“How will they make money?” is the wrong question

First, does the product have a network? Does it connect people with each other, whether for commerce, collaboration, communication, or something else at the core of the experience? And second, does the ability to attract new users, or to become stickier, or to monetize, become even stronger as its network grows larger? Does

Yes, of course you eventually want to figure profitability out. But for networked products, in the earliest stages, sometimes it makes sense to spend—often wildly—to pay up for growth. The goal is to get the market to hit the Tipping Point, driving toward strong positive network effects, and then pull back the subsidies. The result, if executed pro

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This is where most positioning frameworks would have given Substack the wrong advice. They would say that Substack absolutely needed to stick to the thing that makes them most unique and was the most core to their identity. Surely it is better to be a one-of-a-kind “paid publishing platform” rather than yet-another newsletter platform! Isn’t it imp... See more

In 2010, many thought making something “social” meant adding comments or likes, or if they were building a social graph meant adding a “follow” button. These were just the building blocks of social networks, they were the result – not the cause of what made social networks fun to be on. The reality was that each decision made in designing a social ... See more