How Big Business Got So… Dumb…

------

-----

My Other Channel: @HowHistoryWorks @HowMoneyWorksUncut

Edited By: Svibe Multimedia Studio

Music Courtesy of: Epidemic Sound

Select Footage Courtesy of: Getty Images

All materials in these videos are for educational purposes only and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. This video does not provide investment or financial advice of any kind.

#business #finance #technology

----

Platforms and algorithms have changed dozens of the world's largest industries, oftentimes basically overnight.

The way we listen to music, consume cinema, buy useless junk, spread conspiracy theories, find a partner or just order a kebab have all been redefined by just a small handful of companies.

Of the top ten most valuable companies in the world SEVEN of them are still relatively new businesses that have dIsRuPted major industries.

The message is obvious, if you can build a company that changes up the way that people do things with technology, you could become one of the richest people in history…

The best part is!!... YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER…

This has created a problem in the Silicon Valley scene, where these innovators are trying to disrupt industries that… really shouldn’t be disrupted.

Banking, medical care, mental health, real estate, transport and even good old communication are all imperfect industries… but sometimes the solution to problems are slow careful iterative improvements… NOT slapping an algorithm on top of it…

[liamhodgson]

Patents are written in ink, regulations are written in blood

[TheCrazyCapMaster]

Ok I love the phrasing of “too much month at the end of your money” 🤣 it works so well.

[n.ull.]

"It was scams all along???"

"Always has been"

[deltaalpha]

Normal people tend to associate "disrupt" with negative occurrences (e.g. disrupt power). It's baffling how the tech bros settled on "disruption" instead of a more positive word.

[Dukenukem]

Many people think that it starts with "find the problem and provide solution", while more efficient way and often the one used is "invent the problem for your product to solve".

[sor]

AirBnB also skirts zoning regulations as people are effectively buying residential real estate to operate as hotels. I don't think something like this is even a gray area. A person using their primary residence to rent out extra rooms is far different than someone buying real estate for the sole purpose of running a hotel. They try to call it "short term rentals", but that's what a hotel is. If you're not charging monthly or yearly leases, then you're a hotel.

[AlexanderNecheff]

As an engineer working in a heavily regulated industry that has to fight through the bureaucracy to get any work done...it amazes me that people actually want to go full laissez faire. Yes, there could be a few optimizations here and there but for many of these things you are far better off being a little too conservative than just under the mark.

I don't think the average person necessarily fully appreciates just how close society is to spontaneously combusting.

[kxht]

The more we go down this road of deregulation, consolidation, and “fixing” problems that don’t exist with anew paid services that only add to cost without adding value the quicker we are heading to a 1920’s crash and depression.

[me]

Okay, this one hit a nerve. I'm in the business of building a disruptive technology, specifically what Theranos claimed to do: making diagnostic tools that can detect different diseases. A lot goes into R&D at the fundamental scientific level. Sure, the end goal is flashy and marketable, but the bitter work required involves the discover, rediscovery, and repeated rediscovery of the same scientific principles, just with different engineering applications.

One thing that always rings alarm bells to me is that founders don't even have a fundamental understanding of the technology or industry they intend on working with. How can you work in DNA-related biotech with no knowledge of PCR? How can you work on AI without having ever written something as simple as an undergrad-level Naive Bayes algorithm? How can you work in photovoltaics if you have never made a basic Silicon solar cell? If you want to have any hope of having any kind of worthwhile idea, you have to have a very strong background in the industry and technology you are trying to "disrupt". Speaking of which, the term "disruptive" technology is so overused that it has become semantically satiated. People don't even know what this term actually means anymore- they just throw it around as another worthless corporate buzzword.

[peterclarke]

I love the irony of making a video like this while simultaneously being an advert for a company that's trying to "disrupt" the shaving market with a dodgy subscription service.

[genericusername]

Disruption is a euphemism for corporate privateering, and if it’s good for the consumer it’s a pure accident

[_heidune]

Why must the options only be monopolies or sketchy companies?!

[HerrMarkusWolf]

After 4 decades in the Tech the most dangerous "value propositions" have been the ones that have no business merit but are "Technology for Technology's Sake". The hype created around "fads" in the Media fuels this. Disrupter Tech Bros and the Media make Tech4TechSake cool and fashionable to the masses.

[gogameing]

The boring slow patient way to do things is most of the time the way you do it

[mc-gebt]

I left working at big institutional companies to work at startups about a decade ago and I am firm in my opinion that the current environment startup founders came from institutional larger companies but felt that the back office were needless and that other made more money off of them then they did. So they aren't really creating new ideas or dynamic processes. They are reducing back office (HR, Legal, Compliance). And that is what leads many of these new companies to land themselves in the press and court because they decided to forgo proper, often required, practices that keep companies functional and out of the eye of regulators. I have said this too many times, "this company just needs to get sued one good time to realize they do not know what they are doing".

[fixthespade]

My main takeaway from so many of the 'richest companies' being new tech firms is they're not as good at hiding their wealth as the old money. I find it hard to believe that ANY of them are truly as rich as the oil and mining firms, or some of the global royal families.

[thebenevolentsun]

I was saying something similar to my friends about YouTube and netflix. It seems like they're slowly becoming cable TV. Like these companies are realising that the established TV companies etc do all the stuff they do for a reason.

[bfrank]

One of the problems with regulation is when it isn't properly enforced. This includes having penalties set too low. You end up with a situation where compliant companies are at a disadvantage to those who choose to flout the rules. In New Zealand at least, companies will occasionally get prosecuted for breaking some health and safety, environment, consumer protection law. When found guilty, the penalty will be an amount of money that sounds large to the average citizen, but which is a pittance relative to the company's revenue or profit. The prosecutor will proudly state that the verdict "sends a strong message", but it really doesn't. The fines just become the cost of doing business.

[HyrulianNerd]

One of the biggest problems is that the hype cycle gets VC money.
There's plenty of good tech that people have made, it's just that a lot of garbage gets funded at the same time and the product with the higher marketing budget is not often the better product...

[Omegaess]

The original title was does every industry need to be “disrupted”