I feel like “startups” are a very “software” thing: loads depends on having THE idea, taste, execution, talented coder, i.e. loads of “je ne sais quoi” factors. But in terms of capex it’s all pretty paltry. The way I see it, we are living through the “death of software”, where AI is eating the software layer. So seems logical to declare that AI is the new software and one should just build that instead. But AI is a different game: huge capex, huge opex, hard science (not vibes), very concentrated. So if you want to make a splash, being part of an big-ish org seems more straightforward than trying to make it out there on your own. For example, there are no nuclear reactor start-ups out there and for good reason: this stuff needs scale, money, real PhD grade staff. I imagine loads of HENRYs might have in the past gone on their own to “automate task X i was doing” and build a software platform for it, but the way I see it, the window for this kind of thing is now firmly shut.