from Hacker News

We haven't had a major new technology company in more than 10 years

by dennybritz on 7/12/17, 6:44 AM with 8 comments

• by stephanfroede on 7/12/17, 7:39 AM

  The article is not mentioning that QE flooded the capital markets with money globally.

  Money which mostly sits idle (they are so desperate that they buy bonds with negative interest rates).

  This over supply of money and the lack of investment targets, eased raising of money for VCs.

  More money, more VCs, more funding, more pressure on VCs to deliver returns, less interest in radical new ideas.

  In other words VCs got an incentive to look for proven business models to invest in.

  That also explains the success of angel.co.

  I think the bigger problem is that capital allocation for new startups is broken. There is so much free capital in the market, and only a tiny percentage makes it into startups, globally ca $120bn per year. Compared to trillions of dollars floating free in the markets, that's a drop in the ocean.

  Venture activity is also concentrated in a few places. It isn't widespread enough.

  -> capital allocation for new ideas is ineffective and inefficient, the current model of investing isn't sufficient anymore.

• by romanovcode on 7/12/17, 7:24 AM

  I'm slightly annoyed by the title and subtitle of this article.

  > The end of the internet startup

  > We haven't had a major new technology company in more than 10 years.

  Does VOX even know what a startup is? Startup by definition is not a "major internet company".

  I think as long as internet is widely used there will be internet startups.

• by noncoml on 7/12/17, 8:00 AM

  > But Zuckerberg recognized the significance of touchscreen mobile devices and pushed his engineers to make mobile apps the top priority across the company

  Ugh. No. I still remember the days when Android folks were complaining that there isn't a Facebook app for them and the response from FB was that the one in iPhone was not really official FB app, but just happened to be made by one of their engineers in their feee time.

• by Jabanga on 7/12/17, 9:00 AM

  Uber is 8 years old and worth $79 billion. When Google was that old, it had just done an IPO and was worth $23 billion. When Amazon was that old, it was worth about $20 billion.

• by raleighm on 7/12/17, 8:14 AM

  By which the author means "massive-scale internet company". Needless to say, it's possible to be an "internet startup" without becoming a publicly listed behemoth or selling yourself to one. It might be more difficult now to build a massive-scale internet company from scratch - and perhaps antitrust regulation of internet companies needs tightening. But it's much easier now than a decade ago to build an internet-based business that allows you to do interesting work and have adequate income.

• by pwinnski on 7/12/17, 10:14 PM

  It turns out that satisfying the author's definition of "major" requires more than 10 years.

  Is it so shocking that a company like Uber is not as valuable as a company that's been around five years longer (and happens to be wildly valuable)? In other news, humans born in the last ten years are not as tall as humans born more than ten years ago. Is there something wrong with today's humans?

  For the giants, the author describes them as being able to "launch with modest amounts of money and reach profitability within a few years." Seems like quite a few companies have done the same within the last decade. Time will tell if they grow to be behemoths.

• by brudgers on 7/12/17, 4:02 PM

  Microsoft is not a Silicon Valley company. Like Amazon, also mentioned in the article, it has been based in the Seattle area for many years. Both took relatively little venture capital prior to going public.

• by sunstone on 7/12/17, 9:48 PM

  NetFlix? Sure not brand new but didn't start streaming til 2007. Market cap of almost $70bn now.