[StudyAnimal]

The message I get from his article, is not that "scaling to amazon levels is easy", but "scaling amazon size ideas down to a size where they are easier is possible".

Isn't that part of the startup culture? That simple scaled down approaches are not only credible alternatives to "big business" but are in many ways better alternatives.

Bigger question: how many people have been motivated to try something by this pied piper of the globalized/information age?

[jonnathanson]

I think you're giving his analysis too much credit. His point wasn't so much that the field remains wide open to startups. It was that, in his estimation, Amazon had no sustainable competitive advantage precisely because the barriers to entry into its business were (ostensibly) very low.

This is a little like saying that anyone can beat Tiger Woods, because all you need to do is pick up a golf club and practice for 10,000 hours, and golf clubs are readily accessible. While nominally and theoretically true, it's also a drastic simplification of many, many factors that have gone into making Tiger as good as he is -- and that will keep him better than most of the competition for quite some time.

Access to resources is only one very small part of business strategy. The rest is what you make of those resources, and how the advantages compound when you're making smart use of them. On the flipside, the beauty of startups is that they can, and often must, use the resources in different ways.

Furthermore, he made the fundamental mistake of thinking that Amazon was just a traditional retailer, but on the web.

[yardie]

IIRC, Amazon took something like 6 years to turn a profit. Its success is built off the hubris of investors at the time. Their business model was to sell everything at a lost to build up the brand, than assume profits will come later. In hindsight I doubt it's an event that can be repeated.

[rokhayakebe]

I agree with you. I remember reading an article by Om Malik and Copland and decided then and there that I wanted to do a startup. Mind you before that I did not know anything about startups. Soon after I read TF's the world is flat and it jump started me. In the end everyone is right for saying he makes shit sound easy when it isn't, but as you say there is a bigger question.