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tl;dr: successful product-focused teams have a clear Product Narrative that defines who to build for, why to build for them, how to build it, and what to actually build. Moreover, a Narrative sets the direction for a team – a charter that unifies everyone together, identifying the target customers and their problems to be solved. 
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For the big players at least, Venture Capital is no longer just a vehicle to support entrepreneurs and ideas, but a means to guide and influence a global market. I did a deep-dive of VCs through the lens of the transportation landscape, and how it can drive the habits and characteristics of other industries in the future. The State of Ride-sharing: Let’s talk about Softbank for a moment, and how powerful they’ve become - here are the major two ride-share players to-date, and how much capital they’ve accumulated:  Epic Game’s new hit, Fortnite, has a whopping 125M players today, blowing out other games like LoL: League of Legends (100M players) or Overwatch (40M players) out of the water. How did this all happen in less than a year?  I unpacked further what’s the deal; tl;dr: its colossal success is attributed to four areas: 1. social nature of gameplay, 2. accessibility of the ecosystem, 3. timing to product market fit, 4. relatability with pop culture & influencers.
tl;dr: building great products not only requires a clear vision, but a strong strategy. Instagram has been able to achieve its mission to “… capture and share the world’s moments” in part by leveraging second mover advantage over certain competitors’ features and building an all-in-one social experience. Let’s compare against competing social platforms and analyze Instagram's impact:  Metrics reflect estimates around MAUs based on publicly available data, source below. [this is a follow-up to my previous blog post here] TL;DR: e-Scooters is looking to have a brighter future in the EV (e-Vehicles) market because it is 1) smaller (but fast enough), 2) portable, 3) affordable and 4) more available. Consumers want quick, easy, reliable transportation services that just works. The need for faster/cheaper taxi alternatives, better public transportation systems and avoiding car ownership in many U.S. cities has debatably been solved by Uber and Lyft. The problem with last mile traveling is partially solved (via walking, driving, biking, Uber-ing, busing, subway-ing et al), but also very much still in the experimental and growing phases. Let’s do a deep-dive of some of the U.S.’s hottest on-demand startups trying to dominate this space. $ Raised v. Funding v. Headcount:  (visual my own, data sources at end of post; Spin and Scoot currently do not have publicly available valuations, so theirs are estimates) TL;DR: The global market appetite for last mile EVs (e-vehicles) is driven by 1) overall more efficient mode of transport, 2) the push for eco-friendly options, and 3) shared services over private ownership. Over the past month, I had my first try at Bird, Limebike, Spin and Jump - the hot new e-scooter and e-bike startups that entered SF. This got me thinking about the overall transportation industry, in particular the last mile (colloquial phrase for: movement of people from a transportation hub to a final destination) market powered by the onset of the e (electric)-economy.  (visual my own, data sources referenced at end of blog post) |
I'm a tech investor @ Obvious.com. I was formerly a Product Manager @ Dropbox and Uber, & studied CS at Stanford. I also write on Medium.
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