💡JCNews #40
L'importance du produit et de sa stratégie.
Bonjour,
Chaque semaine, je partage quelques ressources que j’ai trouvés particulièrement enrichissantes. J’espère qu’ils vous aideront autant qu’ils m’ont aidé.
Cette semaine (entre autres) :
Une excellente analyse de Spotify et de leur développement futur
L’importance du Focus dans toutes les décisions produit
Bright Health lève 500M d’euros pour continuer son expansion
Les nouvelles vidéos des fonctionnalités d’Alan
Certains articles sont en français, la plupart sont en anglais (je copie certaines citations en anglais). Ils ne sont pas tous récents et vont au rythme de mes lectures.
Bonne lecture !
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📱Monde des technologies
👉 Excellente analyse de Spotify qui utilise beaucoup de “frameworks” pour construire de la différentiation et donne de bons outils stratégiques sur comment construire et surfer des tendances (Yahoo)
While historically mobile phones have provided the onramp to music streaming consumption, the next phase of growth will be driven by a plethora of emerging platforms including connected cars, gaming devices, workout equipment and smart speakers. (...) As device proliferation accelerates, spotify’s position as the category leader makes it most likely to be designed into device presets. Just as Google Maps is pre-loaded on car dashboard screens so too is Spotify. (...) With that kind of hardware footprint, it becomes very difficult to dislodge incumbency.
The average Spotify user spends 25 hours a month on the service, topping even Facebook at 19 hours a month and Instagram at 14 hours per month.
With each music streaming service offering up largely identical music libraries, conventional wisdom suggests there is little in the way of competitive differentiation making the music streaming platforms commodity businesses. (...) The very fact that the average Spotify user is on the platform an entire day a month suggests that ease of use and value of discovery are paramount. There is no doubt that Spotify’s platform is sticky with 70% of churned users returning within 45 days. This is indicative of its competitive differentiation, something we believe the market has not caught on to yet
Last year, music streaming represented 80% of the music industry’s revenue. (...) With streaming responsible for the resurgence of the music industry, the labels need Spotify for maximum distribution. While in theory the labels could pull their catalogues from Spotify to extract leverage, such a move would sabotage their relationships with music artists who would see their earnings drop precipitously. (...) Over time, we expect Spotify to capture the economics of the music industry value chain commensurate with its importance to the eco-system.
As a competitive slate, this is a murderers’ row. All three dominate globally, possess deep pockets and enjoy low CAC. Moreover, each is happy to utilize music as a loss-leader to sell more phones (Apple), serve more ads (Google), or in Amazon’s case, deepen its commitment to its ecosystem. It would seem that Spotify’s die is cast. (...) Spotify has done a better job of localizing music offerings than its American counterparts. (...) It is worth nothing, that despite competitor inroads, Spotify remains the undisputed category leader.
Data Flywheel Compounds Advantages. (...) Self-reinforcing business models --the rare business where each transaction on its platform makes the business structurally stronger. Spotify is such a business. (...) In Spotify’s case, it uses data insights gleaned from its users’ listening habits to improve its recommendations for daily and weekly playlists. (...) it also enables the company to sit astride emerging audio categories outside of music. Such categories include books, courses, meditations, sports, news, talk radio, podcasts, concerts and live events. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has been consistently clear that Spotify’s market is audio and he is going after earshare not music streaming share.
“We are in the discovery business…If discovery drives delight, and delight drives engagement, and engagement drives discovery, we believe Spotify wins and so do our users.” (…) Discovery is Spotify’s superpower. (...) By providing best-in-class discovery and personalization tools, Spotify creates a virtuous flywheel of demand -- with discovery driving engagement and engagement feeding data algorithms further improving personalization. (...) - Importantly, playlists cannot be shared across music platforms increasing customer retention. Switching costs typically denote a learning curve, but in Spotify’s case it’s premised on a personalization curve.
Second, Spotify’s increasing investments in podcasts should lead to a shift in its cost structure with fixed costs replacing the variable costs paid to music labels. This is similar to Netflix’s shift from licensed content to original content. Like Netflix, Spotify’s move toward greater in-house content should drive operating leverage.
We are big fans of management teams that ignore Wall Street. The first rule of winning is knowing what game you’re playing. For Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, it’s the long game. (...) Just like Bezos with Amazon, Ek is happy to defer profitability in the pursuit of growth. (...) In the meantime, however, it appears foolish, just as Amazon’s 20-year march to profitability did. (...) It takes a unique mix of urgency and strategic planning to both focus on the long-term but relentlessly innovate in the short-term.
🏯Construire une entreprise
👉 Product Strategy: L’importance du Focus dans toutes les décisions produit (SVPG)
Picking the few things that can truly make an impact.
Instead of 2-3 truly important things, they have at least 20-30 (which is bad)
The bottom line is that organization will get more critical work accomplished if it focuses on just a few at a time.
We need to limit the number of major problems we’re trying to solve at once. “Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes.” –Richard Rumelt
👉 Product First : ou comment créer une boucle a) construire selon l’intuition, b) comprendre le marché, c) opérationnaliser (David Sacks)
About Square: It was more about enabling more people to come into the system. To do that you have to lower the barrier of checking that that person will be a legitimate vendor.
I think a lot of the financial industry had a mindset of distrust and just constantly looking for opportunities to prove why people shouldn't get into the system. __We took on a mindset of trust and then verify, verify, verify.
Step 1: Create the product hook. ... The starting point was to conceive of a simple product that would create tangible value ... PayPal started in a similar way: The product hook was to “email money,” which also created the first distribution trick (email virality).
Step 2: Discover the market insight. The market is discovered as a result of seeing who uses the product and why. ... Both Square and PayPal realized that they could increase access to a new and under-served market by eliminating the upfront requirements and approaching fraud detection in a different way.
Step 3: Operationalize the insight. To operationalize the market insight, Square (like PayPal before it) built fraud expertise at the transaction level to replace hoops at the merchant level.
Square and PayPal are both examples of the philosophy that “if you build it, they will come.” But users will only come if you build it the right way: The company starts with a product hook to grab users and a distribution trick to find them, pays attention to the organic use of the product to discover the market insight, then leans into that insight to build the company.
🏥 Santé
👉 Bright Health raises $500M, plans expansion into employer-based insurance (MedCity)
Insurance startup Bright Health raised another $500 million, as it plans to expand into new markets and offer small group plans.
Investment firms Tiger Global Management, T Rowe Price and Blackstone led the funding round.
The Minneapolis-based company currently operates in 43 markets across 13 states, a significant expansion from December, when it was in 22 markets and 12 states
💚 Les publications d’Alan et sur Alan
👉 Alan, votre partenaire santé embarqué : gérer vos remboursement instantanément, recevez des conseils personnalisés et piloter votre assurance santé du bout de vos doigts. Découvrez ces fonctionnalités d’Alan et bien d’autres dans nos nouvelles vidéos. (Youtube)
👉 Amour et pandémie, 5 conseils pour s’aimer en toute sécurité : c’est la question à 1000 euros que vous ne poserez peut-être pas à votre généraliste, est-ce que je peux continuer à dater pendant la crise sanitaire ? (Blog)