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Concepts

Distribution and Transaction Costs

The key economic change introduced by the Internet is the effective elimination of marginal distribution and transaction costs.

  • Dithering and Open Versus Free

    Announcing the new Dithering podcast, and why it is important to fight for the open ecosystem that Spotify is trying to aggregate.

  • Facebook Invests in Jio Platforms, The Building of Jio, Understanding the Deal

    Jio showed how the best way to serve the poor is to create a market for them, not simply give them charity like Facebook tried to do with Free Basics. That is why it makes sense for them to work together.

  • How Tech Can Build

    Marc Andreessen has written (another) seminal essay: It’s Time to Build. What does that mean for tech and venture capital?

  • Coronavirus Clarity

    The coronavirus crisis is making clear just how powerful tech companies are; hopefully this leads to a much more productive conversation about how that power should be utilized or regulated.

  • Morgan Stanley Acquires E*Trade, Intuit Reportedly Acquiring Credit Karma, User Acquisition and Market Power

    Morgan Stanley acquired E*Trade, and Intuit is reportedly acquiring Credit Karma; both are about improving customer acquisition, but the competitive impacts differ.

  • Lime Leaves 12 Cities; Scarcity Amongst Abundance; An Update on Apple, Trump, and Encryption

    Scooter companies appear to be struggling, which is not a surprise; still, it is an excuse to re-visit assumptions around ride-sharing in comparison, and an generalizable principle about Aggregation Theory. Plus, an update on Apple versus the FBI.

  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin Step Down, Why Now?, Google Going Forward

    Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s impact on Silicon Valley is incomparable; now, though, they are formalizing a departure that arguably happened years ago. Why now, and what should Alphabet and Google do next?

  • The Google Squeeze

    Google, the real Aggregator, is squeezing OTAs, which acted like Aggregators while depending on Google for demand. It’s easy to say Google is being unfair, but this may be better for consumers.

  • The Internet and the Third Estate

    Mark Zuckerberg suggested that social media is a “Fifth Estate”; in fact, social media is a means by which the Third Estate — commoners — can seize political power. Here history matters.

  • Neither, and New: Lessons from Uber and Vision Fund

    Uber represents something new: a company that is different than incumbents because of technology, yet not itself a tech company — just like the Venture Fund is not a VC.