> There is, of course, the $178,000,000 we have sent to creators
This money wasn't sent to creators. They sold products worth $178M + Gumroad fees through the service. The creators made the products, marketed the products, acquired the customers, etc. When I use Paypal to sell something they aren't "sending me money".
When you sit down and think about it you start to realize just how “temporary” all these so-called unicorns are, as they are just middleware services with no real differentiating benefits other than size and brand recognition and maybe some vague “guarantee” to the customer. You’ve got to get big fast, because what you actually do is easily replicated.
Not really for Lyft/Uber, at not now that it's flat fee and ride pooling instead of a traditional per minute/mile fee structure. To achieve those thing efficiently you need data and until you get that data you're burning through a lot of money.
- scale
- brand
- customer loyalty
that's a lot of differentiation. more then 99% of the businesses in the world and more than even many public companies.
(especially once you add the power gained from aggregating demand and supply which most of these companies have)