The post social age is not the age built after the age of social media, it’s the age built on top of social media.
For more about Tac Anderson, (and my disclosures) go here.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
What Is and Is Not A Technology Company
It;s a really good question and one I used to ask myself all the time. I don’t ask this question very much anymore because I don’t know that it matters. Does it matter?
If it does, I like Alex’s attempt at a definition:
These questions are pretty easily resolved. You are a technology company if you are in the business of selling technology. That is to say, if yourproduct – the thing you make money by selling – consists of applied scientific knowledge that solves concrete problems and enables other endeavors, you are a technology company.
By this definition, most of the companies that dominate the “tech blogs” are not technology companies. They’re just, well, companies. These businesses might use technology, or develop technology, or even be run by people who used to work at technology companies, but they don’t exist to create and sell technology.
But I don’t know if it really matters anymore. Technology is so ingrained in our life that it just is. I think how companies are using technology is actually far more interesting than the technology that’s created.
There have been three big innovation narratives in the last few years that complicate, but don’t invalidate, my thesis. The first — The Rise of the Cloud — was essentially a rebranding of having data on the Internet, which is, well … what the Internet has always been about. Though I think it has made the lives of some IT managers easier and I do like Rdio. The second, Big Data, has lots of potential applications. But, as Tim Berners-Lee noted today, the people benefiting from more sophisticated machine learning techniques are the people buying consumer data, not the consumers themselves. How many Big Data startups might help people see their lives in different ways? Perhaps the personal genomics companies, but so far, they’ve kept their efforts focused quite narrowly. And third, we have the daily deal phenomenon. Groupon and its 600 clones may or may not be good companies, but they are barely technology companies. Really, they look like retail sales operations with tons of sales people and marketing expenses.
I also want to note that there are plenty of ambitious startups in energy, healthcare, and education, areas that sorely need innovation. But fascinating technology startups, companies who want to allow regular people to do new stuff in their daily lives? Few and far between.
Where are the $1 billion European acquisitions?
I wonder, do US startups come with a premium over their European counterparts?
