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Brett Bivens Profile picture
Brett Bivens
@brettbivens
Research @primamateria_
Jul 13, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Half-baked thinking out loud thread on "Apple's Organ Monopoly" and why we're at the Fitbit in 2010 stage of understanding device usage...and thus understanding mental fitness (and capturing value in that market) more generally.

↓ Our phones already essentially function as human organs.

The shrinking "half life of technology intimacy" means this will accelerate...

Jul 7, 2020 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Love reading “The Rise of Company X” analyses.

A few favorites:

Softbank — 7globalcapital.com/insights/softb…

Discord — mule.substack.com/p/dark-horse-d…

Figma — kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why…

Supercell — deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2020/4/23…

Pinduoduo — blog.ycombinator.com/pinduoduo-and-…

ByteDance — turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-… Continued...

Nintendo — masterthemeta.substack.com/p/why-nintendo…

Under Armour — 2pml.com/2020/02/14/und…

Stripe — cbinsights.com/research/repor…

Epic Games — matthewball.vc/all/epicprimer1

Amazon — zackkanter.com/2019/03/13/wha…

McKinsey — europeanstraits.substack.com/p/11-notes-on-…

Visa — minesafetydisclosures.com/blog/2019/5/29…

Bloomberg —
May 11, 2020 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
This analysis begs the question - how can a company earn the loyalty & scale to hit "escape velocity" from the Google & Facebook vice grip?

I think there's roughly a three part solution:

1/ Reassurance Multiple
2/ Responsive “Tooling”
3/ Business Model Leverage

Quick thread ↓ 1/ Lululemon is a company reaching "escape velocity" from Google and Facebook.

This starts with its high “Reassurance Multiple”, which we can sum up w/ this Rory Sutherland quote:

“Perhaps what people are seeking (in seeing the doctor) is not treatment but reassurance."
Apr 26, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The Metaverse concept extends well beyond the gaming context it is most associated with.

Take consumer health — the future is persistent (passive monitoring), synchronous (expert/peer access), emergent, interoperable (public/private, data, etc.) w/ a functional digital economy. A proto-Metaverse consumer health example:

Taking a live Peloton ride & talking w/ fellow riders on Discord (via AirPods) while monitoring Whoop to ensure you hit optimal “Strain Score” (calculated based on “Recovery”).

Seems a lot but is actually quite straightforward today.
Feb 20, 2020 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
A good business equation meets three criteria:

1/ Isolates controllable high-leverage inputs
2/ Ties deeply to value delivery
3/ Maps directly to accumulating advantage

I wrote about building business equations w/ ex. from Amazon, Peloton, & PayPal.

venturedesktop.substack.com/p/the-business… As @rabois is fond of saying, every business can be distilled into a simple equation.

Execs that hold the broader equation & relationships between each of the variables (& their sub-variables) in their head create differentiated value.

venturedesktop.substack.com/p/the-business… Image
Jan 13, 2020 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
1/ Lizhi (IPO this week) provides a great look at the future of Interactive Audio.

You might think of it as "Anchor.fm of China" because both are UGC audio platforms but Lizhi is much larger with a deeper set of product features & revenue streams.

Quick thread 👇 2/ Lizhi is the largest UGC audio community in China, owning 70% of the Interactive Audio Entertainment market — a subset of the broader audio market that incorporates interactive social, gaming, & live streaming. Well beyond how many think of podcasting or audio books today.
Nov 24, 2019 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
As audio categories continue to blend — podcasts, books, education, wellness, religion — Spotify is upstream (data-wise) of a lot of compelling consumer subscription expansion opportunities it can capture via M&A, new product, & platform to close audio’s engagement/revenue gap. These additional subscription paths mean, in part, that as their streaming business caps out market size-wise, Spotify is well positioned to grow revenue off of its existing customer base and become the first “negative churn” consumer subscription company.
Aug 27, 2019 • 11 tweets • 7 min read
Helpful report on the consumer subscription market although I disagree w/ this chart.

The consumer subscription winners over the next decade will have metrics that look a lot like good enterprise SaaS, specifically around net retention.

cc: @joshelman

gpbullhound.com/research/gp-bu… 2/ One of the first business axioms I remember learning is that it is cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. In an era defined by unlimited consumer choice and dynamic consumer preference, this statement rings truer than ever.
Dec 17, 2018 • 28 tweets • 8 min read
1/ Been thinking about what could be referred to as "3rd Wave VC"... 2/ With the continued evolution of the early stage market, what is the most effective way to categorize all of the different types of investors and what does that mean for founders raising from them, LPs backing them, and other investors competing (or collaborating) with them?