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Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
61–70 of 324 posts
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#62We should stop thinking in terms of "tech companies" and think of them in terms of "companies that use tech with a high degree of success". Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. Also, with the right incentives and management it is possible, although hard, for legacy companies to start using tech better to compete.
This whole argument seems a silly bit of semantics. Is a company's product is not "technology" a tech company?
For the vast majority of companies technology is tool, not the product, but whether you call them a "tech company" seems a silly game. I'd think pretty much all companies are "tech companies" and the better you are at using those tools can provide a competitive advantage.
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#63We should stop thinking in terms of "tech companies" and think of them in terms of "companies that use tech with a high degree of success". Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. Also, with the right incentives and management it is possible, although hard, for legacy companies to start using tech better to compete.
> Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business.
"X makes money, therefore they are not a tech company" seems rather oversimplified in the same way "X is a tech company" is oversimplified. Actually, it seems oversimplified to the point of maybe not being so useful.
I think the way most people would define "tech company," if they were pressed to offer a definition, is that a tech company is one that derives the bulk of their revenue from selling technological goods and services, rather than using technology as the means to sell other goods and services. There's no way to keep that definition from being somewhat fuzzy, but if I say "Dell is a technology company and Cadbury is not," I don't think people will really object to that unless they're trying to be pedantically clever about it: Cadbury may use technology in all sorts of clever ways to manufacture chocolates and get them to retail shelves, but they're selling you chocolates.
There are obviously companies that complicate this by having multiple divisions with different kinds of revenue streams -- Amazon and Apple both come to mind immediately -- but Netflix really isn't one of them. What they do requires a lot of focus on their technology, and from the perspective of someone perusing their job listings it's very easy to think of them as "a tech company." But what they're ultimately selling is access to their content.
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#64> The tech has to be good - but, it’s still all about the TV. If Netflix was only showing reruns of Frasier and Ally McBeal no-one would have signed up I think this is always a bit of a silly argument. If Netflix was showing everything, but the tech was terrible, no one would've signed up. You need both.
Maybe I am just getting older, but I would pay for a service that simply showed reruns of my favorite shows (including Frasier). That is 99% of what I watch anyway nowadays, just from my NAS.
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#65Yes they are.
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Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#66When I worked at Yahoo back in the mid-2000s one of the most depressing internal messages was the idea that "we're not a tech company, we're a media company" - while Google were running circles around us on basically every front.
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#67It just depends on the dimension you are talking about.
If you describe a company based on the product/service it provides, there is no such thing as a tech company. There are car companies, project management software companies, web search companies, entertainment companies, oil companies, etc.
If you describe a company based on their core competency, there are tech companies, product companies, brand companies etc.
You can choose any dimension you want. It's usually just helpful to then be consistent, ie Tesla is a car company and Netflix an entertainment company. Or both are technology companies.
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#68We should stop thinking in terms of "tech companies" and think of them in terms of "companies that use tech with a high degree of success". Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. Also, with the right incentives and management it is possible, although hard, for legacy companies to start using tech better to compete.
I'll just copy and paste my response from before because this comes up often:
there is no real definition of a "tech company" or "tech industry", the word "tech" defines the operating model. This is the dirty little secret VCs don't like to tell you because it means they can call Tesla a tech company (its a car and battery manufacturer) to fetch tech-like valuations or Facebook a tech company (its a media company). Tech operating models typically net high gross margins (i.e. Facebook) which is one of its major defining characteristics.
I therefore posit there is no such thing as a "tech industry", but rather businesses that sit on a spectrum of operating models from:
- Back office IT supported
- Tech enabled
- Tech Led
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#69Facebook is not a tech company it's a (social) media company, Google is not a tech company, it's an information search company, Apple is not a tech company it's a consumer electronics company, Amazon is not a tech company, it's a retail company.
You can say this about any tech company, it's just where you draw the line of what "tech" is.
Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)
#70tech make it possible.