The Emergence of B2B Raw Material Marketplaces

Business-to-business marketplaces are among ecommerce's leading growth trends, yet many industries remain under-served, especially for raw materials.

What Spotify and Apple can learn from Chinese podcasting apps

Western platforms are still way behind in giving creators (and fans) the tools to succeed.

The thriving business of ‘Ikea hacking’

A growing number of companies are offering design tweaks for old Ikea furniture — and business is booming.

The Great Game of Risk Played in Category Creation, and Why the Winning Str

Suppose you’ve started a company that’s creating a category. Most buyers in your target market haven’t heard of your business or the kind of software you sell. There’s no budget line item, no Magic Quadrant, no G2 High Performer Award, no conference. You have an idea, a vast…

Can Apple change ads? — Benedict Evans

20 years ago Apple seized music, and turned it into a lever for its broader business. It failed to do the same to TV, and lost control of music, but won massively in games, where it now makes more money than the entire global digital music industry. Now, perhaps, it’s looking at…

7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy by Hamilton Helmer – The Rab

Summary Helmer sets out to create a simple, but not simplistic, strategy compass. His 7 powers include: scale economics, switching costs, cornered resource, counter positioning, branding, network effects, and process. Key Takeaways Strategy: the study of the fundamental…

Distribution and Demand

Distribution on the Internet is free; what matters is controlling demand. AT&T and Verizon didn’t understand the distinction.

App Store Arguments

There are all kinds of arguments to make about the App Store, and nearly all of them are good ones; that’s why the best solution can only come from Apple.

Spotify’s Surprise

Spotify’s new subscription podcast offerings embrace the open ecosystem of podcasts in multiple ways.

Why I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one.

After more than 12.000 Github stars, two successful open-source projects, a failed open-core company, and a successful prop-tech one*, I feel more than ever that giving your product away for free is just as bad a business strategy as it sounds.

Excel Never Dies

The Spreadsheet That Launched A Million Companies

Enterprise Gateway Marketplaces Will Turn Large Organizations Inside-Out

The marketplace revolution is still just beginning and the enterprise gateway is the newest type of marketplace.

How to Eat an Elephant, One Atomic Concept at a Time - kwokchain

How Figma and Canva are taking on Adobe—and winning In 2010, Photoshop was ubiquitous. Whether you were editing a photo, making a poster, or designing a website, it happened in Photoshop. Today, Adobe looks incredibly strong. They’ve had spectacular stock performance, thanks to…

Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement

A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and…

Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage · Collaborative Fund

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com.

Why Competitive Advantages Die · Collaborative Fund

A few factors I’ve seen pull winners off the podium…

Dan McKinley :: Choose Boring Technology

Five Lessons From Dave Chappelle – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Dave Chappelle has a new special about his old show that includes fundamental lessons about how the Internet has changed the content business.

A guide to platform fees

Platforms can build a business, but the businesses have to pay.

Come for the Network, Pay for the Tool

Paid groups, bespoke social networks, and the meaning of community for internet-native businesses.

10 Best Ecommerce Platforms Compared & Rated For 2020

Our top ecommerce builders are based on objective performance data, feature set & value. Check out ecommerce platforms now.

Moats Before (Gross) Margins

In 2019, long before the outbreak of COVID-19, many lower gross margin tech companies were not being well-received by the public markets, and an excessive spotlight was cast by many on company gross margins. In the present moment, that attention has only grown for both public…

What is the business model for DuckDuckGo? (2017) | Hacker News

How Cameo Turned D-List Celebs Into a Monetization Machine

Inside the surreal and lucrative two-sided marketplace of mediocre famous people

When Distribution Trumps Product

If you polled a cross-section of companies about their most important software, accounts payable and accounts receivable software would likely not rank high on their lists. It’s the kind of unglamorous, workhorse software that’s necessary, but often taken for granted. Then, late…

How interchangeable parts revolutionised the way things are made

One man's desire to create the perfect gun profoundly changed manufacturing.

8 Things to Consider When Building Managed Marketplace Companies - Andreess

There might be no more beloved image of the American entrepreneurial spirit than that of neighborhood kids who open a sidewalk lemonade stand on a hot summer day. With a little bit of “capital” from their parents — lemons, water, sugar, a card table, some markers and paper —…

The Story of a Great Monopoly - The Atlantic

”These incidents in railroad history show most of the points where we fail ... to maintain the equities of ‘government’—and employment—‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’”

HBO’s Corpus of Content and Apple’s Lack Thereof

Apple TV+ is cheap and barren. HBO Max is expensive and cheapening their brand. Everyone is confused.

Japanese manufacturers use decades of experience to dominate key chemical m

Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., JSR Corp. and Shin-Etsu Chemical Co.: Three seemingly inconspicuous companies suddenly came into the spotlight in early July when Japan announced it would slap tightened export controls to South Korea on three key chemicals — photoresists, fluorinated…

The Rickety Economics of Food Trucks

Whenever food trucks materialize to serve often-indulgent food out of a little kitchen with a big engine, more than a few of us wonder: How...

Netflix and the Economics of Bundling

How does Netflix get away with releasing its movies in theaters on the same day it makes them available for “free” on its streaming platform? The answer is that Netflix is pursuing a fundamentally different business model from everyone else in the industry. Netflix is not in the…

Disruptive Interfaces & The Emerging Battle To Be The Default

A new battle is brewing to be the default of every choice we make. As modern interfaces like voice remove options, augmented reality…

Product innovation is not enough to beat a competitor’s network effects

Bird recently announced a new form factor for micromobility, the Bird Cruiser. It’s a cross between an electric scooter, a bicycle and a…

A Framework for Moderation

The question of what should be moderated, and when, is an increasingly frequent one in tech. There is no bright line, but there are ways to get closer to an answer.

Amazon is a boring retailer — Benedict Evans

Amazon is so new, and so dramatic in its speed and scale and aggression, that we can easily forget how many of the things it’s doing are actually very old.

Hidden Networks: Network Effects That Don’t Look Like Network Effects – And

Many of the most consequential projects of the internet era — from Wikipedia to Facebook and bitcoin — have all been predicated on network effects, where the network becomes more valuable to users as more people use it. As a result, we’ve become really good at analyzing and…

Bullet Time

An inquiry into how young people are hanging out on the internet.

10 Quirky Families That Still Rule the World

You’d never confuse them for the Rockefellers. But you also wouldn’t have curling without ’em.

The economics of copying

Art has always had a strange relationship with copying.

Ahead of Its Time, Behind the Curve: Why Evernote Failed to Realize Its Pot

Evernote has been plagued by a series of managerial missteps and failed product launches. The company’s future is far from certain.

The Truth About the Scooter Economy — An Insider’s Perspective

There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has…

$9 Marketing Stack: A Step-by-Step Guide

Update 2016-10-18: This tutorial has been updated to reflect the latest version of my stack (now with Drip!). I’ve also updated pricing info (it’s technically a $0 stack now) and screenshots. The original outdated article is archived here. “Just tell me what to do so I can stop

Come for the tool, stay for the network

Chris Dixon's blog.

The Dynamics of Network Effects

The most successful companies and products of the internet era have all been predicated on the concept of network effects, where the network becomes more valuable to users as more people use it. This is as true of companies like Amazon and Google as it is for open source…

Shopify App Store: Ecommerce App Marketplace

Shopify App Store: customize your online store and grow your business with Shopify-approved apps for marketing, store design, fulfillment, and more.

‘It’s their moat’: How Shopify built an $800 million partner ecosystem

Shopify is partnering with a network of more than 20,000 app developers and agency partners to build profitable businesses.

Do platforms work?

The distributed network has gobbled the hierarchical firm. Only by seizing the platform can workers avoid digital serfdom

The Moat Map

The Moat Map describes the correlation between the degree of supplier differentiation and the externalization (or internalization) of a company’s network effect.

The pains of growing a platform - Inside Intercom

Hundreds of startups are pitching themselves as "platforms". While platforms make compelling businesses, they're nearly impossible to create from scratch.