At scale, online marketplaces are fantastic businesses. However, a crop of startups is aiming to chip away at marketplace networks effect by making multi-tenanting easier for suppliers. Keeping It 100 Since 2020, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital firm, has released the Marketplace 100, a list of the top 100 private online marketplaces…

Why the Stripe-backed checkout startup failed, and what we can learn from it — Failure is a great teacher. Fast, a high profile one-click checkout startup backed by Stripe, went belly up on April 5th. The company’s failure offers lessons for investors and operators. Fast 101: Passwords Don’t Scale Stripped to the chassis, business is basic arithmetic: cash in versus cash out. At some point, the former needs to…

Getir, Uber, DoorDash and others are racing to control market share in a notoriously unprofitable business — 2022 has been a brutal year for unprofitable tech stocks. Many are trading 25–50% below recent highs. The carnage hasn’t yet filtered into the private markets. In March, ultrafast grocery delivery startup Getir raised a Series E at a nearly $12 billion valuation. …

“When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” — John Muir In the aftermath of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, CDS spreads on Egyptian government bonds blew out. That’s because Egypt is a large importer of wheat. …

A look at Berkshire’s 2021 annual letter — For investing nerds, Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letter is like Christmas in February. Relative to the cautionary tone of Berkshire’s 2020 annual letter, colored by its $11 billion write-down of its investment in Precision Castparts, a go-go market, and the beginnings of the SPAC craze, the 2021 letter strikes a more…

The music streaming giant has improved its margins by moving aggressively into podcasting — Part 1 of a 2-part series on Spotify’s podcast business Spotify is a fascinating company. Despite being a fraction of their size, it regularly competes with and wins against giants like Apple and Amazon. To unshackle its financial model from record labels, it has boldly moved into podcasts. …

The vertically integrated service relies on local sourcing and full-time employees instead of gig workers. Is that enough? — Over the past year, ultrafast grocery delivery startups like Getir, GoPuff, and JOKR have raised billions of dollars. Mini-fulfillment centers have mushroomed across cities in Europe, Latin America, and the US. Below, a look at JOKR and the challenges of ultrafast delivery business models.

The burrito chain’s digital playbook enabled it to compete with delivery marketplaces like Doordash and Uber Eats — Leveraging investments in tech and loyalty, Chipotle exits the pandemic in a position of strength. The company offers a case study in how to successfully competing with food delivery marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber Eats. Liftoff Covid-19 shook the economic center of gravity. Growth at companies like Peloton, Wayfair, and Zoom…

Customer-Based Corporate Valuation can analyze the paths to profitability for unprofitable businesses — Losing money has never been more fashionable. Many recent IPOs like Allbirds, Rent the Runway, and Warby Parker are growing quickly, but losing money. Customer-based corporate valuation (CBCV) is a tool for triaging unprofitable business models and assessing paths to profitability. It does this bottoms-up by analyzing customer behavior and…