There are about 550k tech companies in America, 200k in the UK and 100k in Germany. But realistically, just nine firms dominate the industry landscape.
One of the things we talk about a lot at Delphi is how today’s tech sector conversation is massively bifurcated.
At one end of the spectrum, there are the nine companies we could define as “Big Tech” that absorb the vast majority of time and focus: MAMAA plus Nvidia, OpenAI, Tesla and TikTok. These companies have enormous wealth and power, and their every action moves markets.
Then there’s Everyone Else – the hundreds of thousands of companies in cybersecurity, fintech, enterprise SaaS, and so on, who don’t get even a fraction of the same attention.
We analysed media reporting on tech over the past year in the Financial Times and New York Times to get a sense of this. Coverage of the Big Nine massively outweighs even other big firms like Cisco or Samsung – let alone startups and scaleups.
But honestly – how much does the gigantic scale and influence of Big Tech matter to Everyone Else? On a day to day level, how relevant is it all to them?
We think the gravitational pull of Big Tech creates three specific challenges for those companies in the Everyone Else category:
1️⃣ They operate in a reputational context that is defined by Big Tech, even though they aren’t responsible for it.
2️⃣ They’re caught up in regulations that they aren’t the original target for.
3️⃣ And they have to fight that extra bit harder to cut through with the amazing stories they have to tell.
To that extent, they need to keep an eye on what Big Tech is up to. Even if, a lot of the time, they may as well be operating in a different world.
