Competitive advantages can be build on the demand and the supply side. And advantages on the demand (i.e., revenue) side are usually about customer capture in some form. One general category for this is when a company captures a “share of the consumer mind.” In this talk, I go into how some companies do this […]
This week’s podcast is about online-merge-offline (OMO) platforms. A business model that is just emerging in China. I talk about Sun Art Retail and Beike / Lianjia as examples. You can listen to this podcast here or at iTunes, Google Podcasts and Himalaya. Here is the BCG article I mentioned. —– Related podcasts and articles are: Lianjia and […]
This week’s podcast is about the current political risks around Alibaba. But also about the very important concept of Worst Case Scenario. You can listen to this podcast here or at iTunes, Google Podcasts and Himalaya. Here is the Harvard Business Review case about Viva Macau. Here is the book I mentioned, Dead Companies Walking by Scott Fearon. Here are my 9 Questions. […]
This week’s podcast is about how to think tactics that generate short-term growth and results. And we see these coming out of China all the time. In particular, I talk about how Pop Mart used blind boxes. How Joy Spreader and Ruhnn Holding used influencer marketing. And how everyone is using community group buying. You […]
In Part 1 and Part 2, I laid out Baidu’s core search engine and some of the complexities that have evolved in search over time. I have three strategy questions for Baidu going forward: How competitive will a stand-alone search engine be against China’s larger digital giants over time? Can Baidu create a second large […]
This week’s podcast is about Baidu and its key strategic questions: Can it thrive as a stand-alone search engine? Against competitors such as Tencent and ByteDance. What is its best growth opportunity? I think cloud. Did it need to go into content? How far? Can it compete in the attention market? Search plus feed. You […]
In Part 1, I laid out some basic theory for Baidu and search engines. I think it was a pretty solid picture for Baidu circa 2010. But strange things have been happening since then. Baidu has moved into entertainment, services (for a while), content creation and self-driving cars. I’m not sure if these were […]
I like search engines. But they are very strange animals. They remind me of giraffes and ant eaters. Unique animals that you can’t really compare to anything else. But their competitive strength is really impressive. For example: Google Search is dominant globally, with +85% of the market. Bing and Yahoo are 2nd and 3rd globally, […]
This week’s podcast is about my investment checklist. Which is really just 9 questions. Shown below. You can listen to this podcast here or at iTunes, Google Podcasts and Himalaya. My competitive strength and defensibility pyramid: My handwritten checklists for various companies. Charlie Munger’s Speech on the Psychology of Human Misjudgment. Located here. […]
This week’s podcast is Fiverr and their classic approach to building a marketplace platform (for freelance services). I don’t go into it too much but I thought it was a good example of a common playbook for venture capital-backed early stage companies. You can listen to this podcast here or at iTunes, Google Podcasts and Himalaya. Andreesen Horowitz […]
