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It's a marketplace business, all internet marketplaces are tech companies because they simply aggregate buyers and sellers while owning none of the assets/inven
by pembrook 6y ago
It's a marketplace business, all internet marketplaces are tech companies because they simply aggregate buyers and sellers while owning none of the assets/inventory/risk being transacted on the platform. Airbnb is just a website with a ToS. There is zero marginal cost to Airbnb for servicing a new listing.
Do you also question whether Ebay is a "tech" company?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago> zero marginal cost to Airbnb for servicing a new listing. Don't underestimate the cost of customer support (on both ends), dispute resolution, ...
- RhodoYolo 6y agoAirbnb's customer service on cancelations and disputes have all been relatively fast in my experience so I imagine they invest heavily.
- pembrook 6y agoAll tech companies have support costs. This does not make them non-tech companies. Salesforce isn't suddenly an old school manufacturing business just because they have a customer success team.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago> Do you also question whether Ebay is a "tech" company? Yes.
- princeb 6y agothis is an amusing question actually. is cme group a tech company? it is literally marketplace technology. eurex and xetra, nasdaq, nyse, bats, lse all those guys as well. if you want to go a bit further, jpm, morgan stanley, goldman, barclays and so on are also tech companies, since they're one layer over all these marketplace tech companies, but with their own internal marketplace technology on top of it. anyway, it's all very silly and meaningless categorization.
- pembrook 6y agoEverything can be both tech and not-tech if you want to argue semantics (ie. If you use a computer to do your job, is it tech?). That's not useful. But I find the zero marginal cost qualification useful. These companies are fundamentally different than companies that are further out on the marginal cost spectrum. Take for example CME, NYSE, Nasdaq, etc. Pure zero marginal cost. Virtually unassailable positions for the marketplace niches they dominate. Then compare that to JPM, Morgan Stanley, Goldman (farther down the spectrum). While they do offer software products in trading, retail, etc...they also offer lots of high touch, high human cost investment banking services. Not the same thing. It doesn't really matter if you IPO with JPM or Goldman. The bank will make lots of fees but it will be proportional to their man hours worked. No obvious winner. By this definition, you could say they do some tech, some old school professional services. As a "tech worker," I find this useful when examining which employers to work for. It determines how much leverage I can have in affecting my employers business. Far and away, the best jobs I've had are at companies on the extreme end of the zero marginal cost spectrum (pure tech, by this definition). To use banking as an example, you can go from zero to $1B quite quickly in the software (zero marginal "tech") side of the business. Look at SoFi or Plaid. Meanwhile, on the old school professional services side, imagine how hard it would be to get to $1B there.