Tinker

In 2014, Facebook had a problem. They were being out-competed by WhatsApp, a 55-person startup. Facebook reacted by buying WhatsApp for $19 billion. How could a business be worth $345 million per employee? A century ago, it would have been inconceivable that a 55-person team could out-compete Standard Oil's 60,000 employees. Industrial businesses grow with labor and distribution. Digital products need upfront investment to build them but can deliver lasting value with low marginal costs. WhatsApp leveraged the software business model's attributes to generate such an efficient business.

A pro-competition framework for the information age. Regardless of whether Google is a monopoly, it needs to be regulated. Information Age conglomerates entrench their positions and compete with each other, resulting in an oligopoly that prevents innovation. We need to split big tech companies up across business lines to prevent them from becoming too big to fail.

In 2017, I co-founded Moonlight as a professional community for software developers with Emma Lawler. We were both leaving San Francisco, and wanted to make it easier for all developers to find specialized, remote work options. We envisioned a Silicon Valley diaspora that would permanently transform knowledge work into a distributed, work-from-home career.

Starting with a no-code prototype, we slowly built a web application and iterated on different parts of the business model. In 2019 we raised a pre-seed round of funding.

In 2020, PullRequest acquired Moonlight. Their developer marketplace, funded primarily by Google, continues to operate and grow the product today.

Publishing the pitch that we used to raise investment money for Moonlight (MoonlightWork.com) in 2019. I want to share the vision we had pitched for the future of knowledge work, and I want to demystify the process of fundraising for other founders.

Read the column at: https://www.tinker.fyi/4-pandemic-rent-control/

Read the column at: https://www.tinker.fyi/3-tactics-to-talk-to-more-users/

Read the column at https://tinker.fyi/2-buyers-define-marketplaces/

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