Dominance Friction

If a company has market dominance, and it adds a feature to its product that is someone else’s entire business, this is inherently unfair, but life is unfair - does it follow that it’s bad, and that we should we do something about it, and if so, what?

This is one key insight in Ben Thompson’s famous Aggregation Theory: modern marketplaces get their power from aggregating the demand side. And that’s a much better position than the old way of trying to own the supply side.

In other words, dominance in a market, not aggregate GMV across many markets, is the goal of any marketplace and ultimately what determines equity value.

1. Build a product so good that customers will use you over an incumbent. Build a large user base on the back of this first product. 2. Be aggressive rather than complacent about customer growth early. Outsized companies like Google, Facebook, and Uber were aggressive and calculating about growth from their earliest days. In contrast, non-metric-drive

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