If a new app takes over TikTok, it is because they took the opportunity (and the risk).
You don’t learn much if you have hindsight bias
ByteDance said it’s unlikely they will sell off TikTok in the US. Probably because ByteDance needs to get approval from the Chinese Regulator, and they’d hate to sell off their major asset (the tech + soft power).
The bill still has to be approved by the Senate and then signed by the US President. ByteDance can also challenge it in US courts, therefore progress may be delayed.
Maybe some people in the US are trying to build another short-form video social networking app soon because of what is happening.
Many months or years later, if TikTok is banned and a new app takes the market, people will be singing praise for their brilliant move.
Or if TikTok is not banned and the new app dies, people will be saying ‘Well what do they expect, TikTok will definitely find some way to come back’.
All these narratives will be from the benefit of hindsight.
Take a look at the e-commerce/tech company layoff post-Covid until now. I do not, by any means support the mass layoffs that have been happening,
Why were so many companies overhired during Covid?
A couple of months into Covid and lockdown, e-commerce and tech experience explosive growth, the market is expanding, and nobody knows if Covid will mutate or the vaccine is going to curb it.
Nobody can accurately predict how long until things return to normal. Also, what if it doesn’t?
E-commerce and tech companies see an opportunity — and a risk of not acting on it.
If Covid continues and you don’t have sufficient resources to capture the expanding market, you are going to lose in capturing the market shares.
The winning company will grow bigger, get more customers, and eventually talents that lead to better tech/ product development. All of a sudden it becomes a huge gap that is difficult to overcome.
Turns out Covid is tamed, and the growth doesn't continue (I suspect some of the company projections of growth are too high, to begin with even if Covid continues).
Anyway, reality and interest rates kick in, and most companies that overhired but did not have appropriate risk control when trying to seize the opportunity get burned and shut down. Those that did some degree of risk control started laying off people by stages, their employees got burned, and the company survived (ironically some achieved record profit or cashflow positive....in adjusted EBITDA).
Management: "Sorry to all the affected employees, I have made a mistake about the growth of the company, we are trying to stay lean now"
The company sees an opportunity and the huge risk of not acting on it during a potentially black swan event. It didn't happen the way they wanted, so they adjusted.
The ability to recognize a potentially game-changing event and then act on the opportunity based on a 'good enough reason' (at that time) requires courage. To win from a situation like that, and sometimes also requires luck.
The outcome only paints part of the picture.
