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Anyone can start a news or media organization in the US. Is it the high barrier of entry that limits these businesses? HN likes to talk about industries ripe fo

by fumar 6y ago

Anyone can start a news or media organization in the US. Is it the high barrier of entry that limits these businesses? HN likes to talk about industries ripe for disruption. I would argue then that the media or news sectors are primed for a new breed of journalism. Can media ownership be decentralized when the gateway to media consumption is owned by Google and Facebook?

breck 6y ago
Yes, anyone can start one. > Is it the high barrier of entry that limits these businesses? No. Entering isn't hard, it's surviving, particularly if you are good. It's the near impossibility to compete against the big players because of copyright and patent laws. Without abolishing these unfair laws, you cannot disrupt them. You cannot displace them. When I was at Microsoft I saw the advantages first hand. If I had the blessing of the C-Suite, I could go and squash any business I wanted to as long as they weren't Apple, Google, Amazon, or Facebook. Look at Slack, GitHub, LinkedIn, etc. Huge successes, and yet at the end of the day realized they couldn't be viable without joining one of the big dogs. The problem is those big dogs are black holes sucking up an enormous amount of information, that you cannot take with you if you leave because of #imaginaryproperty laws, and hence you are always at a huge information disadvantage if you try and compete against them and will get squashed. Come up with a great new Saas app? At some point if you're successful you will have to sell to one of them, or some exec will decide they'd like to take over your market and leverage their information advantage against you—good luck hanging on to your top talent when the big players offer them 3x the salary and job security; good luck building your sales pipelines when the big dogs have access to your customer list and purchasing decision makers with a snap of their fingers; good luck hanging on to your suppliers when the big dogs offer better terms; good luck acquiring customers when the big dogs have 1/10th the CAC. I loved and was in awe of the talent of the people at Microsoft. But they don't need the #ImaginaryProperty protections. It makes them do shittier work and makes us all worse off (and the only affect is a redistribution of wealth to the top 1%).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fumar 6y ago
  If information and copyright laws create an unfair advantage to the established large players, then removing them should create a more level playing field. Is that right? Wouldn't we still have a winner takes all outcome due to network effects, and users would eventually prefer one search engine or one internet portal? Even if new players could compete, they would still encounter existing large protected companies. Protected by a data and high monthly active user moat. I suppose without copyright laws, the small players could coexist but remain small...
  - breck 6y ago
    Imagine if a search engine couldn’t sue a competitor for crawling it’s results.

by fumar 6y ago

breck 6y ago

Yes, anyone can start one. > Is it the high barrier of entry that limits these businesses? No. Entering isn't hard, it's surviving, particularly if you are good. It's the near impossibility to compete against the big players because of copyright and patent laws. Without abolishing these unfair laws, you cannot disrupt them. You cannot displace them. When I was at Microsoft I saw the advantages first hand. If I had the blessing of the C-Suite, I could go and squash any business I wanted to as long as they weren't Apple, Google, Amazon, or Facebook. Look at Slack, GitHub, LinkedIn, etc. Huge successes, and yet at the end of the day realized they couldn't be viable without joining one of the big dogs. The problem is those big dogs are black holes sucking up an enormous amount of information, that you cannot take with you if you leave because of #imaginaryproperty laws, and hence you are always at a huge information disadvantage if you try and compete against them and will get squashed. Come up with a great new Saas app? At some point if you're successful you will have to sell to one of them, or some exec will decide they'd like to take over your market and leverage their information advantage against you—good luck hanging on to your top talent when the big players offer them 3x the salary and job security; good luck building your sales pipelines when the big dogs have access to your customer list and purchasing decision makers with a snap of their fingers; good luck hanging on to your suppliers when the big dogs offer better terms; good luck acquiring customers when the big dogs have 1/10th the CAC. I loved and was in awe of the talent of the people at Microsoft. But they don't need the #ImaginaryProperty protections. It makes them do shittier work and makes us all worse off (and the only affect is a redistribution of wealth to the top 1%).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fumar 6y ago
If information and copyright laws create an unfair advantage to the established large players, then removing them should create a more level playing field. Is that right? Wouldn't we still have a winner takes all outcome due to network effects, and users would eventually prefer one search engine or one internet portal? Even if new players could compete, they would still encounter existing large protected companies. Protected by a data and high monthly active user moat. I suppose without copyright laws, the small players could coexist but remain small...
- breck 6y ago
  Imagine if a search engine couldn’t sue a competitor for crawling it’s results.