BRAVE: Regulation VS. Startups, Monopoly Power, Regulatory Capture & Startup Strategy - E675
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
15 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 18 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is regulatory capture and how do incumbents use it to block startups?
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, Palantir, he likes to say, and it's a great book called Zero to One, I really recommend this. And what he says is that all happy companies are different. Each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same. They fail to escape competition. Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy Al, Venture Capitalist, Sarah Founder, Harvard MBA, Science Fiction Nerd, and Dad of Two Daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over forty thousand members and get transcripts, resources and community at www.bravesea.com
Stay well and stay brave. Anyone that has a monopoly will pretend that they are in incredible competition. And the corollary to that is that anybody that has a lot of competition will pretend that they are a monopoly and epithet, right? So I think that's something for you to think about because what is he saying? He's saying that a company that is a startup You know, a David versus Goliath becomes a Goliath, becomes an incumbent, it becomes a billion dollar company with a hundred billion dollars of revenue, with high profitability margins, because they have managed to earn a monopoly, right? And are therefore able to earn monopoly profit, right? And so Peter T, obviously we know PayPal, we know Palantir.
Also, if you think about unicorns that are there, you look at Google, look at Facebook. Meta, they are under attack by the EU and the US, right? Because they are saying that these are monopolies that need to be legislated. And so, for example, one of the big issues that's happening right now is that there is a lot of court scrutiny of these companies because these companies often acquire startups, right? Meta acquired Instagram, they acquire WhatsApp, and they also acquire Oculus, right? For VR headsets. But better finds it difficult to acquire companies these days because they're under scrutiny, because they're seen as a monopoly, right? And we see Apple, for example, getting the legislation to open up the App Store because it is argued that they have a monopoly over the Apple devices, right?
One thing to think about is regulation versus regulatory capture. And so
Why does regulatory inaction create a growth window for emerging technologies?
Josh Diggler, he's the winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Economics, says, as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for his benefit. And if you look at Bill Gurley, he is the bachelor VC, he shouted and said, Regulation is the friend of the incumbent. Right. And as we know, it's the all-in-podcast, which is done by Chamaf. We obviously have David Sandler. Right, who is the current US administration AI czar? And obviously we have lots of other folks, right, that are also doing a lot of regulatory work as well. So Bill Gelly describes in his talk about how benchmark had invested in a company, a startup, to provide free Wi-Fi services across their downtown areas, right?
And they were gonna make money through advertising and so so forth because Wi-Fi is cheap. And so they saw that the opportunity to provide. free Wi-Fi in other cities. But he said that in this case, in Philadelphia, the collided of commercial interest, which is incumbents with powerful lobbyists like Verizon Comcast push-through bills that basically made it impossible for startups to provide free Wi-Fi services there, right? Because you can imagine that providing Wi-Fi will obviously disrupt the telco services. And so all these regulations then spread to other states. So yeah, so it's interesting to think about. Because some of you are lawyers, you represent the law. The law are the regulations industry.
And these people are claiming that you are actually representing corporate interests, right? So it's something for you to think about because we're gonna start talking about why these things are happening. Now. What I want to tell you is that obviously when you think about regulatory affairs, it's obviously highly dependent on your political structure, of about how you engage with regulations.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is regulatory capture and how do incumbents use it to block startups?
0:00–2:23
2
Why does regulatory inaction create a growth window for emerging technologies?
2:23–4:43
3
How do startups use policy testbeds in friendly jurisdictions to shape global regulation?
4:43–7:10
4
What was Uber’s playbook for challenging taxi regulations and winning public support?
7:10–8:55
5
When can a startup ask for permission versus ask for forgiveness when scaling?
8:55–11:25
6
How can founders mobilize customers to influence political and regulatory outcomes?
11:25–13:54
7
What regulatory hurdles did TikTok Shop and Airbnb face, and how did they respond?
13:54–14:57
8
What strategic lessons can startups learn about navigating monopoly power and regulation?
14:57–15:17
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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