RicardoN's Profile

Thanks for this very interesting article Krish. I did not know Uber was venturing into other revenue streams than Eats and its traditional pool. Although I find it very interesting and resourceful from Uber management, I fear that the company does not have the right mindset for this sort of crisis. Uber is known for being a cash black hole. If they are not able to have a sustainable business that generates results now (and not in a few years) it might not be able to go forward, as liquidity in the markets is likely to dry and cash to become scarce!

Thank you for this very interesting article. I imagine how stressful it must be for applicants having to deal with this hassle…

I honestly believe that even though this online GMAT is not as good as the offline one, it is definitely good enough for 95% of cases (schools and people). With that in mind, I would even argue that the crisis might have a silver lining for GMAT, as it will force the company to disrupt itself (which they would hardly do without a catalyzer) before others can.

Super interesting post, Loti!

It is very interesting that Covid-19, with all its obvious downsides, helped telemedicine to gain traction by eliminating many bureaucracies along the way.

I definitely think that telemedicine will have its space in the future, but I wonder if Teladoc should not use the opportunity to push stronger towards creating a larger health ecosystem (with more services and offerings), such as MyDoctor and Ping An Good Doctor (both from China). I believe that the company is in a very good spot to do so!

Thank you for this very interesting post! Zencare seems to have a very compelling proposition for patients and professionals. My only fear for the company to scale further is the threat of payers in this space. Because payers are the stakeholders that have most control over clients (as they are the ones that pay the bills), they could create a similar or even more integrated tool – that included physicians -, force it to patients and make Zencare obsolete. I would try to somehow tie payers’ success to Zencare success as to guarantee that such move would not happen (maybe selling some equity).

Thank you for this very interesting post! Gojek seems to be in a very good and defensible position in Indonesia. My only concern with this model is that although transportation seems to be a good base for the super app, messaging and financial apps (such as WeChat) are more powerful and could represent a real threat for the company, in terms of new competitors in the market. I wonder why Gojek hasn’t tried – or why it failed – to further expand on both fronts as to increase its dominance.

Wow… As a customer, I loved the concept! I’ll definitely check Boatsetter for my next vacation! However, from a business perspective I would be very worried about this endeavor. Because creating such a platform seems very simple and straight forward, competition will for sure be intense, either for direct competitors or from other players, such as Airbnb, that could move into this territory. I believe that the company needs to create more differentiation and provide more services as to have a very strong client lock-in. If not, there is a good chance this business will evolve into a cash black hole, competing in terms of pocket size.

Thank you for your reflections on Coursera! I did use the platform some years ago and had a great experience doing so!

Although I agree that Coursera is a multi-sided platform, I am not sure if all dynamics of a multi-sided platform completely apply to it, specifically the network effects on the side of the course providers. In regular platforms, network effects work because the number of one side of the platform increases the value of that platform to the other side, and vice-versa. In that sense, once a platform is big enough, if some individuals or organizations leave, there wont be a big effect in the overall value of the platform. However, in Coursera, brands like MIT, Stanford, Yale, etc., carry a lot of the value of the platform (I remember I only used Coursera because of such names). Given that such names are extremely important for Coursera, I would be afraid of the business model because if these few players leave the platform than much value is lost and there is little differentiation from other platforms (e.g. Udacity, Edx, etc.). In conclusion, I think Coursera has done a great job so far, but I fear that its position is more fragile that it looks like in a first glance.

Very well done, Sneha! I had no idea Burberry was such a pioneer in digital channels.

I can clearly see how the company did a great job in leveraging media to push forward its brand and get closer to its customers. It is clear that Burberry was able to – through its channels – make prospects and clients better experience their brand in the last decade. I wonder, however, if there are more innovative ways to truly bring the Burberry experience online as a product (as opposed to merely advertising it). If there is, my bet is that it would be the new frontier for luxury brands!

Thank you for this interesting post, Miguel!

Although I completely agree that Netflix has been a critical catalyst to the entertaining industry and has been for sure a winner on the last decade for consumers’ eye balls, I wonder if the company has a solid strategy to keep that position. I feel that as the competitors recover from the initial shock from Netflix’s disruptive business model they are starting to deploy strategies that put Netflix’s model into question.
Lets take Disney, for example. With the roll-out of their platform strategy with exclusive content, they suddenly not only become a formidable competitor to Netflix, capable of producing high quality content (recorded and live, through ESPN, which Netflix cant compete with), but weakens Netflix’s position as a one stop shop. When you factor in that other large content providers are slowly moving away from Netflix and new competitors keep coming into play, I wonder if Netflix will be able to have enough differentiation to keep its market position. Moreover, if incumbents start to get closer to Netflix, their scale will probably benefit them, as they have more financial resources and Netflix is currently burning over USD 3 billion annually.