Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
[00:00:49]My guest today is Ben Thompson. Ben is the author of my favorite business strategy newsletter called Stratechery. He's also the host of the Exponent podcast and now, The Dithering, a podcast he recently launched with John Gruber. I think Ben is among the most interesting business analyst in the world, and I've learned from and directly applied many of his ideas. We cover many of the major concepts he's introduced over the years, including his well-known aggregation theory. I think that to understand how the internet has changed the business world for good, you must read Ben and follow his thinking. I'm excited to finally have him as a guest on the show. Please enjoy our conversation.
Companies Built for Disruption
So Ben, I thought a fun place to start would be with a recent post that you called the end of the beginning, and we're going to back way up after we talk about this concept to talk about aggregators and platforms and ecosystems and all these cool things you've written about, but I'd love to start at the end there. Tell us a little bit about what you were thinking through in that post and why it might be important for this big incoming technology companies.