The claim that you need a 10x better product to win any market share is simply incorrect, both logically and historically.

Maybe if people that bought Dell had a deep love for Dell products and were deeply integrated unable to move, but even then 10x is a waste exaggeration.

But if you have any serious academic literature that underlies this 10x claim I'm happy to take a look.

> You aren't making silicon. You are still ultimately a purveyor of other people's IP.

And neither does Dell and they are worth 80 billion $. And AMD doesn't make semiconductors, so they relay on other people IP. And TSMC doesn't make their lithographic machines or many other things, relaying on other people's IP. And all those materials relay on other people IP to be brought to market in the first place.

This is just a silly argument that for some reason puts CPU design companies as 'the real deal' and everybody else is somehow not good enough.

Historically good systems companies make just as good margin as most CPU design companies, specially those that don't have near monopolies.

> it's actually not such a good story

They are making inroads in a market that is 100s of billion $ large and people invested 300M$+ in them because they see costumer demand. If that's not good enough for you then I don't know what to tell you. I wish any of the starups I have worked at that kind of opportunity.

It seems to me you operate in a sense where anybody that doesn't go for a monopoly in a 5 trillion $ market is somehow not 'worthy' of being a startup. That just a very strange perspective on reality.