While much has been written about the rise in fintech innovation, it’s the steps taken by at-scale commerce platforms (Square’s acquisition of Afterpay, PayPal’s recent acquisition spree, and Apple’s continued foray into financial services) that frame a broader trend.

Link: https://commercevc.medium.com/introducing-the-great-american-super-app-e2ea8c01c22c

China is both a large and a fast-growing retail market—worth about $5 trillion in 2020—and highly digitized.

Link: https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2021/09/how-chinese-retailers-are-reinventing-the-customer-journey

As Mark Twain never said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. I used to get so many pitches from startups eager to knock PC gaming powerhouse Steam off its block, that in 2018 I wrote one big standard response called So You Want to Compete with Steam, with a follow-up a year later.

Link: https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-roblox/