Why is Alibaba worth $500 billion and what does that have to do with how smartphones will be given out for free in the future?
How To Win In The 21st Century: As Much “Free” As Possible For As Long As Possible
The name of the game, if you want to win in the (first half of) the 21st century, is pretty clear:
As much “free” as possible for as long as possible.
The #1 example of the sentence highlighted above is the Chinese Alibaba group’s way of doing business—give everyone free access to:
- their e-commerce store
- their media channel
- a payment method…
… and you will be repaid for it. Given their $500B valuation is based mainly on offering a lot of value for free, we can easily agree that it played out well.
There are dozens of other examples as well. Facebook and Instagram are way too overused for us to go any deeper than just mentioning them.
Intercom is publishing free books for their users — and that’s a match made in heaven, since their user base (business professionals) are into the written medium of communication. The fact that it’s free just makes it better.
