Internet enabled careers

Escape competition through authenticity

In 2018, I watched a TV program where a couple of friends secured financial backing for their business idea. They were developing a snooker game, to play on mobiles. Intrigued and excited, I decided to design and build my own game. 2 years later, I launched Conxy onto the AppStore. One day, shortly after, I found downloads had jumped to over 4,000, mostly in China. I was not quite in Candy Crush’s league, but thousands of strangers, the other side of the world, had chosen to play my game. I was delighted. 10 year’s earlier, this would not have been possible.

Access to everyone

The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven't figured this out yet. - Naval Ravikant

The internet connects together nearly every one of the 7 billion people on Earth. That is its super power. We can reach people in multiple ways, including sharing videos on YouTube, live broadcasting on Twitter, podcasting, direct emailing or linking to a website. The internet enables us to find an audience for our product, talent or skill, no matter how far away they are.

The internet makes our uniqueness valuable

Escape competition through authenticity - Naval Ravikant

Pre-internet, if we grew up in a small community and we had an unusual idea then the prospect of finding others to engage with was minimal. Now, by exploiting the global reach of the internet, we can find an audience and, potentially, make a living from our niche idea or product. We may have a weird obsession relating to building matchstick models of battle ships, people with bizarre tattoos or breeding rare frogs. The internet enables anyone to scale up and, if we are the best at it, dominate our niche market. That’s not to imply that we can all build the next Twitter with billions of users, but reaching 50,000 passionate people like us is entirely feasible.

If we compete with others then, essentially, we are trying to do the same thing by copying. However, it is wonderful that each human is unique and we are best at being ourselves. We can be creatively superb at our own unique thing. If we build and market something that is effectively an extension of us then no one can out compete us on that. There is only one Michael Caine or Paul McCartney or J. K. Rowling. Only one you. Uniqueness is Our Power.

Other resources

The Long Tail talk by Chris Anderson

Branding Ourselves post by Phil Martin

How to Join the New Rich post by Phil Martin

We can escape competition by being true to ourselves and following our passions. That is only true because we have access to the internet.

Have fun.

Phil…