Profiting from the Destructive Wake of the Internet
The internet changed everything and it hasn’t stopped changing everything. New companies are sprouting up day after day from the aftermath of the creation of the internet. Over the past 15 years, many companies greatly benefitted ($AMZN, $MFST, $GOOG, $FB, etc…), but the gains from the internet are still coming. Amazon, Google, Microsoft picked at the obvious areas. Plenty more opportunity exists.
Uber, Lyft and Airbnb are all great examples. They shifted the industry and commoditized trust. In doing so, they moved closer to their customer base (i.e instead of owning hotels, they owned the relationship). Owning the relationship with the customer is a much more profitable business than owning the actual physical location (ie, vehicle, hotel, etc..). This was never an obvious switch at the time. How do you commoditize trust?
“Taxis have a monopoly, no one will ever just get in a random person’s car!”
“I won’t stay in some random person’s house!”
“I would never let some random person stay in my house!”
This was all before trust was commoditized. But, this is just the start of commoditizing trust. Plenty of big fish left in the sea. Real Estate is a huge industry Zillow is going after. Auto sales is a huge industry that multiple tech based companies are going after. Some industries haven’t been affected yet, but no customer facing industry can escape the destructive wake of the internet. Tourism and banking are too huge areas that I can think of off the top of my head.
Keep your eyes open and we will have plenty of profitable opportunities coming.
