American tech giants are making life tough for startups • Hacker News Board

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#121

Post by kilbuz » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #105

orcdork wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about "evil capitalists" using their advantage unfairly to stifle & crush competition, keeping their profits high, while keeping salaries artificially deflated for the majority of workers. But ok, let's just create this fantastical narrative that "paying workers too little" and "paying people too much" cannot possibly apply at the same time to different segments of the population. Hell, let's even use the loaded…

Yet us tech workers are some of the highest paid people in the world, and technological progress is advancing at a rate never before seen in human history. I guess the current system isn't so bad.

This is nowhere near the fastest technology has progressed in history.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#122

Post by notyourwork » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 1:00 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #109

oldgun wrote: post #62

> Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a sale, saying that they will launch a competing service and put the startup out of business unless they agree to a deal... > Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their workers to consider joining startups. Reminds me so much of the show Silico…

I’m not always convinced Google, Amazon, etc can start a product and compete in a new market and have it work 100% of the time. These companies have plenty of their own flops. Many things come to mind: google plus, amazons smart phones, MSs acquisition Skype... Certainly they have scale advantages, but there’s also diseconomies of scale that can work against them.

The world doesn't need to be convinced, only the startup needs to be convinced of the possibility. It is intimidation not technical vetting of a prototype.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#123

Post by walshemj » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #107

walshemj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which some what ignores the fact that a 2 stroke engine has three moving parts in its simplest form. and mech engineering doesn't have its clients demand 5 months before a new engine delivery you now make it a rotary Wankel engine as that's the new hotness :-) Ex BTEC A1 (Thermo Fluids ) Eng Tech BTW ;-)

Is BTEC suddenly a notable qualification? And isn't A1 the lowest level (up to 5?). Last thing I heard was that Pearsons BTEC system was a gateway to University in the UK; akin to GCSE or A-Level depending on the level taken. And A1 would be year 10 (14-15 years old) ~ GCSE level grades.. no? If this is no longer the case my BTEC's are going to get a prominent position on my CV.

A1 was the specialised version of a mech ENG BTECH aimed at the pump, turbine, hydrodynamic and aerospace industries it did cover all 5 levels up to the equivalent of a HND aka first two years of Uni.

All but one of us worked at the bleeding edge in research for the scientific civil service or in related civilian organisations based at Cranfield.

I did do a spec pitch a few years ago to a small engineering company RBR racing - I recon I could saved them a F1 win using the basic skills I learnt at my first job

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#124

Post by rwj » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #109

oldgun wrote: post #62

> Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a sale, saying that they will launch a competing service and put the startup out of business unless they agree to a deal... > Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their workers to consider joining startups. Reminds me so much of the show Silico…

I’m not always convinced Google, Amazon, etc can start a product and compete in a new market and have it work 100% of the time. These companies have plenty of their own flops. Many things come to mind: google plus, amazons smart phones, MSs acquisition Skype... Certainly they have scale advantages, but there’s also diseconomies of scale that can work against them.

A lot of their power could come simply from raising risk. Cut the chances of success in half, and that nice investment opportunity no longer a good bet.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#125

Post by delecti » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

osrec wrote: post #102

whatshisface wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a monopoly - a monopoly would be if for at minimum one of those things, you could only find a Google-controlled version.

I think it is monopolistic. If one company has so much influence in your life that they can direct you to their own products, so that you habitually start relying on them for almost anything, then they have the ability to develop a wide range of monopolies by influencing your choices. E.g. Google has a monopoly as a trusted source of all information - what's even stranger, is that they are seen as a non-interfering t…

By that logic, Walmart would already be a monopoly in the perception of quite a few people in America, which is clearly not the case to much of the rest of the country.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#126

Post by Eridrus » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #120

I don't know, maybe I'm not enough for the startup but I don't feel very intimidated. If I've ceded control of my board, surely they can sell the company. If I make a product that Microsoft or Google or Apple can copy in the next 6 months. then surely that is my fault. Added: I will say that I am not comfortable with some of the state powers that allow other businesses to mangle the legal system around you to sabotag…

Software folks are quick to write off companies which are not technically difficult to build (eg all of social media), but I think Slack is a very interesting case to think about.

The software is simple, the idea has existed forever, there were competitors in the space. But the thing that really drove the space forward was Slack raising hundreds of millions and marketing the shit out of their software. Only after that have the big guys gone "oh, shit, we have to get in there".

I'm not really impressed by Slack as an engineering/innovation company, but it provides a very interesting perspective on business.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#127

Post by specialist » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 1:56 PM UTC

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #3

Another reminder, alongside the apparent Microsoft GitHub acquision, that regulators need to step up and prevent large tech firms from acting anti competitively. From another Economist article ("How to Tame the Tech Titans", https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/01/18/how-to-tame-the... ): > Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming the titans. The first is to make better use of exist…

Cashectomies. Applied to wind fall profits, savings, estates, endowments.

Keep the money moving.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#128

Post by EGreg » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

oldgun wrote: post #62

> Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a sale, saying that they will launch a competing service and put the startup out of business unless they agree to a deal... > Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their workers to consider joining startups. Reminds me so much of the show Silico…

Yeah I often joke I want to decline at least $6 Billion. (Following Facebook declining Yahoo’s $1.5B buyout offer and later Groupon declining $4B. Yeah our company’s that old.)

Anyway I met the lawyer of the Free Software Foundation, Eben Moglen, with one question: how can I prevent the tech giants from cloning my open source software, while the indie shops can? He said AGPL. That’s the poison pill you need for those big guys.

“You just watch, we are gonna copy your open source software, roll it out it to our 1 billion users and release all the source code to everyone so they can build on top of it.. oh wait.”

Yes! Do that! It will help everyone

You see... an economic system of collaboration instead of competition eliminates a lot of these issues. The best architecture and code rises to the top instead of being killed off, and the profit motive isn't what drives progress.

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#129

Post by ttoinou » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #94

rimliu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody forced me to program for iOS.

The fact that iOS and Android are the only smartphone OSes did force you to do that. Unless you mean that you could have made a competitor, but that's inane -- that's a completely different market, with huge barrier to entry. Apple is using its huge market position in one area (smartphone OSes) to give itself a huge advantage in another (music apps). That's the sort of thing companies have got huge fines for in the p…

You can have alternative app store on Android there's no technical limitations, right ?

And at some point you could jailbreak iPhone and iPod Touch and crack apps but no real alternative market rose up

Re: American tech giants are making life tough for startups

#130

Post by sidhu1f » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #128

oldgun wrote: post #62

> Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a sale, saying that they will launch a competing service and put the startup out of business unless they agree to a deal... > Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their workers to consider joining startups. Reminds me so much of the show Silico…

Yeah I often joke I want to decline at least $6 Billion. (Following Facebook declining Yahoo’s $1.5B buyout offer and later Groupon declining $4B. Yeah our company’s that old.) Anyway I met the lawyer of the Free Software Foundation, Eben Moglen, with one question: how can I prevent the tech giants from cloning my open source software, while the indie shops can? He said AGPL. That’s the poison pill you need for those…

Wouldn't GPL v3 be as effective as AGPL in this context?