The Current Bottleneck of the World

What a Game taught me about Entrepreneurship

A Great Question

A few months ago I found this thread on hackernews Factorio and Software Engineering it sparked my interest on this game called Factorio.

The goal is to create a rocket by automating processes by building factories and pipelines. On a superficial level it’s a highly addictive game keeping the player busy building more and more efficient systems. But after a while you see that this game teaches a lot about decision making and how to priorities your next steps regarding your resources constraints.

The blog post I mentioned makes the comparison to software engineering especially the trade offs you face on an architectural level.
We always have the choice between quick & dirty vs slow & clean but it’s not that easy. The real world has many more layers (maybe infinite) than a video game or a software project.

Playing Factorio gives you a playful way to understand the trade offs and makes you a better decision maker. The most important task is to work on the current bottleneck.
You jump from one bottleneck to the next. First it’s ore, then iron. Then there is to much iron blocking the conveyor belt. Then you are going to pick them manually but decide to place a robot arm to do that. Next you will see that you have not produced enough ammunition to protect a part of your base. Now iron is not flowing to the ammunition production due to your robot arm taking too much from the conveyor belt …

What you are really doing is: working on the current bottleneck.

And solving the current bottleneck yields in massive returns. While playing Factorio one friend asked me “Omar, what do you think this the current bottleneck of the world?”

“Omar, what do you think this the current bottleneck of the world?”

Wow. I had to pause for a moment. What a great question. As an entrepreneur it’s my passion to solve problems and create value. But finding your way is hard and looking for guidance gives you mostly the same answers and quotes.
”Build what your customers want.”
”Find a new market.”
”Look for problems to solve.”

Can we shift this perspective? Let’s take the bottleneck approach.
So what is a bottleneck in Factorio?

You have producers and consumers.
If you produce more than there is demand you have a bottleneck on the consumer side.
If you consume more than there is supply you have a bottleneck on the producer side.

Basic economics. Really basic.

The price can be seen as a measurement on how big the bottleneck is. Which tells you how long does someone need to wait until they get what they want. Once someone eases the bottleneck, prices goes down but then some other bottleneck pops up. Sometimes on different part of your system. In Factorio you chase the bottleneck. Same as an entrepreneur chases market opportunities.

The real world in infinitely more complex than a game. In Factorio you know in advance what you need and how to create them. Well that’s not true in real life. We figure new things out and change the rule set of our game.

So what’s the current bottleneck of the world?

The bottleneck will always change but if I have to make a guess it’s human potential wanting to be realized.
What do I mean with that?

There is a creative force within us wanting to express itself but almost everyone is not in a fruitful environment for it to unfold fully. We are stuck in meaningless work, unemployment bureaucracy, or have no access to a safe creative space. Well there are plenty of things holding us back to create and bring value.

Can it change?

Maybe. The internet is the greatest equalizer in human history. We can tap into the depths of our knowledge, connect with people around the globe and get creative altogether. The cost to create a new business rapidly decreased in the last few decades and we might have brought prices low enough to start businesses in part time without outside funding.

Questions I have for myself are:

Can we start a business with strangers around the globe?
Can we do it part time?
Can we trust each other?

I’m really curious about this. That’s why I started documenting my thoughts and journey. I asked a similar question on indiehackers and some really cool people connected with me. We had video calls and we talked about things we researched and how to work together on new ideas and projects.

Subscribe and stayed tuned for my next update.