I really don't think the top 200 is as impressive a metric as you think for so called middle ground. I mean really, extend it to other industries.
The top 200 highest grossing album, concert, football player, movie star, corporate executive etc, are all making big money too, and not because these industries have a great middle ground, but because the top 200 on the planet in just about anything is the top 0.1%.
For example, I took a look at the very bottom of the list, the first company that had a report on its website I opened, which was Iggs, second to last game on the top 200 list, and it had 860 employees, mostly in low-cost areas like China. (more power to them, but for many HN readers, the prospect of competing with a team of 5 people who total your salary in the iOS game industry probably isn't very appealing). I'll grant, it's not their only game on the list, but if it was it'd still be a very sizeable studio.
This is by no means a middle-ground company. The notion you don't need to be top 10 or top 100 and that top 200 is good, too, is meaningless when such companies can have almost 900 employees. Check the list and you'll find lots of big ones, from EA, Disney, Zynga to Bethesda, hanging around at the bottom of this ostensibly middle ground list.
Anyway I do agree, there is a lot more middle ground than people make it out to be, but it definitely feels like an industry where mediocre talent doesn't really fly. Small studios have to do something special, unique, in a niche. That's a bit different from some other industries where you can make a living without really standing out. In that sense, the app store does feel like a place where the middle-ground is scarce and relatively competitive. And that's a new reality from 6 years ago, when you could still make money on flashlight apps, which is a lifetime ago in the appstore, but a short time for an entire industry in general to undergo such a paradigm shift. I think a lot of the myth you talk about is a narrative that contrasts the story we had not very long ago, when every app idea was relatively new and got the guaranteed downloads you mentioned already.
I don't think he's saying top 200/0.1% is middle ground. He said that level can probably support hundreds of employees, and that they take in ~10k/day, which is 7 figures annually.
He's saying he himself is in the middle ground, which is a 2 man operation pulling in 6 figures.
The top 200 highest grossing album, concert, football player, movie star, corporate executive etc, are all making big money too, and not because these industries have a great middle ground, but because the top 200 on the planet in just about anything is the top 0.1%.
For example, I took a look at the very bottom of the list, the first company that had a report on its website I opened, which was Iggs, second to last game on the top 200 list, and it had 860 employees, mostly in low-cost areas like China. (more power to them, but for many HN readers, the prospect of competing with a team of 5 people who total your salary in the iOS game industry probably isn't very appealing). I'll grant, it's not their only game on the list, but if it was it'd still be a very sizeable studio.
This is by no means a middle-ground company. The notion you don't need to be top 10 or top 100 and that top 200 is good, too, is meaningless when such companies can have almost 900 employees. Check the list and you'll find lots of big ones, from EA, Disney, Zynga to Bethesda, hanging around at the bottom of this ostensibly middle ground list.
Anyway I do agree, there is a lot more middle ground than people make it out to be, but it definitely feels like an industry where mediocre talent doesn't really fly. Small studios have to do something special, unique, in a niche. That's a bit different from some other industries where you can make a living without really standing out. In that sense, the app store does feel like a place where the middle-ground is scarce and relatively competitive. And that's a new reality from 6 years ago, when you could still make money on flashlight apps, which is a lifetime ago in the appstore, but a short time for an entire industry in general to undergo such a paradigm shift. I think a lot of the myth you talk about is a narrative that contrasts the story we had not very long ago, when every app idea was relatively new and got the guaranteed downloads you mentioned already.