Concepts 🍻 to an Amazing New Year 2024 Let's get the cat out of the bag already. I haven't really posted too much, well I haven't posted almost in a year. Well I was roaming around Europe for the whole year. Yup you read that right, the whole year. It was a good year (2022 and Q1 of
🍻 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