Differentiation and Value Capture in the Internet Age

Over time, though, the Model T was very much a victim of its own success: by massively expanding the market for cars and triggering the development of car-friendly infrastructure, Ford created openings for other car manufacturers that previously didn’t exist. A company like General Motors didn’t need to compete with Ford by building a Model T clone... See more

That’s why I loved her decision to pull out of Spotify. Taylor Swift is not some sort of Luddite futilely standing against the forces of modernity; rather, she is a highly differentiated content creator capturing the immense value she is creating instead of ceding it to an aggregator that treats every piece of content the same.

It’s hard to have a conversation with anyone in tech without the word “scale” entering the conversation; “Internet scale” is a particularly popular variation of the term. Scale is a concept that is at the root of most venture investing: because software has zero marginal cost – one copy costs just as much as 100, or one million – there are massive ... See more

It’s easy to think that the Internet Age is well-established, but the truth is we’re only getting started. Remember, it took nearly two decades for the Model T to develop the car ecosystem to the point where new opportunities emerged to offer differentiated vehicles at much higher prices and much greater per-unit profit (Mercedes-Benz, for example,... See more