I think Bloomberg is a lot weaker than people realize (in terms of competitive position). It offers a lot of functionality as many threads have pointed out but at any given time, the marginal user utilizes 0.5% of what it does. I sat in fixed income origination for years and the only reason I used it was to find some obscure pricing details which are now available for free elsewhere and to quickly export interest rate curves. Our traders definitely found it mission critical but there were 3 of them and 40 of us. Now if you go to someone within equity-linked securities, they will use it for a variety of different reasons but my friends there admitted they used it for 2-4 discrete pieces of functionality.
I believe one of their great data advantages is access. Buy a terminal and you will now have access to niche email distribution lists that no website sees or crawls with important market data (like fixed income bwics).
I believe it is difficult to attack Bloomberg head on as others are trying (like money.net or Eikon) but relatively easy to build really rich ecosystems in niche places outside of Bloomberg. Have you heard of a company called Intex? Probably not. In the global structured products market they are a monopoly solution generating 100-200mm in top line with 100 employees and 3 sales people. Wildly profitable but try to start something like that without being in structured products for years and you're dead on arrival. No one will give you the data you need.
PS: Here is an example of a great niche tool we loved as analysts and associates with thousands of active professional users. It was created by one person on the side (now a team of two) and generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in fully automated revenue. The challenge is that those who use EDGAR frequently instantly see the utility but someone outside of the industry would not know this even exists or the problem it solved.
www.bamsec.com
ps this is not a personal plug. I do know the founder now but only after I discovered tool and reached out.
In a word: Speed. As an analyst and associate I spent a ton of time on EDGAR and this tool wiped out easily 20 to 45 min of work a day. It's a collection of subtle enhancements for example it pulls the title of an 8k rather than me having to guess which 8k out of a dozen contain the information I need. It now has a transcript search that allows you to search for word references across all filing (dozens to hundreds at a time) for a company which can easily save hours. There are a lot of subtle enhancements that are not worth enumerating on HN but feel free to ping me and I can go deeper into it if you want.
I believe one of their great data advantages is access. Buy a terminal and you will now have access to niche email distribution lists that no website sees or crawls with important market data (like fixed income bwics).
I believe it is difficult to attack Bloomberg head on as others are trying (like money.net or Eikon) but relatively easy to build really rich ecosystems in niche places outside of Bloomberg. Have you heard of a company called Intex? Probably not. In the global structured products market they are a monopoly solution generating 100-200mm in top line with 100 employees and 3 sales people. Wildly profitable but try to start something like that without being in structured products for years and you're dead on arrival. No one will give you the data you need.