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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

Is this the first crack in the Hoover Dam that is Bloomberg Terminals? Probably not - but the widespread reliance on the $10k+ per year terminal in the financial services industry means that this thing is ripe for disruption. The key isn't to build a terminal replacement though. fintech startups need to chip away at little bits and pieces - and need to inter-operate as much as possible. Only then will the bbg dominance be reined in.

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You can write the software, but where are you going to get the data? There are only a few companies that own it and they're not going to give it away. The data is very costly to collect. That's a lot of the cost of any financial software is data licensing fees.

$10k/terminal/year? Absurd. It is a lot more than that.

As another commentator mentioned, chip away. That is how Bloomberg made it as a company. By being better and more sane at fixed income in a very new market.

Find a niche and chip away at that. Data is expensive. Personally, I think making a niche in something coming to becoming mainstream (like R) which is already there in some boutique areas is where it could be.

But don't quote me. I'm still doing COBOL>

one of the reasons i'm generally Ok with Slack's valuation is that there is a ton of room for a messaging service to offer a service that is secure and auditable at the level that the SEC/FINRA and Banks require. Like the article mentions, if you talk to the people using BBG, it's really the chat functionality that provides the main value for literally everyone, at least in my experience (former front office dev)

I'm unfamiliar with these terminals (have kind of always wanted to play with one), but at first blush, a "secure and auditable" messaging system does not seem that difficult to build.

Is it a legitimate compliance or practical implementation problem, or is it just the network effect?

Network effect.

Its not just the network effect..Bloomberg's messaging system is tightly integrated with the other functionality of the terminal..for example one can execute a trade via a message or get live streaming quotes.

its also easy to keep it secure when it doesnt use the internet

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