Macromegas #18 - 25 Years into the Internet Revolution
Amazon, Tencent and the Fintech Ecosystem
Hi friends,
Happy Friday!
25 Years into the Internet Revolution - Amazon, Tencent and the Fintech ecosystem
First - I know - the Internet is officially 50-something. I am counting from 1995, when it actually started getting some popular traction.
Amazon’s Secret Recipe for Success
Spoiler: it’s not crazy tech. Jeff shares the story of consistent long-term success is really based on:
True Customer Obsession
Resist Proxies
Embrace External Trends
High-Velocity Decision Making
Read his own words here: 2016 Letter to Shareholders
One of his early employees has also written a fantastic essay of (one of) the underlying forces with which Jeff has always shaped Amazon: storytelling.
The more I personally grow - both professionally and personally - the more I realise how insanely paramount storytelling is to the human brain.
Read the story he tells there: Compress to impress
Tencent’s Own Vision to World Domination
Most of us are reasonably familiar with Amazon, Google, or even Elon Musk’s vision for the world.
Tencent is far less known. The size of its internal market and its different regulatory positioning gives its vision a slightly different twist.
Packy McCormick recently wrote two fantastic pieces about them:
Tencent: The Ultimate Outsider, which focuses on Tencent’s history and general vision/market positioning.
Tencent's Dreams - Investing in the Metaverse, which deep-dives into Tencent’s investment portfolio strategy.
I strongly recommend both reads - as well as most of Packy’s other articles.
The Current Stage of Internet Value-Creation Enablement
Many of us have already lived through several stages of Internet value-creation enablement: from e-commerce (Amazon, Tencent) to ubiquitous communication (Tencent).
Andreessen Horowitz theorise on how Fintech comes in as a vertical enabler to increase the addressable market. Some of their publication can be overly specialised or complex. This one is brilliantly universal.
Read their own words there: Fintech Scales Vertical SaaS
If you enjoy reading my regular free content, please consider donating for this little girl who will die if her parents can pay for a very expensive gene-therapy injection.
As parents, this is something that really shocking for my wife and me.
Sharing the world also helps massively.
Thanks for reading,
V