With a disruptive product, what sorta harassment to expect from bigtech?
hi there, an aspiring founder here. I am a few months away from releasing a product that could possibly disrupt the market of tech giants who have been at it for decades (the alpha testing results seem promising). If indeed I am successful, I was wondering what kind of harassment to expect. I imagine they would start off by trying to buy me out at a very very small price, and I expect I would refuse it, which might not sit well with them etc. I have no idea how corporate power play works. I think this might be an interesting discussion.
I don’t have an answer for you unfortunately, but one small piece of advice: find a good lawyer and put them on retainer ASAP. You’ll definitely want to run this question past them BEFORE you release, as there may be things they can do to prevent, pre-empt, or mitigate whatever damage is to follow. They also may have some good advice on documenting things so you can take the bastards to court after the offense occurs. Also, expect your personal reputation to be tarnished and your personal finances to take a huge hit. Be sure you insulate yourself and whatever assets you have first - which is where that attorney comes in.
Hope you still launch, whatever it is! Looking forward to hearing about it!
Oh, and make sure you’re TOTALLY free from those tech companies for all your accounts for personal and business use, same for family and friends. Migrate to small competitors now so you’re not scrambling at the last minute. Because I’m fairly sure your accounts (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc) and those if your friends/family will suddenly become “flagged for abuse”, reported as copyright infringing, suddenly trigger a “security incident”, or otherwise get totally fucked. And we’ll all know none of that bullshit will be true, they just killed your account out of spite. If discovered, it’ll be chastised as a “bug” and later “fixed” quietly in a software update.
Release the product. Worrying about what might happen if you disrupt an industry is energy poorly spent.