
The End of the Beginning [video] - dirtyaura
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/11/16/the-end-of-the-beginning
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Reedx
Some fun tidbits in there.

Amazon's original business plan: "No warehouses, no stock, no shipping"

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jgrahamc
This was an odd presentation. There were a bunch of interesting data points
and ideas about how the Internet really hasn't change commerce as much as it
will. But then it ends on a bit of a whimper mostly saying "we couldn't see
what was coming in 1993 and we can't tell right now".

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thedevil
The part that I found most interesting was the idea that we're moving away
from low-capital startups.

Does that mean venture capital is going to have to get much bigger to fund
these ventures? Does it suggest the ballooning of worldwide VC funding isn't
just a bubble? (There's a really interesting chart in WSJ that I can't find
right now). And will a few massive VCs become more powerful while smaller ones
fizzle? What about ycombinator?

Does it mean that technical talent will be more or less valuable? Much more
talent will be needed, but there's probably less opportunity to build a
massive business with a few talented geeks as the low-hanging software fruit
is probably plucked. Talented developers might be less critical to business
success.

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anongraddebt
It's a solid presentation and full of insights (per usual). There were some
puzzling aspects, however, like the point about the shift to capital intensive
startups. Some thoughts:

(1) It isn't clear whether Evans believes the shift in higher capital
requirements will occur in the early-stage or when a successful startup
reaches maturity. The industries left to 'disrupt' do seem to be capital
intensive industries, but that fact alone doesn't preclude 'disruption' from
early-stage, low-capital startups. Technology changes the boundaries of
industries through a process the economist Brian Arthur calls, "abstraction
and redomaining". In Evans' terminology, new enabling layers allow us to do
new things in new ways. I like to think of this as: technological change opens
up competitive attack vectors that are neither inside, parallel to, or
perpendicular with, but rather diagonal to an industry.

[Abstraction for Arthur is different than Evans' use of that term when Evans
describes how ML will provide deeper levels of meaning in comparison to the
query abstraction of Google, FB, and Amazon]

(2) He contrasts Yelp with Door Dash to illustrate this shift. I know for a
fact that GrubHub was a low-capital endeavor in the early-stage. Is it now
capital intensive? Perhaps.

(3) The original search engines, which Google subsequently eviscerated, were
on track to be capital intensive at scale/maturity. This is a direct
counterexample to a simplistic take on Evans' narrative, unless we only care
about the startups that come to dominate a space.

(4) Google may actually have been a capital intensive project as it was two
guys in a garage... who were finishing CS Ph.ds from Stanford. It matters how
we define 'capital'. The natural move is to classify Brin and Page as an "R&D"
line item on the income statement, and say that moving forward "R&D" will be
more expensive and/or other indirect costs will be significantly higher.
However, this doesn't sufficiently clear things up.

\----

I think the most we can say is that the Financial Services, Automotive,
Industrial, Biotech, etc. sectors are more capital intensive than Media and
much of Retail. Though, it isn't clear whether this means 'disruption' is any
more expensive or complex than it was before.

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leowoo91
Just want to point out phrase about "Netflix eating TV". I would like to give
an example that TV didn't destroy or replaced radio, they are different
technologies and still co-exist.

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lostmsu
Mostly that's because you can't watch when driving.

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Angostura
I'm in the UK and blessed with BBC radio.

* You can listen while driving * while cooking * while gardening * while flicking through the newspaper * while falling asleep.

Wouldn't be without my audio friend.

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mcny
I wish I had more experience with the BBC. On the surface, it seems like a
very interesting experiment. From outside, I imagine BBC would be different
from other broadcast television stations in that it doesn't have do ads (BBC
outside the UK is different, I believe). How much of a difference does it
make? I'd love to hear some insight from people in the UK.

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mrec
I'm a Brit, vehemently anti-ad, but am not a fan of the BBC, and don't support
it (financially or otherwise).

It may have made some sense back when it was the _only_ broadcaster, but now
that it's one of many, and there are proven alternatives for ad-free (e.g. the
HBO subscription model), I can't see any justification for continuing to force
people to pay for a channel they don't like and don't use.

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SuperGent
Whereas I agree with the sentiment, I find that nearly all subscription TV
(Sky, etc) has 15 minutes of adverts an hour. These include the premium
channels, such as Sky films and Sports. I don't see why anyone would pay £60 a
month for these channels to play 8 hours of adverts each a day, and then
complain about the TV licence cost of £150 a year.

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mrec
The only subscription service I use is Netflix, which doesn't have ads and is
cheaper than the TV license. I wouldn't pay for anything that did have ads,
and I don't see why "some people spend a lot on ad-infested channels" in
inconsistent with "some people complain about being forced to pay for
something they don't use".

