2 ms·

This is a great article but I doubt many people will actually make it to the second half...where everything is tied together.

human20190310 7y ago
I found it incomprehensible from the start. EDIT: The first five sentences invoke Uber, the author's previous article, the Wall Street Journal, Gurley, Damodaran, and two different dubious valuations.
zby 7y ago
https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech-company/ https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech-company/ - should really be read first
- davidivadavid 7y ago
  I read that article when it came out, and I still don't really understand the obsession with putting a "tech" or "non-tech" label on companies. Besides that, there are companies that do not satisfy the author's definition that are pretty clear "technology" companies (e.g. Intel). What explanatory power does the label have?
  - zby 7y ago
    It means different business strategy. Tech companies can have massive revenues without having many employees. They write software, this is the initial big fixed cost, then making a copy of the software or servicing another customer in a SaaS is extremely cheap. This has not started with software - a factory has the same characteristics in comparison with manufacture: https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-bffd36063a72 https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-bffd36063a72 - but with sofware it goes on another level. The Stratchery article is great in analysing all the angles of this.
    - davidivadavid 7y ago
      The point is that there's nothing particularly "tech" about these companies, unless you're redefining the word completely. They're scalable companies. They're low marginal cost companies. They're software companies. Fine. But that's not what a "tech" company is. This pervasive notion that the "tech sector" is software companies from the Bay Area is creating an engineering brain drain that seems oblivious to the fact there's technology in literally every industry, and it's probably damageable to innovation. The Stratechery analysis seems to me to just restate obvious things using homemade terms ("aggregators") and doesn't explain much. I must confess I still don't understand the hype around that newsletter which to me has the style and substance of run of the mill B-school case analyses. I wish there was a "tech sector" equivalent of Matt Levine.
      - zby 7y ago
        In common language you might call a software house a tech company - but in the context of business it is good to have a term that would distinguish companies that are good candidates for facebook or google like growth. The "What is a tech company" article is an analysis of what that means. I kind of agree that Stratechery does a bit of word juggling - "aggregators" are a good example of this - but I still like his writing because there is more in them than just that :)

human20190310 7y ago

I found it incomprehensible from the start. EDIT: The first five sentences invoke Uber, the author's previous article, the Wall Street Journal, Gurley, Damodaran, and two different dubious valuations.

zby 7y ago

https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech-company/ https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech-company/ - should really be read first

davidivadavid 7y ago
I read that article when it came out, and I still don't really understand the obsession with putting a "tech" or "non-tech" label on companies. Besides that, there are companies that do not satisfy the author's definition that are pretty clear "technology" companies (e.g. Intel). What explanatory power does the label have?
- zby 7y ago
  It means different business strategy. Tech companies can have massive revenues without having many employees. They write software, this is the initial big fixed cost, then making a copy of the software or servicing another customer in a SaaS is extremely cheap. This has not started with software - a factory has the same characteristics in comparison with manufacture: https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-bffd36063a72 https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-bffd36063a72 - but with sofware it goes on another level. The Stratchery article is great in analysing all the angles of this.
  - davidivadavid 7y ago
    The point is that there's nothing particularly "tech" about these companies, unless you're redefining the word completely. They're scalable companies. They're low marginal cost companies. They're software companies. Fine. But that's not what a "tech" company is. This pervasive notion that the "tech sector" is software companies from the Bay Area is creating an engineering brain drain that seems oblivious to the fact there's technology in literally every industry, and it's probably damageable to innovation. The Stratechery analysis seems to me to just restate obvious things using homemade terms ("aggregators") and doesn't explain much. I must confess I still don't understand the hype around that newsletter which to me has the style and substance of run of the mill B-school case analyses. I wish there was a "tech sector" equivalent of Matt Levine.
    - zby 7y ago
      In common language you might call a software house a tech company - but in the context of business it is good to have a term that would distinguish companies that are good candidates for facebook or google like growth. The "What is a tech company" article is an analysis of what that means. I kind of agree that Stratechery does a bit of word juggling - "aggregators" are a good example of this - but I still like his writing because there is more in them than just that :)