also HN. There's just nowhere near as much stuff, and as you say the capex barrier to entry makes that a much smaller business.