that competitor you thought you didn't need to worry about due to your unimpeachable network-effect-derived moat
yes they are digital businesses--in an increasingly digital world--but this serves as a reminder: most payments are hyper-hyper-local.
you exchange resources daily with the people that you see daily.
Interesting (to me):
Compared to other canonical network effect failures, Venmo isn't obviously mis-executing to allow @CashApp to chase it down.
MySpace caught Friendster due to Friendster's infrastructure failures.
Then MySpace sold and overmonetized opening the door to FB.
There is no doubt that @CashApp has a faster innovation pace, sharper marketing, better swag, but it hasn't really needed to rely upon its most obvious strategic advantage (synergies with the merchant PoS business) in order to catch up.
A testament to what a team can achieve with properly honed focus and ambition.
(Side-note, per @mfriedrichARK's excellent work, Venmo has historically seasonally enjoyed back-to-school as on-campus has been an area of historic strength, so the loss of a lot of return-to-campus activity probably disproportionately weakened their competitive position.)
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The apparent secret sauce:
They watched the livestream of Tesla’s battery day;
They also took notes;
Then those notes were exclusively leaked to Reuters.
So they could hire, hoping to begin production by
[checks notes]
2025.
fwiw
In 2011 I placed a number of 10 to 1 bets with friends that Apple would have an iCar in-market before April of ’21.
Going to lose.
But it always seemed like the right play for them, and I’m convinced that if Jobs hadn’t passed they would have made that bet (and made mine)
At the time (2011) people were arguing that Apple would vertically integrate through TV manufacture (which I always thought was inane).
There was (and still is!) so much transformation-potential in automotive, but they waited too long; Tesla is tearing through their green space.
Balance sheet management probably evolves into immediate conversion of all foreign-denominated profits into Bitcoin
Thinking about companies that accrue huge cash balances off-shore and keep them inaccessible to avoid punitive US tax
(And all attendant inefficiencies and costs)
You liability match against all local costs and then shift everything else into the currency without a country.
Eliminates all kinds of exotic hedging, bond market operations and legal shells that are otherwise required to balance sheet optimize against a global footprint
(This new world is not great for the investment banks or a whole coven of associated legal purveyors of structuring and advice, so expect this transition to be accompanied by all manner of carping cacophony)