Own the Demand

Ben Thompson’s famous Aggregation Theory: modern marketplaces get their power from aggregating the demand side. And that’s a much better position than the old way of trying to own the supply side.

There’s this famous comment that “Uber owns no cars; Airbnb no real estate; Facebook no content; and Ebay or Alibaba no inventory.” If you can get away with being 1% as capital-intensive as your competitors while extracting greater profits, why wouldn’t you do it?