Bloomberg is an example of the classic Web 2.0 business maxim “come for the tool, stay for the network.” But the inverse trajectory, from which this essay takes its name, is now equally viable: “come for the network, pay for the tool.” Just as built-in social networks are a moat for information products, customized tooling is a moat for social netw... See more

A final option is financial engineering: turn a hardware purchase into a subscription by either leasing the product to the end user or financing their purchase for them.

There’s certainly an argument that the more physical the network is, the more difficult it will be to reach escape velocity. The flipside is that those who do reach escape velocity will have much stronger moats compared to their virtual network counterparts. A common narrative is that software has zero marginal cost, but rarely do we talk about how... See more