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Bloomberg terminal and Thomson Reuters are certainly ripe for strong competitors.They are basically operated as monopoly for decades.Yc,developers and others sh

by pma 11y ago

Bloomberg terminal and Thomson Reuters are certainly ripe for strong competitors.They are basically operated as monopoly for decades.Yc,developers and others should take on this challenge. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/business/dealbook/the-bloomberg-terminal-a-wall-street-fixture-faces-upstarts.html?ref=business http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/business/dealbook/the-bloo...

throwaway5752 11y ago
First it's Thomson Reuters. Second, YC has little chance in this market which requires large capital for the data feeds, and has enormous incumbent advantages. Third, FactSet is a player there, it's not even a duopoly.
- pma 11y ago
  There is no such thing as "incumbent advantages" for market this is based on technology that could be duplicated.The same is applicable to payment system that paypal,stripe and others take on now.Same with car industry that Telsa is working on.Did you read the linked article about MONEY.NET.The thing is that developers have not been paying much attention to nuts and bolts of these terminals,until lately.http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/can-the-bloomberg-terminal-be-toppled/ http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/can-the-bloomberg-terminal-be-...
  - fennecfoxen 11y ago
    No incumbent advantages? Not even an advantage associated with the reduced financial risk of operating a money-making business in the space? No name recognition? No established working relationships between Sales and Important Customers? No firm-specific human capital in the form of all the little things their employees know about how business in this sector works?
  - protomyth 11y ago
    Your better & duplicated technology is generally no match for the incumbent's connection, trust, familiarity, and fully expense-accounted sales team. That is the incumbent advantage and why Oracle wins so often. Its very much like message boards. HN and Reddit have the hot hand and the connections overcome better technology of other boards. Once the connections become too toxic, people will migrate to the next thing. Then you might have a shot, but the group with the best connections will probably be the next thing.
Keyframe 11y ago
That business is more about connections than anything. While tech stack is great, it's all about data feeds. Fast, exclusive, reliable data feeds.
KaiserPro 11y ago
Traders value consistency and dependability. Its not like you can throw together some trading system with an eventually consistent datastore in the back. the entire finance industry is based on trust. Part of that is trust that bloomberg is correct. Loosing a couple of trades without an audit trail crashes markets.
- dagw 11y ago
  Traders value consistency and dependability. And support. Being able to pick up the phone any time at quickly get someone on the other end who really knows their shit is a big thing you're paying for.
  - DavidHm 11y ago
    I also used to be amazed at the amount of stuff our Bloomberg rep had crammed in his head.
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  > Its not like you can throw together some trading system with an eventually consistent datastore in the back. Loosing a couple of trades without an audit trail crashes markets. That's not consistency, though, that's durability. Consistency in banking is basically the part where you don't allow people to spend money twice. That can be "eventual" and violating it can be OK under some circumstances, like when your bank issues you an overdraft (and applies a fee) or when your airline sells too many seats. So the eventually consistent data store in the back is fine... as long as it's durable and as long as you're willing to invest man-years of effort in understanding the implications of your selected consistency model so that you don't screw it up and can perform operations which are compliant with some set of business rules that the business understands and approves of, naturally.
  - KaiserPro 11y ago
    I'm talking about trades specifically. A trading platform must have a 1:1 mapping of buyer to assets when trades are agreed. You cannot have a situation where two people buy the same share, as it requires unwinding. A trade must be atomic. traders want to see all the bids/asks of the whole market. Otherwise you'll effectively have a random assortment of tiny markets under one supposedly united trading platform. Thats the other thing, trades need to be reversible. There is a good correlation between massive trade volumes and the need to reverse transaction. Having an eventually consistent model is just not going to work. Being overdrawn is not eventual consistency. The act of an overdraft is not a failure of a bank to properly account for your balance, its a deliberate business move to generate cash. So no, its consistency, one price, one bid, one ask.
brobinson 11y ago
I recently read about this company in the NYTimes which is trying to do just that: https://www.money.net/ https://www.money.net/ $99/mo/user vs $21,000/year/terminal. Wow! I wonder what other kinds of entrenched, expensive products like the Bloomberg Terminal are in need of competition. I think this requires industry-specific experience to know, however.
- saosebastiao 11y ago
  Really interesting...this is the first I've heard of them (I'm nowhere near the finance industry). I wish finance companies weren't so tight lipped, I can't find anything about their tech stack.
coliveira 11y ago
YC style companies are great for consumer software, but BB is directed at financial companies, which are very conservative and put a lot of value in support. There is no way to win in that space by being cheap, you need a lot of investment to provide mature code and high-quality support by real people.
aaronkrolik 11y ago
I'd say that Slack is actually bloomberg's biggest competitor at the moment.
- jayzalowitz 11y ago
  Strangely I agree.
ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
I'd argue the Westlaw portion of Thomson Reuters is certainly ripe for competition.

by pma 11y ago

throwaway5752 11y ago

First it's Thomson Reuters. Second, YC has little chance in this market which requires large capital for the data feeds, and has enormous incumbent advantages. Third, FactSet is a player there, it's not even a duopoly.

pma 11y ago
There is no such thing as "incumbent advantages" for market this is based on technology that could be duplicated.The same is applicable to payment system that paypal,stripe and others take on now.Same with car industry that Telsa is working on.Did you read the linked article about MONEY.NET.The thing is that developers have not been paying much attention to nuts and bolts of these terminals,until lately.http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/can-the-bloomberg-terminal-be-toppled/ http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/can-the-bloomberg-terminal-be-...
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  No incumbent advantages? Not even an advantage associated with the reduced financial risk of operating a money-making business in the space? No name recognition? No established working relationships between Sales and Important Customers? No firm-specific human capital in the form of all the little things their employees know about how business in this sector works?
- protomyth 11y ago
  Your better & duplicated technology is generally no match for the incumbent's connection, trust, familiarity, and fully expense-accounted sales team. That is the incumbent advantage and why Oracle wins so often. Its very much like message boards. HN and Reddit have the hot hand and the connections overcome better technology of other boards. Once the connections become too toxic, people will migrate to the next thing. Then you might have a shot, but the group with the best connections will probably be the next thing.

Keyframe 11y ago

That business is more about connections than anything. While tech stack is great, it's all about data feeds. Fast, exclusive, reliable data feeds.

KaiserPro 11y ago

Traders value consistency and dependability. Its not like you can throw together some trading system with an eventually consistent datastore in the back. the entire finance industry is based on trust. Part of that is trust that bloomberg is correct. Loosing a couple of trades without an audit trail crashes markets.

dagw 11y ago
Traders value consistency and dependability. And support. Being able to pick up the phone any time at quickly get someone on the other end who really knows their shit is a big thing you're paying for.
- DavidHm 11y ago
  I also used to be amazed at the amount of stuff our Bloomberg rep had crammed in his head.
fennecfoxen 11y ago
> Its not like you can throw together some trading system with an eventually consistent datastore in the back. Loosing a couple of trades without an audit trail crashes markets. That's not consistency, though, that's durability. Consistency in banking is basically the part where you don't allow people to spend money twice. That can be "eventual" and violating it can be OK under some circumstances, like when your bank issues you an overdraft (and applies a fee) or when your airline sells too many seats. So the eventually consistent data store in the back is fine... as long as it's durable and as long as you're willing to invest man-years of effort in understanding the implications of your selected consistency model so that you don't screw it up and can perform operations which are compliant with some set of business rules that the business understands and approves of, naturally.
- KaiserPro 11y ago
  I'm talking about trades specifically. A trading platform must have a 1:1 mapping of buyer to assets when trades are agreed. You cannot have a situation where two people buy the same share, as it requires unwinding. A trade must be atomic. traders want to see all the bids/asks of the whole market. Otherwise you'll effectively have a random assortment of tiny markets under one supposedly united trading platform. Thats the other thing, trades need to be reversible. There is a good correlation between massive trade volumes and the need to reverse transaction. Having an eventually consistent model is just not going to work. Being overdrawn is not eventual consistency. The act of an overdraft is not a failure of a bank to properly account for your balance, its a deliberate business move to generate cash. So no, its consistency, one price, one bid, one ask.

brobinson 11y ago

I recently read about this company in the NYTimes which is trying to do just that: https://www.money.net/ https://www.money.net/ $99/mo/user vs $21,000/year/terminal. Wow! I wonder what other kinds of entrenched, expensive products like the Bloomberg Terminal are in need of competition. I think this requires industry-specific experience to know, however.

saosebastiao 11y ago
Really interesting...this is the first I've heard of them (I'm nowhere near the finance industry). I wish finance companies weren't so tight lipped, I can't find anything about their tech stack.

coliveira 11y ago

YC style companies are great for consumer software, but BB is directed at financial companies, which are very conservative and put a lot of value in support. There is no way to win in that space by being cheap, you need a lot of investment to provide mature code and high-quality support by real people.

aaronkrolik 11y ago

I'd say that Slack is actually bloomberg's biggest competitor at the moment.

jayzalowitz 11y ago
Strangely I agree.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago

I'd argue the Westlaw portion of Thomson Reuters is certainly ripe for competition.