Ben Thompson: evaluation

Transcript context

…We’re mostly going to talk about tech, so let me just plunge right in. Why aren’t the big tech companies very good at public relations? Or are they? The add-on is an excellent question. I think there’s an aspect where they haven’t needed to be for a long time. This is both a broader context in that they’ve been like American heroes in many respects. And where is American innovation? Everyone looks to Silicon Valley, and from that perspective, can do no wrong. The other big thing is, their business model is making people happy. You can define happiness in all kinds of ways, in perhaps nefarious ones as well. But people use Google because they find Google useful. They use Facebook because their friends and family are there. They use these companies regularly. They’re very different than the dominant companies of old that were like monopolies based on controlling distribution. They had no need to service their customers well because their customers couldn’t go nowhere else. In this case, they succeed by virtue of being better than everyone else, and that gives them a leg up in the public eye, generally. Are founder-led companies worse at public relations, maybe because they’re so substance obsessed?…

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