What is Tech, anyway?
What is Tech, anyway?
It's a question that has been nagging me since earlier this month, when my business partner Tommy and I went to Munich for the annual Bits and Pretzels startup conference. This year more than 7,500 attendees were there, including VCs, LPs (AKA limited partners, the people who fund the venture funds), and lots and lots (and lots) of startup founders.
I spent all three days talking to as many founders as I could, and I couldn't help but notice how similar many of them were. Take legal startups, for example. I would guess there were at least 10 AI startups there focused on legal research and compliance. Each had some kind of AI-enabled tool that promised to make the more tedious parts of the legal profession less tedious.
Great. But is it Tech?
Over the last 20 years, we have grown to assume a couple of things about Tech startups. The first is that whatever is being developed is novel. The second (and related) is that the development is difficult. This makes sense. A thing that is both new and hard to create is valuable, which is why there is so much money in startup Tech.
But the presence of so many legal startups (and there were also many accounting startups and quite a few general compliance startups) suggests that AI has changed the game, and that the definition of capital-T Tech is not what it was even last year. The barrier to entry has been lowered dramatically, allowing anyone to build software that would previously have been out of reach for almost everyone.
Is this good or bad?
My take is somewhat counterintuitive: I believe competition is good, even for early-stage businesses. It shows that there is demand, or at least that many people agree the pain point you're trying to solve is worth solving.
But too much competition is a different thing. In years past, a visionary founder or a team of talented technicians might set you apart by allowing you to build the hard thing faster or more elegantly. But thanks to AI, that's no longer the case.
So what is going to set you apart if the gee-whiz technology is no longer so gee-whiz?
It's the fundamentals. It's trust. It's people being able to understand your offer. It's people wanting to work with you, specifically, because they believe in your mission. It's distribution.
If that sounds less like a tech startup and more like a regular business, that's because it is. A good plumber doesn't win because he has a better wrench. He wins because people trust him, recommend him, and know what they're getting. Here in Germany, the Mittelstand (the private, often-family owned mid-sized businesses that are at the heart of Germany's economy) has competed this way for generations, building world-class companies on reliability, reputation, and long-term partnerships.
Tech companies! They're just like us.
This fits with something strange happening in tech hiring. Companies are hiring fewer marketers than they did before the pandemic, especially at the junior level, where AI now handles much of the routine content work. But at the top, the market for people who can shape a company's story has never been hotter. LinkedIn postings mentioning "storyteller" doubled last year, and companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are paying well into six figures for the role. One of the companies hiring a head of storytelling was Vanta, a compliance startup. Sound familiar? The content is cheap now. The story isn't. And at an early-stage startup that can't afford a storyteller, the storyteller is you (the founder).
That's why I think even the newest businesses should invest in a founder-led social strategy. It can't be the only channel. For B2B companies, it probably won't even be the main way customers find you. But there's no better way to build trust and differentiate yourself from competitors than to appear occasionally in their feed, telling stories that humanize you and build rapport.
So, what is Tech, anyway? I think the old definition still holds: Novel and difficult. But increasingly, the things we used to consider Tech, are just regular businesses. Which means the old rules of business apply again.
News from the WestWord Office
Aside from the conference, we did a thing we should have done years ago, given that we are a German business: we created a German version of our website. Schau dir gerne hier die Website an.
Clickin’ Stuff
A TV Show: My wife and I finally got Apple TV and have watched the first season and a half of Ted Lasso. I say finally, because I was a full-time sports journalist in a previous life, writing mostly about soccer, and I can not tell you how many people have learned that and immediately asked if I have seen the show. And to all you who have asked: I like it! It's really campy, but that's the point.
Another TV show: We also watched Widow's Bay. I liked it, but the ending is a little weak in my opinion.
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