Owning Customer Relationship
Companies that win in the Internet era do so by owning the customer relationship, which gives them power over suppliers.
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Amazon Health doesn’t seem like much now, but there are hints it could be the ultimate application of Aggregation Theory.
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Disney’s rumored acquisition of 21st Century Fox is all about competing with Netflix; whether or not that is a good thing depends on your frame of reference.
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The Internet has removed scarcity, meaning business models based on controlling distribution are no longer viable. Instead, the key to success is controlling access to the best customers — and that means being the best.
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An Interview With Babylist Founder and CEO Natalie Gordon
An interview with Babylist founder and CEO Natalie Gordon about Babylist’s founding, her growing ambition, and why the company is a shining example of Aggregation Theory in action.
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Cable’s Last Laugh
Cable companies survived the great unbundling thanks to selling Internet service; they may be best place to make the bundle of the future.
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Amazon Earnings, Amazon’s Costs, Amazon Closes Stores
Amazon messed up its capacity planning and the result was a big loss; CEO Andy Jassy seems focused on scalability above everything else.
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Beyond Aggregation: Amazon as a Service
Amazon’s new Buy With Prime announced the arrival of Amazon Logistics as a Service, and is a big red flag for Shopify.
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More on Substack, Faceless Publishers and ATT, Apple’s ATT Deliberations
More on Substack, and how they have done right by publishers, and why their approach may be essential in a post-ATT world.
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Substack Launches App, Substack and the Four Bens, In-App Purchase and the Substack Bundle
Substack launched an app, which isn’t a surprise given their VC model, but which portends change all the same.
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Spotify and Joe Rogan, Culture and Principles, Music Versus Podcasts and the Long Run
Lessons from Spotify’s recent controversy, both for other tech executives, and also for the Spotify’s long run profitability.
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Gaming the Smiling Curve
The spate of recent acquisitions in the gaming space — Take-Two and Zynga, Microsoft and Activision, and Sony and Bungie — make sense in the context of the Smiling Curve.
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OpenSea, Web3, and Aggregation Theory
OpenSea is positioned as another Aggregator, which is evidence that Web 3 is a layer on top of the Internet, not a replacement.