“The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation.” — Alex Rampell, a16z The only question, will you win that race? And for Fortune 500 companies with everything on the line, that’s a costly question indeed. Yet so often, incumbents fail to innovate and fall hard. Worse...
In the eyes of experts, when it comes to blockchain, there is often no middle ground — it will either be boom or bust, nothing in between. I for one have become a big proponent of blockchain technology, especially the crypto-economics used to jumpstart powerful network effects. But with so many opinions and noise floating...
We are entering an era of unparalleled tech dominance. Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple control more and more of our everyday lives, owning our data and everything around it. The inherent network effects and flywheels these companies built are unprecedented both in their scope and ability to stave off competition. This is the 3rd...
The internet has changed. The world of the walled garden is here. This creates interesting dynamics, problems and opportunities for startups. It is exciting, and terrifying. Let me explain. My background is ecommerce and Amazon. In 2015 I invested ~$8k in product and managed to scale my “startup” to a 7 figure exit at the...
Society is built upon a story. The glue that holds humanity together is fiction, a creatively invented story for “the greater good.” Look at money. Why trade our lives for paper? Wars are waged over this meaningless money. And money my friends is the one bubble that’s never popped. Money’s also the source of power...
With great power comes great profit, and then even the innovative get fat and lazy. This was the paradigm pre 2000s. Rome rose and fell. Microsoft’s monopoly was cracked. Kodak created the digital camera and kept it from customers. The bigger they are, the harder they fall and the harder they fight. But historically failure...