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After the Gold Rush

techcrunch.com

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Re: After the Gold Rush

#81

Post by jestrada »

olivermarks wrote: post #59

TechCrunch, the over confident tabloid reporters of hype who only a few weeks ago were all breathless about 'unicorns', are now swinging the pendulum to the other extreme. I'm in the bay area and there is a new realism for sure, but the idea that low buck entrepreneurialism is 'over' is absurd. Most of the current wave of tech's origins are in the Web 2.0 'read/write' web that came after the dot com pump and dump fun…

I think you're right. Most of what we read in media is the latest hype. Unicorns were hype and covered to no end. This weeks hype is the end times of tech.

There's no middle ground in most of the news I read. Imo, the markets are tightening up forcing companies at all stages to cut their budgets and/or generate revenue.

Tighter markets and harder conditions does not equate to the stagnation of tech. They are not the same. In fact, constraints lead to greater innovation.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#82

Post by eru »

Periodic wrote: post #42

As someone who has worked at Google for a few years, I can't agree with the author's characterization of tech behemoths. While they have embraced the start-up mode of doing things for some new projects and are very free with their investing, their core business is everything you'd expect from a big business. I'm not sure it's possible to grow as large as Google, Apple or Facebook and remain agile. The product and org…

> [...] their core business is everything you'd expect from a big business.

I have worked for a bank before coming to Google. The biggest difference, even in the core business, is that people speak up to management and call bullshit out.

Memegen, for all its flaws, wouldn't survive one week in the open in a bank, and the perpetrators would be fired.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#83

Post by douche »

debreuil wrote: post #29

The gold rush is over because everyone who wants a PC has a PC. -2005ish

The hardware hasn't really gotten significantly better in the last 10 years to get people on the upgrade treadmill again. Phones are on that curve now, but eventually they are going to top out too, and your iPhone 10 won't be that significant an upgrade from your iPhone 9.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#84

Post by eru »

rubicon33 wrote: post #63
udkl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The big companies may be innovating on the edges, but their established products are all ripe for disruption." It looks like a cycle. Come up with new product with a small team, add more employees, add more managers, add more cruft, slow down. Then a startup comes along, moving faster, innovating faster, disrupting until it grows and starts to add more employees, add more managers, add more cruft, slow down. And T…

This cycle that you're depicting, is largely sustained by fear. Big companies buy 'disrupters' when they fear their market share is at risk. But most of the time their market share is not at risk, and they should just wait for X startup to crumble.

We shouldn't complain too much: the potential of the buyout draws many founders into the game in the first place.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#85

Post by eru »

marincounty wrote: post #77
nostrademons wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only if that distribution channel is your only access to the customer. If you have other alternatives, you can (and often will) still win. Google Videos vs YouTube. Orkut vs Facebook vs Google+. Facebook status messages vs Twitter. Google Offers vs Groupon. Google Flights vs Kayak or Hipmunk. iMessage vs Whatsapp. Google Local vs Yelp. There're plenty of examples where the big company came out with a competito…

Google makes good products, but doesn't market them properly. They can screw up great products too. I miss my old YouTube. I currently have videos up that I can't access. It seems like tech companies are prone to an--I don't know the correct word/term, so I'll just say it. They remind me of a hiker on a mountian. At first, the company seems great. We all join. We all use their products. Then it's downhill. I honestly…

I wonder whether Alphabet is a way to try and ride these waves.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#86

Post by steven2012 »

I disagree with the authors premise that there can only be 2-3 behemoths. Has he not been paying attention to how kids use mobile apps these days? No one is locked in to a single ecosystem like they used to be.

People use gchat, Facebook, Instagram, snapchat, whatsapp, and iMessage simultaneously, for distinct purposes. And all of their friends do too.

As long as the app present value, kids these days have no problems switching back and forth between apps, meaning they can get hundreds of millions or billions of users too.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#87

Post by willholloway »

petra wrote: post #78
willholloway wrote: post #51

There is truth here, but remember that the age of the intelligent networked machine is just beginning. Look at the YC classes. They are very different from 2005. You can't get rich making a site like reddit today. YC is going international, with X for Y country businesses. I was talking to a friend with a startup in Indonesia. In Asia its like 1998. I think we are just at the end of the easy social/mobile revolution…

>> And the same process that created cheap and easy tools for software, the same process that dropped the cost of starting a SaaS business 10x will happen for robotics/ai/IoT. So OK, we've got tools for the IOT(mbed/arduino, etc). The key question is - how do you protect your product from being rapidly copied by big competitors(or worse, china),when they are using those same tools ? In web development, we did it by g…

I think the key to network monopolies there is going to be iot device + backend. The backend/network is where the lock in/value will come from.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#88

Post by tedmiston »

> Over in The Information, the Lessins argue that “the period where tech startups can readily disrupt larger tech companies is ending for a simple reason: Today’s tech behemoths aren’t the lumbering giants of yesteryear. They are leaner and meaner and more competitive precisely because they have co-opted the same technologies startups used to attack them” and so “until there is another fundamental technology disruption, the window of opportunity for startups is limited to more traditional markets with less competitive players.”

Oh, come on. Where there are BigCos, there is inherent bureaucracy slowing them down. Creating a startup gives founder engineers the opportunity to massively create wealth in a way that BigCo simply does not incentivize.

Re: After the Gold Rush

#89

Post by petra »

willholloway wrote: post #87
petra wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And the same process that created cheap and easy tools for software, the same process that dropped the cost of starting a SaaS business 10x will happen for robotics/ai/IoT. So OK, we've got tools for the IOT(mbed/arduino, etc). The key question is - how do you protect your product from being rapidly copied by big competitors(or worse, china),when they are using those same tools ? In web development, we did it by g…

I think the key to network monopolies there is going to be iot device + backend. The backend/network is where the lock in/value will come from.

I don't understand, could you please expand?

Re: After the Gold Rush

#90

Post by crdoconnor »

nostrademons wrote: post #53
crdoconnor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course, if you look too disruptive they'll probably just buy you with their mountain of cash. Or just copy you. Even if they are 10-20% worse, they have a bigger, cheaper distribution channel than you which they can stuff their product into.

That's only if that distribution channel is your only access to the customer. If you have other alternatives, you can (and often will) still win. Google Videos vs YouTube. Orkut vs Facebook vs Google+. Facebook status messages vs Twitter. Google Offers vs Groupon. Google Flights vs Kayak or Hipmunk. iMessage vs Whatsapp. Google Local vs Yelp. There're plenty of examples where the big company came out with a competito…

YouTube basically won against Google Video because they allowed pirated content. They took an enormous legal risk which Google Video didn't and it paid off. It almost didn't pay off.

Nothing to do with user experience.

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