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“If you’re a young entrepreneur today it’s a really hard schlep to build a billion-dollar business in tech, because the barriers to entry there have massively increased: the expectation around the complexity
of technology, the level of sophistication that consumers are willing to put up with has accelerated – and of course you’ve got the tech behemoths that will swallow up and crush anything that stands in their way. So it’s really tough to succeed in tech now.
“Conversely, to launch and grow consumer goods has become immensely easy. All the things that were difficult about product supply, manufacturing and distribution can now be commissioned as a service, and instead you can focus on the delicious challenge of figuring out a consumer proposition, brand positioning and formulation.
“So if you’re a bright and ambitious entrepreneur you’ll now work on a consumer goods brand, because the opportunity is so much more straightforward than in tech. And if you’re a VC you’re sitting on vast amounts of capital that you cannot put into tech, and instead you’re putting it into consumer goods.
“If you put it all together, then in terms of shifting consumer demand, shifting economic context and shifting economic opportunity, for consumer goods this is the direct equivalent of 2002, 2003 for tech.”
One of the key consequences of all of this is that the talent flow into packaged goods is greater than ever. As Sceti remarks:
212 'This time is genuinely different'