Resources for Investing in Internet Businesses
Hi All —
Yesterday, I shared on Twitter the resource page I published for understanding and investing in internet, marketplace, and media businesses. Since not everyone lives on Twitter, I wanted to quickly share the link and list here as well.
If people have other suggestions, feel free to DM me on Twitter or email me at ardacapital01@gmail.com. I’ll continue to update the page over time.
Table of Contents:
Foundational Materials
Blogs, Newsletters, and Trade Publications
Other Internet Books
Media and Telecom Books
Foundational Materials
Strategy:
Ben Thompson’s Platforms vs. Aggregators, Aggregation Theory, Defining Aggregators, and Spotify, Netflix, and Aggregation are critical to understanding Internet businesses.
Increasing Returns to Scale by Brian Arthur (book and HBR article)
Analysis and Trends:
Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Reports
Mauboussin’s The Economics of Customer Businesses
Tribe Capital’s Unit Economics and The Pursuit of Scale Invariance
Tren Griffin’s The “Free Parking” Business Model
Bill Gurley’s Above the Crowd (ATC). It’s worth reading through all the articles at some point but would highlight The Most Powerful Internet Metric of All, The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula, and How to Miss By a Mile: An Alternative Look at Uber’s Potential Market Size, in addition to the ones listed in the marketplace section.
Understanding Marketplaces:
ATC: Money Out of Nowhere: How Internet Marketplaces Unlock Economic Wealth and All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces
History of the Internet, FANG, and Others
Amazon: The Everything Store, Amazon Unbound, and The History of Sears Predicts Nearly Everything Amazon Is Doing
Google: In the Plex
Uber, Airbnb, et al: The Upstarts
Memos and Docs
The memos provide insight into the companies think about their businesses and strategy
Zuckerberg’s Memo on Owning VR/AR Platform and Acquiring Unity
Zuckerberg on Monetizing the Messenger Ecosystem
Gates’ Tidal Wave Memo
Amazon’s Deal Memo for Ring and Blink
Blogs, Newsletters, and Trade Publications
Stratechery by Ben Thompson - covers/writes about the internet (understatement)
Mobile Dev Memo - covers digital advertising, gaming, and the app economy
Above Avalon - exclusively covers Apple
Sports Business Journal - everything sports media related
Entertainment Strategy Guy - covers streaming and media.
Puck - Matthew Belioni’s Hollywood newsletter is a must-follow.
Ben Evan’s Newsletter and Annual Presentation
Skift - covers the travel industry
AdWeek - covers agencies and advertising
Prosus Capital Markets Days - Prosus’ investor presentations are interesting ways to learn about different business models (e.g., food delivery) across geographies.
Other Internet Books
Media and Telecom Books
Hard to separate the internet from media these days so including those recs here.
The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies
Cutthroat: High Stakes & Killer Moves on the Electronic Frontier
Government Documents
DOJ and CMA documents have a lot of detail about the big tech internet businesses
And ICYMI, here’s a link to the Software list.
If you’re finding this newsletter interesting, share it with a friend, and consider subscribing if you haven’t already.
Always feel free to drop me a line at ardacapital01@gmail.com if there’s anything you’d like to share or have questions about. Again, this is not investment advice, so do your own due diligence.
Been reading these resources over the past few months. They've helped a ton with understanding the TMT space.