6 Comments

All companies are looking for their moat.. some edge that creates a barrier to entry that reduces threats of competition. The only thing is not all moats are the same, and how they are judged and regulated probably shouldn't be the same.

Its one thing for a company to build moats through anti-competitive behavior (mergers, predatory pricing). Its another if a company is able to build a moat through innovation, where the market gravitates to their new product because it just adds so much value. There are also businesses where their viability depends on a critical mass of users (social network, online exchange, trading platform), which in itself is a significant moat.

The latter two examples I think are situations where there are net benefits to society in moat-creating. But the former, obviously not. There's probably a decent grey line in between which I think is the trickiest to judge, but deserves public scrutiny.

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Thrasio is literally every Consumer Package Goods (CPG) platform but just selling on Amazon instead of big box retailers.

Connecting buyers with sellers is actually hard. Which is why you’re writing on Substack and not some random Wordpress blog.

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The first question is, of course, how has the fund done? Buffet has used this thesis for decades. He was sharp enough to couch it in less blunt terms.

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Hey Matt, I just saw something on Politico about farmers inability to service their John Deere farm equipment because Deere doesn't provide the necessary information resulting in the farmers having to take their machines to a dealer for repair. Sounds like a monopoly to me. I'm sure Deere isn't the only company building road blocks in the road to repair.

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What would happen if that ball in the middle said "publicly owned" instead of Google or whatever other private entity?

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