I just returned from a tech policy conference. It was off the record so I can’t tell you about what was said. But I can tell you that it got me thinking about what happens when a tech startup appears on policymakers’ radar screens.
Policymakers respond to what they see. Generally they don’t see startups, so startup products can do whatever makes sense from a technical and customer relations standpoint. Startups talk to lawyers, they try to avoid doing anything too risky, but they don’t spend their time trying to please policymakers.
But if a startup has enough success and attracts enough users, policymakers suddenly notice it and everything changes. To give just one example, YouTube is now on the radar screen and is facing takedown requests from national authorites in places like Thailand. (Thai authorities demanded takedown of an unflattering video about their king.) The cost of being on the policy radar screen can be high for online companies that have inherently global reach.
Some companies respond by changing their product strategy or by trying to outsource certain functions to other companies. We might even see the emergence of companies that specialize in coping with policymakers, making money by charging other tech-focused companies for managing certain parts of their technology.
Perhaps this is just another cost of scaling up a service that works well at smaller scale. But I can’t help wondering whether companies will change their behavior to try to stay off the radar screen longer. There’s an old strategy called “stealth mode” where a startup tries to avoid the attention of potential competitors by keeping secret its technology or even its very existence, to emerge in public at a strategically chosen time. I can think of several companies that wish for a new kind of stealth mode, where customers notice a company but policymakers don’t.
