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> One should not, and cannot afford to, use transnational conglomerate controlled platforms for building a small business. I think slightly differently here. B

> One should not, and cannot afford to, use transnational conglomerate controlled platforms for building a small business. I think slightly differently here. Building tools to leverage these platforms seems like a really easy way to generate some revenue. I think relying on that revenue is the problem. So many companies build just one revenue stream. When that revenue stream is interupted or destroyed the company is destroyed. The whole do one thing and do it well is the core issue, do one thing until you reach a certain point and start doing another thing, and repeat.

gumby 6y ago
> So many companies build just one revenue stream. When that revenue stream is interupted or destroyed the company is destroyed. It's not just small businesses. As discussed in a post today ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26385317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26385317 ) Google suffers from this too: they've got advertising revenues down to less than 90%, but this is still very risky. They have a "tech" premium; normally Wall Street investors are uncomfortable with lopsided revenue exposure.
- OriolRoda 6y ago
  It's not the only source of revenue, but one of the most important ones. The thing is that if you want to reach people you need to go where people is.
  - gumby 6y ago
    Generally if more than 20-25% of your revenue comes from one customer, or one segment which you dominate (as with Google) it's a red flag for investors. Google still has the magic pixie dust (and revenue size and margin) to keep investors transfixed. If the air comes out of the on-line advertising business Google faces an existential challenge (as did the newspapers due to the development of online advertising). They have scraped together less than 15% of revenue from a motley collection of marginal businesses (e.g. Nest) while lack the internal management signals to seriously engage anyone in improving things. For example, I assume that if Dianne Greene left Google Cloud it would simply wither. She has the experience and fortitude to actually make a serious go of it. I seriously doubt there's anyone else in the company who would -- it generally doesn't encourage such people. An imbalance in revenue has an additional problem for investors, which is blinders. Rockefeller and the other owners of the Standard Oil Trust made significantly more money after the antitrust breakup than they had as a monopoly.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      If you want to look back even further, radio when television emerged, and sucked up most of the advertising dollars. Radio went from premium and premiere programming to disk-jockeys and news/talk. Trying to recall source(s), though possibly Ithiel de Sola Pool.
NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
> do one thing until you reach a certain point and start doing another thing Ideally you do multiple things, but multitasking is hard and distracting. Back when I was a student and the woolly mammoth roamed the earth, I administered a small business website. The traffic was mostly google based. I dedicated significant efforts to build partnerships, brand awareness on small niche forums and websites, a link exchange catalog for same-niche-noncompete websites, leveraged several google-competing platforms, created a mailing list and a customer CRM. When the latest google algo update all but removed the search traffic, the business did not observe any drop in sales, thanks to multiple points of outreach. When apps arrived, we created an RSS feed app that pinged customers with attractive offers, not repeated on the mailing lists. Confusing tactics for strategy is a very Silicon Valley thing. Every service will betray you, unless you have rights to the source code, has served me well.

gumby 6y ago

> So many companies build just one revenue stream. When that revenue stream is interupted or destroyed the company is destroyed. It's not just small businesses. As discussed in a post today ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26385317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26385317 ) Google suffers from this too: they've got advertising revenues down to less than 90%, but this is still very risky. They have a "tech" premium; normally Wall Street investors are uncomfortable with lopsided revenue exposure.

OriolRoda 6y ago
It's not the only source of revenue, but one of the most important ones. The thing is that if you want to reach people you need to go where people is.
- gumby 6y ago
  Generally if more than 20-25% of your revenue comes from one customer, or one segment which you dominate (as with Google) it's a red flag for investors. Google still has the magic pixie dust (and revenue size and margin) to keep investors transfixed. If the air comes out of the on-line advertising business Google faces an existential challenge (as did the newspapers due to the development of online advertising). They have scraped together less than 15% of revenue from a motley collection of marginal businesses (e.g. Nest) while lack the internal management signals to seriously engage anyone in improving things. For example, I assume that if Dianne Greene left Google Cloud it would simply wither. She has the experience and fortitude to actually make a serious go of it. I seriously doubt there's anyone else in the company who would -- it generally doesn't encourage such people. An imbalance in revenue has an additional problem for investors, which is blinders. Rockefeller and the other owners of the Standard Oil Trust made significantly more money after the antitrust breakup than they had as a monopoly.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    If you want to look back even further, radio when television emerged, and sucked up most of the advertising dollars. Radio went from premium and premiere programming to disk-jockeys and news/talk. Trying to recall source(s), though possibly Ithiel de Sola Pool.

NotPavlovsDog 6y ago

> do one thing until you reach a certain point and start doing another thing Ideally you do multiple things, but multitasking is hard and distracting. Back when I was a student and the woolly mammoth roamed the earth, I administered a small business website. The traffic was mostly google based. I dedicated significant efforts to build partnerships, brand awareness on small niche forums and websites, a link exchange catalog for same-niche-noncompete websites, leveraged several google-competing platforms, created a mailing list and a customer CRM. When the latest google algo update all but removed the search traffic, the business did not observe any drop in sales, thanks to multiple points of outreach. When apps arrived, we created an RSS feed app that pinged customers with attractive offers, not repeated on the mailing lists. Confusing tactics for strategy is a very Silicon Valley thing. Every service will betray you, unless you have rights to the source code, has served me well.