Scott Rafer on Dalton's letter: "Learning the wrong lesson" • Hacker News Board

Re: Scott Rafer on Dalton's letter: "Learning the wrong lesson"

#51

Post by scottrafer » Sat, Aug 04, 2012, 4:42 AM UTC

petegrif wrote: post #48

scottrafer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like any other resource or dependency that you build into your business, using a platform requires an ROI calculation of some sort. The distribution advantage needs to be worth the risk.

True. The point however is to understand how to quantify the risk. The complicating factor in this case is surely the fact that he had received explicit assurances that his development was welcome and would be supported. The thing I don't understand is how you would go about assessing the 'distribution advantage' given the fact that the risk is evidently so hard to evaluate. DC has evidently now come to the conclusio…

Treat the 'explicit assurances' like politicians' campaign promises. If they lose, the promises are irrelevant. If they win, those promises had better align with the new incumbent's larger aims or they were just marketing.

The risk is not very hard to assess. It's pretty binary per startup opportunity. Do the relevant incumbents' revenue models, distribution models, or inherent cultural limitations prevent them from competing with you. @paulsutter covered the first two well early in this discussion. For the last, Apple has great difficulty with social, Facebook hasn't figured out Touch, Google is excessively focused on those two competitors, etc.

Please also see these two comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4336783 http://rafer.net/post/28638883246/mark-i-know-for-a-fact-tha...,

Re: Scott Rafer on Dalton's letter: "Learning the wrong lesson"

#52

Post by slurgfest » Sat, Aug 04, 2012, 6:20 AM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #16

slurgfest wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE's inclusion in Windows (which dominated the market) had a lot to do with Microsoft crushing Netscape - it wasn't just that IE was free and Netscape wasn't.

Free seemed to work fine for Chrome and Firefox. The real key here is that corporations stopped paying for Netscspe, which was their main revenue stream. Microsoft definitely got a big advantage from bundling the browser, but how can it make sense in an Internet era for an OS to ship without a browser? How could it possibly benefit consumers if they were forced to download a browser separately? Nobody is screaming an…

No, the real key here is that IE was included with copies of Windows. You absolutely cannot account for the rise of IE without this. It is pure revisionism to try.

Apple's position with respect to Safari is nothing like Microsoft's position at that time. For starters, Apple doesn't even approach a monopoly in the desktop PC market. And Chrome and Firefox got big in a different era, years after Netscape was buried.

You seem greatly concerned to say that Netscape was "whining" and "screaming" and that it wouldn't "make sense" for Microsoft to have done otherwise. I am only concerned with the accuracy of the account of how IE got popular. If that impedes your Netscape bashing, that is only incidental to me and I don't even understand why you would still have any kind of interest in the subject given how long Netscape has been buried.

Re: Scott Rafer on Dalton's letter: "Learning the wrong lesson"

#53

Post by slurgfest » Sat, Aug 04, 2012, 6:22 AM UTC

petegrif wrote: post #49

scottrafer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully understand breaking the rice pots and burning the boats, and I hope that you are right. However, his implementation doesn't create the developer education that you suggest. As they well should, young founders look up to guys like Dalton and may well take him at this word that Facebook's negotiating tactics are surprising. FB's stance on these issues are so ruthlessly consistent and well known that it's hard t…

I don't think that the key message is that FB's negotiating tactics are surprising. Whilst he was certainly surprised the point is surely that he was shocked because their behavior at the meeting was so at variance with what he had previously been led to believe. You say that FB's tactics are 'ruthlessly consistent' and 'well known' but this is surely a simplification. For example, the FB platform supports games but…

> I am not aware of any instances in which FB has muscled in on a games dev.

I gather Zynga has that covered (and has an interesting relationship with Facebook)