---
title: Platform Economies
link: https://medium.com/@alibhamed/platform-economies-65d6714ca768
published: 2020-09-01
category:
  - Article
---

Small businesses growing digital first on platforms, and those brands creating their own traffic and following. By [[Ali Hamed]] https://medium.com/@alibhamed/platform-economies-65d6714ca768

> We’ve noticed a handful of themes that are starting to crystalize for our investment team:
> (1) The world of small businesses is moving off of main street, and into platform-based economies
> (2) Value capture is moving away from the platforms themselves, and to the commercial actors of those platforms
> (3) Platform economies are not created equal, and offer varying levels of “investability”
> (4) It might be better to invest at the atomic level, rather than in the shares of these tech stocks
> (5) The commercial actors on platforms are getting better
> (6) Certain platforms have magical superpowers

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> Rather than own FB shares, we’d rather own Instagram accounts. Rather than owning Amazon stock, we’d rather own a bunch of third-party selling merchants. And rather than owning Google stock, we’d rather own YouTube libraries.