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Comment by hashberry | Hacker News Reader

WeWork/Uber/Airbnb... it's interesting how WeWork is classified as tech IPO next to these (e.g. Softbank used its "technology fund" to invest in WeWork). How did this happen? Isn't it an obvious real estate company? Is it because WeWork appealed to tech startups and remote workers?

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Isn't Uber an obvious transportation company?

Isn't AirBnB an obvious hospitality company?

It's an interesting point. If drivers are employees, I'd call them a transportation company. If they aren't, I'd call them a tech company. Analogous logic for Airbnb. But it seems like too subtle a distinction to be reasonable. More likely, "tech company" just isn't a super useful label anymore, with the grey area growing and growing.

I tend to view tech companies as companies that consider custom tech a competitive advantage and attempt to maintain in-house competency.

If you're a grocery chain and you contract out most of your technical needs then you aren't a tech company. But if you're a grocery chain and you hire and maintain a large technical team to provide you with various custom pieces of technology, you're both a grocery chain and a tech company.

This could be any piece of tech: from custom software to custom refrigeration systems.

This is a great way to think about it.

Uber is not buying cars and transporting people, Uber is a technologic middle man, a tech tool.

AirBnB is not buying houses to rent, it's a web middleman.

Amazon does sell stuff directly, so it's retail not tech.

All these 3 companies are well categorized, WeWork is not, WeWork buys properties to rent, it's just that, nothing that Regus isn't.

According to Masayoshi, they're a tech company because they use the internet.

I hate when people say that WeWork is not a tech company. WeWork is a real estate tech company. They make a ton of internal tools that help them to automate the business, which is exactly what technology is for - affect real life experiences. In a sense, they are a pure tech business.

By that definition you won’t find many non tech companies. What company that’s not super small doesn’t build internal tools and doesn’t try to automate things ? By your definition all car companies are tech companies, so are insurances, banks and pretty much everybody else.

> By that definition you won’t find many non tech companies.

You will. It's easy. There are thousands of non-tech companies around you. Your local grocery store, laundries, car services, barbershops, etc. They do not hire software engineers, they do not build internal tools. Some of them do rely on third party software, but it's different.

Pretty much every bank is a tech company nowadays. Insurances? Same thing. If Oscar or Chase fires all of its engineers, the business is dead. By my definition, a tech company is a company whose business won't sustain long without its engineering team.

Except in terms of tech being the core of their product, which is what a tech company is. A hospital uses a network and banks make a ton of internal tools. This does not make them pure tech businesses.

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