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Tech companies are not technology companies.
I've 'worked in the Internet' since before the web and one of things I notice new people who enter the space often do is assume that startups and the opportunities they exploit are usually to do with technology per se.
I've 'worked in the Internet' since before the web and one of things I notice new people who enter the space often do is assume that startups and the opportunities they exploit are usually to do with technology per se.
Some investors or founders will invest in technologies such as AI or blockchain rather than opportunities (the adjacent possible) created by market shifts (what I look for at Anthemis) where new technologies (I'd argue blockchains are just architectural) such as these play a part
The best analogy I can think of is a new road and the businesses.alongside it. The new road is the technological change and the web represents a very important structural change which allowed businesses to be built alongside it, like they are alongside roads.
Just as it would have been ridiculous to talk about a Pizza Hut next to a freeway as being a highway technology company, it's similarly dumb to talk about AI or blockchain companies unless you are genuinely building the roads.
The road building technology is niche, however, compared to the opportunities to create businesses alongside, and the immediate opportunities can become bigger over time. Amazon started as a business alongside the 'information super highway', selling books, and now sells anything
Amazon is called an Internet company or a technology company but don't take that literally, it's a company that uses the latest technology (once it has come out of the lab) to help it exploit the opportunity for new business created by a changing landscape created by the Internet
That business landscape was structurally changed by a shift from the industrial to the information technology age, so Information technology age companies are sometimes, wrongly called tech companies, just because the use computers the way industrial ones used machines.
Most tech companies are not technology ones and we should invest in companies that leverage the latest tools, (often once they are commoditised) to capture new opportunities created by technology. To do it the other way round is to be a solution in search of a problem.
Most tech companies are not technology companies. They are information age companies.
