One of the questions that I got most frequently when I did the last company was, “Is Tapas a tech company or a content/IP company?” (*For those who don’t know, Tapas was/is a creator platform for serialized digital comics and novels)
I’m sure big companies get the same questions all the time too. Is Airbnb a tech company or a hospitality company? Is Netflix a tech platform or a TV/movies company? Is Bonobos a tech company or men’s fashion company? And so on.
The answer, as we know, is “both”. However, it’s not easy nor optimal for companies to emphasize both aspects equally, especially when they’re early in stage.
At least, what I experienced myself at Tapas was, we started out more as a tech company and became more of IP/content company as the years went on. The progression path was, in hindsight, fairly obvious – but I often fell into a trap of keep mentioning “We’re both and both are important”, part of the reason being not to be seen treating one part of the organization better than the other.
I suspect this “tech to industry” transition might be the case for most tech startups targeting for a certain vertical industry: They start out by leveraging tech (mobile/could/SaaS) to get the supply and distribution, then they ultimately become a player in the same category/industry and need to compete on the same traditional competitive factors.
No one goes to Netflix to specifically enjoy their state-of-the-art streaming technology now; people go to Netflix to see the latest shows. But superior tech played a big role when Netflix initially won out the competition in the early days of streaming.
So it might be a good idea for startups to think about their long term progression path, and give a little more focus to one aspect (tech vs the core industry capability) depending on the stage of the company, while we all know ultimately both are important.
Sharing the long term roadmap transparently (“At this stage of the company, the most important priority for us is _“) could be a better way of rallying the company, vs. a murky “everything is all equally important” communication which might lead to a tug of war for resources among the teams.