This is my first post.
I've always felt that established big tech companies are fundamentally different from YC's most successful companies (https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?top_company=true) in that they just seem so much more foundational and impactful to the world.
I can't see how any of those YC companies will produce the amount of value FAANG Et al. will produce.
So my question is, how may one go about starting a generational / foundational technology company today? The only example I can even think of in recent memory is OpenAI, Tesla & SpaceX. Note that 2/3 of these have a huge hardware and manufacturing component to them.
It seems like it has been decreasingly common to start generational companies. Is it because they are just harder to start over time? Does that mean future technology startups will never be as big as the biggest technology companies of today? Are software startups particularly limited, competing for an ever smaller pie?
And if generational technology companies can still be founded, then what are some ways in which that could happen? Will they be mostly hard tech, biotech? Or is there room for pure software still? A related but meaningfully different question: Can the founders of generational companies still be young (as in the past) or do you need a ton of expertise now?
Excited to hear your thoughts!
Alternatively, maybe big foundational ideas aren't super compatible with the "take over the world in three months" format? I'm not familiar enough with the process to be sure, though, so take this as wild speculation.