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

by Scott Galloway

In addition, two-thirds of the world’s GDP growth over the next fifty years will occur in cities. Cities will not only attract the best talent, but manufacture the best talent.

In many countries, like the UK and France, one city is responsible for 50 percent of the nation’s GDP. Seventy-five percent of large firms are located in what could be called a global supercity.

Over the next twenty years, this tendency will likely increase, as firms now need to follow talented young people, not vice versa.

For all they have in common, the Four Horsemen occupy distinct roles in the digital age and have come to prominence through different paths.

We also can’t presume that the current Four Horsemen are all guaranteed to hold their positions for decades to come.

In April 2016, a native online commerce company surpassed Walmart to become the world’s largest retailer.

it is the $485 billion in “gross merchandise value” (GMV) of products sold through Alibaba that beats Walmart.

Alibaba itself collects only a fraction of that in revenue—$15 billion in fiscal year 2016.

But size matters, and nobody manages more retail trade than Alibaba. It makes up 55 percent of China’s e-commerce,

Alibaba has succeeded because it hit most of the markers we’ve outlined.

It began in a vast market—China—filled with millions of small manufacturers desperate to reach the outside world. It went global almost immediately, reaching almost every country on the planet. It is a master of big data/AI—one of its services. And the market has given it a stratospheric valuation, so it has investment capital to burn.

Alibaba has grown so fast, that it essentially has no competition in its ...

For all its vast scale, Alibaba faces significant challenges if it wishes to emerge as a global digital-age player in the same class

As such, Alibaba carries a lot of water on its path to global domination.

First, there is no historical precedent for a consumer brand emerging from China.

The world is used to global brands from the United States and Europe, and more recently from Japan and So...

Alibaba comes up short on visionary capital and has struggled to master storytelling—not just with consumers, but with investors,

as Alibaba’s opaque governance clouds the story.

Finally, a critical limitation to Alibaba’s long-term success is the company’s entanglements with the Chinese government.

The government has supported its investment in a variety of ways, perhaps most substantially by severely curtailing the operations of Alibaba’s U.S. competitors in China.

as it moves into the Western markets, Alibaba may find recruiting great talent difficult, and its intellectual capital substandard.

any number of foreign actors, including U.S. and European governments, might see Alibaba through a geopolitical lens and register their concern in the form of regulatory hurdles, investigations, and other roadblocks.

Finally, data privacy concerns are likely to be a constant thorn for Alibaba as it goes global,

Tesla faces challenges, but it has accomplished more than any other start-up automobile company in our lifetime, and looks well positioned to solidify its position as the market leader in electric-powered cars.

Tesla has the potential to bust out of its specialty niche and become a mass market player.

the company faces challenges beyond those faced by traditional auto companies, as it needs to set up vast networks of charging stations and service stations (where backlogs are an issue), set up global distribution, deal with an array of government subsidies and expectations for electric cars, and manage regulators in the back pocket of the auto industry.

However, what appear (now) to be obstacles could end up being the type of analog moats that sustain a giant.

Its product is unparalleled in quality and technical innovation.

Tesla is not just an electric car; it’s a better car across several dimensions,

including a massive and beloved touchscreen-based dashboard, over-the-air software updates (big data/AI), an industry-leading autopilot mode, and design touches (lik...

Tesla controls the customer experience in a way that no other car company has done, or will be able to do wit...

Automobile firms fail the vertical test, as they have pursued a capital-light strategy with independently owned dealerships that are time machines—visiting

Independent car dealers and the direct-to-consumer model that Tesla has built may be a good analogy for insurance.

These entrenched third-party dealer networks, the limited ability to modify or enhance the vehicle after it has left the factory, and an industry focus on moving the steel off the lot have created a gulf between car companies and consumers.

Tesla’s most revolutionary change to the auto industry is not its electric engine—everyone is building those—bu...

Tesla understands that a $50,000–$100,000 purchase is the start of a multiyear relationship with Tesla, not John Elway’s Claremont Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram.

If Tesla can maintain quality customer support in the face of its rapid growth, Tesla’s superior repeat customer rates will become a static part of the story that enables access to cheap capital,

Tesla is also a luxury brand, and that combination is potent.

Don’t bet on Tesla limiting itself to automobiles.

It already is developing deep expertise in the capture, storage, and transport of electricity. It is putting self-driving auto technology on the road by the tens of thousands while Google and Apple are still in the research park.

its cars are data-collecting machines, so the challenge here is scale and execution, not the underlying capability.

For many urban dwellers around the world, Uber has become their default transportation solution,

Uber has access to visionary capital and has paired it with creativity and a lack of respect for the norms around customer experience.

But it fails on vertical, as the cars are owned by the drivers, who often work with competitors. Not owning cars has helped them scale fast, but it makes them vulnerable, as they have no analog moats.

As you might imagine, Uber also has considerable big data skills—it knows where you are, where you’re going, where you’re likely to go, and it’s all linked to your identity.

The firm appears to be building a vascular (last-mile) system for global business—that

Getting atoms (stuff) around is still a huge issue for firms and people,

It’s likely that, without yet recognizing it, we are seeing a celebrity death match take shape between Uber and Amazon for control of the last mile.