Jim Barksdale

Bundle or unbundle: the only two ways to make money

Greg cites Netscape's Jim Barksdale: there are only two ways to make money, bundling or unbundling. Andrew Parker's classic 'unbundling of Craigslist' post showed the aggregate market cap of the spun-out verticals (Airbnb, StubHub, etc.) far exceeds Craigslist itself.

“It's a famous thing, I think in the '90s, that Jim Barksdale, Marc Andreessen's partner, co-founder of Netscape, basically said there's only two ways to make money. You can either buy bundle or unbundle. And just, you know, there's, I think, a post by Andrew Parker from— he was at Spark Capital, 2012 maybe. He wrote this post about the unbundling of Craigslist.”

Steal thisFind a big aggregator (Craigslist, Reddit), pick one high-energy vertical, and build a dedicated product for just that community.