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Ask HN: What are the biggest zombie tech companies that we don’t know of?

23 points by somid3 ↗ HN
Inspired by the article below by the Fed, what are some debt-ridden tech companies that most people don’t know of but are central to the economy?

Article: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/us-zombie-firms-how-many-and-how-consequential-20210730.html

15 comments

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more_corn
Not debt, but there have been rumblings of massive efforts to move off of VMware.
rjh29
A general trend is moving to the cloud where VMware isn't generally being used directly. But it depends how companies do that - if they take the lazy route and pay for VMware cloud licensing, then never move off it, maybe VMware stand to gain in the short term.
ozzythecat
Not a zombie from a debt perspective, but I’d say Amazon falls into a category where many orgs are stagnant or declining. The headline is always AWS and the Amazon.com, but there are entirely separate organizations producing little value, and it’s been working out because the two juggernauts foot the bill or because debt is (was) cheap.

They’re out of ideas and their long term bets require buying up other companies and using the retail and AWS war chest to entrench into “new to them” industries.

I don’t see how long the H1B/burn out culture is going to scale in the longer term. People only started staying longer at Amazon because of the increasing stock price (thanks Fed). With that story now ended, I’d no longer bet on them.

uptownfunk
Well as an investor, what big box retailer is able to compete with Amazon? Walmart and Target all have to keep stores open, Amazon doesn’t. It’s like the Tesla of retail. On the cloud side, maybe azure and gcp are catching up but the pace and mechanisms for launching new businesses at amazon are well oiled, it’s going to be hard to compete.

Burn out culture is changing in many orgs, and the world is constantly churning out a fresh supply of labor ready and eager to jump in and get the job done. On the retail/fulfillment side, the time is coming for automation which will displace many workers. Overall very bullish on Amazon, and more so if they start cutting the fat.

relaunched
It's unclear that stores are a disadvantage. Arguably, they've become more of an advantage and continue to evolve in that direction. From a supply chain point of view, having micro distribution / fulfillment centers makes a lot of sense.
uptownfunk
How are stores an advantage?

For things people don’t need to go to a store to see/try in person, amazon needs to figure out how to get things to people when they need them.

For things people need to try before they buy, Amazon needs to make it incredibly easy to put it back (return) the item, and also focus on tech innovation (ar/vr) to improve the purchasing experience.

On the cloud side they need to reckon with what will happen when we go to a multi cloud world. And then the limiting factor becomes the product/tech innovation itself. The issue with innovation in the long run is that everyone is able to provide an offering as OSS continues to grow more prevalent. At that point you may see more rapid acquisition for better vetting and faster time To market.

solarmist
How is this different than Alphabet with their ads business and cloud computing? Almost everything else is minuscule at best in comparison.
yunwal
I think this is kind of the plan with Amazon though. The separate organizations don't necessarily exist to make a profit, they exist to feed logistics and AWS with product ideas and tight feedback loops.

I do agree with the burnout culture point though, Amazon seems to be having trouble bringing in good talent, both at the IC level and the leadership level.

missedthecue
Very unlikely to occur in tech because it's not capital intensive. Zombie firms are usually in sectors that require constant capital investment to sustain operations, or those that have gone on a buyout binge. Think about things like airlines, utilities, oil and gas, trucking, and so forth. Real estate is also predisposed to this because they are always levered up to the hilt.
Wonnk13
Epic- based out of Madison,WI. They make the EMR software for basically every hospital in the country.