The Theory

Established companies have to become uncool over time. What is uncool? Becoming publicly traded and having to answer questions on quarterly conference calls regarding your earnings. Uncool is focusing strictly […] Read More

The current way in which companies acquire and retain customers is broken. Most turn to advertising on Google or Facebook. Even if these companies start out in a niche market, […] Read More

Contrarian Questions In Zero to One, Peter Thiel writes, “My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by […] Read More

Masterclass companies defy all conventional rules. We currently see that with Amazon. Amazon, after becoming the enemy of all brick and mortar, announced that it will open hundreds of brick […] Read More

The rapid rise of startups was brought on because we all dropped the notion that a company has to do “everything”. By segmenting the markets, and biting off the piece […] Read More

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) Via New York City had an exciting ridesharing entrant in 2015. Via branded itself as on-demand transit on a mass scale. The idea was simple: […] Read More

Juggernaut Instagram A story came out recently about Instagram cutting off its feed to Flipboard. But this is nothing new. Instagram shut down its access to the developers of Being, […] Read More

Recently Google announced that it’s throwing its hat into the “Voice Activated Home Hub” category with the Google Home. All the large tech companies: Google (Market Cap ~$500B), Amazon (Market […] Read More

Mercury in Fish Mercury is present in only very small concentrations in seawater. However, they are absorbed, usually as methyl mercury, by algae at the start of the food chain. This algae […] Read More

I once heard a very interesting quote from Tony Robbins, “Give a monkey a banana, and he’s happy. Give that money two bananas, and take away one, he’s furious.” That […] Read More

Warren Buffett In 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis, Warren Buffett published an Op Ed piece in the New York Times. Warren wanted the world to know that […] Read More

BMW i8 Used Cars Owning a used car has always had so much stigma surrounding it. You never can really know if the car has: Been in a flood Been in an accident […] Read More

What is Shazam? Shazam was originally a mobile app which uses a few seconds of a sound to identify which song is being played. It created an acoustic fingerprint based on […] Read More

Tinder, the origin dating app for millenials, which ushered in the UX of “swipe left for no and right for yes,” recently took on an opponent — one of their own. Bumble, […] Read More

If you choose to build a company, do it in around something you love. According to Crunchbase data, the average time from founding to liquidity is around 7.5 years. The […] Read More

The ease of creating something is not correlated to ease of that product getting traction. We have identified the sweet spots that a company needs to hit in order for […] Read More

Pricing subsidies must 1) seem temporary and 2) be credits. The need for a subsidy to be temporary is so that it would not cheapen the brand. Many multinational companies […] Read More

There has been a lot of thought about the phenomenon of the “paradox of choice” or how more is not actually better. As the the 2006 HBR article cited, “In 2000, […] Read More

With disruptiveness we are trying to find out how this new technology/approach is different from the incumbent way of doing things. We will be using the word “disruptive” loosely as […] Read More

Frequency of use is based on current behavioral patterns of customers. For example, people tend to eat three times a day, so if you have a company in the food […] Read More

Groupon Their market is the total ecommerce market on the internet. Because of how simple it is to comparison shop on the internet, people are always looking for the best […] Read More

Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator, describes the “TAM” as the following, “Founders think of startups as ideas, but investors think of them as markets. If there are x number of […] Read More

Square This is another company that has a great reason for you to input your credit card and checking account into their system. Since they do have your credit cards, […] Read More

This concept is the approximate value a company can get once it activates its revenue model. This metric requires a bit of forward thinking. It is not the immediate monetizable […] Read More

Groupon Groupon was launched while the US was in a recession. Businesses were not doing well because banks were not lending. In addition, from 2007 to 2009, unemployment doubled to 10%, […] Read More

There have been a lot of concepts that have been tried before and have failed. Either it was because the technology was not there, or it was too expense to […] Read More

One of Peter Thiel’s big ideas is what he calls “monopoly theory”: the idea that you want to start a business in an area where you can avoid competition. Thiel […] Read More

Although closely related to Barriers to Entry, a moat is the economic advantage that an existing company has over a new entrant. This also included switching costs. Here is an […] Read More

Great Barrier Reef This term is borrowed from Michael Porter’s “Porter’s Five Forces” which is a framework to analyze levels of competition within an industry and business strategy development. For the […] Read More

Groupon Groupon originally targeted the gender that is responsible for 75%+ of purchases, women. Because of the illusion of the low barrier to entry, Groupon did not want to signal […] Read More

Uber Uber came out of a need because the founders, residents of San Francisco, realized how terrible the taxi system was in their hometown. When Uber launches a new city […] Read More

As the angel investor Chris Dixon wrote in his 2010 blog post, “the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a toy.”   This goes hand in hand with […] Read More

A few notes on acquisition tools. There are ways in which a company can add value to the user from day one, and build a massive business around the data […] Read More

The first strategy will be to correctly identify what kind of business the company is currently in and how the business model can evolve over time. This will address the kind […] Read More

The payments space is one of the most competitive industries to be in. Credit cards earn a fee equal to a percentage of the transaction value each time a customer […] Read More

In an effort to conserve the nature and wildlife of the MidWest, billionaire Ted Turner made several large land purchases. It was rumored that he could ride a horse from […] Read More

When starting a social product, which intrinsically depends on more than one connection, a young company will hit a “cold start” problem. Why would anyone come to a dating site […] Read More

Staircase from Inception The niche market paradox states that a market cannot be too small that it would not be able to generate enough revenues for a company. However, if […] Read More

Go and AI Early March 2016, one of South Korea’s treasures was dethroned. His name was Lee Sodel and he is one of the best Go players in the world. Go is […] Read More

Castle with a Moat Juice Bars The cold-pressed juice market is estimated at $100 million a year. It is fast and convenient — although the juice client would never venture into a fast-food […] Read More

Companies can become victims of their own success. Either they grow too fast and investors don’t buy into their vision 100% to give them additional funds. Or, two companies emerge […] Read More

The Palm Restaurant, Ilala Lodge Hotel, Victoria Falls Gigwalk Back in 2011, I came across an app called Gigwalk. The premise was simple, you were given a task to do with […] Read More

Multiplicity (1996) A small Belarus company with a Growth Hack One of the most talented, yet overlooked actors in Hollywood today is Leonardo DiCaprio. The ongoing joke is that even though […] Read More

Generation 1 Historically, when you wanted to go on on a vacation, you would call up a travel agent and tell them you want to go somewhere warm. They would […] Read More

link Companies A while ago the Economist featured this graphic to demonstrate the true value of Yahoo’s core business after stripping away all of it’s holdings. Holdings included Alibaba, Yahoo […] Read More

We hear stories about people “thinking outside the box” when structuring a deal. When negotiating using one medium (i.e. Money) it feels very zero-sum — when I get more, you get less. […] Read More

It seems like sample subscription boxes are the hottest new thing. Birchbox, which is arguably the most recognizable service and valued at a reported $485 million in April, 2014, led […] Read More

Two Types of Marketplaces There are two types of marketplaces that need to be considered. High Variation, Low Engagement The first is a high variation, low engagement marketplace. Examples of […] Read More

We’re all seen the movie where the brain eating succubus takes over the body of a human and turns them into an avatar. Then they all band together to perform […] Read More

We’re seeing a slowing adoption of an online presence of a lot of brick and mortar retailers. To the untrained eye, it might seem like a no brainer to have […] Read More