Interesting and insightful piece I read at a Nigerian Tech blog, post was written by a Nigerian.

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Ideally, tech startups are supposed to disrupt huge traditonal businesses, break monopolies, make products and services better or cheaper for the consumers and all in all, make living a much easier hassle for humans. Most inventors or tech entrepreneurs start out with such dreams and end up making a huge fortune on the side. Building a successful product or service in tech, especially something on a Global scale like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, has been a surefire way to become insanely rich. So, why am I saying that if you want to be the World’s next richest, don’t start a tech company?

The truth is, the World has changed, the tech industry has matured and is divided into countless verticals that no single company could control any considerable part of what would make the founder richer than the movers and shakers in other Global industries, also, in tech, business disruption happens very fast with the continuous invention of more advanced technologies so it is pretty difficult to stay on top.

Prior to recent happenings in the world of billionaires and finance, I had always thought that the world’s next richest person would be an innovator and a futuristic thinker. I had always pictured a scenario where the Google founders would replace the need for phones and other gadgets with their not so cool glasses, wrist watches, other wearable gadgets and selling us smart self-driving cars while making themselves a lot of money to be the World’s richest. I have also pictured another scenario where a serial entrepreneur and risk taker like Elon Musk would provide most of the world with the smartest sustainable energy solution while breaking space travel frontiers and making himself the richest man on earth from some sort of space mineral or energy source discovery may be. Ok, obviously I have watched too many Sci-Fi movies, but you get the idea.

Well, even though there is still a lot of money to be made in technology as most major tech stocks right now are arguably undervalued and the Internet of everything is about to make tech companies more valuable and bring in new riches to new comers and even incumbents, I still think it really doesn’t take any tech skills or innovation foresight to be the next richest man on the planet.

Tech is becoming more diverse and specialised that there is hardly any chance for anyone holding a monopoly like what Microsoft had in the early days of personal computing. Also, disruption happens fast so even if you do manage to invent something and enjoy some sort of monopoly, it won’t take long before someone in a dorm room in Stanford or anywhere comes up with a better, cheaper or even free alternative that you are forced to either buy them out or watch them take a slice of your business or even worse, new companies coming out of Asia that don’t mind getting very slim margins to get (spoil) hardware market share for example

Reality is, throughout history and even now, you don’t really need to be an inventor or have as much smarts to have all the money in the world. You only need to be a fast moving business mind for identifying where opportunities are coming, seeing potential growth sectors right before they pick upand being savvy enough to startup and quickly acquire good control. It also has a lot to do with a great dose of luck, being in the right place at the right time. Like how Warren Buffet admits to being lucky he was born in America just before the development of their financial system. So, do you think you are lucky to be born in Africa right before an enormous economic growth on the continent?

Look back in history at the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, and of course, Bill Gates, they all controlled probably the fastest growing vital industries of their times and........................

continue reading >>>> http://www.techsuplex.com/2014/07/21/next-richest-person-isnt-building-tech-company/

nice piece

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