The Balcony on Platform Revolution

The Balcony on Platform Revolution, by Parker, Van Alstyne and Choudary: a manual for businesses that own nothing and match everyone. Augie takes chapter one, two designers renting air mattresses who became Airbnb. Both take chapter five: PayPal paid $10 a sign-up and $10 a referral, about $20 a customer, and went from 100,000 to a million users in three months. Vera keeps the eight launch strategies; Augie keeps the air mattresses.

Platform Revolution, by Geoffrey Parker, Marshall Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary (2016), is a manual for businesses that own nothing and match everyone: pipelines make and sell, platforms connect outside producers to consumers and grow faster because every user makes the network worth more; its examples run from two designers renting air mattresses, which became Airbnb, to chapter five's PayPal, which paid $10 a sign-up and $10 a referral, about $20 a customer, used a bot that bought on eBay insisting on PayPal, and went from 100,000 to a million users in three months; the book catalogues eight ways to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of a two-sided market.

On the book: Platform Revolution by Geoffrey Parker, Marshall Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary

Starring

DotVera LindqvistAugie Castellano