Quitting engineering to pursue art full-time

> In business theres a term called “Total Adressable Market,” or TAM. This is basically everyone in the world who could buy a product in a given category. What’s the TAM for a product like fishing rods? Well, that would be everyone in the world who likes fishing...

> The reason we mention this is because when Pablo first started selling his art online, he created all his posts strictly in Spanish - his native language. Over time, he felt that this was limiting him, so he started making posts in both English and Spanish, and then eventually just English.

The bit about cutting out Spanish entirely suggests this is not a lesson in maximizing one’s TAM

I had one interesting thought while reading that section.

It seems that a lot of effort has been put into tooling for translating to and from English. It's probably much more effort invested than for other languages, so by using English he actually is increasing his TAM because the translation tools are better adapted to many other languages from English.

Or to put it another way:

Spanish can understand English.

English can't understand Spanish.

Speaking English you can communicate with English and Spanish without also speaking Spanish, kill two birds with one stone.

The virtues of a lingua franca.

Funny how dominant languages of the past have died but now the lingua angla feels forever. I wonder if that's how it feels to be at the height of some culture's age: it feels immortal. Then it falls and is only remembered as the past: either as humorous, or as sophisticated, but not meant for normal use. We shall cement this one by creating AIs in the American image.