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The story behind the world’s best companies
Why less is more
What makes companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google great?
Ever wondered why companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, Google, Amazon, etc. continue to build great products despite the challenges faced by them from beginning.
And its not like these companies always get to hire the best people or train them differently.
Early start advantage
The Technology business is a bit different than other businesses because here first the technology is created, then a few years later which can also become a few decades later, governments start imposing regulations around them.
So it means they usually have a head-start of nearly 10 years to others. New and small players have to navigate the hurdles of regulations before they can compete with these giants.
Story of Netflix beating Amazon
Let’s take the example of Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.
Most people who have watched both will tell you that Netflix is miles ahead of its competitors in terms of both the content catalogue and it’s recommendation engine while Amazon Prime for a long time had lagged in those aspects.
Truth be told Netflix realized a long time ago that OTT was the key and started innovating to make it the best experience possible for it’s customers.
Netflix started competitions like the “Netflix Prize” to improve their collaborative filtering algorithm. The aim was to predict user ratings for films, based on previous ratings without any other information about the users or films.
The Competition was eventually won by 3 researchers from AT&T Labs (the same company Alexander Graham Bell co-founded).
By keeping the competition open for everyone and not just Netflix’s employees they got everyone to participate and help them improve their algorithm for almost no charge (except the prize money).
