🤯Unknown Unknowns #74 - Value Unicorns

As soon as you finish a show, the next one starts.
As soon as you finish a song, the next one starts.
As soon as you finish a post, the next one starts.

Every company has an algo now.  Netflix, Spotify, Twitter.  You’re not in control of what you consume.  Why do companies do this?  Because they are valued on metrics like DAU, CAC, LTV, churn rate, viral coefficient.  Alphabet soup that measures engagement and time spent, not customer satisfaction.  

These companies are asking you for your time and attention.  They are not giving you the value you actually want.

What’s the incentive for the founders?  Obviously money.  But there’s also a cachet for founding a “unicorn”, a company that’s valued at one billion dollars.

Ben Thompson’s Bill Gates Line differentiates between aggregators and platforms.  It’s based on a quote from Chamath Palihapitiya (the rare case when you should do as he says, not as he does):

“A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.”

Platforms facilitate users to generate more value, aggregators derive most of the value for themselves.

What if we saw unicorns, not as a company that was worth one billion dollars, but as a company that created one billion dollars of value for users?  A true unicorn should be measured by the value it generates for its users and not by how much value it captures.  What if we venerated creators of these “Value Unicorns” as much as we venerate creators of “Unicorns”?

---

Discoveries:

I’m sharing some more essays from the current cohort of Write of Passage:

1️⃣

Parker Thomas writes about the lessons he learned when he spent two years building his own airplane:

I had managed to turn 700 pieces of aluminum, several thousand rivets, and 347 foot-long Subway turkey sandwiches into an airplane that I could fly. Needless to say, I learned a lot about building an airplane.

🔗 Link Here

2️⃣

Taylor Foreman on finding meaning in the world:

If physics is the patterns of the material world, then myths (stories, if you like) are the patterns of the meaning world... But, on the surface, the modern world has tricked us into thinking there is only matter. This makes people (like me and many others) depressed and aimless.  

🔗 Link Here

3️⃣

Frank Tarczynski writes about seeing life through the hands of those he loves:

Hands tell the story of a person’s loves, their desires, and their defeats. They reveal secrets never spoken.

🔗 Link Here

---

Blast from the Past:

A quick economics lesson:

Gas prices are in the news again.  It's those wicked gas station owners!  Or it's those greedy oil drillers!  No.  In reality, high prices are caused by two things: the subsidization of demand or the restriction of supply.  In the case of gas, it's the restriction of supply.  Low levels of investment have reduced the amount of oil that's produced.

Education both restricts supply and subsidizes demand.  Colleges and universities need to be accredited, which restricts supply.  Student loans are guaranteed by the government and handed out like hotcakes.  No wonder the average price has doubled in the past thirty years. 

The cure for high prices is high prices.  When prices are high, entrepreneurial types want to sell that product.  They will figure out ways to produce the product and the competition will lower the price.  Online courses have already started providing education at a far lower price point.  As they grow and compete with higher education, hopefully college tuition will decrease.

---

Quote of the week:

"Something in our soul has a far more violent repugnance for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue. This something is much more connected with evil than is the flesh.  That is why every time we truly pay attention, we destroy evil in ourselves.” - Simone Weil

---

Questions, suggestions, complaints?  Email me at [email protected].  Feedback welcome.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.  And feel free to send anything you find interesting to me!

Leaving you in peace,

Chris