I am a researcher, writer, and investor interested in how technology, culture, and science come together to move society forward. I work at Prima Materia, a European investment company that builds, grows, and owns companies for the long term.
For occasional updates, you can subscribe to my newsletter or connect with me on Twitter.
Writing
I enjoy experimenting with new content formats and ways of communicating ideas. This page is the online home for all of the things I have written on the internet over the years. If you want to get updates when I publish a new post, you can subscribe to my newsletter or follow me at @BrettBivens.
Featured Essays
- The Merits of Bottoms Up Investing Seth Klarman, Benchmark, and seeing the present clearly
- The Business Equation Feeding the accumulating advantage flywheel
- How to Identify Underrated Markets A framework for analyzing the catalysts of emergent demand
- Spotify: The Ambient Media Company The new era of "passive media", Spotify's Ladder, and combating commoditization
- The Metaverse of Health Ushering in the age of Precision Wellness.
- One Person Companies are (still) Underrated Why the next McKinsey, Harvard, or Benchmark might start on Substack, with a Teachable course, or as a podcast
Screenshot Riffs
These are a collection of shorter essays pulling together voice and images in an attempt to distill an idea into a more crisp format than a full essay. In some cases, I expand these shorter ideas into larger essays. Shout out to both Eric Stromberg and Ryan Dawidjan for the inspiration.
The Nuance Stack (Tweet)
Consumer Subscription — Hidden Moats and Expansion Opportunities (Tweet)
This screenshot riff was a remix of an essay from Eric Stromberg of Bedrock Capital.
All Essays
- The Storytelling Thesis Why progress depends on storytelling and on the evolution of who is empowered to be a storyteller
- Spotify's New Customer After Joe Rogan, why Sonos might be Spotify's next big buy
- Organizing for Innovation How corporations can empower new people with new ideas to drive more inclusive growth
- Empowerment Loops The driving insight behind Nike, TikTok, and Figma.
- Economic Oceans A framework for analyzing the building blocks and catalysts of emergent demand
- Building Bollingen Tower Why Stitch Fix style curation can help make distributed work actually work.
- Internet Escape Velocity How companies can break free from Google and Facebook to own their own demand
- Patient Innovation Why Spotify is a bellwether for broader shifts in economic power and consumer demand
- The Consumer Subscription Roll-Up Opportunity On Match Group, Spotify, and building the Vista Equity of Consumer SaaS
- Accumulated Accidents Unwinding society’s suboptimal defaults
- Thinking Slow, Deciding Fast A one-year-in framework for operating as an early stage investor
- Global Like Goldman Three core principles for startups expanding internationally
- Creative Compounding
- The AirPods Industrial Complex What the iPhone was for the Consumerization of the Enterprise, AirPods will be for “Industrial Consumerization".
- Assets That Don't Earn A company's accumulating advantage and its “assets that don't earn” represent the tip of the sphere behind which all the power of all of its resources should be aligned.
- Building Lambda School for Personal Wellness Redefining the boundaries of traditional education technology
- The Fourth Edge in Early Stage VC There exists a fourth key source of alpha in the world of venture capital that investors have long sought to exploit: Strategic
- The Professionalizing Creator Class Why creators are seeking out the tools that help them build their own networks
- 3rd Wave Venture Capital The ecosystem’s need for more aligned capital options is starting to be met by a new wave of firms, investing what I call Precision Capital
- The Low Gravity Collaboration Layer Why the future of Enterprise Voice Collaboration will feel more like Superhuman than Slack
- Trend Following in Consumer Wellness We are living through a transformational cultural unbundling of consumer preferences driven by the rise of the wellness-driven consumer
- Uber and the Benefit of Building Social Capital Why Uber's growth can't sustain
- The At-Home Fitness Roll-up Why L Catterton could become the Vista of the fitness world
- The Future of the First Responder The themes and technologies driving the future of public safety
- The Steph Curry Fallacy In the same way that Steph Curry is “hurting the game of basketball”, Silicon Valley’s success is “hurting” nascent venture ecosystems around the globe.
Audio
I have had the chance to be a guest on a number of podcasts. Here are a couple that I think provide good context for the ideas I am working on and the investment areas I am excited about.
The Seedtable Podcast
Listen Notes | Apple | Tweet
Structural Shifts, by Aperture
Listen Notes | Apple | Tweet