largely true of pharma companies as well - they are largely big marketing organizations, where most of the real R&D is done by small startups that can be purchased when necessary.
It feels like part of it is a cultural issue. People in the startup space largely seem uninterested in starting companies they will run their whole life
They just want the fun of experimentation and a payday
And like that's fine whatever, live your life, but it's creating a really crappy feedback loop of monopolization and buy outs
Different stages of the corporate life cycle require different skills and attract people with different temperaments; someone who launches a startup is not necessarily going to be great at running it for their whole life, nor feel fulfilled by doing so.
I prefer to work for startups whether they yield a "payday" or not - they usually don't - because huge organizations and complex bureaucracies leave me feeling miserable and demotivated.
Any single Nx buyout results in N additional startups being funded. This is how VC culture operates and grows. It’s one of the main ingredients that build Silicon Valley’s success. Other countries are desperate to copy this model.
Goliaths were and will always be around. But as long as there is an unregulated, free market - there will always be startups competing. It’s not easy, but it’s doable through innovation and creativity. The Goliaths are always more conservative, slower and less agile.
In the absence of regulation, goliaths will inevitably become monopolies and startups have no real chance to compete. The best a startup could be is to hope to be bought by the goliath.
How exactly will startups will have “no real chance to compete”? What is the mechanism that will stop them?
Unless prevented by governmental regulation or similar (like patents) startups move faster and are more innovative and creative. They are not the cheapest but competing on price is not a good idea for a startup anyway, and the monopoly cannot be the cheapest possible since that would diminish profits - then what would be the advantage to be a monopoly?
A monopolised market is ripe for disruption and VC are dying to fund startups who can claim a chunk of that market. Any startup bought out by a Goliath will fund another 10 in its stead.
I know zero cases of unbeatable monopolies in a free market. All monopolies had government support. Do you have any examples?
the only solid fact that you need is that tech giants of the past are not tech giants today, and the same way MS missed mobile market, Nokia failed with touchscreen smartphones, atnt and its parts failed to innovate, ibm lost and left pc/x86server etc, current giants are likely to loose. The only difference now is that the biggest competition today is from foreign companies that leads to them being able to get support of government and therefore compete not on the basis of merit, but in a political way.
Maybe that’s fine? A company that can do cutting edge research and a company that can manufacture and market at scale don’t have to be the same company.
There is a invisible incentive filter though- nobody will create a startup that is not worth buying for a large company - or whos product would cannibalize somebody elses product in the oligopoly.
I am not sure that's true (is it?) but more so, don't see how that follows from Pharma's alleged focus on acquisition. Can you give me an example where in a different world something good would happen that isn't happening now and why? I am not trying to be difficult just genuine don't see it yet.
This has a practical aspect that is different from software though. Bringing a drug to market requires a huge amount of capital and very specialized manufacturing. It’s very difficult for a small company to do that.
I’m not saying it’s a good system necessarily, but it’s a big factor worth acknowledging and different from a tech start up.
They just want the fun of experimentation and a payday
And like that's fine whatever, live your life, but it's creating a really crappy feedback loop of monopolization and buy outs