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The Brand Age

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Brand Age

#11

Post by fragmede »

7777777phil wrote: post #5

Nike is a useful test case (1) here. Brand was the whole competitive moat for them and once athletic gear commoditized, then management spent five years cutting the things that sustain it: athlete relationships, premium positioning, product development. Each cut looked (somewhat) rational on its own but none of them were, taken together. (1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-economi... EDIT: Neverm…

The question is, in this new software world order, how much do brands matter vs what they've done vs network effects. I could have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter clone, or an Uber clone, and have none of the baggage of Cambridge Analytica, being owned by Elon Musk, or Travis kalanick of Greyball and S. Fowler legacy. An Uber driver-turned-dev could easily stand up a competitor and give way more money to the drivers simply by not having the overhead that Uber has with lawyers and executive salaries in this age of ChatGPT. Drivers will go to where there's riders and money, and riders will go to where there's drivers and cheaper rides. (and no drivers.) If someone needs an app idea to work on, it's the incumbents, without the suck. Facebook without "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."

Because looking at Truth Social and Gab, people do adopt brands as part of their identity; and Uber but for drivers, or Facebook, without the spying, are trivial to make the software side of things on now. The fact that we haven't seen a dozen Uber competitors spring up is a testament to the fact that branding is a helluva moat. It's impossible to put a dollar value on it, but ChatGPT has no moat, except that it's Chat-fucking-GPT. The original chatbot and no matter how good Claude gets, it'll never be the original.

Re: The Brand Age

#12

Post by stackghost »

7777777phil wrote: post #5

Nike is a useful test case (1) here. Brand was the whole competitive moat for them and once athletic gear commoditized, then management spent five years cutting the things that sustain it: athlete relationships, premium positioning, product development. Each cut looked (somewhat) rational on its own but none of them were, taken together. (1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-economi... EDIT: Neverm…

[dead]

Re: The Brand Age

#13

Post by observationist »

bogardon wrote: post #9

Is it just me or are an increasing number of (high profile) people in the tech industry into luxury watches these days?

Status games are evergreen, and a lot of conspicuous consumption has fallen out of fashion. They've gotta flaunt their wealth and position somehow, and lambos are just too crypto-bro and gauche.

It's also a sales tactic - a watch can be a schelling point if you're looking to network with someone who's into it.

Re: The Brand Age

#14

Post by jgrahamc »

"Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list."

Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury" brands like Louis Vuitton. Why bother?

PS I'll stick to my Casios: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/06/the-discreet-charm-of-infrastru...

Re: The Brand Age

#15

Post by nadis »

> "Brand is what's left when the substantive differences between products disappear. But making the substantive differences between products disappear is what technology naturally tends to do. So what happened to the Swiss watch industry is not merely an interesting outlier. It's very much a story of our times."

Really interesting parallel between decidedly traditional technology and today.

Re: The Brand Age

#16

Post by fragmede »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #7

His point of Omega doubling-down on the things that would progressively harder to establish a moat on made me think about what we have been seeing with higher ed. It seems the "smart ones" definitely read the book that making the "education better," in a world where it is mostly free, was a fool's errand, and now the margins that they all compete it stray far, far away from the quality of the schooling. I work in K-1…

The something that happened was ChatGPT. Enough commenters didn't like the idea that everything they write publicly online is fed in as training data for AI that there's been a shift in this site's community. That, and everyone got laid off, either for section 174 or AI reasons, but Twitter employees are no longer collecting that fast paycheck and posting here. I'm sure a data scientist could make a good analysis of if what I'm saying is backed by actual data, but that's my feel based on spending more time on here than is healthy.

Re: The Brand Age

#17

Post by mrexcess »

bogardon wrote: post #9

Is it just me or are an increasing number of (high profile) people in the tech industry into luxury watches these days?

Anecdotally, in the trenches, I'm seeing a proliferation of Casio F-91w and AE-1200s. Maybe a counter response, lol.

Re: The Brand Age

#18

Post by mikestew »

busterarm wrote: post #4

I can't respond to tzury's comment because it's already flagged and dead but I honestly don't think that's quite fair on this board. The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong. It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other si…

The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like…

First off, you might be right for some small number of cases, but I’d flag any and all rants such as this, regardless of the target. Off-topic, and doesn’t contribute to the conversation.

Second, for those as you describe, when they go off on an off-topic rant about DHH, someone else will conveniently flag it.

Re: The Brand Age

#19

Post by stronglikedan »

jgrahamc wrote: post #14

" Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list. " Strange game, the only winning move is not to play. I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury"…

> Why bother?

ego, of course

Re: The Brand Age

#20

Post by kridsdale1 »

fragmede wrote: post #11
7777777phil wrote: post #5

Nike is a useful test case (1) here. Brand was the whole competitive moat for them and once athletic gear commoditized, then management spent five years cutting the things that sustain it: athlete relationships, premium positioning, product development. Each cut looked (somewhat) rational on its own but none of them were, taken together. (1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-economi... EDIT: Neverm…

The question is, in this new software world order, how much do brands matter vs what they've done vs network effects. I could have Claude code shit out a Facebook or Twitter clone, or an Uber clone, and have none of the baggage of Cambridge Analytica, being owned by Elon Musk, or Travis kalanick of Greyball and S. Fowler legacy. An Uber driver-turned-dev could easily stand up a competitor and give way more money to t…

(I look over to the Coca-Cola Classic on my table that I picked because my taste buds prefer the classic brand)
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