Aberration
The original for the quote is behind a paywall, and it’s about four loosely related sections. One of them is borrowing from this story and expanding on the larger ecosystem of the recent crop of “intermediaries”:
In the old economy of price signals, you tried to build a product that people would want, and the way you knew it worked is that people would pay you more than it cost. You were adding value to the world, and you could tell because you made money. In the new economy of user growth, you don’t have to worry about making a product that people want because you can just pay them to use it, so you might end up with companies losing money to give people things that they don’t want and driving out the things they do want.
I think we’ll look back at the late 2010s / early 2020s as some kind of a weird aberration in the global market as untold billions of dollars were burnt trying to upend industries, with no solid business plan other than the vague promise of innovation, customer centeredness and dreams of striking it rich. Well, the last part obviously is working for the very very few who are still managing to squeeze incredible amounts of money from a) investors, b) creators of the thing and c) consumers of the thing. While at the same time destroying the very market they have set out to “rescue”.