Framework
The Laggard Arbitrage
Everyone is racing to serve early adopters. Dan buys the other end of the curve.
How it works
- 1He bought a QR code reader in 2026. His first reaction was "who is even using this?"
- 2The financials: roughly $10M revenue, $5M EBITDA, about 80% subscription, 20% cohort retention at year five.
- 3The audience turned out to be boomers, using QR creation features and scanning things a phone camera would not read.
- 4AOL is the extreme version of this thesis. Bending Spoons paid about $1.45 billion for a business throwing off roughly $334 million a year, and 30 million people still use it monthly.
- 5"People are really quick to say that business is dead. But you're forgetting the late adopter and the laggard. That's a big space."
Hear it on the podcast
The Consent EconomyListen to the episodeMore from this episode
The Consent ExchangeConsent is not a checkbox problem. It is a pricing problem.M&A As User AcquisitionDan does not think of acquisitions as acquisitions. He thinks of them as UA.Data Exhaust MonetizationMode Media exists because Dan noticed what he was already sitting on.The Fundraising Business UnitCrowdfunding is not a campaign. It is a department.Zone Of Genius PruningKnowing what to stop doing.
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