yesyes.
nono.
I finally got to writing my essay on consolidation, how to go about it, opportunities, threats and full stack washing.
Full what?
Yes.
There’s an ant I met during my evening stroll. And how the autumn colours of Haru’s fur ended up in This Hollow Earth’s colour palette.
innovation is fast, adoption is slow.
innovation is fast, adoption is slow.
innovation is fast, adoption is slow.
innovation is fast, adoption is slow.
Consolidation and the perils of full stack washing
Here’s the sector’s consolidation playbook for environmental service providers. Raw and unpolished.
Hype copy:
“Environmental data providers love to sell ‘end-to-end’. Few actually deliver it. I call it full-stack washing. It’s inevitable in a new market, and it will spoil that market if nobody fixes it.
The essay is about why environmental service providers should consolidate around cycles and chains, not vertical and horizontal lines. And the case against full-stack washing.
Short version: find the cycles and chains in your market, know your place in them, close the loops, fill the gaps. Be at the table, else you’re on the menu. You choose.”
Enjoy and let me know what you think.
Haru, seconds after coining the term “Full Stack Washing” in the weekly marketing meeting
First feedback: people want me to elaborate on what possible winning solutions look like, and how. And to give existing examples of parties that consolidated and own one or more cycles.
Will do.
an evening stroll
I was walking my dog the other day when we ran into the ant
“Good morning ant”, I said
“Good morning”, the ant said
“Good morning”, I said
“Good morning”, the ant sighed
“Are you okay?”, I asked
“Guess so”, the ant said
“You guess so?”
“Yeah, well, euhm, you see”, the ant hesitated, “the thing is … It’s …”
“I see”, I said, “it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me”
“No. No!”, the ant exclaimed, “I want to tell you. It’s just …”
“No worries ant”, I said, “no worries”
I nodded to the ant and walked on.
“It’s the colony!”, the ant said, “I woke up, and they were all gone, they left me”
“They left him”, I thought
“Drunk and alone”, I thought
I created a colour palette for my design system based on Haru’s fur.
So I can create graphs like these:
More on my design system, example graphs and maps in my latest tech note. You can also read about my homeserver and how I recovered files from an encrypted NVMe SSD disk from a dead laptop.
Data supply chain
While writing the consolidation essay, I thought a lot about data supply chains. What they look like, how they work, how they should work and how thinking about your role in the data supply chain creates opportunities. Consolidation opportunities. But also moat opportunities, or, what is your Unique Selling Point? What is the thing that is hard to copy? Why do your clients buy stuff from you?
To lift the veil a little: when Aravind posted on the $730M Vexcel acquisition by CoStar group and noted in a PS that “I think there are 3 geospatial moats in the age of AI: access to proprietary data, long-term customer relationships and deep domain expertise. This is the first kind.”, I elaborated with:
“2 things:
1: Remove geospatial and it still holds
2: Access to proprietary data = first mile
Deep domain expertise = last mile
Those (first mile and last mile) will always be difficult. The rest of the data supply chain will be automated.
An overlooked (4th?) moat is verification: provide evidence of epistemic, quality, lineage and governance integrity of data.
Verification: a cross cutting trust layer.
No decision will be made based on unverified data.”
No decision will be made based on unverified data
Next essay is about data supply chains. Let me know if you have specific requests or questions about this topic and I will take those into consideration.
haha