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There's also very little friction to prevent centralization. With physical goods, there might be geographic/logistical reasons why a dominant player can't easi

by skohan 6y ago

There's also very little friction to prevent centralization. With physical goods, there might be geographic/logistical reasons why a dominant player can't easily be competitive in every market, but this largely isn't true of tech. And given the short time-frame needed to bring a software product to market, how possible is it really for a small player to compete with any of the software giants? Even if you come up with something really innovative, how likely is it that your product can't be replicated by an organization with infinite resources?

aeternum 6y ago
Historically, this is probably one of the easiest times for a small player to compete with the giants. Is it really harder to compete with big tech than it was with Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Carnegie's steel industry, Vanderbilt's railroads, AT&T's national phone network? It's much easier to compete against tech and we have evidence as small players like TikTok, and even Snapchat have done it successfully.
- skohan 6y ago
  Sure you can name a couple of unicorns, but tiktok and snapchat themselves occupy spaces where there are maybe 2-3 competitors at most.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    Is it beneficial for there to be more than 2-3 competitors? That may be sufficient from a market POV. There are also areas that are ripe for competition. For example gmail hasn't changed/innovated in nearly a decade. Atlassian's Jira is the leader for bug tracking but is pretty terrible.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > Is it beneficial for there to be more than 2-3 competitors? That may be sufficient from a market POV. Lol I don't know what markets you are talking about, but definitely not from an economist point of view.
      - aeternum 6y ago
        Interesting, is there an optimal number of competitors from an economist pov?
        lmm 6y ago
        I saw a paper once saying that in any market where the top four competitors controlled more than 60% of the market, they'd act as a de-facto cartel. (I wish I could find it again).

by skohan 6y ago

aeternum 6y ago

Historically, this is probably one of the easiest times for a small player to compete with the giants. Is it really harder to compete with big tech than it was with Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Carnegie's steel industry, Vanderbilt's railroads, AT&T's national phone network? It's much easier to compete against tech and we have evidence as small players like TikTok, and even Snapchat have done it successfully.

skohan 6y ago
Sure you can name a couple of unicorns, but tiktok and snapchat themselves occupy spaces where there are maybe 2-3 competitors at most.
- aeternum 6y ago
  Is it beneficial for there to be more than 2-3 competitors? That may be sufficient from a market POV. There are also areas that are ripe for competition. For example gmail hasn't changed/innovated in nearly a decade. Atlassian's Jira is the leader for bug tracking but is pretty terrible.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > Is it beneficial for there to be more than 2-3 competitors? That may be sufficient from a market POV. Lol I don't know what markets you are talking about, but definitely not from an economist point of view.
    - aeternum 6y ago
      Interesting, is there an optimal number of competitors from an economist pov?
      - lmm 6y ago
        I saw a paper once saying that in any market where the top four competitors controlled more than 60% of the market, they'd act as a de-facto cartel. (I wish I could find it again).