Creating something that is newer, better and cheaper isn’t easy. In fact, it’s really difficult. The benefit today is that we have technologies that seemingly have the ability to transform industries that have been resistant to technological change. Packy McCormick in his post ‘Everything is Technology‘ takes a look at the opportunity in front of venture capital-backed firms to transform entire industries. He writes:

“As we’ve discussed at length, it’s not just software that is eating the world, but technology in general. Joseph Schumpeter wrote that “Constant, relentless change is the hallmark of capitalism.” My contention is that as this capitalist churn happens, technology companies will replace non-technology companies…Technology companies frequently eat incumbents and create new industries. These transitions happen more quickly than you would expect, typically within a decade or two (and the two most recent, at something like the modern speed of change, took only six and eight years). And the new companies created on the backs of new technologies typically end up being larger than the entire industry they replace.”

All of which is plausible. McCormick believes this transition will largely benefit those able to access venture capital funds, because much of this value add will happen outside of the public markets. Then again, not everything VCs touch turns to gold. Venture capital has poured into companies that have set out to disrupt transitional consumer brands, but have yet to make a meaningful dent in the markets or in terms of investment returns. Katie Gatti Tassin writing ‘The Venture Capitalization of Culture‘ looks at where these (DTC) startups have fallen short. She writes:

One might wonder generously if these disruptors are keeping legacy brands on their toes by injecting competition into century-old markets. But it seems the primary lesson the legacy brands have adopted from the young, venture-backed ones is the bottom line-boosting power of the subscription model, the creeping ubiquity of which appeared in the new season of Black Mirror, a plot line that some viewers criticized as being so commonplace as to be predictable.

We can argue whether a new payment model is an interesting enough outcome for these companies. One thing we can probably agree on is that these startups have continued a trend where consumers are increasingly distanced from the the company that makes the goods or provides the service. This is a feature, not a bug. Anne Helen Petersen argues in ‘What to Do With All This Consumer Rage?‘ that this is one reason why everyone seems so angry, all the time. Especially in our online interactions. She writes:

We’re addicted to cheap stuff and infuriated by the systems that produce it but resistant to reform. We’re hungry for local alternatives but disappointed that they are, well, what they are: not cheap, and not always quick, and not always precisely what we wanted. Like so many other good things, they’re unoptimizable and deeply human — which means they require the sort of flexibility and patience we have become unaccustomed to offering.

Technology is going to continue to transform industries and our lives. Newer, better, cheaper is great. History shows us that getting them all simultaneously is a difficult trick to pull off.