Lens family
324 analyses · Business Model
Square Charges 2.6% and Keeps About 1.1%. The Other 1.5% Was Never the Point.
Block (Square)
Cash App's "Free" Transfers Aren't Free. They're Filed Under Marketing.
Block (Square)
Regulators Came for the Confetti. The Real Target Was the Money Machine Underneath.
Robinhood
Stripe Could Have IPO'd Years Ago. It Built a Private Liquidity Machine Instead.
Stripe
Lilly Sells the Same Drug at $1,086 and $299. The Gap Is the Strategy.
Eli Lilly
The $2 Million Drug Wasn't the Scandal. The Hidden Data Was.
Novartis
Purdue Didn't Get Caught Once. It Kept Selling to Diverters for a Decade After.
Purdue Pharma
WeWork Wasn't a Money Machine. It Was a Money Machine Run in Reverse.
WeWork
Target Sells $31 Billion of Its Own Brands. The Trick Is That Most of Them Aren't Premium.
Target
Dollar General's Model Wasn't Beaten by a Recession. It Was Beaten by Itself.
Dollar General
Chewy Can't Out-Logistics Amazon. So It Made You Stop Deciding.
Chewy
Etsy's Sales Fell 6%. Its Revenue Went Up. That Gap Is the Whole Strategy.
Etsy
Temu's "Factory-Direct" Prices Weren't a Supply Chain. They Were a Loophole.
Temu
Wayfair Calls Itself Asset-Light. It Spent a Decade Quietly Building a Warehouse Empire.
Wayfair
Wayfair Sells $12 Billion of Furniture a Year and Can't Keep a Dime of It
Wayfair
IKEA Doesn't Design a Chair and Then Price It. It Prices a Chair and Then Designs It.
IKEA
Tesco's Clubcard Was Never About the Points. It Was About Buying the Company That Read Them.
Tesco
Trader Joe's Makes Less Per Item Than Its Rivals. That's the Whole Plan.
Trader Joe's
Home Depot Didn't Build One Moat. It Stacked Three, Aimed at the Same Customer.
Home Depot
Costco Caps Its Own Markups. The Cap Is the Whole Business Model.
Costco
Broadcom Doesn't Buy Companies to Build. It Buys Them to Mine.
Broadcom
TSMC's Real Invention Wasn't a Chip. It Was a Promise to Never Build One.
TSMC
Search Doesn't Fund the Moonshots. It Funds the 17-to-1 Bet That One Day Pays.
Alphabet (Google)
Waymo Just Raised $16 Billion. The Real Story Is Who Keeps Writing the Check.
Alphabet (Google)
Samsung's Chip Division Doesn't Fund the Galaxy Phone. It's Strangling It.
Samsung
Samsung Isn't a Diversified Giant. It's a Memory Bet With a Cushion Bolted On.
Samsung
Snowflake Sells "Pay Only For What You Use." Most of Its Money Is Prepaid.
Snowflake
Apple Didn't Start With Its Own Chips. The Order It Took Them In Is the Whole Strategy.
Apple
Apple Sells the Bundle Cheap. The Discount Is the Cheapest Part of It.
Apple
Dell Got Paid Before It Paid Its Suppliers. The Trick Was Born of Being Broke.
Dell