Tren Griffin Profile picture
Dec 30, 2021 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
1/ In 1994 I said to Bill Gates that while network effects can be beneficial, the phenomenon can easily disappear because the factors that sustain them are brittle. We were talking about AT&T losing network effects.

Bill responded to me by saying "That's why I worry so much."
2/ At the time (1994) our friend Craig was selling McCaw Cellular to AT&T, which was buying mobile assets since it believed it could save the long distance business. AT&T (the long distance co. now gone) not understanding network effects was ironic given who first described them.
3/ Each question is different

a. Do you have a moat? (The test is based on math)
b. What created the moat (eg, supply or demand side scale economies)?
c. What value does the moat protect? (Google a lot vs Twitter not so much)
D. How long will the moat last (CAP)?
4/ Google has at least two beneficial demand-side economies of scale — one for search and one for advertising targeting — that are mutually reinforcing. The Google platform is for something sellers value. The Twitter platform is not as valuable to sellers. a16z.com/2016/03/07/net…
5/ What else reduces the value of barriers to entry (moats)?

Porter: "Competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include other competitive forces [including] suppliers."

Wholesale transfer pricing can be a problem in any profit pool in any value chain.
6/ "A critical difference between single and multi-sided market is that the sides interact directly. A single-sided “market maker” buys x, puts x in inventory, and eventually sells x. Multi-sided markets look like this: 25iq.com/2016/10/22/a-d…
7/ A market that has two or more sides is vastly more financially attractive to create since it has the potential to scale and generate value in a non-linear manner. Network effect-based value can increase exponentially at the same time as costs grow linearly, if at all.

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More from @trengriffin

Jan 1
1/ A friend asked me to summarize Charlie Munger's framework with a few of his quotes from after my book was published. "Extra points for a short explanation."

Four categories form a checklist and create the pneumonic "RISE”:

Rationality
Inversion
Self-Regulation
Emulation Image
Rational:

"There's hardly anything more important than being rational or objective. Think of the people who are just utterly brilliant who do some of the dumbest things. You won't have any trouble thinking of examples. It's hard to be rational." Image
Inversion

"The way complex adaptive systems work, and the way mental constructs work, problems frequently become easier to solve through inversion. If you turn problems around into reverse, you often think better."

Be smart by not being stupid Image
Read 5 tweets
Feb 25, 2023
John Malone: "At the moment, there’s a lot of blood flowing down the gutters, of people who are streaming, and some can afford it and some cannot.” hollywoodreporter.com/business/busin…
"With WBD backing out of their RSNs, when combined with the Bally Sports networks, 17 of the league's 30 clubs, or 2/3 of MLB’s total now are on the edge of financial collapse." forbes.com/sites/maurybro…
"The leagues are gonna have to be careful, they don't want to end up with a very high price premium service with no reach because then the kids will stop watching the sport." cnbc.com/amp/2022/11/17…
Read 4 tweets
Feb 25, 2023
Of the 300 poss I wrote on 25iQ the one about Steve Jobs was perhaps the trickiest to write. To make sure that everything I said was accurate I had every word checked by someone who was his direct report for 7 years. Steve Jobs would have been 68 this week.25iq.com/2014/12/28/a-d…
On the August day in 1981 Bill Gates hosted a summit meeting at the Seattle Tennis Club (pictured) on the shores of Lake Washington. Steve Jobs gave a mesmerizing performance. Macintosh would offer exponentially greater value than anything on the market. siliconvalley.com/2014/08/29/199…
One giant advantage of being born in 1955 was the the magic of the microprocessor arrived while you were in high school. This changed the world at just the right time for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. That birth year meant you missed the Vietnam draft and were too old for disco. 🕺
Read 4 tweets
Feb 19, 2023
"Operating loss of $392 million."

"Adjusted Operating Income increased 34% to $137 million"

It's all about the adjustments.

amcnetworks.com/press-releases…
"I’ve never made an investment in the movie business in any way, shape, manner or form. It may be a very good place to make a living as an actor or a writer or something or a musician. But it’s a hard place to make money if you’re an investor."

Charlie Munger this past week.
Warren Buffett: "The nice thing about the mouse is that he doesn't have an agent. You know I mean the mouse is yours and he is not in there renegotiating and you know every every week or every month. [Disney] understands all of that very well."
Read 4 tweets
Jan 7, 2023
1/ What is Roku's customer acquisition cost (CAC)? What is churn? How about ARPU? Gross Margin? Do you understand Roku's unit economics? Can you calculate per customers CLV/CBCV? variety.com/2023/digital/n…
2/ "The YOY compression in platform and player margins resulted in gross profit growth of negative 2% YOY versus the 12% YOY growth in total net revenue. Q3 adjusted EBITDA was negative $34 million and we ended the quarter with >$2 billion of cash." fool.com/earnings/call-…
3/ Is nine months right?

"So churn is job one for 2023. You have to get your churn down because the customer acquisition costs means you have to have a subscriber for like nine months before you get a payback just on your customer acquisition cost. ca.finance.yahoo.com/video/streamin…
Read 10 tweets
Jan 6, 2023
OCT. 10, 1989

This estimate for Excel was across all platforms. Not just OS/2.
upi.com/Archives/1989/…
Steve Ballmer

"IBM was the bear and we were going to ride the back of the bear. You just had to try to stay on the bear's back and the bear would twist and turn and try to buck you and throw you, but darn, we were going to ride the bear."

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1098019…
pbs.org/nerds/part2.ht…

“IBM is proposing to take over the definition of PC desktop operating systems. Thru have a plan to design the operating system so that their hardware Micro Channel architecture and applications are tied in.” Bill Gates PC Week, June 24, 1991
Read 4 tweets

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