
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
My guest today is Hamilton Helmer, the Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Strategy Capital and the author of one of the best business books in history called 7 Powers, which is the topic of much of our conversation. He has spent his career as a practicing business strategist: advising companies, investing based on strategic insights and teaching strategy. In the last three decades, he has also utilized his strategy concepts as a public equity investor. In this conversation we cover all seven business powers, from counter-positioning to scale economies, and how companies earn and keep those powers. Any investor or businessperson should understand these concepts, and 7 Powers is the best work I’ve seen that explains them in depth. Please enjoy our conversation.
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
Show Notes
(1:31) – (First question) - What power means to him
(5:05) – Benefits being more common than barriers in the power equation
(6:28) – How early-stage companies develop their barriers
(11:23) – The power of counter positioning and how he’s seen it applied
(14:47) – The product side of counter positioning
(16:39) – Daniel Ek Podcast episode
(17:27) – Applying the idea of counter positioning to yourself
(20:40) – A cornered resource
(23:49) – A look at google as a cornered resource
(27:12) – Unique power of network economies
(31:18) – What subtleties disqualify network effects
(32:54) – Nuances of scale economies
(35:56) – Learning economies and who can scale it better
(37:07) – Building a switching cost and barrier into your business
(40:10) – Branding as power
(44:27) – Defining process power and how it differs from scale economies
(46:40) – The notion of the time lag and cash flow
(50:42) – Why is so much power concentrated in technology businesses
(52:07) – What does power mean for customers
(53:43) – Developing power as an art vs science, and the best power artists
(55:08) – The kindest thing anyone has done for him
Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
4.7
22122,212 ratings
My guest today is Hamilton Helmer, the Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Strategy Capital and the author of one of the best business books in history called 7 Powers, which is the topic of much of our conversation. He has spent his career as a practicing business strategist: advising companies, investing based on strategic insights and teaching strategy. In the last three decades, he has also utilized his strategy concepts as a public equity investor. In this conversation we cover all seven business powers, from counter-positioning to scale economies, and how companies earn and keep those powers. Any investor or businessperson should understand these concepts, and 7 Powers is the best work I’ve seen that explains them in depth. Please enjoy our conversation.
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
Show Notes
(1:31) – (First question) - What power means to him
(5:05) – Benefits being more common than barriers in the power equation
(6:28) – How early-stage companies develop their barriers
(11:23) – The power of counter positioning and how he’s seen it applied
(14:47) – The product side of counter positioning
(16:39) – Daniel Ek Podcast episode
(17:27) – Applying the idea of counter positioning to yourself
(20:40) – A cornered resource
(23:49) – A look at google as a cornered resource
(27:12) – Unique power of network economies
(31:18) – What subtleties disqualify network effects
(32:54) – Nuances of scale economies
(35:56) – Learning economies and who can scale it better
(37:07) – Building a switching cost and barrier into your business
(40:10) – Branding as power
(44:27) – Defining process power and how it differs from scale economies
(46:40) – The notion of the time lag and cash flow
(50:42) – Why is so much power concentrated in technology businesses
(52:07) – What does power mean for customers
(53:43) – Developing power as an art vs science, and the best power artists
(55:08) – The kindest thing anyone has done for him
Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
2,174 Listeners
1,036 Listeners
519 Listeners
1,789 Listeners
938 Listeners
1,906 Listeners
804 Listeners
196 Listeners
9,207 Listeners
416 Listeners
107 Listeners
353 Listeners
64 Listeners
212 Listeners
86 Listeners
16 Listeners
21 Listeners
98 Listeners
461 Listeners