Why do big companies have such a tough time doing emerging technology right? I think there are five reasons. (A Thread, of course):

1. You cannot force a market to maturity. Big cos. get excited, throw capital at a market, and then get disappointed with lack of "overnight" results. They get frustrated and leave before the market matures.

2. Top-Down Sales Targets. They don't work. x% of the market, yy% of our customer base. It's all irrelevant. Do you have a product? Reference clients? How much did you sell last year - how fast can you grow? Those are the questions VCs ask, and with good reason.

3. The customer isn't always right. Sorry, but CIOs of large enterprises are very risk averse. That's why they like things like private blockchains and private cloud. Sounds good, makes board members happy, but that mode doesn't last.

Eventually, all clients move to open standards and public markets and networks. And if you've built your skills on something else, you've got trouble now.

4. Industry analysts & press have a hard time gauging what is real and what isn't. Press release and demos, especially in software, are really easy. Production systems are extremely hard, but aren't flashy. If you're not on the inside, it's really hard to tell.

I'm in the blockchain business, and honestly, I am not even sure exactly what my competition is doing. It's just really hard to tell how much substance is behind the competition. Often, the answer is very very little.

5. Consistency pays exponentially increasing dividends. Software is built incrementally and iteratively. Four years ago, our products looked no different than demos. Today, we have enormous depth (just got my second patent awarded today!).

As they say at Amazon, there is no compression algorithm for experience. Every time you change direction ("pivot" is the fancy work), you lose some of that. Building a software business is a long, slow difficult battle built on lots of small wins.

Despite having deep pockets, it's surprising how little patience large companies have in this space.

Finally, I have two "bonus" concepts that I think apply here as well, and also to MANY other cases: (1) too few people study history. The history of technology is overflowing with great case studies of open systems and platforms winning over closed networks.

(2) Not everyone can run or control the ecosystem. The hubris of big companies especially is astounding. Why does everyone want to build an ecosystem and tax it? Doesn't anyone just want to make a better mouse-trap? All the best platforms started as better mouse traps.

Big companies especially are at risk of thinking they have a "right" to the market and they start with the platform and fail to focus on the job to be done. I prefer Peter Thiel's message (ignore politics) of building small monopolies - just fix something important for a client.

Thanks.