<story><title>If you like startups you should love anti-trust</title><url>https://alexwrites.substack.com/p/if-you-like-startups-you-should-love</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>I started to use the term &amp;quot;fracking&amp;quot; for this[0], because that&amp;#x27;s more-less what the likes of Uber, AirBnB, Doordash, etc. do to their respective markets: they pump billions of VC money like it was a fracking fluid, in order to &lt;i&gt;crack&lt;/i&gt; the market, pump out all the value, and leave behind a toxic mess for the locals to deal with.&lt;p&gt;While I agree that startups &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; disrupt the big monopolies, past Uber, I now find them just as dangerous as big companies to the customers and the societies they live in. Perhaps more so, because big companies don&amp;#x27;t have to &lt;i&gt;disrupt&lt;/i&gt; anything to extract their rents.&lt;p&gt;I feel startups are not like they used to be. Or maybe they always were what they were, and I became disillusioned only recently. Either way, today, this is a well-developed process of wealth transfer. In a sense, startups aren&amp;#x27;t something opposite to big companies - they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;the means&lt;/i&gt; big companies use to frack an existing market and pump out all value. Startups are an integral part of the market ecosystem now, and from the POV of those at the top, it&amp;#x27;s arguably a symbiotic, not parasitic relationship.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[0] - I used to call it &amp;quot;strip-mining a market for all its worth&amp;quot;, pointing at fast extraction of value with no concerns about sustainability, but I think &amp;quot;fracking&amp;quot; is better, as it also evokes the image of first cracking the market by a sudden, focused infusion of seemingly infinite free money.</text></item><item><author>franga2000</author><text>Many startups do the same thing to established industries. They burn VC money to &amp;quot;disrupt&amp;quot; a field, then when it&amp;#x27;s time to make money, they hike prices. But by then, there&amp;#x27;s no competition left.</text></item><item><author>langsoul-com</author><text>More legal effort should be put into big companies coming in and crushing start ups.&lt;p&gt;They usually build something and price it at a loss, because big companies can afford that till start ups go under.&lt;p&gt;Or unfairly using their services to hinder competiton.&lt;p&gt;Amazon is a big prepetrator of this. There was a smart oven, sold on Amazon. Amazon was also an investor, who made their own into a basics product at a loss.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thefaux</author><text>&amp;gt; I feel startups are not like they used to be.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had a similar epiphany over the last five years or so. Once you take money from the VCs, you are essentially just an R&amp;amp;D department of the VC collective with perhaps a bit more autonomy than you might have in a BigCo but you are still heavily constrained by the demands of your funders. This is nothing like the romantic two guys in a garage with a great idea taking on the world narrative that we&amp;#x27;ve been fed for decades.</text></comment>
<story><title>If you like startups you should love anti-trust</title><url>https://alexwrites.substack.com/p/if-you-like-startups-you-should-love</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>I started to use the term &amp;quot;fracking&amp;quot; for this[0], because that&amp;#x27;s more-less what the likes of Uber, AirBnB, Doordash, etc. do to their respective markets: they pump billions of VC money like it was a fracking fluid, in order to &lt;i&gt;crack&lt;/i&gt; the market, pump out all the value, and leave behind a toxic mess for the locals to deal with.&lt;p&gt;While I agree that startups &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; disrupt the big monopolies, past Uber, I now find them just as dangerous as big companies to the customers and the societies they live in. Perhaps more so, because big companies don&amp;#x27;t have to &lt;i&gt;disrupt&lt;/i&gt; anything to extract their rents.&lt;p&gt;I feel startups are not like they used to be. Or maybe they always were what they were, and I became disillusioned only recently. Either way, today, this is a well-developed process of wealth transfer. In a sense, startups aren&amp;#x27;t something opposite to big companies - they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;the means&lt;/i&gt; big companies use to frack an existing market and pump out all value. Startups are an integral part of the market ecosystem now, and from the POV of those at the top, it&amp;#x27;s arguably a symbiotic, not parasitic relationship.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[0] - I used to call it &amp;quot;strip-mining a market for all its worth&amp;quot;, pointing at fast extraction of value with no concerns about sustainability, but I think &amp;quot;fracking&amp;quot; is better, as it also evokes the image of first cracking the market by a sudden, focused infusion of seemingly infinite free money.</text></item><item><author>franga2000</author><text>Many startups do the same thing to established industries. They burn VC money to &amp;quot;disrupt&amp;quot; a field, then when it&amp;#x27;s time to make money, they hike prices. But by then, there&amp;#x27;s no competition left.</text></item><item><author>langsoul-com</author><text>More legal effort should be put into big companies coming in and crushing start ups.&lt;p&gt;They usually build something and price it at a loss, because big companies can afford that till start ups go under.&lt;p&gt;Or unfairly using their services to hinder competiton.&lt;p&gt;Amazon is a big prepetrator of this. There was a smart oven, sold on Amazon. Amazon was also an investor, who made their own into a basics product at a loss.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>b1zguy</author><text>I did the term &amp;#x27;fracking&amp;#x27; in this context. I&amp;#x27;ll start using it.</text></comment>