Following operating in Australia in the mid-1990s, Mr Rice usually supposed to return the moment the sector was ripe for financial commitment. In 2019, he headed again down under and set up his undertaking cash fund King River Capital, alongside previous Goldman Sachs expenditure banker Chris Barter and previous vice-president of clear power tech fund Angeleno Team, Megan Guy.
He believes US regulators will shift to crack Facebook into three individual organizations: WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. Mr Rice also said the Biden administration would crack down on the social media platforms’ regulate, or deficiency thereof, of user-produced content material, specifically in the wake of the Capitol riots.
When anyone offers a rather superior services for no cost, no one else will get funded for the reason that it can not compete with that.
— Zebediah Rice, King River Cash co-founder
“At the very least in America, the thought of limitless free speech is nonsense. Folks absolutely misunderstand that proper. You are unable to yell hearth in a crowded theatre . . . . or have the appropriate to incite violence and stress,” Mr Rice mentioned.
“Glimpse at what is actually heading on with Facebook and WhatsApp. They supply the support for free of charge. I use it each and every working day, texting people all about the environment and pay back practically nothing for it. How is that not monopolistic behaviour?
“It can be stifling innovation simply because you can find all these other providers that could have come up with superior strategies to converse, but when a person provides a quite superior provider for free, no 1 else gets funded simply because it can not contend with that.”
Mr Rice’s views echo all those of former Jetstar boss turned tech entrepreneur Bruce Buchanan, who is based in New York. He, far too, has explained there was wide support for a big tech crackdown.
Past 12 months the US Justice Department brought proceedings in opposition to Google for allegedly sustaining an unlawful monopoly on the net research and marketing marketplaces by making certain its items are mounted to the exclusion of rivals’ on most phones.
It followed action by the Australian Competitiveness and Purchaser Fee, which has introduced a number of court conditions against Google, as effectively as forcing Fb and Google to be element of a necessary code of carry out with Australian media teams these kinds of as Nine, which publishes The Australian Fiscal Assessment, and News Corp. It is also conducting an adtech inquiry.
By breaking up the tech giants, Mr Rice claimed, alternatives would be made for new firms to arise.
“The typical case in point is Instagram. It used to be just made use of to share photos, but then SnapChat was going gangbusters . . . . so they released Tales. Now there’s TikTok, so Instagram launched Reels. In Instagram’s look at they will obtain you, or duplicate you and place you out of enterprises,” he reported.
“When they are pressured not to use their industry energy to kick these other companies out of organization, or protect against them from even being began, persons like me will begin funding other ideas that can consider off.
“COVID has also experienced this transformative outcome . . . . wherever it can be created it invisible wherever you happen to be from. The man or woman down the avenue from the Walmart headquarters now has the very same means to pitch as a corporation in Sydney or Byron Bay.
“You can have a corporation coming from anywhere, and you may have a amount participating in area.”