“when something like steam shows up when something like um downloadable shareware shows up everything about your product changes”
Steam
By Valve
0 recommend/use · 2 sourced episodes
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“steam the video game marketplaces in this bucket where the thing you care about is suppliers bringing you like amazing creative new things”
Related frameworks
Adjacency-and-Network Expansion Test
Prioritize marketplace expansion by adjacency and network reinforcement, not by the size of the adjacent TAM
Brand as a Promise
A brand isn't a logo — it's a promise you make and keep, worth paying extra for.
Building the Network Effect Into the Product
For SaaS, ask if the product works better when users tell others — if not, your marketing is doomed.
Dual-Sided ROI Equation
Price each acquisition to include the cost of acquiring the other side it needs, then push to your payback threshold
Homogenize the Early Experience for Retention
Move retention by fixing unlucky bad first experiences, not by nudging people about to churn
Seeing the System
Strategic thinking is naming the invisible systems and their self-protecting culture so you can change the rules.
Taste and Standards as Meeting Spec
Good taste is knowing what people want just before they do; high standards means relentlessly improving the spec, not hiding behind perfectionism.
Tension at the Center of Strategy
Every great strategy creates 'it might not work' tension — the possibility a customer falls in love with.
The Four Marketplace Health Metrics
Track GMV, unit economics, liquidity, and share of wallet to know if a marketplace is truly healthy
The Four Strategic Choices
Choose customers, competition, validation, and distribution deliberately — each choice determines your product and your future.
The Gardener Mindset for Marketplaces
Run a marketplace like a gardener with a light touch, not a construction worker building linear features
The Growth Model Building Blocks
Build a spreadsheet formula of how your business grows, layer by layer, to find your real levers
The Marketplace Fragmentation Test
A marketplace only works if the market is fragmented and the per-transaction dollars are small enough to keep it in the middle
The Purple Cow: Building Customer Traction
Make something worth remarking about, and engineer in advance what you want people to say.
Vertical Unbundling Criteria
Only carve a vertical out of a horizontal marketplace if it has high value or frequency and a self-contained network
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