READY, SET, DISRUPT

摘要

Facebook. Amazon. Apple. Not too long ago, these were the companies upending the status quo—unleashing provocative business models that changed our daily lives even as they transformed entire industries. (See: bookstores, record labels.)rnNow it's their turn to face the newbies. Buoyed by rocketing investor enthusiasm— venture-capital funding hit $28.4 billion in the U.S. last year, up 22% from 2010— the next class of start-ups aims to disrupt the disrupters. "Are we worried about iTunes? Of course," says Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, a much hyped app that offers streams of songs legally and free. "But our goal is to be the best product there is to consume music, period."