🍻 to an Amazing New Year 2023

First of all, I could not imagine where Unicornomy is today - grown 4X (YoY) in number of subscribers just on the back of referrals - So a Big Thank you for this. The end of the year is a time for reflection and for looking ahead. This is an

Business Model

Disrupting the Record Label Business via NFTs

This post actually should be classified into two groups: * one is how investing in music publishing is being democratized.   * second is about the commercial application of blockchain/NFT that is being used as the conduit here Record Labels Business Model Before we move to how blockchain or NFTs are disrupting

Business Model

Modern Money Movement Business Models

A little context about the money movement business.  This is not physical movement of money.  This is about the rails that power the movement of money from one point to another via systems thereby leaving a trail behind in the form of SOR (statement of records).  You might not be

Business Model

Economics of Cross Border Remittance with and without Blockchain

Much has been said about the FinTech evolution worldwide, with behemoth rounds of funding and the newer use cases and business models evolving at rapid pace. FinTech seems to be taking the startup world by storm. But something is common across global markets - all FinTech solutions cater to their

Business Model

Business Model of Sports Leagues and Franchises

I am sure this is well known that PE firms run most of the world.  What might not be as well known, would be that PE firms take active control and interest in sports leagues/teams as well.  Before we get into the why's and how's important to understand the

Business Model

Why are Banks & Tech companies buying Blogs, Content Websites

For all of you, who are wondering what's a list of websites doing at the top of a business model post.  Please read - The next paragraph or two would be around search engine rankings and paid media.   This image shows the who's who of quality content websites in various

Business Model

The Hidden Market behind the Pre-Market (Pre-IPO) Private Companies

With the public markets rising, all that investors can think of is where does this all stop!  But Public markets globally average out their returns in a particular range, over a decently long investment horizon, that is where the IPO gains come in and with the latest fad around SPACs,

Business Model

Democratizing Investing Part 4 - Uncorking Wine as an Asset Class

During the last 2 years (while in the Pandemic), alcohol sales zoomed past all other products (maybe not as high as sanitizers) as billions of people locked themselves inside their homes.  This rise in alcohol sales is an indicator of Quality Alcohol (wine and whiskey predominantly) as an asset class

Business Model

Truecaller Business Model & the Rise of Communication Platforms as a Service

Truecaller IPO is the latest on the block for Tech IPOs.  This one like all others is "unique".  Primarily due to the fact that they are not raising astronomical sums of money and one another reason of their business models concentration risk (2/3rd of users and revenue from India

Business Model

Democratizing Investing Part 3 - Unbundling Art as an Asset Class

The above may look like "The Last Supper by Da Vinci" but it's a different interpretation of an altogether different artist.  It's by Andy Warhol who was commissioned to present his version of the said masterpiece by Da Vinci.   The original artwork is in a museum and is valued in

Business Model

Democratizing Investing Part 2 - Litigation Financing

The part 1 of investment democratization focused on a niche asset class, private equity (which also invests in litigation btw) where the concept was to onboard users digitally and lower the ticket sizes by using a platform approach to pool resources together so that the minimums of the actual investment

Business Model

Democratizing Investing Part 1 - Unbundling Private Equity

Super interesting things are happening for democratizing investing around the globe.  Be it Robinhoods and the likes facilitating TUI (Trading under Influence) for millennial investors to Pipe and the likes facilitating direct retail investment into Revenue generating SaaS companies via Revenue Based Financing models. With all the buzz being focused

Business Model

Data Aggregation Business Models & Future use cases

The origination of this article came at the back of many points that have surfaced lately.  Be it Visa's called off acquisition (of Plaid) to Visa's 2nd attempt at acquiring a Plaid-look-alike called Tink, Yodlee (Plaid's competitor) sold-too-soon dilemma and the latest of the lot - Account Aggregator went live

Business Model

Revenue Based Financing Business Model, Economics & Investment Rationale

Revenue based financing (RBF) is a super legacy business model that has been around since time immemorial.  It officially started with the energy production and distribution businesses that would pledge the future energy generated (thereby revenue generated from those) against a current cash out option. Unofficially this dates back to

Business Model

Metaverse Business Models, Economics & Investment Thesis

We have been reading all sorts of reports around Metaverses and the numbenumberr of times that Big Tech Executives have been using this term in their annual reports and investor presentation and public appearances has gone through the roof.  This is about time we did a piece around the monetization

Business Model

Cloud Kitchen Business Model & Unit Economics

Cloud Kitchens or Dark Kitchens are a concept that has been around for quite sometime now (when we say quite, we mean decades).  The only difference is that, these kitchens were captives of their mother brand and used to supply pre-cooked or part-cooked stuff to the store fronts. Cloud kitchens,

Investment Thesis

Why is Square buying Afterpay?

Last Saturday, we came out with the reason Square was really wanting to be a bank and the how's and what's of the same.  And if you noticed, there was an image with the entire ecosystem play with small green boxes on top of existing blocks of the ecosystem representing

Business Model

Square Banking - Challenger Bank to Challenger Banks

Square Inc (Payments Processor) has launched Savings and Checking Accounts.  While this statement may sound too mundane, it has a lot of meaning in the eyes of the businesses that use Square Payments for accepting their digital payments. Square is a leading payment processor which empowers more than 2 million

Business Model

Big Tech in Financial Services (Part 2) - Google's FS Playbook

In the previous piece we saw how Amazon is building a bank for itself, to be primarily used across its own ecosystem and to make the life of its platform participants a lot easier - for the ultimate goal of buying more and selling more on Amazon!   This piece is

Business Model

Big Tech in Financial Services (Part 1) - Amazon's FS Playbook

This post is a part of a series of 4 long forms about the penetration of Big Tech (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon = GAFA) in Financial Services.  This part 1 is about Amazon. To start off Amazon's Financial Services Playbook actually revolves (primarily) around it's own ecosystem of solutions and problems

Business Model

BNPL Business Economics, Future & Value Unlock

Loans have been around for almost as long as money has been around.  Why specifically now has the concept of BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) picked up so much steam and attracted investments (retail and institutional)?  The answer lies in the insatiable consumption demand and prioritizing instant gratification over long

Concepts

Loss Leader Concept

A loss leader is a product that drives customers by the millions into you store (physical/online etc.) and involves selling a product or service at a price that is not profitable but the only objective here is to attract new customers.  These new customers will eventually also buy something

Concepts

Payment Processor/Gateway Business Model

A Payment gateway is a standalone service (API) that can process the payment instructions via a single service (i.e. X bank's credit card, X bank's debit card etc.). A Payment Processor / Aggregator is a service which aggregates all these services (and thus payment modes) which then can be used

Frameworks

Acquisition Entrepreneurship Framework

Acquisition Entrepreneurship is a fine mix of an entrepreneurs investment thesis (know where to put money) and execution skills to run the business in which they have invested. Simply put an Entrepreneur starts the business ground up, an Acquisition Entrepreneur acquires the business started by someone else by investing in

Concepts

E-Commerce Roll Up

An E-Commerce Roll Up (ERUP) Entity/Business aggregates smaller D2C, Internet first, E-Comm Marketplace dependent Brands that sell their products directly to customers via digital channels.  This entity then supports these brands with their tech, capital muscle to increase revenue, efficiency, economies of scale and decrease costs. Let's take example