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So this is a question that I’ve been investigating for the past 3 years, and that I only have contingent answers to.

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Mar 5, 2021

It is so interesting that in the west, focused technology companies have tended to dominate. "swiss army knife" is a pejorative, usually. But Sea, Tencent, etc have won being "all things to all people." Trying to figure out all the reasons why this is the case.

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what are your contingent answers? Might be interesting to riff on here

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I don't feel comfortable talking about them in public :P I will say that all 3 of the reasons you've proposed don't ring true to me, nor do many of the proposed answers in

@patrick_oshag

's original thread. Right now, the state of my research is still a bit of a mess.

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The good news is that I've run some of my theories past those working in/adjacent to these SEA conglomerates, and they've said that it explains some of the things they've noticed while working in those contexts. So I think I'm on the right path.

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Related: twitter.com/ejames_c/statu Investigate the history of the use of the JV structure, and many things will follow.

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Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Jan 16, 2021

So, working theory: businesses reflect the capital structure of their ecosystems (like how animals evolve to fit their environments), and judging an ecosystem for not having enough startups is a bit like saying there aren’t enough polar bears in a tropical rainforest.

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Interesting! I wonder where India fits in all this, they seem to have 1 foot in each ecosystem with large conglomerates & 1 vertical firms blog.eladgil.com/2020/10/unicor

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So this is EXACTLY the right question to be asking. Why are conglomerates so dominant in the rest of the world?

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The obvious answer is government granted monopolies. The approach I’ve taken is to ask the general question and then break it down per country — Korea (chaebols), Japan (zaibatsus), SEA and HK Chinese family conglomerates, Indian conglomerates, etc.

7:13 AM · Mar 7, 2021Twitter Web App

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Naturally the answers become very messy very quickly, because (inevitably) it becomes tied to the history of the country/region.

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I think that's a good line of inquiry: there have been empirical studies (and common sense) that countries with stronger familial ties (vs more individualistic countries) have higher nepotism & corruption. Even within regions, eg Northern vs Southern Europe.

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