I think this is spot on. Most people want to grow up, but they simply can't. They can't afford the same lifestyle without far more debt inducing schooling, both parents have to work, housing is unaffordable, our congress and presidency is filled with ancient people who have no idea how an iPad works, so policy is far behind the times.
It's no surprise many people just...gave up. There's nothing to latch onto or own - everything is blocked by someone who already got theirs.
Yea, effort estimation is a waste of time much like building a piece by piece project plan of anything.
The key is workflows, like how buildings used to be built. You just keep working on it - no stupid schedule that fails immediately once one little detail to follow goes wrong. Building accurate plans never works and it takes ridiculous amounts of time.
To me it's a natural consequence of wealth inequality. When you have mega funds like the oil countries have, where even losses like this are not really relevant, you will have this behavior. They know it's a moonshot. It's high risk high reward. And many will fail - but in the end, it doesn't really matter that much.
People use knives a lot more than instant pots. They wear down quite quickly and many just buy new ones instead of sharpening. Vitamix blenders are priced quite high to make up for a lower sales volume.
> Also, I don't think the market for this stuff is ever truly saturated: every day, plenty of people get their first apartment and need to buy appliances. Instant Pot seems similar to other things like microwaves and toasters, which we don't think of as a dead end due to market saturation.
The market for microwaves isn't, because people use them. Outside of that craze, I don't know of anyone who uses their instant pot anymore. It was a fad, PE came in and gutted it. but the fact is, it probably wasn't going to be this huge performer either way.
I completely disagree with your examples. Cars have massively changed over time - even in short intervals, cars today offer a lot of value you wouldn't get even just 5 years ago in many models. And they're priced accordingly. Computers? Laptops got smaller, graphics improved, performance improved, etc. And still is. Televisions went from CRT to LCD, SD to HD, to OLED. There were continual reasons to upgrade.
The instant pot is like the Bialetti Moka pot - it's a simple device, that doesn't wear down quickly and isn't used enough to wear it down quickly. New devices don't differentiate nearly enough. And the used market is likely flooded with cheap ones that others stopped using.
Just happened to me this week, same thing. Out of nowhere. It also auto-signed me into Edge, when I never did it before in my life. It really is getting ridiculous now.
It's no surprise many people just...gave up. There's nothing to latch onto or own - everything is blocked by someone who already got theirs.