Lillian Sheng

• Vertical SaaS can support longer payback periods than generalist SaaS. Historically, Toast had a 18-month payback period which is extremely long for a company selling to small businesses (I would have expected something between 6 to 12 months). It works because Toast has a verticalised and all-in-one platform. As a result, it becomes the last soft

... See more

Borrowing social capital is easier than creating it. MasterClass took people who were already famous and gave their fans even more access to them (without much burden on the celebrities). It’s tricky to create a world-class talent. The MasterClass model skipped the line of building a large audience and lots of credibility and instead, they purchase... See more

With TikTok, the fact that it’s a new network is actually a feature, not a bug. There is an inherent conflict in the goals of creators for the different formats, and this tension is I think keeping a lot of people from posting to Reels.

Pullman Palace Car Company was famed for its sleeper and luxury rail cars that it manufactured. One of these manufacturing locations was in Pullman, Illinois. George M. Pullman founded the town of Pullman as a place where his workers could live.

Since there’s no guaranteed distribution for content through friend graphs in recommendation media, creators are incentivized to seek engagement elsewhere when they’re not getting it from the platform where they created content.

On the other hand, this type of environment also means that some people will make a lot of money by buying early and selling before the whole thing collapses. In China, the biggest winner from the real estate frenzy was the local government, the original owner of the land. Online, the same outcome is quite likely: The companies selling these plots ... See more

Oatly’s response to Jeff was a perfect example of this. It was well-crafted messaging that weakly represents the arguments against them without actually discrediting them. “Sugar is found in lots of foods, including cow’s milk.”