Selling Picks, Building Systems

There's the old saying that the best thing to do in a gold rush is to sell picks and shovels. It's probably true to some extent. If you can sell the tool everyone needs then there's a fairly stable way to make some money.What I've been thinking about lately is whether there's another angle on this line of thinking. Selling picks and shovels is good business but you're still out of work when the gold runs out. This is where the analogy starts to wear a bit thin but if you can find a way to manufacture gold rushes then you're in business for the long term.To avoid stretching the analogy too much, I was originally thinking about this in terms of design and design systems. I've built enough products that I have what I'd call a passable eye for design but I'd never call myself a designer.Despite that, products will usually benefit from a decent set of rules and components which prevent every page getting its own twist on how things fit together. AI development has probably made this a…

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