Look at Payroll: ADP, Paychex, Paylocity, Paycom, Ultimate Software are public, and Ceridian which used to be a public Co. Among upstarts, between Papaya, Deel, Gusto, Payfit, lots of new public players. Plus Visma which owns a bunch of Northern European payroll Companies...
Some markets are incredibly large + don't have network effects...
Insurance is the same (both with upstarts and public Companies).
Social commerce, especially in India. Lots of value to be unleashed from the resellers - women (individual) entrepreneurs, as they strive to earn faster and more through social commerce platforms. Especially now, with drained income in the majority of households, post-COVID.
What the article and the comments show is that most markets seem like they're many-winner markets when you look at it. Just that we tend to overemphasize the winner-take-all dynamics too much!. Except for markets where economies of scale are unbeatable (AWS) or network effects are v strong (social media), most markets can have multiple winners happily survive together. If you look at the distribution in the current world - insurance comes to mind, or real estate, asset mgmt (incl the software), most types of saas products...
Not sure the concept of "market" is useful with software on the Internet. Take design. Canva has certainly seized market share, but from who? The job-to-be done for design on the Internet doesn't seem to have an end. Same for consumer social. In b2b, marketing automation's job-to-be-done is essentially "help get more customers." I'm not sure there's an end there, either. Same might be said for engineering automation, sales automation, etc.
I think the more interesting question is for markets/products with significant network effects (so I don't think the marketing saas qualifies) which are winner take all v. many winners
Look at Payroll: ADP, Paychex, Paylocity, Paycom, Ultimate Software are public, and Ceridian which used to be a public Co. Among upstarts, between Papaya, Deel, Gusto, Payfit, lots of new public players. Plus Visma which owns a bunch of Northern European payroll Companies...
Some markets are incredibly large + don't have network effects...
Insurance is the same (both with upstarts and public Companies).
Payments - Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com.
Social commerce, especially in India. Lots of value to be unleashed from the resellers - women (individual) entrepreneurs, as they strive to earn faster and more through social commerce platforms. Especially now, with drained income in the majority of households, post-COVID.
What the article and the comments show is that most markets seem like they're many-winner markets when you look at it. Just that we tend to overemphasize the winner-take-all dynamics too much!. Except for markets where economies of scale are unbeatable (AWS) or network effects are v strong (social media), most markets can have multiple winners happily survive together. If you look at the distribution in the current world - insurance comes to mind, or real estate, asset mgmt (incl the software), most types of saas products...
Not sure the concept of "market" is useful with software on the Internet. Take design. Canva has certainly seized market share, but from who? The job-to-be done for design on the Internet doesn't seem to have an end. Same for consumer social. In b2b, marketing automation's job-to-be-done is essentially "help get more customers." I'm not sure there's an end there, either. Same might be said for engineering automation, sales automation, etc.
Is it more like a progression over time irrespective of the industry? Like;
many winner markets > winner takes most > winner take all
I think the more interesting question is for markets/products with significant network effects (so I don't think the marketing saas qualifies) which are winner take all v. many winners
consumer social - looked like a winner takes all market up until 18 months ago..
Killer newsletter today, Nikhil!
Have you considered posting any of these ideas on Kern.al yet? Just came across this concept by Eric Bahn (https://kern.al/idea/special-purpose-vehicles-for-non-accredited-investors) and thought you might wanna post up your ideas there for more traction to the newsletter?