The Internet Is Still in Its Infancy
Can you imagine how incredible it must have been to be an ambitious entrepreneur back in 1985, at the dawn of the Internet? You could register almost any .com domain name you wanted — even single-word ones — and it would cost you almost nothing. This golden opportunity lasted for several years.
In 1994, one of Wired’s writers noticed that mcdonalds.com was still available. Following my advice, he registered it and even tried to give it to McDonald’s for free — but the company had no idea what the Internet was. That story became the foundation for a famous Wired article.
At that time, the Internet was an untouched frontier. You could easily become the first in any chosen category. Consumers had no real expectations, and barriers to entry were almost nonexistent. Want to launch your own search engine? Open the first online store? Host amateur videos? You could — it was all wide open.
But that was then. Today, looking back, it seems as if every corner of the Internet has been bulldozed and built over by multiple waves of settlers. The web feels saturated with apps, platforms, devices, and content — enough to capture humanity’s attention for a million years. If you launch a tiny new innovation, who will even notice it in this sea of abundance?
The truth is: the Internet is still just beginning. From the perspective of the future, almost nothing has happened yet. If we could travel 30 years ahead and look back from 2050, we’d realize that most of the defining online products people use then were created after 2016. Those future generations — with their holographic displays, virtual-reality contact lenses, and AI-powered interfaces — will look at us and say, “You didn’t even have the Internet back then.”
And they’ll be right. Because all the truly transformative products of this century haven’t been invented yet. They’re waiting for visionary innovators — those who aren’t afraid to try the “impossible.” Right now, the world is full of low-hanging fruit, the modern equivalent of registering a one-word domain name in 1984.
In 2050, the old pioneers will sigh and say:
"Can you imagine what it was like to be an innovator in 2016? The world was wide open! You could choose almost any category, add AI, put it in the cloud, and make history. Expectations were low, barriers were minimal. It was the best time ever to start something new.”
The truth is: that time is now. There has never been a better moment in human history to invent something. Never greater opportunity, lower risk, or higher potential return than this very minute.
Over the past 30 years, we’ve built an incredible foundation — a strong platform to create truly extraordinary things. But the real breakthroughs — the ones that will define our future — are yet to come. The coolest technologies haven’t even been imagined.
