AnshuBlog: The Stack Fallacy

Why did the Apps in the Browser Succeed?

If you go back in time, to the late 90’s and early 00’s, the operating system of choice at work was Microsoft Windows. Windows was not a very well designed OS when it comes to security and stability. Installing one app could open the possibility for security holes and for one app to hurt the performance of other apps- remember the corrupt registry problem?

CIO kills the Native Apps — Microsoft helps

The CIOs who run our computers at most workplaces responded to the various challenges by essentially locking down our computers. We could not install any apps as end users because we were not given the permission to do so by the CIO. This facility — the ability to remotely control and manage our computers — was a key selling point for the Windows platform.
Essentially, the apps we could access on our computers were the ones built by the likes of Microsoft (Excel, Word, Outlook, Powerpoint), a few large software companies like Oracle & SAP, and 3–5 apps the CIO built. That was the computer. You as a user had NO CHOICE.
In theory, you could install other apps by following the company processes — go buy app, get CIO to approve the purchase, get CIO to test the app, and then isntall it. It was just too difficult.

Unlocking the locked PC

If you were an employee at a company and wanted to use a new piece of software it was nearly impossible to get access to it on your PC laptop. This, by the way, was equally true for Mac or Unix systems which were locked down.

Nature Abhors an App Vacuum

However, we still had a lot of tasks that were not yet automated like customer relationship management (CRM) for which we as end users wanted to try out new software and were often willing to pay for it, albeit in small dollar amounts. Similarly, the users could imagine better versions of tools they were using or being forced to use at work.
The software vendors were suffering too. They had to go through the CIO to sell every new app to the end user or a department. What if we could bypass this CIO?

SaaS is the Market Response to the PC Lockdown

At the same time, as our PCs were getting locked down on the apps side, we could visit all kinds of magical places on the internet and do things like buy books online. As Marc Benioff said — what if we could use enterprise software the way we buy books on Amazon?
You could sign up online and using just your web browser access new functionality. The rest as they say is history.
The browser apps were NOT better than the native apps in terms of core funcationlity — even today a natively installed Excel or Numbers app beats the best online spreadsheet.
It took Steve Jobs and opening of the app store for us to realize that you can actually get best of both the worlds — cloud backends and a fully native, rich app running on your device fully exploiting its resources — rather than a boiled down version of the app forced to fit into the browser.

Today, the Apple app store and the Android app store have millions of apps with millions of developers making billions of dollars while there is no such equivalent for the PC.
Microsoft’s biggest failure of the last decade may not have been missing the cloud and the mobile revolutions but giving away probably the biggest advantage it had — developers building killer apps for your ecosystem. Microsoft seems to have finally acknowledged, and under Satya Nadella’s leadership is fighting back with innovations like apps that sit inside a VM container to isolate them and make them safe to install.
Today, the browser based cloud apps on the desktop completely bypass Microsoft’s Windows stack by running on the browser and most of the mobile apps run on either Apple iOS or Google Android. A daylight trillion dollar heist.

• Kill the Password: The watch is the ultimate personal second or third factor in Authentication. Passwords are a bane for our financial and communications security.
• Make us Healthy: While I loved my Fitbit, and even Philips DirectLife (now discontinued), I kept forgetting them and losing them. Entrepreneurs who use the watch to deliver the right nudges to us – to take a walk, to eat healthier, to snooze better, to sit straighter – can help us live better and longer. 
• Train a Dragon: Well, you may not actually train a dragon but the watch sensors could be used as an input device to play games. Just as an iPhone can be tilted, the Apple watch can enable new gestures to be used as input.
• Money: The obvious use case of using Apple Watch to make payments which Apple has already thought through – you can reimagine all kinds of processes from how you order at a restaurant to how you get notified when food is ready.

by permission (Creative Commons)

The governments don’t have to be structured this way geographically. It can be a graph of nodes. Think of each government today – city, state,  etc. essentially offering an (outdated) API to a set of services they offer – registering a title for example.

But there is no reason why title registration has to be done by your county. They need the information but the actual act can be performed by a third party and the government can make an API call to verify this information. (Yes, I know title companies help do this but they are acting as an agent not a their own system of record.)

Break up the Government API
Today, governments are like a mainframe system – everything is mingled into one giant, expensive, outdate machine that is sub-optimal. We know that a distributed architecture works better in most cases – and I would argue its true for government too.

The government of Estonia is embarking on one such journey – to offer us many unique online services by taking the first step of offering an online ‘government issued online identity’. Think of it in simple terms as somewhat similar to getting a Facebook account and using it to log in to say a news website. Similarly, you will be able to use your Estonia issued electronic identity to do things like sign papers (legally in EU).

Start Simple
In the beginning, we will see very simple services like identity used for online signatures and other basic stuff. Today, we use our email address and password to sign using EchoSign or DocuSign – this will be a step up.

Over period of time, you will be able to create legally viable business entities. I am not aware of Delaware’s plans but there is no reason why Delaware could not create an API for creating C corporations for example tied to my identity.

The Beginning of the End of The Big Government
Today, as a resident of say New Delhi or San Francisco, I am beholden not just the local laws but also to the local bureaucracy. My cousin had to bribe someone in India to simply attest a copy of his birth certificate which he wanted to use in Australia. For services like this, there is no reason to rely on your local government service provider. As long as its consistent with the law, you will be able to use any service provider globally.

Balaji and others at Andreessen Horowitz have talked about government as a trillion dollar market and I think they are right. As governments get deconstructed, there will be room for private companies not only to make governments better but to replace entire government departments and programs with private service providers – the ‘full stack’ startup for government sector is not a Palantir or a OpenGov (read this) but Estonia and many other full service providers.

New Motto: Don’t just make government better, replace it.