[pbronez]

My theory is that the big firms can do this because those relatively fixed lob or costs over huge user bases. Smaller companies just don’t have the leverage.

I also think this applies to internal applications at huge enterprises. The number of users for any given internal application is small, so you can’t spread the development costs out very far. You have to connect the initiative to something that impacts the whole firm, the whole customer base to really invest in it. Even then you’re dealing with a user base that is way smaller than the big tech firms enjoy, so you still get outspent... unless you have dramatically better margins.