Rather than interpreting fintech's job as bringing Old World institutions online, 'embedded finance' modularizes financial functions
- Bill Gates said, "Banking is necessary, banks are not." Embedded finance frees the former from the latter @mariodgabrielethegeneralist.substack.com/p/the-disappea…
- This dispersion of finance may result in a different set of surplus managers
- affinity finance may come back; we may keep our money with those that keep our attention
- We are entering the era of the disappearing bank. It may fundamentally alter how society manages its surplus
Sep 25, 2020 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
- bundling of services into broad subscriptions
- unbundling of services into niche subscriptions
- can be purely digital, physical and/or hybris
- different delivery marginal costs, acquisition & retention friction, operationally
by @nbtnbt.substack.com/p/consumer-sub…
- US: average $640 on digital subscriptions in 2019
- first 20 years of the Internet, from 1995-2015, was defined by advertising & marketplace business models
- the current era, perhaps beginning around 2015, is defined by the subscription business model nytimes.com/2020/01/29/tec…
Tencent has been dubbed "the Softbank of China' and "the Berkshire Hathaway of Tech"
- social networks monetized mainly via subscription (video & music) vs ads
by @packyMnotboring.substack.com/p/tencent-the-…
- owns 5% of Tesla, 12% of Snap, and 9% of Spotify + investments in more than 700 companies
- 103 of the 700 investments in this spreadsheet docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
Aug 17, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
the IKEA effect implies that we tend to value an item more when we have played a part in creating it
- a combination of multiple psychological & social factors > endowment effect & effort-justification effect
by @shv_prbhkrnmodels.substack.com/p/the-ikea-eff…
the idea of making things more laborious to get consumers to value them more is an established marketing tactic
- “infusing the task with labour” was a crucial ingredient
via @ConversationEDUtheconversation.com/the-ikea-effec…
Aug 13, 2020 • 15 tweets • 8 min read
Embedded finance; a non-financial services company creates financial services products for their users
- By delivering more value, this becomes a useful way to increase the lifetime value of each customer.
- history; open tab, private label cards @iankar_fintechtoday.substack.com/p/shopify-and-…
benefits of private label cards;
- Brands collected interchange revenue
- locked customers into their ecosystems,
- by developing their own financial products (like private network cards) > essentially eliminate payment processing fees for transactions made in their store.
Aug 2, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
question; does the 'software subscription' include product subscriptions like amazon prime, dtc product subscriptions in the spirit of selling recurring revenue?
interview by @Alex_Danco w/ what @harryhurst is doing with @pipe danco.substack.com/p/its-not-debt…
- Up until now, founders have only two things to sell as they raise capital to fund their business: they can sell equity, & take expensive dilution, or they can sell debt, & take on covenants and other handcuffs. Pipe creates a new asset class to sell: the software subscription
Jul 18, 2020 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
- GPT-3 is essentially a context-based generative AI
- autocomplete as a service
- PhDs as a service
- “bicycles for the mind.” > even in its current form, GPT-3 is “a racecar for the mind.”
by @zebulgardelian.substack.com/p/quick-though…
So it can do law, coding, poetry, and philosophy @edleonklinger
contrarians;
- break down wins into a series of actions & reactions
- master the rules so they can break them (not follow)
- which patterns (and when) do you violate/deviate, and why?
- more time on the mental models (the psychology) behind rule deviation nfx.com/post/how-contr…
- derives a set of independent views (not disagreements)
- insights about the world that everybody else thinks are wrong, but prove to be accurate
- “Well, when you master all the rules you get to violate them.”
Jul 10, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
0/ thread on good & interesting visualizations like 1x1s, 2x2s, triangles & circles with useful takeaways.
About 2x2s;
- a 2x2 matrix is tool to scaffold thinking and conversation about your users and problem space
- a decision support technique used during your synthesis process
- an elegant instrument to effectively communicate insights using eigen type axes loci
Jul 2, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
0/ growth in context of; user base, financial metrics, defensibility, costs
- thread on linear and compound growth thinking; funnels, virality, loops, network effects, compound interest, appropriate m&a, moats, etc
1/ Zoom's fatal flaw (virality) vs Slack
- virality vs nfx in networks
- virality in itself allows short term scalability, sacrifices defensibility
by @sameer_singh17 in @MRKRmarker.medium.com/zooms-achilles…
Jun 23, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
0/ A thread on fantasy m&a's, which eventually may or may not happen! they are a combination of (semi)insider (as a investor probably) or an 3rd party outside observer views with their filters, lens and logic applied
1/ zillow + airbnb
- Instead of vertical or horizontal integration, this merger would represent Duration Integration. One place for consumers to book homes at every time interval - from one night to forever
by @packyMnotboring.substack.com/p/zillbnb
Jun 21, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
0/ thread on funding model or profiles. my attempt to seek, learn, understand and appropriately apply. Can be useful for investors, founders, entrepreneurs, corporate employees with strong & good ideas, etc
1/ equity vs dept capital funding for founders / entrepreneurs
- understand generally which category your company fits within to tap into equity or debt
by @Bootstrapp_co bootstrapp.co/equity-vs-debt…
Jun 16, 2020 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
0/ Thread of threads on;
- marketplaces - enables transactions between two or more participants, of good or service
- networks - connects participants to enable interactions and information flow (like visa)
observations, perspectives & learnings to understand & use as applicable
With clear visualizations, @sameer_singh17 from breadcrumb.vc covers;
- fragmentation, concentation
- unique, agnostic identity
- scalability, defensibility
- saas, engagement, side-switching, liquidity
- local & cross-x nfx, network bridges
etc
0/ Thread on understanding platforms. Platform itself is defined in various ways and the term itself is loosely used leading to possible confusion or additional overhead of connecting the dots
- platform; when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it
- platform matrix; Majority of platforms are either both scalable and defensible, or neither.
by @sameer_singh17 link.medium.com/gz056gOjl7
networks that are reliant on a handful of participants on any side of their network (supply or demand) face the same roadblock > turn into just another distribution or acquisition channel for them with low margins
by @sameer_singh17 link.medium.com/gRL7rjKld7
Funding to valuation multiple varies between marketplaces that have hyperlocal, regional or cross-border / global network effects. Also indicates the stress in 'unit economics + latent demand
by @sameer_singh17 medium.com/breadcrumbs-gu…
Jun 8, 2020 • 22 tweets • 11 min read
0/ Collection of long form writing on bundling, unbundling & rebundling
1/ Why is YouTube not as unbundled and verticalized as much as craigslist or lately zoom? medium.com/time-for-eleve…
Jun 4, 2020 • 32 tweets • 12 min read
- predicting the future is easy, but timing it is hard
- being too early means confusing the adjacent and remote possible
- when a door is just been opened, you’re almost certainly going to run into problems with immaturity sirupsen.com/adjacent-possi…@Sirupsen
- if we look at history, making things cheaper, smaller, faster, and more reliable tends to expand the adjacent possible
- every time these improve by 10%, something new is feasible
May 27, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
The solution is not to ignore strategy, but instead, to push past the initial intoxication (“Strategy Drunk,” I call it) in order to achieve clarity divinations.substack.com/p/strategy-dru…
- Execution alone will not ensure success. If you don’t get your strategy right, you are at risk
- energetically pursue thoughtful strategizing
- managing through context, not control
- root of strategy challenges; Counter-Positioning, Power Progression 7powers.com/foreword/
