If you found yourself in 2009 with the vision of one day dominating payments, where would you start? For most, I suspect it would be P2P payments or point-of-sale software or some other bits-based service with the conventional trappings of network effects, virality and scale. Square instead launched with what must have seemed the most […]
In some industries you will find one player that uniquely and above all peers excels at something that is foundational to excess returns, whether that be customer service, cost discipline, scale economies or product innovation. At times, you may find yourself thinking “I get it, X is a much better company than Y. But Y […]
Compared to the monolithic architectures of the on-premise world, cloud computing and the microservices paradigm accompanying it have given rise to more flexible and scalable applications. But those applications often run on complex distributed environments. A large company like Uber might be running thousands of microservices written in different languages, making it tough to track […]
You can think of Teladoc as a router for clinical care, receiving patients and connecting them to the right physicians. The doctors on Teladoc’s platform work as independent contractors and interact with members through: 1/ Teladoc’s app/website; 2/ CVS’ Pharmacy App, which white labels Teladoc’s technology; and 3/ hospitals/clinics, whose providers interact with patients remotely […]
I have a writeup on Teladoc (TDOC) coming next week but felt like throwing out some first impressions on the possibility of IAC acquiring Meredith. I don’t normally comment on rumors but I typed up some thoughts yesterday for my personal file and figured why not share. This past May, Meredith Corp. agreed sell its […]
From its origins as on-premise installations sold to CTOs, enterprise software has expanded to include to SaaS applications sold to business users and now to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) sold to developers. As I explained in my Okta post: Twenty years ago, it probably wouldn’t have made sense to fashion a whole company around, say, […]
Fiserv (FISV) Even as the largest merchant acquirer and issuer processor in the US, Fiserv is overlooked amid the fintech jubilee. You should read my 4 part post on merchant acquirers for more detail but to recap, a few years ago Fiserv and First Data merged in a $22bn all stock-deal. The combined business now […]
IQVIA is the product of a $23bn merger of equals between IMS Health and Quintiles Transnational. IMS sells access to the most comprehensive post-clinical data base in the healthcare industry. It sources over 1mn data feeds on 1bn patients through long-term contractual arrangements with >150k data suppliers, including physicians, labs, governments, patients, and health plans […]