The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

by Scott Galloway

as distribution is expensiv...

Remember where you used to go get your Apple computer fixed fifteen years ago? There was a guy who looked like he’d never kissed a girl but was a pro at fantasy adventure games. He stood at a counter in front of piles of gutted computer parts, next to stacks of Macworld magazine.

Apple stores today are intentionally beautiful; they remind you that Apple, and those who purchase its products, “get it.”

A trillion-dollar company must have technology that can learn from human input and register data algorithmically—Himalayas

Marketing historically can be parsed into three major shifts regarding how potential customers were targeted.

The first era was

demographic ta...

Then, for a hot minute, it went to

social targeting,

if two people, regardless of their demographics, “like” the same brand on Facebook, they are similar and should be grou...

Social targeting was a failure.

The new marketing is

behavioral ta...

And it works: nothing can predict your future purchases like your...

Thanks to artificial intelligence we now can track behavior at a level and scale previously unimaginable.

Behavioral targeting is now the white meat of marketing. The ability to attach behavior to specific identities is the quiet war taking place in media.

In sum, my business strategy message boils down to “What can you do really well that is also really hard?”

We used to admire firms that created hundreds of thousands of middle- and upper-class jobs; now our heroes are firms that produce a dozen lords and hundreds of thousands of serfs.

That’s why people attend my talks: I’m free to tell the truth, or at least pursue the truth (I get it wrong all the time).

Good side insight here...the perception of being a honest broker and "speaking truth" does have value!

In the last decade, the world’s most important companies have become experts in data—its capture, its analytics, and its use.

The power of big data and AI is that it signals the end of sampling and statistics—now you can just track the shopping pattern of every customer in every one of your stores around the world—and

and then respond almost instantly with discounts, changes in inventory, store layouts, etc...

Or better yet, you build in the technology to respond every se...

The result is a level of understanding about your customers—indeed, about human nature itself—that has never before been possible.

And against smaller, more regional companies it offers a competitive advantage that is essentially unbeatable.

No one has been able to aggregate more intention data on what consumers like than Google.

Google not only sees you coming, but sees where you’re going.

Google controls a massive amount of behavioral data.

Google has to aggregate this data, and can only say that people of this age or people of this cohort, on average, type in these sorts of things into their Google search box. Google still has a massive amount of data it can connect, if not to specific identities, to specific groups.

Facebook can connect specific activities to a lot of specific identities.

Facebook has 1.5 billion daily active users. People live their lives out loud on Facebook, documenting their actions, desires, friends, connections, fears, and purchase intentions.

As a result, Facebook is tracking more specific identities than Google, a huge advantage when selling the abili...

Facebook can identify and serve up the right consumers at a scale previously unimaginable because it can connect data to identity,

and we’re not as creeped out, as we made this information publicly available ourselves.

Amazon has 350 million credit cards and shopper p...

More than any company on earth, it knows what you like. It’s able to connect identity, shoppi...

Not to be outdone, Apple has a billion credit cards on file and knows the media you most enjoy and, if Apple Pay works, even more than that. Apple too is...

Just as important, these firms have the skills to leverage software and AI to uncover patterns and improve their offerings.

The seventh factor in the T Algorithm is a company’s ability to attract top talent.

The war for tech-enabled talent has reached a fever pitch.

A horseman’s ability to attract and retain the best employees is the number one issue for all four firms.

Their ability to manage their reputations, not only among young consumers, but also among their potential wor...

Indeed, one could argue that their brand equity among current and potential employees is more importa...

Why? The team with the best players attracts cheap capital, innovates, and can spark the upward spiral that p...

There are few places a talented twenty-five-year-old can go further by age thirty in terms of role, money, prestige, and opportunities than at one of the Four.

The process is the message: if you survive, you are among the elite, the most brilliant members of your generation.

There is no evidence that this process actually works, but that doesn’t matter.

The ability to develop and lubricate a pipeline with the best engineering talent from one of the best schools in the world is the eighth factor in the T Algorithm.

To be an accelerant you must have the raw material.

the raw material today is top engineering, business, and liberal arts graduates.