Blog Column
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Why the remodeling industry needs to be remodeled
The remodeling industry is pretty big. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimates that aggregate annual expenditures on residential improvements and repairs is around $275B. It also has a pretty maligned reputation. According to the Consumer Federation of America, the remodeling industry receives the third most complaints after the auto and credit industries. There are […]
How to think about online marketplaces
We’ve been speaking with investors over the past several weeks. Most will contextualize BuildZoom as an online marketplace, which makes sense. What gets tricky is that “online marketplace” comes with certain associations and assumptions, based on existing online marketplaces. Online marketplaces are differentiated by several variables: Commodity type Some online marketplaces deal in physical products […]
In some online markets, monopolies are created through UX
Several months back, I was fortunate to hear a lecture from Peter Thiel on creating a monopoly. According to Thiel, a company must have some combination of these variables to own a market: Brand Scale cost advantages Network effects Proprietary technology Great companies like Apple, have all of these things. According to Thiel (chronicled by […]
How different applications influence the marketing wheel
Last week, I discussed the application of the marketing wheel, a conceptual framework that could be used to consider the consumer experience. This week, I’m going to use the wheel to contextualize contemporary marketing applications. I see things generally breaking down like this: The point is that different marketing applications help the wheel at different […]