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At least in the technology industry many investments are astronomically expensive. See the acquisitions of Instagram, Whatsapp, et al. Having huge amounts of ca
by danielsiders 11y ago
At least in the technology industry many investments are astronomically expensive. See the acquisitions of Instagram, Whatsapp, et al. Having huge amounts of cash allows companies to suddenly expand into new fields (robotics, self driving cars, etc) without having to borrow anew from banks or investors.
- pkaye 11y agoSo Instagram and Whatapp are investing robotics and self driving cars? Even Google is divesting the robotics division possibly because there are no short term returns. The investors are focused on investments with low initial capital, high short-term returns. Many are not even concerned with productizing the technology but only packaging it up to sell to a deep pocket suitor company where it will whither and die (ie Yahoo.) So there are a lot of critical infrastructure technologies not invested in. Take cellphone batteries for example. Imagine the market share you could get if you could double the life of current batteries? Instead the big investments are in a hundred different social, photo sharing and instant messaging apps.
- WalterSear 11y agoThey didn't divest their robotics division: they sold off one team due to a lack of cultural and technological fit - with the other groups in their robotics division.