I think the distinction the original person was trying to make is that to be a software company you need to sell the software someone would use to offer such a

I think the distinction the original person was trying to make is that to be a software company you need to sell the software someone would use to offer such a service instead of offering the service yourself. They would stipulate that a tech company is specifically a company that sells technology to others, not any company that uses technology. Otherwise, all companies are tech companies. You can not buy the software that Grindr uses to do matchmaking; you can only buy their matchmaking service.