>as someone who's been building for the internet for 25+ years, this is the first time that i've ever felt like it's very difficult to make money building new things.

I understand it was already the trend 25 years ago, but way before that you really weren't expected to be able to make money building things for the internet.

The internet itself was simply not designed for that to begin with.

Building things where the internet was an element was already getting bad enough.

The force from within to return to "normal" baseline may yield, but probably never go away.

>The people winning mostly had a head start. Or they have money. Usually both.

As said every millennium since institutions and finance have existed.

>Show HN, the one place the internet was supposed to notice if you built something real.

No no no no no. This is for people who want to share with a much more limited audience than the entire internet.

HN readers did notice a lot of times especially when the project is amazing, OTOH sometimes the latest little side project from somebody well-known, or random interest could be shown.

Naturally the most popular things are free since that's inherently the most compatible with the internet anyway.

But real marketing and promotion is supposed to be far away from this site. If you're trying to sell to "the internet" you've got the whole rest of the internet for that.

HN is not supposed to be enough to be widely noticed at all, if you've got something that's worth marketing, YC is there the whole time and might be able to get you making the most of the internet and then some. Especially if you need a moat of money.

But why do so many people think the only business plan is to prepare to be sieged by a small enough horde which can be deterred by a moat anyway?

>if you're not already moving, you might never take off.

>The cost of acting like it isn't true when it is: permanent.

As I first mentioned, the internet being in place so people can make money off of it is the thing that just wasn't true to begin with, lots of people had some pretty good workarounds for a while though.

I've been watching businesses from startups to large corporations lock in high costs the exact same way for decades before the internet ever came around.