Headline Jan 10, 2018/ ''' START-UPS SAND SHUNNING '''

''' START-UPS SAND SHUNNING '''

CHANCES FOR A START-UP of break-out success, and especially of displacing a giant, have diminished.

THE TECHNOLOGY industry is now a playground for giants. Where  .... 10 or 20 years ago we looked to start-ups as a font of future wonders, today the energy and momentum have shifted almost completely to big guys.

IN ADDITION, to the many platforms they own already, one or more of the Five are on their way to owning Artificial Intelligence, voice assistants, virtual and augmented reality, robotics, home automation and every other cool and crazy thing that will rule tomorrow.

The tech giants are just too, too big. But so what? Hasn't that always been the case as one's memory recalls.

As the men who run Silicon Valley will be the very first to tell you, a company's size doesn't matter here. 

For every lumbering Goliath, there are always one or two smarter, faster Davids just now starting up some fabled garage, getting ready to slay the giants  when they least expect it.

SO,  if you are worried about the power of the Frightful Five -Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft.............just look at how IBM, Hewlett-Packard or monopoly-era Microsoft fell to earth.

THEY were all victims of ''creative destruction,'' of an  ''innovator's dilemma.'' the theories that bolster Silicon Valley's vision of itself as a roiling sea of pathbreaking upstarts, where the very thing that made you big also also make you vulnerable.

WELL, maybe not this time.

The technology industry is now a playground for giants. Where 10 or 20 years ago we looked to start-ups as the font of future wonders, today the energy and momentum have shifted almost completely to the big guys.

Although Startups are still getting funding and still making breakthroughs. But their victory has never been likely  [ fewer than 1 percent of start-ups end up as $ 1 Billion companies], and recently-

Their chances of breakout successes  -and especially of knocking the giants off their perches -have diminished considerably.

The best  start-ups  keep being scooped up by the  big guys [ see Instagram and WhatsApp, owned by Facebook].

Those that escape face merciless, sometime unfair competition [ their innovations copied, their projects litigated against'. And even when the start-ups succeed, the Five still win.

Because today's giants are  nimbler and more paranoid about about upstart competition than the tech behemoths of yore, they have cleverly created an ecosystem that enriches themselves even when they don't think of the best ideas first.

THE FIVE run server clouds, app stores, and network and venture firms, altars it is to which the smaller guys must pay a sizable tax just for existing.

For the Five, the start-up economy has turned into a head-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition -they love start-ups, but in the same way that Orcas love baby Seals.

There is perhaps no better example of this dynamic than what has happened to Snap the company that makes the disappearing messaging app Snapchat.

Although it is one of the most  innovative  consumer-focused Internet companies -Snap created a whole new paradigm in social networking and pioneered the idea that the camera is the future of  human communication -it has been battered by the giants.

After failing to buy Snap several years ago, Facebook repeatedly tried to copy its Key innovations.

This year, when Facebook lifted Snapchat's Stories feature for Instagram, WhatApps and Facebook's main app, it seemed to deliver a death blow.

But Facebook isn't the only behemoth trying to feed off Snap's carcass. In January, Snap signed a  cloud hosting deal with Google. It agreed to pay Google  $400 million  a year for the next five years.

NOTE, that Snap  booked only about  a  $330 million in add revenue in the first half of the last year. In other words, its paying more than half of its revenue to Google.

''OH, OH, AND do you know who its largest competitors  in the Internet ad market are?  Surprise!............ Facebook and Google.

The small guys won't concede any of this, of course. Unbridled optimism fuels the start-ups world, and many investors and start-up executives have disclosed the insane amount of money pouring into start-ups-

The FIVE  don't have the whole game won.

They said the Five's platform had made starting companies cheaper and easier, and pointed to several successful start-ups that managed to elude the Five's clutches in the last few years :

Netflix, Uber and Airbnb and !WOW!.

And when you looked at the business focused companies that aren't household names, you come with dozens more from-

Slack, to Stripe to Square to *Better World Network*   

The Honor and Serving of the latest  Operational Research on The World Students Society, Better World Networks, Start-ups continue. And the World Students Society thanks Farhad Manjoo for this research and insight.

With respectful dedication to the Scientists, Thinkers, innovators, Students, professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Chances-Start-ups '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless