Ask HN: Why haven't any privacy startups taken off yet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why haven't any privacy startups taken off yet?

3 pointsprak51908 comments

Companies like skyflow and evervault seem to have some really good ideas and yet have somehow not really hit it big yet (as far as I can see)

Whats the reason here ? Is it just a sales or marketing issue or is there a fundamental flaw with how these products integrate

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Because there were never enough people for whom it matters despite the publicity campaigns. People have for decades giving a large portion of their digital intellectual property to google, fb or apple etc for free to use for indexing or AI training or modeling. This is truly remarkable if we consider the value of the IP that has been given away, and of course these companies became hugely profitable because of it. Private information is less valuable

This is my theory. Customers claim to care about privacy. But their actions consistently betray that they value convenience more than privacy. I think it is about stated vs demonstrated preferences. Given the demonstrated preference for convenience (over privacy), it makes sense for businesses to align themselves to the customer's actual sentiments.

Customers can feel convenience up front—it is hard for them to feel privacy.

They might value convenience as much as privacy but are given 1000 units of convenience for a unit of lost privacy.

B2B has to contend with the principle-agent problem: it's the end consumer that benefits, but the businesses that have to choose to use the service. So until real regulation (and enforcement) come or people start voting with their wallets from the perspective of ROI it doesn't make sense for the run-of-the-mill business to use these services.

Most people don't know how little privacy they have. Since they can't see how violated their privacy is, it's not a very high priority.

My mom doesn't know that every website she's been to, emails she's read or written, purchase she's made via square/amazon, message she's typed on Facebook, show she's watched on the smart TV, etc. is being aggregated and used in various ways to sell her stuff.

Since it's all behind the curtain, she'd rather just not deal with it.

Privacy is something that needs to be regulated because the cost of caring about privacy is learning about complex systems and being paranoid about how they are/could be used.

It also creates a hazardous conflict of interest for companies selling privacy: "Let me scare you about your utter lack of privacy online and then sell you a product to reduce that fear in a very small way that doesn't really meaningfully make your digital life more private."

A small percentage of the world truly cares about privacy. A percentage of those people are willing to pay for privacy oriented tools.

It's just a small market. Granted, it's a growing market. See things like Duck Duck Go, Plausibly, etc.

Signal?

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