Nothing new here. I guess every generation has to re-discover what has happened before and what will happen again.

Take the 1849 Gold Rush in Northern California Sierra Nevada Mountains. For the very, very first miners, gold literally was picked up off the ground. It was very easy to make a fortune just by picking stuff up off the ground. Just like the first people, like Bill Gates, who where in on the ground floor. However, once the gold was picked up off the ground, then the next influx of new miners had to pan for gold all day in the streams coming down the mountains. It was more difficult, but they could still they make a lot of money. However, after that, when even more miners come for the gold rush, it became a much different story. You had to dig deep mines, for example. And after that, it became very expensive to mine for gold, and the situation again tilted to the investors. Just like today's tech world. The reason for that is because you needed a lot of expensive - for the time - equipment. You needed water drawn from the creeks and streams to be transported by use of gravity through chutes to new locations, you had to have equipment that brought the water down to a small high-powered hose and blast away the sides of mountains looking for gold. You had to have automatic panning to pan for all that gold. You had to pay a skilled workforce for that time who had knowledge of hydraulics, maintaining equipment, buying out other peoples' claims, management, etc. So the east coast investors got involved.

For those who use the whole false "I'd sell the picks and shovel to the miners" crap, it is the same exact story.

Sure, for the first people who got there, it was easy and they made a lot of money as towns grew up around them. The first people who opened stores got the great locations on Main Street. They established relationships with their suppliers, whomever they were - ship captains or wholesalers in San Francisco. They established relationships with their customers. They could stock their store better than any new competitors. So the first stores on the scene made a lot of money and could open stores in new towns that sprang up. But what about the people that came next? The best location on Main Street was already taken, so they might be on the edge of town or down a side alley. Or, because real estate got so expensive with growth, they can't afford it. The newcomers don't have personal relationships with the miners. If the new store tried to sell for less money, the old store could lower their prices below what the new competitor charged, and make them go out of business. The old business might have relationships with wholesalers and say something like, "Hey, Mr Jack Supplier, we have been doing business together for a long time. This person is a competitor, and if you sell to him, I won't buy from you anymore." OR, alternatively, probably better, could say, "Hey, if you don't sell to my competitor, I will pay you $500 per month extra until the person goes out of business." So again, the big investors come in and take control. They have the capital to put the original store owners out of business. They can buy the most expensive real estate on the streets, use their purchasing power to buy a ship and ship in their own lower priced goods directly, etc.

So as you see, once the first wave has hit and the market becomes mature, any newcomers don't get the same chance, not like the first people, anyways. Maybe they find something niche that people need in the mining industry and can make money, perhaps even a lot of money equal to millions today. But, nobody really will become huge. The first people make the easiest money, and if the first don't screw up, can dominate and prevent new people from entering. Buy the pick and shovel stores out, and for a great price, like big tech companies today, for example.

The same exact thing happened 50 years later in the automotive industry. When it started, and over time, there have been hundreds of manufacturers that either went out of business or were acquired by larger competitors. So the first manufacturers had ample opportunity to make sell their autos, but after a time, the big money came in and we end up with GM, Ford, and Chrysler which is now acquired by a European company. Here is a list of just the notable auto manufacturers. this list purports to be every manufacturer that ever existed: https://everycarmade.wordpress.com/car-list/

So the moral of the story is that the first people in generally make a lot of money if they play their cards right - buy selling out to bigger competitors that emerge as the juggernauts, in every new industry that appears from time to time. And, there will always be niche players all along, where the owners can get wealthy as well. And, sure, large companies can always go out of business, like Sears, but that's usually from mismanagement or misreading the new business environment.