Podcast Of The Week: Strategic Stratechery

Every now and then Ben Thompson lets an article/podcast out from behind his paywall, and if you’re interested in strategy, you’ll want to take note.*

There’s a lot of technical and jargony stuff going on here, but listen (or read) “Cloudflare’s Disruption” and focus on this core concept:

A small company (Cloudflare) is figuring out a way to compete with a big company (Amazon), and being very deliberate in picking their spot so it moves their needle.

Listen and forget about the names of the companies, the products, and the services. Just try to focus on the logic at play.

Since any of us in any type of business are either on offense or defense (and usually some version of both) all of the time, real-time case studies like this can be massively informative.

Bonus points: go revisit Clayton Christensen’s work or read some of my posts about him here (if’n you’re curious). Breaking into markets, defending market positions, etc. are all researched and explained in exquisite detail.

*and if you’re really interested in strategy, just subscribe to Stratechery.