The $100 Trillion opportunity 💰- Newsletter as a business 📝- Gender vs overtime ⌚️- Listen or read vs learning 📚
Only 5-10% of B2B transactions are digital in 2022
Episode #86. Hey Sunday reader 👋🏼
This Sunday, The Timestamp is here again for you! Get your weekly dose of summaries from the articles, books, or podcasts you may have missed in tech & culture.
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#1. The incredible business opportunity in marketplaces 💰
Last Oct 5th, 2022, Rex Woodbury detailed why marketplaces may still be an untapped business opportunity. Here are a few of my takeaways from this great episode of the newsletter called Digital Native. 👇
While the general public and journalists like to pay attention to successes in B2C startups like Airbnb or Uber, B2B marketplaces represent a 4x to 5x opportunity: a $100 trillion business… which is massive.
Only 5-10% of B2B transactions are digital in 2022!
Take startups Faire or Ankorstore, they built a business to help small boutique shops source online the product they sell in stores. This replaces the time-consuming and legacy business of boutique owners having to attend large trade shows where fragmented businesses of suppliers meet brick-and-mortar store owners: the perfect conditions for creating a marketplace as both parties are fragmented.
The elegance of marketplace businesses is in how network effects kick in: as more retailers and brands join the platform, the marketplace becomes more valuable to both sides.
“Embedding payments into the marketplace removes a huge pain point while also preventing disintermediation. Faire goes a step further by offering net-60 payment terms. In short, Faire will give retailers 60 days to repay purchases from brands, which improves working capital and reduces risk. If a retailer can’t sell a brand, it can simply return the product.”
This trend in B2B marketplaces also works better when SaaS solutions are verticalized.
I share the viewpoint that “Given the size of the opportunity in B2B marketplaces, it’s surprising that we’ve seen relatively little startup formation”. Discover in this article from Rex Woodbury (click on the source article above to access) why the timing for a new opportunity is now.
#2. Newsletter as a business 📝
Last Oct 10th, 2022, The Diff, a famous newsletter about finance and tech by Byrne Hobart went through an explanation of the business you can create with a newsletter. Just as a reminder, The Timestamp is 100% free and is set to remain free; this is a side hobby. 👇
Newsletters have traditionally 4 possible revenue options: subscription, advertising, sponsored posts, and lead generation.
“Basically any media business is a balance between monetization and growth. Conveniently for newsletter writers, the same raw material can be used as either a way to advertise the newsletter or as a way to harvest that demand.”
Tips for newsletter writers: “A higher ratio of research and editing to writing means better quality.” Here is an example of the best article from The Timestamp that helpt drive many new readers: 2022 predictions you cannot miss.
Value perception is partly a function of how much gets produced, but also a function of how much people end up reading. It is worth noting that most readers stop their subscriptions to newsletters because they feel guilty about having a growing backlog of unread posts.
#3. The unknown gender bias about female bosses
I was choked by the reading of this article from Bloomberg published in Oct21st. This article puts light on an employee bias we should all be aware of in companies led by female bosses.👇
What is this ugly bias you may encounter in a workplace where the boss is a female?
A new study shows that employees working for female bosses do not expect to work longer hours. They would feel much easier to say no to their female boss rather than say no to a male boss. The root assumption is those male bosses are not expected to understand well the importance of work-life balance … and they may be blamed for not working long hours.
This topic is specifically important for the startup community where hard work is still the expected behavior in a fiercer global competition for innovation. Taking into account that female founders have been put forward to emphasize gender equality, investors may still have to be mindful that employees’ mindset does still have to evolve towards work behaviors that comply with this holly goal.
#4. Listening or reading vs learning
“Listen without guilt: audiobooks offer similar comprehension as reading” discloses the truth about guilty listeners. Here are a few key points from the source article published in Tech & learning on March 21st, 2022 👇
New research about reading vs listening to books came to the same conclusion: it is the same outcome in terms of comprehension.
For every age group, the results are consistent; so do not feel ashamed of ‘reading’ audiobooks if you join a book club.
This research proves that learning modalities are just preferences we may have towards one method of learning (listening or reading) but this will all be the same in the end. You can also listen to The Timestamp using the Substack feature and it sounds great.
#5. The bonus of the week
Some ads are just better than many others. Special mention to my friend Sylvain who also favors this one. Thanks @matt_gray_ for sharing it again on Twitter👇
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See you next Sunday!