Y Combinator has been Silicon Valley’s pre-eminent start-up incubator for 20 years. But the organisation that helped launch Airbnb and Reddit only hired its first full-time lobbyist in 2023.
These days, Big Tech firms are continually fighting lawsuits and regulators over complaints of anti-competitive behaviour. But when Luther Lowe began calling foul over Google’s treatment of rivals in its search leads to the early 2010s, Silicon Valley’s giants seemed invincible.
An activist in school who grew up in a family with long-standing ties to Washington DC, Lowe joined local reviews site Yelp in 2008 and led the San Francisco company’s legal campaign against what it alleges is Google’s “illegal self-preferencing” in local search.
Yelp’s legal battle continues to be ongoing but last August’s US court ruling that Google illegally exploited its dominance in search — followed by one other victory for the US Department of Justice in its adtech case against Google in April — has provided vindication for Lowe. Google denies wrongdoing and is appealing each decisions.
Lowe’s current mission is fighting for “Little Tech”, ensuring that start-ups have their very own voice in Washington and Brussels — whether pushing back against what he sees as onerous regulations or continuing to spotlight misbehaviour by among the world’s most precious firms.
From Washington he spoke to the FT’s global tech correspondent Tim Bradshaw about how these David-and-Goliath battles have evolved and where he sees the brand new front lines.
Tim Bradshaw: You made your name running policy at Yelp, the local reviews app, by putting the highlight on how Google’s search algorithm was harming competitors. How you probably did you come to hitch Y Combinator and why does a start-up accelerator programme, working with firms that won’t even have launched yet, have to become involved in policy advice and political campaigning?
Luther Lowe: Garry Tan, Y Combinator’s CEO, recognised that in places like Washington and Brussels, there’s loads of representation for the biggest (tech) firms. But “Little Tech”, this phrase that he coined, doesn’t have a seat on the table. So when he became CEO and president (in 2023), he and I got coffee and that’s when the conversation began.
TB: So you’re attempting to represent the a whole lot of start-ups that undergo YC after which the broader tech founder community as a complete — Little Tech as you call it. How do you choose what to deal with when there’s potentially many competing agendas in there?
LL: It’s definitely plenty of juggling. (Loads of my work is) attempting to move the needle on the macro issues, like access to talent. YC desires to brain drain essentially the most sensible people from world wide and produce them into the US to have them construct great firms. Sometimes you’ll have these cases where a founder who’s from outside the US, despite being extraordinary, is hitting snags in getting their visa and getting in to take part in our three-month programme. So we care rather a lot about that access to talent issue.
(Another focus is on) access to markets, which I might define as ensuring that competition is powerful and that the biggest players aren’t egregiously putting their thumb on the size through self-preferencing or denying interoperability.
And then one other big topic obviously is artificial intelligence. Where we are available in on AI is attempting to advocate for a more open market, where there’s a lot of open source models and founders have a lot of options to pick from in constructing their tools.
TB: Are there any early wins that you are feeling you’ll be able to point to? You helped to quash California’s Senate Bill 1047, which intended to stop potential harms from large AI models but was vetoed by Governor Newsom, who cited concerns that the bill could stifle innovation. (Meta, Google and OpenAI also lobbied against the bill.)
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LL: There’s been plenty of little wins and really big wins along the way in which. Issue smart, we thought that California bill was going to be overly burdensome to start-up founders working in AI. We placed on an enormous event and created plenty of awareness and energy on that, which ultimately led to the governor vetoing the bill.
I might say there are also individual examples, like there was a bill that handled copyright law within the US that was form of like a laser-guided missile at one in every of our smaller firms that helps aggregate constructing codes and make them searchable and simple to make use of. We were in a position to get the votes to kill that in the home.
TB: Especially for the time being, there may be a lot legislative activity, each on the federal level and state-by-state. What’s your radar when there’s laws coming down the pipe? How do you choose your battles?
LL: DC runs on Signal and really Silicon Valley too. I feel like there’s just a lot of Signal and WhatsApp groups that individuals belong to where they’re sharing intel and that is definitely really helpful. We just launched an organisation, the American Innovators Network, with (Silicon Valley enterprise capital group) Andreessen Horowitz and there’s a superb amount of resources stepping into to assist monitor and advocate for Little Tech interests on AI issues in state capitals. And then the founders help flag stuff for me.
Then we resolve if that is a problem where YC weighing in could move the needle. I actually have to be selective, because there is simply one in every of me. So it really runs everywhere in the map when it comes to the character of how I’m attempting to help, but generally speaking, it’s a mix of, are we moving the chains on the core issues we care about — open source AI, competition, immigration, some tax issues — after which just this grab bag of random things that bubble up from founders who might need assistance with federal bureaucracy navigation.
TB: I remember a decade ago when Andreessen Horowitz began hiring lawyers and policy advisers to assist their portfolio firms. At that point Uber was battling city authorities, you were (taking over) Google at Yelp, and there was a growing awareness that policy and the law isn’t something that tech start-ups can just ignore. Now it’s almost flipped the opposite way and there’s a lot regulation and litigation around tech. How have you ever seen those broader dynamics change because you began at Yelp?
LL: I feel it continues to be true — similar to it was true 10, 15 years ago — that Silicon Valley and Washington are form of intrigued by one another. When I’m going back to San Francisco, individuals are very excited to refer to me because they see Washington, especially what’s occurring without delay, is sort of a buzzy place. They need to get all of the gossip. I do think that there’s probably some connection to the growing frustration at among the larger tech firms that probably began back then. Around summer of 2016 was probably the largest inflection point within the US, when (Democratic senator) Elizabeth Warren gave a speech that namechecked plenty of these firms. Then after the 2016 election . . . you began to see some fracturing between this form of love affair between the Obama Democrats and Big Tech.
I feel President Trump in his first term, rightfully, viewed these firms with suspicion and hostility, which culminated within the US vs Google (antitrust) filing in his last couple months of his first term. And then when the Biden administration got here in, there was the alternative to bring on Jonathan Kanter and Lina Khan (to steer the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission) and double down on that approach. Now you’ve got the Trump team carrying on that essential work.
The VCs becoming more invested in Washington, aside from YC, is a somewhat connected trend. As these dominant platforms sucked up plenty of the oxygen that might normally go to consumer services, I feel the investment world began taking a look at what are the opposite kinds of technology and end markets that we will take a look at. So “dual use” or technologies that might be created for consumers but may also be sold to government and even defence tech. And when you are making a latest rocket, you have got to have in your Series A deck a proof of what’s your game plan to speak with the federal government and comply with all of the vital regulations.
TB: When the agitation began against the Big Tech firms as being potential monopolists, it felt like they were almost invulnerable at that time. How did Europe play a task in galvanising the US to act?
LL: This all began in 2010, 2011. Twenty ten was when the primary grievance with the European Commission was filed against Google. Twenty eleven was when Yelp, my former employer, form of got here out of the closet and began talking about how Google was putting its thumb on the scales, stealing their content. And then eventually the FTC opened an investigation later that yr.
The Obama-appointed FTC ultimately voted against bringing charges. And then the ball was within the court of Joaquín Almunia, the European Commissioner (for Competition, from 2010 to 2014) who preceded Margrethe Vestager. He, to his credit, decided to not settle the case, despite overwhelming pressure to follow what the FTC had done. And that teed things up for Vestager, when she entered office in late 2014, to take a fresh take a look at the problems. That led to Vestager in April of 2015 announcing the intention to do an announcement of objections.
I feel like that was the firing gun for the anti-Big Tech “techlash”. Eventually you had US politicians like Elizabeth Warren begin to make political arguments along the lines of, ‘why are European consumers poised to enjoy higher protections than US consumers?’ And so it form of boomeranged back to the US. And now you’ve got the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA, designed to curb tech leaders’ dominance of the digital marketplace), which we’re eagerly awaiting, (to see) how that’s going to shake out. Then Google has lost two antitrust trials; Meta is in the midst of its own; Apple’s goes to begin pretty soon.
TB: But without delay, it looks like Europe is getting a reasonably bad rap from the Trump administration on almost all the things. What do you are feeling like Europe has done right and unsuitable in attempting to tackle Big Tech?
LL: What was surprising to me about first going to Brussels is that it looks as if plenty of the political energy and advocacy about what should occur in Brussels is definitely coming from US firms. It’s coming from small and medium-sized US firms which might be saying, from 2010 through 2016, ‘no person within the US government would hearken to us regarding these abuse of dominance issues’. And so Brussels became form of this objective venue.
There is that this status and stereotype that Europe doesn’t innovate, it regulates — that Europe is just jealous of all these great Silicon Valley firms and so it just needs to manage them. And there are specific regulations that I feel Little Tech or the tech crowd might be fair in caring about, similar to the Digital Services Act and GDPR and the AI Act — even though it looks like they’re tinkering with the AI Act and attempting to make that higher.
What we’ve been attempting to do is be certain that folks see that the Digital Markets Act stands aside from among the stereotypes — that it truly is about ensuring that firms like Apple and Google aren’t choking off all of the oxygen. We’re encouraging people to think opportunistically and supply evidence, open up lines of communication with the European Commission in order that they can contribute to how that’s enforced. Because it guarantees to unlock plenty of innovation and investment in those markets.
TB: Are small firms generally willing to challenge the massive incumbents? Because for a time, big tech firms — especially Google and Meta — were places they ultimately would look to sell their businesses to. Have start-ups, especially on the early stage, change into more willing to be seen to tackle those firms?
LL: I feel there still is a legitimate fear of retaliation. That’s why I feel my role is so essential.
(Among smaller start-ups, the chat app) Beeper Mini was an example of an organization that was vocal about Apple and took the moral high ground. It created interoperable messaging that enabled iMessage usage between Android and Apple devices. It was this cat-and-mouse game for some time but Apple eventually form of disabled their functionality. (Beeper’s efforts to create a workaround ultimately failed and the service shut down in early 2024).
We think it’s really essential for someone that’s fighting for Little Tech to exist and be a voice that may privately back channel these items to policymakers, and help flag opportunities for discrete interaction with regulators when appropriate.
TB: How much of what you probably did at Yelp created a playbook for what you do today? Because it looks as if you would like a mix of public chest-beating and a reasonably one-to-one means of winning hearts and minds.
LL: Yelp was a canary within the coal mine and there have been a few years at first of the method in 2011 where I feel people checked out me like I used to be crazy and it was form of heterodox to suggest that an organization like Google may not be acting in everybody’s best interests. The tables have definitely turned, I feel that individuals are definitely more suspicious of the actions of (Big Tech).
The big obvious one that individuals are talking about now — and California has awoken to this, though I’m unsure that Brussels and DC have fully appreciated it — is the undeniable fact that we’ve had large language models (LLMs) as a mass consumer product for over two and a half years — after which alternatively, we have now Siri, which is embarrassingly silly, and Alexa, which is embarrassingly silly.
It can be technically trivial to attach these two technologies and have these voice endpoints (on smartphones like iPhones or smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo) driving our interactions with LLM-powered assistants. There have been loads of sensible start-up founders which have built those kinds of voice interactions, but the power to access deeper APIs (application programming interfaces) and the operating systems, which might allow some kind of different to overtake Siri as a default, is just impossible now. And so we at the moment are to a degree where these larger firms are mainly denying consumers the fruit of this incredible innovation.
I feel it’s finally becoming apparent that (Big Tech) is usually a drag on innovation. The commitment to an LLM-powered Siri has been kicked out to 2027. They’re just not as equipped as these more nimble start-ups to create progressive stuff. And in reality, they’re nervous concerning the innovation at this point, because I feel the second that you simply hand the keys to a start-up that builds an LLM-powered voice assistant and let that be the default, then it somewhat commoditises your device. Then perhaps suddenly people buy the device from the corporate that’s created the assistant in the longer term.
TB: For a lot of years, internal pressure and worker activism was such an enormous part of creating tech firms listen to a few of these political issues. Is that something that you could still harness or has it gone away?
LL: To get to the foundation of why that was happening — no (political) party owns this and so that you wind up interacting with misfits in each parties. At a recent YC event in DC, we had (Democratic senator) Cory Booker and (Republican senator) Josh Hawley. We had Rohit Chopra, who was the top of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Biden and is an Elizabeth Warren protégé, sitting next to Steve Bannon . . . The title of the Bannon panel was Can Techno-Optimism and Populism Coexist?
Something that concerns me about among the sentiment in Washington around tech is that the anti-Big Tech vibes have become anti-tech vibes. And that’s not good, because technology is definitely an ideal thing. We are very pro-tech, and we would like to create an environment where the market is open and a lot of latest, exciting tech can emerge. The point I’m making though is what strange bedfellows emerge whenever you want advocate on these issues. I’m personally a Democrat, but I actually have change into good friends with plenty of people within the Republican party.
Look at people like (vice-president) JD Vance who’ve been real leaders on these issues. The people who have leaned into these issues have performed very well electorally . . . The party that really figures this out first might be going to profit essentially the most electorally. And it looks as if Republicans are figuring it out faster than Democrats, but definitely there’s a growing set of Democrats who I feel are also embracing plenty of the anti-monopoly issues.
Being in a position to jump forwards and backwards between those sides on these issues, that has tactically been the thing that keeps the wind within the sails of this work.
TB: How do you see efforts by the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and another Silicon Valley leaders to get the Trump administration to line up on their side against European tech regulation? In effect harnessing an argument about free speech and content moderation to each inoculate themselves from criticism from Trump, but then also using that as a weapon against Europe?
LL: If I needed to guess what’s occurring, it’s tech lobbyists that represent firms like Apple and Google, that are intentionally conflating the Digital Services Act (which regulates social networks and other online platforms, to stop disinformation and other harmful activities) and the DMA to people within the White House. And like I said earlier, I feel that there are fair criticisms of the DSA, but when those two things get conflated and that becomes some form of element in some form of trade tit-for-tat, then that might be unlucky for Little Tech.
We’re really excited that the White House has even used the phrase Little Tech in announcing a few of these leaders (in antitrust enforcement), like Gail Slater and Andrew Ferguson. And again, putting Vance on the ticket was just a very powerful signal that they care about fostering the subsequent generation of technology firms.
So what we’re attempting to do is just underscore that not all the things that Europe does on the regulatory front is bad for Little Tech.
TB: You mentioned earlier you were concerned about AI regulation. Why do you think that it’s essential to guard open source AI specifically, given the priority that this may hand a possible advantage to Chinese start-ups like DeepSeek?
LL: What’s going to permit the US to compete against China is our progressive spirit and that innovation is unlocked when there may be open competition. And I feel it’s crazy to me to suggest that we must always just hand the keys to the biggest firms that produce AI products to avoid wasting us from China.
What’s happening in AI is the other of the antitrust debate, in a way — because actually what you desire to see within the technology space is vibrant competition, because that’s what’s producing all this innovation. So we’re really excited by that. We shouldn’t be parachuting in with a lot of heavy-handed regulation in a market where there may be incredible competition.
When there’s not competition, when competition fails, then you desire to implement the antitrust laws. And then when that fails, you then regulate, since you did not implement the law. And we’re not near that stage in the case of AI.
It’s the open source projects which might be giving the opposite firms a run for his or her money and putting competitive pressure on them to maintain innovating. And so it just moves the entire ecosystem forward in a highly competitive direction. Like when you’re working at these (AI foundation model) firms, you’re barely clocking out. Everybody just looks like they’re in a race to construct (artificial general intelligence, a form of AI that surpasses human ability in any given field). And in order that’s super exciting.
