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> Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. "X makes money, therefore they are

> Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. "X makes money, therefore they are not a tech company" seems rather oversimplified in the same way "X is a tech company" is oversimplified. Actually, it seems oversimplified to the point of maybe not being so useful. I think the way most people would define "tech company," if they were pressed to offer a definition, is that a tech company is one that derives the bulk of their revenue from selling technological goods and services, rather than using technology as the means to sell other goods and services. There's no way to keep that definition from being somewhat fuzzy, but if I say "Dell is a technology company and Cadbury is not," I don't think people will really object to that unless they're trying to be pedantically clever about it: Cadbury may use technology in all sorts of clever ways to manufacture chocolates and get them to retail shelves, but they're selling you chocolates. There are obviously companies that complicate this by having multiple divisions with different kinds of revenue streams -- Amazon and Apple both come to mind immediately -- but Netflix really isn't one of them. What they do requires a lot of focus on their technology, and from the perspective of someone perusing their job listings it's very easy to think of them as "a tech company." But what they're ultimately selling is access to their content.

wffurr 5y ago
There's a third category that you're missing, and it's where the definition gets real blurry. There are companies that effectively use technology to outcompete (or "disrupt") incumbent companies in a market. Amazon in retail, Netflix in media, Craigslist for classifieds, Uber for taxis, etc. It seems as if many existing companies, like Cadbury's perhaps, aren't able to effectively re-work their business models with the new possibilities available via tech. Thus they're "non-tech" companies even if they do make some modest use of technology, but ultimately their business model predates tech. "Tech" companies in this space are the ones creating or adopting brand new business models in an existing space enabled by technology. This is the "software eating the world" part of the tech market.
- omarhaneef 5y ago
  I like this definition, but I think it should be associated with a strategy rather than a company. So Netflix is using a tech strategy, but it won't forever be a tech company. As the particular technology a company deploys becomes widespread, then everyone will deploy it and it will no longer be a tech company. To put it another way: Netflix was not a tech company when it launched and was mailing DVDs, it became a tech company when it started its streaming service, and as other companies also launch streaming services, it won't be a technology company in the future.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  We used to have a better word for companies doing things like the Amazon Marketplace: eCommerce. But now that AWS is most of their business, they're "tech" because cloud infrastructure is a computing technology they directly sell.
- neogodless 5y ago
  I really like the focus on strategy (or tools) rather than trying to label the company itself. Across many industries, especially in the past several decades, companies have used (modern) technology to compete, and the successful ones grew and gained recognition for good application of technology. Google, at the core, doesn't sell technology to consumers. They help people find and share information. (Yes, they sell consumer products that have evolved in the technology age, and we often call a phone or a modern speaker "technology.") Apple is a consumer products company. Microsoft is (by revenue share) an enterprise solutions company. (This includes software, hosting, APIs, etc - all technology.) As sibling comments have pointed out, from the beginning of their existence, automotive companies took the newest technology (initially motorized transport!) and used it to sell personal transport to consumers. Technology is in almost everything sold (except when it clearly isn't... food, most clothing, some services) or it's used behind the scenes. Overall, what value do we get from trying to draw a line between technology company, and "not" a technology company? Netflix by itself doesn't really try to sell you technology, and yet they were instrumental in selling smart TVs and streaming boxes. Do we want to know as prospective employees? Knowing if we are cost centers or profit centers?
deleted 5y ago
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comeonseriously 5y ago
> but if I say "Dell is a technology company and Cadbury is not," I don't think people will really object to that unless they're trying to be pedantically clever about it Such as if you were to ask people, "which is the tech company, Apple or Ford?", most would choose Apple, choosing to call Ford, instead, a "car company".
munk-a 5y ago
Is Dell really a tech company though? Does selling computing hardware really count as tech these days since Apple would definitely end up being a tech company under that definition - even with all the other revenue streams it has I think being one of the largest manufacturers of computing hardware would automatically qualify them. I personally consider "tech companies" to be companies with tech I find interesting to think about - Netflix definitely qualifies under that header, Apple does too owing to producing a huge operating system, Amazon not only has AWS services on offer but they also run a storefront of a staggering scale and were pioneers in how storefronts like that were discovered... Dell - Dell might get grandfathered in as a tech company based on how they were earlyish into the market of web-based computer sales (ala "Dude you're getting a Dell" days) but now a days I assume their tech stack is a pretty ornery customized CMS like thing with a relatively simple order processing system behind it.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I’m confused by how at the very end of your comment you seemingly switch to only considering the tech stack of a company’s online ordering system, which seems to me to be always completely irrelevant to whether a company would be considered a “tech company.”
  - detaro 5y ago
    It's in the context of the first half of the sentence: If "online ordering being interesting" was what made Dell relevant, then the fact that it isn't interesting today is relevant.
- parasubvert 5y ago
  Dell takes in a $94 billion dollars in annual revenue across several lines of business and is the 4th biggest “tech” company by revenue after Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet. Facebook is 5th (“tech”?), then Intel, IBM, HP, Cisco. Only half of that revenue is from “Dude you’re getting a Dell” - PC (and network / peripheral) sales. DellEMC (mostly enterprise storage or hyperconverged hardware and software) top line is $35 billion or so of that number. The rest is VMware and other software / services. Simple order processing it is not, it’s like saying a Google is “just search and ads”. Somewhat true, but misses a lot.
philipov 5y ago
I like this definition, but I think it breaks down even if you're not trying to be clever. AWS is a tech company. Amazon is not a tech company, it's a retail store. But AWS isn't actually an independent company, it's just a division of Amazon. So we've got a retail store hiding a massive tech company because the retail store is even more massive. I think this is less a flaw of the definition and more a sign that Amazon should be broken apart and AWS spun off as an independent company.
- phil_e_delphian 5y ago
  I generally agree with you here, since it seems like "tech" or "not tech" should be based on services actually provided (ie selling physical books online isn't really tech). Except, many of these companies have a second, b2b service that they're cultivating as a goal unto itself: customer attribution, identification, aggregation, etc. Companies like goPuff (or Amazon, but Amazon has a hand in everything so is more complicated for this example) have a core "not really tech" service of online ordering of human-delivered goods, but they are actively working to turn all of those engagement/sales/preferences info into a packaged product they can sell to brands and marketing companies, which is at its core, data aggregation and analytics as a service...so "kinda tech"?
tshaddox 5y ago
To me “tech company” also usually implies that the company has replaced some older thing with a newer technological solution. I think that’s why Netflix intuitively feels like a tech company, even though all the other TV/movie home distribution companies (cable TV, satellite TV, pay per view, even physical media sales/rental, etc.) have always used advanced technology. Netflix is just the company that’s most famously associated with the introduction of the newest mainstream technology for distributing TV and movies: Internet VOD.
bcrosby95 5y ago
Most people wouldn't consider car companies tech companies, but they definitely do R&D and directly sell the technology that results from that inside their cars. Probably because people don't even have a good definition of "tech". Everything we use is tech. Even books. Some of it is old, some of it is new. But people's definition of tech mostly centers around when they were born. As a software developer, I mostly care if a company considers their software a competitive advantage. Because they're more likely to treat me well. This is also similar to how I tend to define tech companies: companies that view tech as a competitive advantage. So they aren't just buying stuff off the shelf - they're figuring things out in house, regardless of what they sell.
- auggierose 5y ago
  Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company. I think there exists a strange Silicon Valley definition of tech out there. But maybe my German bias shows. I mean, most of the stuff in SV barely qualifies as tech.
  - bluetomcat 5y ago
    The SV definition of tech leans towards "a user-centric service delivered over the web, with some clever software solutions behind it to handle a lot of data and users".
    - rileymat2 5y ago
      I thought the definition was more about scaling because of the near zero incremental cost of servicing another customer. But using some sort of tech as the product. Other industries also exhibit this, like media. And that is what differs an auto company from a Google. The next car sold still has significant capital investment.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company I have never heard that. Car companies are mostly manufacturing, that is the major part of their organizations and what drives their decisions. They have big engineering teams, but they have way bigger teams working at factories. If you had a company just creating car designs and selling those to manufacturing companies it would be a tech company, but the current ones aren't.
bumby 5y ago
>a tech company is one that derives the bulk of their revenue from selling technological goods and services How would you define pre-AWS Amazon? It doesn't seem to meet this definition, yet I think most would still consider them to have been a tech company

wffurr 5y ago

There's a third category that you're missing, and it's where the definition gets real blurry. There are companies that effectively use technology to outcompete (or "disrupt") incumbent companies in a market. Amazon in retail, Netflix in media, Craigslist for classifieds, Uber for taxis, etc. It seems as if many existing companies, like Cadbury's perhaps, aren't able to effectively re-work their business models with the new possibilities available via tech. Thus they're "non-tech" companies even if they do make some modest use of technology, but ultimately their business model predates tech. "Tech" companies in this space are the ones creating or adopting brand new business models in an existing space enabled by technology. This is the "software eating the world" part of the tech market.

omarhaneef 5y ago
I like this definition, but I think it should be associated with a strategy rather than a company. So Netflix is using a tech strategy, but it won't forever be a tech company. As the particular technology a company deploys becomes widespread, then everyone will deploy it and it will no longer be a tech company. To put it another way: Netflix was not a tech company when it launched and was mailing DVDs, it became a tech company when it started its streaming service, and as other companies also launch streaming services, it won't be a technology company in the future.
nonameiguess 5y ago
We used to have a better word for companies doing things like the Amazon Marketplace: eCommerce. But now that AWS is most of their business, they're "tech" because cloud infrastructure is a computing technology they directly sell.
neogodless 5y ago
I really like the focus on strategy (or tools) rather than trying to label the company itself. Across many industries, especially in the past several decades, companies have used (modern) technology to compete, and the successful ones grew and gained recognition for good application of technology. Google, at the core, doesn't sell technology to consumers. They help people find and share information. (Yes, they sell consumer products that have evolved in the technology age, and we often call a phone or a modern speaker "technology.") Apple is a consumer products company. Microsoft is (by revenue share) an enterprise solutions company. (This includes software, hosting, APIs, etc - all technology.) As sibling comments have pointed out, from the beginning of their existence, automotive companies took the newest technology (initially motorized transport!) and used it to sell personal transport to consumers. Technology is in almost everything sold (except when it clearly isn't... food, most clothing, some services) or it's used behind the scenes. Overall, what value do we get from trying to draw a line between technology company, and "not" a technology company? Netflix by itself doesn't really try to sell you technology, and yet they were instrumental in selling smart TVs and streaming boxes. Do we want to know as prospective employees? Knowing if we are cost centers or profit centers?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

comeonseriously 5y ago

> but if I say "Dell is a technology company and Cadbury is not," I don't think people will really object to that unless they're trying to be pedantically clever about it Such as if you were to ask people, "which is the tech company, Apple or Ford?", most would choose Apple, choosing to call Ford, instead, a "car company".

munk-a 5y ago

Is Dell really a tech company though? Does selling computing hardware really count as tech these days since Apple would definitely end up being a tech company under that definition - even with all the other revenue streams it has I think being one of the largest manufacturers of computing hardware would automatically qualify them. I personally consider "tech companies" to be companies with tech I find interesting to think about - Netflix definitely qualifies under that header, Apple does too owing to producing a huge operating system, Amazon not only has AWS services on offer but they also run a storefront of a staggering scale and were pioneers in how storefronts like that were discovered... Dell - Dell might get grandfathered in as a tech company based on how they were earlyish into the market of web-based computer sales (ala "Dude you're getting a Dell" days) but now a days I assume their tech stack is a pretty ornery customized CMS like thing with a relatively simple order processing system behind it.

tshaddox 5y ago
I’m confused by how at the very end of your comment you seemingly switch to only considering the tech stack of a company’s online ordering system, which seems to me to be always completely irrelevant to whether a company would be considered a “tech company.”
- detaro 5y ago
  It's in the context of the first half of the sentence: If "online ordering being interesting" was what made Dell relevant, then the fact that it isn't interesting today is relevant.
parasubvert 5y ago
Dell takes in a $94 billion dollars in annual revenue across several lines of business and is the 4th biggest “tech” company by revenue after Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet. Facebook is 5th (“tech”?), then Intel, IBM, HP, Cisco. Only half of that revenue is from “Dude you’re getting a Dell” - PC (and network / peripheral) sales. DellEMC (mostly enterprise storage or hyperconverged hardware and software) top line is $35 billion or so of that number. The rest is VMware and other software / services. Simple order processing it is not, it’s like saying a Google is “just search and ads”. Somewhat true, but misses a lot.

philipov 5y ago

I like this definition, but I think it breaks down even if you're not trying to be clever. AWS is a tech company. Amazon is not a tech company, it's a retail store. But AWS isn't actually an independent company, it's just a division of Amazon. So we've got a retail store hiding a massive tech company because the retail store is even more massive. I think this is less a flaw of the definition and more a sign that Amazon should be broken apart and AWS spun off as an independent company.

phil_e_delphian 5y ago
I generally agree with you here, since it seems like "tech" or "not tech" should be based on services actually provided (ie selling physical books online isn't really tech). Except, many of these companies have a second, b2b service that they're cultivating as a goal unto itself: customer attribution, identification, aggregation, etc. Companies like goPuff (or Amazon, but Amazon has a hand in everything so is more complicated for this example) have a core "not really tech" service of online ordering of human-delivered goods, but they are actively working to turn all of those engagement/sales/preferences info into a packaged product they can sell to brands and marketing companies, which is at its core, data aggregation and analytics as a service...so "kinda tech"?

tshaddox 5y ago

To me “tech company” also usually implies that the company has replaced some older thing with a newer technological solution. I think that’s why Netflix intuitively feels like a tech company, even though all the other TV/movie home distribution companies (cable TV, satellite TV, pay per view, even physical media sales/rental, etc.) have always used advanced technology. Netflix is just the company that’s most famously associated with the introduction of the newest mainstream technology for distributing TV and movies: Internet VOD.

bcrosby95 5y ago

Most people wouldn't consider car companies tech companies, but they definitely do R&D and directly sell the technology that results from that inside their cars. Probably because people don't even have a good definition of "tech". Everything we use is tech. Even books. Some of it is old, some of it is new. But people's definition of tech mostly centers around when they were born. As a software developer, I mostly care if a company considers their software a competitive advantage. Because they're more likely to treat me well. This is also similar to how I tend to define tech companies: companies that view tech as a competitive advantage. So they aren't just buying stuff off the shelf - they're figuring things out in house, regardless of what they sell.

auggierose 5y ago
Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company. I think there exists a strange Silicon Valley definition of tech out there. But maybe my German bias shows. I mean, most of the stuff in SV barely qualifies as tech.
- bluetomcat 5y ago
  The SV definition of tech leans towards "a user-centric service delivered over the web, with some clever software solutions behind it to handle a lot of data and users".
  - rileymat2 5y ago
    I thought the definition was more about scaling because of the near zero incremental cost of servicing another customer. But using some sort of tech as the product. Other industries also exhibit this, like media. And that is what differs an auto company from a Google. The next car sold still has significant capital investment.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company I have never heard that. Car companies are mostly manufacturing, that is the major part of their organizations and what drives their decisions. They have big engineering teams, but they have way bigger teams working at factories. If you had a company just creating car designs and selling those to manufacturing companies it would be a tech company, but the current ones aren't.

bumby 5y ago

>a tech company is one that derives the bulk of their revenue from selling technological goods and services How would you define pre-AWS Amazon? It doesn't seem to meet this definition, yet I think most would still consider them to have been a tech company