3 ms·

>First, Big Tech (FAANG) is not representative of the tech industry as a whole, and does not have strong PMF in plenty of markets and sectors abroad. It's not?

• alephnerd 2y ago
  Depends segment to segment and sector to sector. Take instant messaging as an example. In the US, iMessage and FB Messenger are fairly prominent messaging services. Yet in Japan+Taiwan+Thailand it's Line, in Korea it's KakaoTalk, in Vietnam it's Zalo, in China it's WeChat, etc. Furthermore, the entire publicly listed tech industry globally generates around $6T in revenue, but FAANG represents only $1.4T in revenue. The other $4.6T are spread across multiple decently large companies globally. In addition, the stereotypical big tech companies are NOT market leaders in plenty of very large market tech sectors. For example, Cybersecurity, ERP, Payment Processing, CRMs, etc. Big Tech is big, but the world is big as well. There are plenty of markets where a regional competitor or a specialized player can outcompeting big tech. For example, look at Coupang and Flipkart decimating Amazon in SK and India. Big Tech is big, but it is not an end-all.
  • shiroiushi 2y ago
    >In the US, iMessage and FB Messenger are fairly prominent messaging services. >Yet in Japan+Taiwan+Thailand it's Line, in Korea it's KakaoTalk, in Vietnam it's Zalo, in China it's WeChat, etc. Notice how none of those companies in the second line have anything close to a globally dominant position? They're only popular locally. LINE is probably the best here since it's dominant in more than 1 country, unlike the others. Meanwhile, people all around the world use Facebook (though this is falling off lately admittedly). If you want to chat with friends in another country, FB Messenger is probably the go-to chat app for this; your friends in Europe or the US aren't going to be using LINE or KakaoTalk if you live in Japan or Korea, and pretty much no one outside the US/Canada uses SMS messaging (and thus iMessage) for talking to friends/family. >Furthermore, the entire publicly listed tech industry globally generates around $6T in revenue, but FAANG represents only $1.4T in revenue. MAMAA (because of Microsoft) builds the infrastructure most of the tech industry is built on. This infrastructure isn't going to come from China; no one in the western-aligned nations would trust infrastructure tech from there. >look at Coupang and Flipkart decimating Amazon in SK and India. Inside their own countries, sure, just like KakaoTalk dominating Korea. But just like KT, they have no exposure outside their countries. Amazon is huge not just in the US, but many other countries: Canada, various European countries, Japan, etc.
    • numpad0 2y ago
      I think GP's point is that LINE or KakaoTalk or whatever aren't the only ones that are failing to reach global audience, but FAANG is too and "people are stupid they don't understand" or something. I kind of agree with him, there definitely are region-dependent lunch combo of dominant players rather than there's the single universal set. You seem to have an impression that FB Messenger is globally dominant, and frankly a lot of people do feel that way, my hunch is that's where disagreement is.
      • shiroiushi 2y ago
        I wouldn't say FB Messenger is globally dominant at all. However, for a messaging platform that has global reach, I think it's easily #1 (WhatsApp (also owned by FB) is probably #2). This doesn't mean most people use it, by a long shot; most people mostly only communicate with people inside their own countries, which is why WeChat, KakaoTalk, etc. are dominant inside their own countries. My broader point is that US big tech companies have global reach, and also tend to set standards. I think the chat stuff is really a red herring; there's far more to tech than chat apps, and those tend to be very regional/national as we've discussed.
        • alephnerd 2y ago
          And my point is that the people within BigTech who lead product lines that have eaten the world would have not been in the US if there was an extended tech recession in the late 2000s. The product leaders for Google Docs/Spreadsheet/Slides, Google Chrome, Google Pay, Azure, etc were all on EB1/2s or still in the process of naturalizing in the late 2000s, and if there was an extended tech recession in the US, they absolutely would have returned to India or China. Same with startups - Zoom, Rubrik, Cohesity, Nutanix, Databricks, Datadog, Spotify, etc would have not moved to or get founded in the US if there was an extended tech recession in the 2008-12 period as the founders were all in the process of naturalizing at the time. As I've already shown you, multiple startups in Asia have already been founded by alumni from American BigTech during the 2008-12 layoffs and hiring freezes, and already a new generation of startups are getting funded due to the COVID era layoffs and hiring freezes. > However, for a messaging platform that has global reach And that's the issue I'm getting at. WhatsApp has strong PMF in Europe and South Asia because the founding team and later leadership at Meta were immigrants from Ukraine and India respectively who were able to execute fairly successful growth strategies in Europe, South Asia, ASEAN, and parts of South America due to domain experience. Yet they were unable to crack other large markets. PMF requires domain experience, knowledge, and localization, and a lot of that comes from immigration.