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How to succeed in the mobile game space by Lloyd Melnick

Tag: Second Machine Age

WeWork, 1.5 billion examples of the power of recombination

Last year (and I have been waiting to say that), I wrote about the power of recombinations and how it is a driving force for entrepreneurs in creating billion dollar businesses. I recently was reading about WeWork and its $1.5 billion valuation (which should rise to $6 billion this year) and realized it is an ideal example of the power of recombination (or some would say 1.5 billion examples).

Recombination

Recombination is a phrase I picked up from Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s book The Second Machine Age. To recap, recombinations are taking different technological improvements and combining them to create disruptive products. An example they use is Waze, the smartphone app that provides optimal driving directions. Waze is a recombination of a location sensor, data transmission device (that is, a phone), GPS system, and social network. The team at Waze invented none of these technologies; they just put them together in a new way. None of these elements was particularly novel, but their combination was revolutionary.

WeWork

WeWork co-working office

WeWork is a provider of shared office space for entrepreneurs that, as mentioned above, was valued at $1.5 billion last year when it raised $150 million from investors including Benchmark Capital. WeWork has 31 locations where it provides business services and office space to 15,023 companies. Given that many of us would like to start $1 billion companies, WeWork provides a great example of how recombination can be used to create billions of dollars of value. Continue reading “WeWork, 1.5 billion examples of the power of recombination”

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Author Lloyd MelnickPosted on January 6, 2015January 29, 2015Categories General Social Games Business, General Tech BusinessTags Erik Brynjolfsson, recombination, Second Machine Age, WeWorkLeave a comment on WeWork, 1.5 billion examples of the power of recombination

Creating billion-dollar businesses through recombination

I recently wrote about the winner-takes-all economy, based on what I read in The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The authors also provided some fascinating insights into how recombinations are driving economic growth. The insights about recombinations is very helpful in understanding the type of start-ups that are most likely to succeed.

Effectively, recombinations are taking different technological improvements and combining them to create disruptive products. An example they use is Waze, the smartphone app that provides optimal driving directions. Waze is a recombination of a location sensor, data transmission device (that is, a phone), GPS system, and social network. The team at Waze invented none of these technologies; they just put them together in a new way. None of these elements was particularly novel. Their combination was revolutionary.

While recombinations initially feel like something that would drive incremental innovation, because you are combining multiple rapidly increasing technologies it leads toexponential growth that creates staggeringly big numbers, ones that leave our intuition and experience behind.

The authors cite economist Martin Weitzman, who developed a mathematical model of new growth theory, in which the fixed factors in an economy—machine tools, trucks, laboratories, etc— are augmented over time by pieces of knowledge that he calls ‘seed ideas,’ and knowledge itself increases over time as previous seed ideas are recombined into new ones. This is an innovation-as-building-block view of the world, where both the knowledge pieces and the seed ideas can be combined and recombined over time. This model has a fascinating result: Because combinatorial possibilities explode so quickly, there is an infinite number of recombinations of the existing knowledge pieces. Continue reading “Creating billion-dollar businesses through recombination”

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Author Lloyd MelnickPosted on October 14, 2014October 20, 2014Categories General Social Games Business, General Tech Business, Lloyd's favorite postsTags digitization, instagram, networks, recombination, Second Machine Age, Uber, WhatsApp1 Comment on Creating billion-dollar businesses through recombination

Winner takes it all

I recently read The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee and they highlighted a phenomenon extremely critical for technology and game companies. The economy has evolved, especially for apps and other entertainment products, from a system in which there are multiple profitable products to one where there is one product that sees tremendous success and virtually all competitors are failures.

Second machine age

Why the economy has become winner takes all

There are three reasons described in the book that winner-takes-all markets have come to dominate the landscape. In addition to the three I detail below, I have noticed an additional strong factor in the app and gaming spaces.

  • Shifts in the technology for production and distribution, particularly these three changes: a) the digitization of more and more information, goods, and services, b) the vast improvements in telecommunications and, to a lesser extent, transportation, and c) the increased importance of networks and standards. Digitization creates winner-take-all markets because with digital goods capacity constraints become increasingly irrelevant, according to Brynjolfsson and McAfee. A single producer with a website can fill the demand from millions or even billions of customers.Facebook is a great example. Since they have had little trouble scaling (not meaning to underestimate the tech effort but proprietary technology was not the key to Facebook’s growth), it did not leave room for competitors to be a successful second or third social network. In the twentieth century, even a business as successful as a Facebook would only have been able to satisfy a subset of potential customers, leaving profitable opportunities for competitors to satisfy people who could not get Facebook. With digitization, everyone can get Facebook.
  • Technological improvements in telecommunications and transportation that expand the market individuals and companies can reach contributes to winner-takes-all markets. If there are many small local markets, there can be leading local providers in each (winners for those markets), and these local heroes frequently can all earn a good income. If these markets merge into a single global market, top performers have an opportunity to win more customers, while the next-best performers face harsher competition from all directions. A similar dynamic comes into play when technologies like Google or even Amazon’s recommendation engine reduce search costs. Suddenly second-rate producers can no longer count on consumer ignorance or geographic barriers to protect their margins.A great example is the demise of chain restaurants, like Darden’s Red Lobster chain, which were very profitable until Yelp came around and helped people find better dining options.As the authors point out, when there are capacity constraints or significant transportation costs, then the best seller will only be able to satisfy a small fraction of the global market. Inferior products will also have a market. Fast forward to now and the top-quality provider can capture the whole market. The next-best provider might be almost as good, but it will not matter. Each time a market becomes more digital, these winner -take-all economics become more compelling.
  • A third reason the authors cite is the increased importance of networks (like the Internet or credit card networks ) and interoperable products (like computer components) can also create winner-takes-all markets. The App store is an example of this phenomenon. When Apple’s app ecosystem is strong, buyers will want to buy into that platform, attracting even more developers. But the opposite dynamic can unravel a dominant standard, as it almost did for the Apple Macintosh platform in the mid-1990s. Like low marginal costs, network effects can create both winner -take-all markets and high turbulence.
  • There is a fourth driver that the authors do not discuss but that contributes to the winner-takes-all phenomenon: The emergence of freemium and free-to-play business models. When a product is sold discretely as a one-time purchase, it is created to have a limited life, be a consumable. People will use it or play it, finish it and move onto a product so there is room for second and third best products. With a free-to-play or freemium product, however, rather than creating a consumable the company creates a service that is constantly upgraded with new content and features. Thus, the user never uses up the product and has no need to switch to the second best offering.

Continue reading “Winner takes it all”

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Author Lloyd MelnickPosted on September 30, 2014October 15, 2014Categories General Social Games Business, General Tech BusinessTags 9X, digitization, Erik Brynjolfsson, Second Machine Age, Winner Takes All2 Comments on Winner takes it all

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Lloyd Melnick

This is Lloyd Melnick’s personal blog.  All views and opinions expressed on this website are mine alone and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity.

I am a serial builder of businesses (senior leadership on three exits worth over $700 million), successful in big (Disney, Stars Group/PokerStars, Zynga) and small companies (Merscom, Spooky Cool Labs) with over 20 years experience in the gaming and casino space.  Currently, I am on the Board of Directors of Murka and GM of VGW’s Chumba Casino

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