The other week I was helping a client prepare a pitch for Sequoia and GGV Capital. Sequoia is famous for asking the question “Why now?” to people who pitch. One way of looking at this is,
“Why should we invest in you now?”
A far more interesting approach is,
“Why should we invest in your industry or market now?”
A few days later I was preparing some slides for a client and noticed a pattern across a number of companies that have done well – including Airbnb, Google, Uber and more.
In each case, they had realised that they were able to offer something as a low-cost commodity that had previously been scarce.
- Google discovered how to gather and commoditise expensive to research consumer behaviour;
- Uber transformed scarce and expensive to collect data on where consumers were and made is costless and instant;
- Airbnb ignored a market of scarce hotel rooms and made every room in a city a potential place to stay the night.
This is a rule, it may or may not be generalisable. It’s almost certainly not universalisable and it is definitely not the only rule that could apply.
That said, it is not a bad place to start when looking at a business model or problem.
What was scarce and now is not?
What was abundant and now is not?
Maybe futurise it. Then run with it.
Enjoy playing with this.
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