A short opinion-style monologue by Jason M. Lemkin arguing that oligopolies in tech can be beneficial for innovation. Lemkin frames major cloud and AI firms (Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic) as competing on features rather than price and suggests that if oligopolies were unacceptable he would exit the venture business.
Here's the rest of the money. I'm going to write out my winners because if oligopolies aren't okay, I quit. The interesting thing is we have to decide if oligopolies are okay here. All of these that we're talking about, the reason they're interesting is they're oligopolies. We have three to four players, right? We have Oracle's all of a sudden competitive, right? Massively competitive with Google, with Microsoft, with Amazon. We have OpenAI anthropic grok in friends like and so if you want, I think if you want to give up an oligopoly, I quit this venture, I quit this business. Let me return capital. I'm going to do an open view, I'm calling it a day. Here's the rest of the money. I'm going to write out my winners because if oligopolies are no, okay, I quit. And the, you know if you read a classic textbooks on oligopolies, they compete on features, not price. There's a lot of hints of that, right? These products kind of are the same price, right today. And a lot of folks believe that's good for an economy is because it. Because oligopolies maximize innovation, they don't maximize discounts but they pour all the money back into R and D because they're competing on features, not price, right? If you believe in technology, you might almost want oligopolies, right?
