Headline September 15, 2018/ '' 'STARTUPS *SUNRISE* STUDENTS' ''

'' 'STARTUPS *SUNRISE* STUDENTS' ''

'' MERIUM - RABO - HALEEEMA - ZAINAB - SAIMA - DEE - SEHER '' : 'Now, how do you all plan to pull and retrieve Proud Pakistan, out of the debt trap?............

Hussain, Shahzaib, Bilal, Salar, Haider, Ghazi, Reza/Canada, Faraz, Ali, Umer, Awais, Wajahat, Hamza, Zaeem, Hazeem, Danyial?.............

Into the danger zone, and the students go all shaky, and the rigors of world class intellectual thinking on ideas and startups goes right out of the door...........

IT IS A CLASSIC startup story, but with a twist........................

Three-20-somethings launched a firm out of a dorm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016, with the goal of using algorithms to predict the reply to an email.

In May they were fundraising for their startup, EasyEmail, when Google held its annual conference for software developers and announced a tool similar to EasyEmail's.

Filip Twarowski, its boos sees Google's incursion as ''incredible confirmation'' they are working on something worthwhile. But he also admits that it came as a ''a little bit of shock.''

The giant scared off at least one prospective backer of EasyEmail, because venture capitalists try to dodge spaces where the tech giants might step.

The behemoths annual conferences, held to announce new tools, features, and acquisitions always  ''send shock waves of fear through entrepreneurs,'' says Mike Driscoll, a partner at Data Collective, an investment firm.

Venture capitalists attend to see which of their companies are going to get killed next.'' But anxiety about the tech giants on the part of  startups and their investors goes much deeper than such events.

Venture capitalists, such as Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures, who was an early investor in  Twitter, now talk of a ''kill zone'' around the giants. Once a young firm enters, it can be extremely difficult to survive.

Tech giants try to squash startups by copying them, or they pay to scoop them up early to eliminate a threat.

The idea of a ''kill zone'' may bring to mind Microsoft's long reign in the 1990s, as it embraced a strategy of ''embrace, extend and extinguish'' and tried to intimidate startups from entering its domain.

But entrepreneurs and venture capitalists concerns are striking because for a long while afterwards, startups had free rein.

In 2014, The Economist likened the proliferation of startups to the Cambrian explosion, : software made running a startup cheaper than ever and opportunities seemed abundant.

Today, less so.

Anything having to do with the consumer internet is perceived as dangerous, because of the dominance of Amazon, Facebook and Google {owned by Alphabet}.

Venture capitalists are wary of backing up startups in online search, social media, mobile and e-commerce. It has become harder for startups to secure a first financing round.

According to Pitchbook, a research company, in 2017 the number of these rounds were down by around 22% from 2012.

The wariness comes from seeing what happens to startups when they enter the kill-zone, either deliberately or accidentally. Snap is the most prominent example after Snap rebuffed Facebook's attempts to buy the firm in 2013, for $3 billion -

Facebook cloned many of its successful features and has put a damper on its growth

A less known example is Life on Air, which launched Meerkat, a live video-streaming app, in 2015. It was obliterated when Twitter acquired and promoted a competing app, Periscope.

Life on Air, shut Meerkat down and launched a different app, called Houseparty, which offered  group video chats. This briefly gained prominence, but was then copied by Facebook, seizing users and attention away from the startup.

The Honor and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Startups and Capital continues. The World Students Society thanks The Economist.

With respectful dedication to all Startups,  Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all  ''register''  on  wssciw.blogspot.com  -The World Students Society  -for every subject in the world and.........  Twitter - !E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Dangers and Dreams '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless