Manufacturing and physical businesses have their advantages too. Don't look down on the physical economy. Sure, the internet can make money, and the margins are high.
But the internet, in almost every respect, has a zero-sum flavor to it.
Even SEO is a fight over fewer than 10 spots on the first page — really, the top 3. So all you can do is keep hunting for obscure niches.
Choosing a track is the same. The internet industry, especially at this stage, is basically an oligarchs' game. Whether it's social, e-commerce, or short video, you'll find that in the end only one or two players survive.
But manufacturing is different. I saw someone put it well online:
In manufacturing, you can run a big car factory, and I can run a small workshop making parts — there's a living in it for everyone. Because physical radius limits your ability to monopolize. No matter how strong your factory in Guangdong is, shipping cement to Heilongjiang to sell would lose you money.
So manufacturing is naturally fragmented. Competition is fierce, sure, but you rarely see those fight-to-the-death, wipe-out wars.
The internet has no physical radius. If I don't do this business, or I do it a step slower and the company next door gets there first, I'm completely done.
Because nobody keeps two apps that do exactly the same thing on their phone.
And why are internet salaries so high? Because when a company offers a fresh graduate 300K, it's not just because he can do the work — it's also to keep him from going to work for a competitor.
So manufacturing is actually pretty resilient. The ceiling for an ordinary person in a physical business is lower, but over the same year or two, the floor is much higher. Open a small restaurant — however badly it goes, over a whole year you can't possibly sell not a single bowl of rice... Whereas if you start up in IT or AI as an indie developer, selling literally nothing is a real possibility.
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