4 Business Models for the Data Age
Rethinking old strategies.
platforms
3 Steps to Break Out in a Tired Industry
Focus, eliminate, replace.
The Real Power of Platforms Is Helping People Self-Organize
Centralized planning is no longer required.
http://platformed.info/platform-strategy-and-walled-gardens-in-the-toy-industry/
http://www.recode.net/2015/7/23/11615008/guess-whos-making-a-comeback-record-labels
Network Effects Aren’t Enough
In many ways, online marketplaces are the perfect business model. Since they facilitate transactions between independent suppliers and customers rather than take possession of and responsibility for the products or services in question, they have inherently low cost structures…
A Dozen Attributes of a Scalable Business
“A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture fundin…
“Platform” risk — Remains of the Day
Last night, Twitter curtailed Meerkat's access to its graph . I saw lots of discussion on Twitter (I'd say this was ironic but it's just expected) about why and whether Twitter should just compete on its own merits with its recent acquisition Periscope . Some have termed what…
http://platformed.info/platform-metrics/
Use Co-opetition to Build New Lines of Revenue
Just don’t pretend you’re all on the same side.
Pando: Democratizing career progression
Democratizing career progression
http://platformed.info/qa-quora-stack-overflow-mahalo-yahoo-answers-growth-hacking
http://platformed.info/seeding-platform-standalone-square-opentable-delicious/
How to Make a Good Secret Sauce
Knowledge moats (secret sauces) are one of the most fundamental type of moat in business. They consist of the information, data and…
Is There a Platform in Your Product?
Five of the 10 most valuable companies in the world today—Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft—derive much of their worth from their multisided platforms, which facilitate interactions or transactions between parties. Many MSPs are more valuable than companies in the…
http://platformed.info/twitter-whatsapp-uber-airbnb-network-effects/
https://codingvc.com/the-value-of-data-part-3-data-business-models/
Three-Dimensional Strategy: Winning the Multisided Platform
Done right, companies competing as a multi-sided platform often win with higher percentage profit margins than those enjoyed by traditional resellers. The problem is that a winning strategy is far from self-evident. Professor Andrei Hagiu explains the potential and the pitfalls…
http://platformed.info/creative-platform-threadless-500px-dribbble-instagram/
A Brief History of the Ways Companies Compete
Five movements.
Beyond Disruption
Clayton Christensen claims that Uber is not disruptive, and he’s exactly right. In fact, disruption theory often doesn’t make sense when it comes to understanding how companies succeed …
Snapchat’s Ladder
Snapchat is on the verge of conquering the toughest messaging market in the world: the United States. The way they did it is by laddering-up.
10 Places to Find Product-Market Fit
Startups fail because they run out of money before achieving product-market fit. NFX Managing Partner Gigi Levy-Weiss identifies 10 places to look for product-market fit in startup ideas.
Full Stack Music: 1 Trillion Streams, 200 Million Tickets | TechCrunch
At present, there are three distinct music industries: radio, on-demand music, and concert ticketing. However, we are starting to enter a new phase, where these industries will converge and produce one integrated experience for artists and fans. I’ve taken to calling this full…
Strategy Letter V
When I was in college I took two intro economics courses: macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macro was full of theories like “low unemployment causes inflation” that never quite stood u…
Tidal and the Future of Music
Predicting success and failure is about understanding who has leverage. In the case of music, the winners will be the labels, not the artist. But perhaps there is hope for tomorrow
How To Structure A Marketplace | TechCrunch
Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Simon Rothman of Greylock Partners. Rothman is particularly passionate about Marketplace technology (Etsy, Kickstarter, Airbnb, etc) and how to garner success in that category. Marketplaces are endemic to the consumer web: Largely…
The Empty Promise of Data Moats | Andreessen Horowitz
Data has long been lauded as a competitive moat for companies, and that narrative’s been further hyped with the recent wave of AI startups. Network effects have been similarly promoted as a defensible force in building software businesses. So of course, we constantly hear about…
Anatomy of a managed marketplace | TechCrunch
Managed marketplaces have been one of the hottest categories of venture investment over the past several years. They garner a lot of press because the consumer experiences are often radically different than what’s previously been available in the market. But there is confusion…
The New Curated Consumer Marketplace Model: 10 Criteria For Success
By Stephanie Tilenius, an entrepreneur in residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers The Wild West of online marketplaces is over. From 1999 until 2006, eBay and Amazon Marketplaces dominated the field, offering platforms that brought buyers and sellers together. But over the…
Defining Aggregators
Building on Aggregation Theory, this provides a precise definition of the characteristics of aggregators, and a classification system based on suppliers. Plus, how to think about aggregator regulat…
Alexa: Amazon’s Operating System
Money is made at chokepoints, and the most valuable chokepoints are operating systems; Amazon is building exactly that with Alexa.
Economies Of Scale As A Service | TechCrunch
Credit where it's definitely due: this post was inspired by a Twitter conversation with Box CEO Aaron Levie. Don't look now, but something remarkable is happening. Instagram had twelve employees when it was purchased for $700 million; all of its actual computing power was…
Aggregation and the New Regulation
Because of the Internet realities described by Aggregation Theory a smaller number of companies hold an increasing amount of power. However, an increasing focus on market forces reduces the latitud…
Reverse Network Effects: Why Scale Threatens Today’s Social Networks
To explore the future of online networks, it's important to note how network effects correlate with value and the factors that make these network effects work in reverse.
The Intentional Network Effects of Uber
Few realize that Uber's core network effects aren't as strong as they seem. At this point, we count no less than 9 additional defensibilities Uber is pursuing to reinforce their core network effect.
A Taxonomy of Moats
Value is created through innovation, but how much of that value accrues to the innovator depends partly on how quickly their competitors imitate the innovation. Innovators must deter competition to…
What is the point of crypto?
Crypto is a solution in search of a problem — or problems.
Zapier: The $5B unbundling opportunity
Zapier has 3M+ users and generates $125M in ARR. At a $5B valuation, its fast-growing horizontal platform is unable to meet the demands of all of its customers. The increase of underserved Zapier customers presents an opportunity.
The Economics of Data Businesses
How data businesses start, and how they keep going, and growing, and growing.
Twitter Wants to Reinvent Itself, by Merging the Old With the New (Published 2022)
The company is undertaking a far-reaching effort to change how it works. For some, it is an echo of their early idealism and a vision for what the internet could have been.
This Is Peak Subscription
Forking over another $5 a month is getting pretty old.
Five Reasons to Sell End-to-End Products in Early Markets by @ttunguz
In early and developing markets, selling complete products is often a superior go to market strategy, rather than selling an innovation in a layer in the stack. This is true for five reasons. First, for early customers to generate value from a novel technology, that technology…
Shopify and the Power of Platforms
It is all but impossible to beat an Aggregator head-on, as Walmart is trying to do with Amazon. The solution instead is to build a platform like Shopify.
The Tribal Network Effect (nfx #15)
Today, we’re sharing the newest social nfx we've identified—the 15th type of network effect: Tribal Network Effects.
The economics of Spotify
Spotify’s recent Joe Rogan controversy has also deepened a rift between the platform and artists over pay.
Storming Reddit's Moat
A Guide to Reddit, Its Key Competitive Advantages, and How to Unbundle It
How we crack the chicken and the egg problem
Hatching a Design Marketplace from Scratch at Visually
The power of defaults
The world’s most successful companies all exhibit some form of structural competitive advantage: A defensibility mechanism that protects their margins and profits from competitors over long periods of time. Business strategy books like to refer to these competitive advantages as…
White Label Designs – All About Implementation, Design Systems, and New Tec
Building white label products is more profitable than starting a new design every time. Learn how to properly implement white labelling.