The Platform Delusion
Who Wins and Who Loses in the Age of Tech Titans
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An investment banker and professor explains what really drives success in the tech economy
Many think that they understand the secrets to the success of the biggest tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. It's the platform economy, or network effects, or some other magical power that makes their ultimate world domination inevitable. Investment banker and professor Jonathan Knee argues that the truth is much more complicated--but entrepreneurs and investors can understand what makes the giants work, and learn the keys to lasting success in the digital economy.
Knee explains what really makes the biggest tech companies work: a surprisingly disparate portfolio of structural advantages buttressed by shrewd acquisitions, strong management, lax regulation, and often, encouraging the myth that they are invincible to discourage competitors. By offering fresh insights into the true sources of strength and very real vulnerabilities of these companies, The Platform Delusion shows how investors, existing businesses, and startups might value them, compete with them, and imitate them.
The Platform Delusion demystifies the success of the biggest digital companies in sectors from retail to media to software to hardware, offering readers what those companies don't want everyone else to know. Knee's insights are invaluable for entrepreneurs and investors in digital businesses seeking to understand what drives resilience and profitability for the long term.
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Giant tech companies aren't the invincible disruptors they're traditionally seen as, suggests Columbia Business School professor Knee in this in-depth survey (after The Accidental Investment Banker). The generally accepted narrative that posits digital platforms—notably those of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Netflix—are "a kind of unstoppable virus," doesn't hold up to scrutiny, he writes. That "platform companies are sucking all the value, returns, and growth out of the companies that actually do things" may seem true, but many analog businesses functioned as platforms, Knee writes (defining the term as a business whose core value proposition is enabling and enhancing connections), and did it better, such as Diners Club's early foray into credit cards. Knee presents a cogent, arresting argument that digital companies don't have "supernatural powers" and, in fact, the same basic investing rules apply to both digital and analog companies, and covers what this means for e-commerce (Amazon's not as monolithic as one may think), travel (old reservation systems predated the internet and are still going strong), and big data (algorithms aren't so new, either). Knee's untangling of the complexities of platforms and their backers is steadily accessible and surprising. Readers will come away with their deeply held myths debunked.
