[ethanbond]

Microsoft isn't FAANG.

The fundamentals being that they had the most significant bull run in history on top of the lowest interest rates in history on top of the two largest communication-technology transformations in history (Internet then mobile) which happened to produce a near-zero cost distribution channel for a product format (internet-connected software) which has near-zero opex and which has natural network effects.

A very small set of companies were going to win this regardless of anyone's management practices. I think 99.999% of reasonable-sounding conclusions you can draw from their success will be wrong, including "the management style is really really good" or "logos should have blue in them."

> it sounds like silly post-hoc reasoning to claim that these companies didn't work to get to where they are

I am not sure where I made that claim

[TimPC]

Some of the conclusions seem far fetched. But some seem inherently reasonable.

For example, all of the successful tech monopolists paid a premium for engineering and management talent and had processes designed to hire the best (clearly not perfect but effective enough to make lots of good hires). I’m not sure how far we want to stretch the implications of that but at a minimum there is something substantially different between the top 10% of engineers and the bottom 50% of engineers and that difference seems to matter some.

[ethanbond]

Which is exactly another dynamic produced by the natural agglomeration effects: once someone starts winning they can simply outspend the almost-winners for talent, resources, marketing, etc.

Over time this starves the almost-winners into “losers because they didn’t do the right management style.” Which, to find this theory even remotely plausible, we have to ignore the fact that many of the almost-winners-turned-losers did and continue to mimic the management styles of the big kids.

[scarface_74]

> Microsoft isn't FAANG.

This is a horrible well actually. FANG (notice the missing A) was a term coined by Kramer and means absolutely nothing. Apple originally “wasn’t a FAANG” when the term was first coined and it already had a market cap higher than the other four companies.

As far as market cap and impact on the industry, Netflix is a nothingburger. Microsoft has been one of the top five most valuable companies since 2000.

[ethanbond]

> This is a horrible we’ll actually

So is ignoring the actual substance of the response. Would've been silly if my argument was "MSFT isn't FAANG so therefore...", but it wasn't.