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24 Jul 2017

Technological ghettos

tl;dr you do not access on the same shows on Netflix depending on where you are on this planet, but this problem is deeper and not impacting entertainement only.


As for context I am not writing this article from Iran or North Korea, I am writing this article from the heart of Europe, in Luxembourg.

Censorship and embargos. If I were in a country under embargo or with information, there would thousand of online resources that I would miss and I would probably setup a VPN to bypass censorship and access them but this is an answer available only if you have reached an high enough level of tech savviness.

Privacy. In Luxembourg it took something like five years to get access to Google Street View, for some privacy concers prevented it. It took 4 years to get from image capture to market, against three months in France. See Coverage of Google Street View for similar cases.

Job regulations. Which are Uber biggest threat at city or national levels.

Other market complexity. This is the story of our dear friend “Not-Available-In-Your-Country” for phones or other devices or distribution medium that simply did not care looking at your market for the marginal cost of handling this extra destination was not possible. For example Amazon Echo is not available in most countries, same thing for 23andMe or Robin Hood.


Some of those elements are legal, some are a business choices, some are in the middle, I am not sure there is guilt to give to someone for technological ghettos.

Yet the startup credo bouncing back over and over is: “try to live in the future”. This is way harder to do when your present is the past.


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Fräntz Miccoli

This blog is wrapping my ideas and opinions about innovation and entrepreneurship.

For some time now, I am the happy cofounder, COO & CTO of Nexvia.

Ideas expressed are here to be challenged.


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