Amazon’s Whale Strategy

A week before yesterday’s launch of the Fire Phone, Amazon sent all of the attendees a copy of the children’s book “Mr. Pines Purple House” with a note from Jeff Bezos stating: I think you’ll agree that the world is a better place when things are a little bit different. Beyond the book, the first […]

Daily Update: Amazon’s PR Runup, Box Acquires Streem, Priceline Acquires OpenTable

Good morning, Two acquisitions and anticipation for a big announcement – there’s always something interesting in tech! On to the update: Amazon’s Press Release Runup Amazon is doing something interesting in the runup to tomorrow’s announcement, which most expect to be a Kindle smartphone: they are effectively pre-announcing multiple features that will likely be sellingSubscribe […]

Daily Update: Payments – Affirm, Amazon, and Facebook Messenger?

Good morning, Quite a bit happened today across a wide range of industries, but today’s update is all about payments. Max Levchin to be CEO of Affirm A few weeks ago I wrote The Problem with Payments which argued innovation in payments is hard because there isn’t much margin available if you’re building on topSubscribe […]

Daily Update: Google Blocked in China, WeChat Ecommerce, LINE IPO?

Good afternoon, I finally posted the WWDC piece I mentioned yesterday: Growing Apple at WWDC. While the number of updates were pretty incredible, I think they mostly fit into a coherent growth strategy. Check it out. I apologize again that today’s update is a little later (tomorrow’s probably will be as well). I’m very muchSubscribe […]

Daily Update: JD.com Prices IPO, Google’s SEC Letter, Patent Reform Dies

Good morning, My Surface piece got pushed to today, so keep an eye out for that later. On to today’s update: JD.com Prices IPO While tons of attention has been paid to Alibaba’s forthcoming IPO, JD.com, China’s 2nd-largest e-commerce company, has flown under the radar. From the BBC: Chinese online retailer JD.com has raised $1.8bnSubscribe […]

Yahoo and Tumblr, Alibaba IPO incoming, #AmazonCart

Good morning, Thanks for being subscribers! No site news, just on to the updates: Apple Retails and the Innovator’s Dilemma As Angela Ahrendts takes over Apple Retail, I explore why Apple Stores matter from a theoretical perspective. Link Yahoo and Tumblr It’s been a year since Yahoo acquired Tumblr, and the New York Times hasSubscribe […]

Daily Update: Net Neutrality, Google+, Amazon Earnings Follow-up

Good morning, A few site updates: For access members, I invited everyone who had updated their profile to confirm that they wanted Glassboard access to the private Glassboard. If you haven’t gotten an invitation, please double-check your profile; I’ll do another import later today. I’ve manually gone through the member lists to make sure everyoneSubscribe […]

Messaging: Mobile’s Killer App

Messaging is a completely new kind of social networking that is uniquely enabled by mobile.