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For example, in 2015, Payal Kadakia, the founder of ClassPass (a monthly subscription service for fitness classes) decided that she needed to double the size of her staff in just three months so that ClassPass would be able expand into more cities. To achieve this kind of speed, Kadakia and her tea…

On the infrastructure side, Amazon has deftly shifted from minimizing infrastructure spending, as it did during its early years by using techniques such as outsourcing logistics to book distributors like Ingram, to becoming one of the world’s great infrastructure companies. Amazon is so good at inf…

As we’ve already seen, most great ideas look dumb at first. Being contrarian doesn’t mean that dumb people disagree with you; it means that smart people disagree with you! Remember what happened when Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharcyzk tried to pitch Airbnb? Investors like Paul Graham …

[...] Broadcast television succeeded by providing the same thing to all its viewers—a model driven by the technological innovation of broadcasting content via wireless signals and later coaxial cable. Netflix succeeds by providing a carefully personalized experience to each of its many viewers, giv…

If a platform achieves scale and becomes the de facto standard for its industry, the network effects of compatibility and standards (combined with the ability to rapidly iterate and optimize the platform) create a significant and lasting competitive advantage that can be nearly unassailable. This d…