In Part 2, I laid out the story of Stone Company, a Brazilian digital native that is building out payment, financial and enterprise services for SMEs. My basic take was: I like the company’s basic value proposition (payment plus working capital services) for smaller merchants, especially compared to what they get from local banks. I […]
Stone Co is a Brazilian company that is attempting to build a payment and financial services suite for merchants in +5,000 cities. And they are targeting the country’s +8M small merchants, many of whom still operate in cash and do not get great services from traditional banks. That is a big, interesting and difficult idea. […]
Stone Company in Brazil is a really interesting contrast to Ant Financial in China. And to Square in the USA. All three companies are somewhat trying to do the same thing: To build out an alternative payment platform for SMEs. And then to add additional platforms and services on top of that. It’s a big […]
In Part 1, I made a distinction between the development of cloud and enterprise software. There is a sweeping new cloud architecture emerging at the same time almost every B2B enterprise software and service company is trying to become a platform or ecosystem. It’s pretty crazy. For enterprise software and services companies, the price of entry […]
A subscriber suggested I look at Russian ecommerce company Ozon Holdings (OZON). It’s outside of Asia Tech Strategy, but I thought it was an interesting company. And it raises an important question about why some countries develop so much faster than others in ecommerce. And that is really the key question for Ozon going forward. […]
In Part 1 and Part 2, I laid out a framework for Snowflake’s “data ecosystem” business model. I described it as +3 complementary platform business models with +4 network effects. And I think that explains most of what the company is doing right now. However, I also recently listened to an interview with CEO Frank […]
In Part 1, I laid out the basics for Snowflake, a “data ecosystem” or “data warehouse as a service” company. The company appears to have a complicated business model. But it’s actually not if you look at it the right way. Which is the point of this article. I have 7 initial conclusions about the […]
In late 2020, it was revealed that Berkshire Hathaway had an investment in newly public Snowflake, the “data warehouse as a service” company. That was unusual for a couple of reasons. First, Buffett has always avoided new issues. Like in 50 years, he hasn’t bought a new stock issue. Second, Snowflake is a tech company […]
I’ve covered three topics that relate to digital valuation: DCF Discount rates Growth, ROIC / RONIC and value However, I have made one big assumption in all of these. That is the primary goal of the business (and focus of valuation) is profitable growth (i.e., growth that creates economic value). So much of the investment […]
This is my third article on digital valuation. In Part 1, I talked about DCF – and where it works and where it doesn’t. In Part 2, I talked about the discount rate, which is a particularly inaccurate factor. And that brings me to Part 3, which is about growth – and when it creates […]