Where there’s muck, there’s brass →
From Joel on Software again. It’s worth it.
Work that makes you unhappy is what I mean by “a gnarly problem.”
The trouble is, the market pays for solutions to gnarly problems, not solutions to easy problems. As the Yorkshire lads say, “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.”
[…]
The one thing that so many of today’s cute startups have in common is that all they have is a simple little Ruby-on-Rails Ajax site that has no barriers to entry and doesn’t solve any gnarly problems. So many of these companies feel insubstantial and fluffy, because, out of necessity (the whole company is three kids and an iguana), they haven’t solved anything difficult yet. Until they do, they won’t be solving problems for people. People pay for solutions to their problems.
Go read it.