by miguelrochefort on 5/5/22, 10:01 AM with 11 comments
Your company will be expected to have most of these:
* AI Research Lab (FAIR, Brain, MLR, Research)
* ML Framework (PyTorch, TensorFlow, CNTK, Core ML)
* Web Framework (React, Angular, Blazor)
* Browser (Chrome, Safari, Edge)
* Smart Speaker (Nest, HomePod, Echo)
* Smartphone (iPhone, Pixel, Galaxy, Fire Phone, Lumia)
* VC Fund (GV, M12, Apple, Alexa Fund)
* Virtual Assistant (Siri, Alexa, Assistant, Bixsby, Cortana)
* Personal Cloud Storage (iCloud, Drive, OneDrive)
* Typeface (Roboto, San Francisco, Segoe)
* Personal Video Chat (FaceTime, Duo, Skype, Messenger)
* Work Video Chat (Meet, Teams, Chime)
* Personal Chat (iMessage, Hangouts, Skype, Messenger, WhatsApp)
* Chip (Silicon, Tensor, Pluton, Graviton)
* App Store (App Store, Play Store, Microsoft Store)
* IDE (Visual Studio, Android Studio, Xcode, Cloud9, Nuclide)
* Search (Google, Bing)
* True Wireless Earbuds (AirPods, Pixel Buds, Galaxy Buds, Echo Buds, Surface Buds)
* Email (Gmail, Outlook)
* Programming Language (C#, Swift, Go, Hack)
* In-Car Entertainment (CarPlay, Android Auto)
* Design (Human Interface Guidelines, Material, Fluent)
* Maps (Google Maps, Bing Maps, Apple Maps)
* Notebook Hardware (MacBook, Surface, Pixel Book, Galaxy Book)
* Desktop OS (Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, DeX)
* Wearable (Apple Watch, Pixel Watch, Samsung Watch, Halo, Band)
* Health (Apple Health, Google Fit, Samsung Health, HealthVault, Halo)
* Smart TV (Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV)
* Office Productivity (Office, Docs, iWork)
* and much more...
Some of these are easy to reproduce, through licensing, partnerships, acquisitions, reverse-engineering, or open source forking. For example, it is possible for small companies to design their own typeface, white-label their brand of true wireless earbuds, or develop a basic chat application.
On the other hand, some are incredibly difficult to reproduce, due to network effect, lack of data, or R&D costs. For example, designing your own chip, developing your own office productivity suite, obtaining movie streaming rights from all major film producers, or building a digital map of all the streets in the world, might only be achievable by a handful of tech giants. As such, these would be considered to be some of tech's largest moats.
What are some of the largest moats in tech? Are there technologies out there that a company with 5 billion dollar and 5 years would struggle to replicate?
by mikewarot on 5/5/22, 1:46 PM
At its core, only Google's search engine is something of a moat. You have to crawl a sufficiently large chunk of the Web to yield good results.
You correctly point out Semiconductor Manufacturing as having a large cost of entry, which is true of any business that deals in atoms instead of bits.
Heck, just to set up a shop in your garage to make gears would probably set you back $10,000. But you could write the code to control the CNC machine, etc.. on a $100 netbook.
by jstx1 on 5/5/22, 10:48 AM
Not really - you'll need most of them if you want to imitate the big tech companies but you can compete in only 1 category, or in a small number of categories. You don't need all of them.
Also, many of these are cost centers - research, open source languages, frameworks and IDEs, browsers etc. Competition doesn't work the same way in that space.
The one that's obviously missing from your list and probably has the highest barrier for entry is cloud - very tough market, a few established players, huge upfront cost, lots of expertise required to do well and lots of potential downside if you don't do it well.
by kingkongjaffa on 5/5/22, 11:43 AM
by I_DRINK_KOOLAID on 5/5/22, 10:44 AM
Billions of kids grew up with the start button as a gateway to their favorite game, and billions of adults sees it as the gateway to their productivity tool
by markus_zhang on 5/5/22, 11:34 AM