Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Tech

Not the first person to observe that rich people, globally, obviously just have no idea what to do with their money.

I think a big story of this decade is how many companies managed to market themselves - to journalists and investors - as "tech" and not simply "hey, maybe I have a good business idea" to obtain absurd amounts of investment and potentially, briefly, stock prices. A giant business real estate leasing company is not "tech." A new kind of a juicer is, I suppose, "tech" in that it's an invention, but no one thinks of new juicers from most companies as "tech." Gotta throw in some buzzwords to make it tech! Theranos actually was tech! Just a fraud, however. At this point "it's a business, but you can access it on your phone" is not tech and certainly nor is "a subscription model." "Rich douchebags in Silicon Valley like the product" does not make it tech. A laundry pickup service is not tech.

Take a mundane - if maybe good! - idea and sprinkle some magic tech dust on it to dazzle dumb investors and sycophantic tech journalists and suddenly you have a $50 billion company. Until you don't.