Leonardo Hugo Lujan's Profile

Thank you Jona, great post! It is really interesting how they developed a best-in-class playbook to mitigate COVID-19 impact. Nevertheless, I still wonder how they could prepare for post-COVID and how customer behavior could change to smaller-groups or outdoor experiences and how they could guide their partners to address these new needs and maybe offering them proper operational tools to manage these new demands and improve the gross transaction volume. Also, it will be interesting to see how they will manage the disintermediation risk when they put commissions back in.

At the same time, I think they have a great opportunity to access “new” behavioral health insurance companies (on top of employers) as a straightforward way to increase customer’s stickiness to their platform.

Great post!

Great post! As you mentioned, I would also be concerned about the value capture opportunities for the B2B segments, particularly with both public and private schools. I understand they used COVID-19 as a free trial period and were forced to do so by regulations, so I guess that most of the 3rd parties and schools who shifted online will abandon the platform when the normal offline scenario is back if they shift to charge for it like a SaaS.

So, unless the goal of B2B is to acquire new customers for the support B2C business line, it would be interesting for TAL to try freemium models or ad-based revenue generation.

Great post Rocio (and great way to structure the possible pivots!)! As Jona said, it is clear that the remote work market will be larger than in the pre-COVID era and that VR (together with 5G and IoT trends) could make a huge difference as Future of Work tools. Nevertheless, I wonder if Spaces will be able to counteract the competitive pressures from other developers in the industry (and maybe of some bigger players). If VR use ramps up, would it make sense for Zoom, for example, to let a 3rd party provide that solution?

In addition, how will VR headsets address the communicational barrier of the online landscape? Would it be better to watch an avatar rather than a person’s face on a webcam? Or the VR set will be limited to really niche markets (such as the ones that the recently hit Magic Leap is turning to)?

Great article! It is interesting to also think about how Boeing is responding to this initiative with their AnalytX, and whether airlines and suppliers would not prefer a common data-sharing platform that can include both manufacturers, provided with proper privacy and access controls (maybe Blockchain could be an alternative?).

It would also be interesting to see if after the 737 Max scandal safety regulations do not force both companies to make more portions of their data publicly available and develop a unified standard for data sharing.

Amazing post, James!

The idea seems great on paper, but as you point out in the last piece, it is worthless if they can’t provide clear reasoning behind the AI black box. Even when their algorithm is correct, they are in a complicated place where they need to engage the community of communication researchers to can support the effectiveness of the QC score…and at the same time are introducing a tool that wipes out the jobs of the people from whom they need support.

It’s like the many failed Zebra alike start-ups that positioned themselves as eliminating the job of radiologists.

Great post!

Great post Loti, super interesting! As others mentioned, great coverage on the privacy and regulatory concerns. I’m wondering if this could also open the door to a new segment of physical toys capable to educate children while they are playing, and how they would compete with educational gaming apps. Maybe would not be the case of such an established brand like Barbie, but I think there will be a new space that could combine joy and learning in a new way.

Great post Megan, thank you very much for sharing! Following up on your last reflections about the ways Drizly could make its business more sustainable, I was wondering if in addition to offering value-added features for users they can find ways to develop their relationship with local retailers, providing them with more user data, management best practices or even apps to improve their business performance. I think that reducing multi-homing is the only way they have to raise barriers for new entrants, whether small competitors or big players (who will enter sooner or later).

Thanks for the post, Bastian! I agree with you PZ, and it is also interesting to note that all the localization efforts that they made in Indonesia were abandoned when they started to quickly expand to other markets. If localization is the key element to succeed in these clusterized network structures, then it would be recommended for companies to expand internationally at a slower pace, establishing partnerships with or investing moderately in local players rather than competing against them.

Great post James, thank you for sharing!

They seem to create a solution for a very cumbersome interaction of companies with their distributors. Nevertheless, on top of the factors you mentioned about their business sustainability, it would be also interesting to analyze what would be the regulatory reaction to this market. As with other platforms businesses, low-skilled workforce flexibilization usually tends to generate a regulatory backlash (such as Instacart or Uber) and in this case, it should be even more exposed since there are big companies on the other side of the platform.

Great article! On top of the arguments that you have elaborated, I think that a big competitive advantage they have is their current user base. As a business with strong network effects (same-side), low differentiated market (there are no multiple products per company) and high multi-homing costs, it seems reasonable to think that this will most likely be a “winner-take-all” or 2 winners-take-all market. In this sense, Sendwave is extremely well-positioned to react to new entrants and adapt to long-term cash-less trends. It will be also very interesting to learn what are the next steps they are planning and if the money transfer success is considered as a key opportunity to offer complementary financial products for the same customer base.

Really insightful post! As you mentioned, it’s very interesting that Airbus is already finding a way to monetize urban air mobility and at the same time generating the expertise needed to run these operations in the future and adjust their product development initiatives. I agree that an integrated approach could be extremely helpful during the early beginnings of this space (which, as you described, will need several years of infrastructure and regulatory coordination to be deployed), but I think Airbus will be better off if they focus on the vehicle production and the monetization of its products with an innovative per-ride fee pricing model, leaving the operation of the platform for better-suited mobility platform players, who have access to the customers by offering a broader and optimal set of mobility services. It will also be very interesting to understand if simpler solutions could continue to shake this industry and limit more complex and capital intensive sectors to serve a super niche customer segment.

Great article! It is clear that Flexport made a huge change in the freight shipping sector and that within this sector they will be able to keep their competitive advantage. However, I still wonder what would be the reaction of other Supply Chain Management software providers and logistics giants (DHL, FedEx, etc.) as they recognize an emergent big winner in one vertical of the Supply Chain that could expand to other steps of the process. In this sense, I wonder if Flexport will decide to focus on freight shipping or if it will try to expand beyond that vertical and fight with different players to become a one-stop-shop for the logistics industry.