Prediction
Hit
More companies will move treasury into Bitcoin within a year
Shaan predicts that beyond Square, PayPal, and Tesla's $1.5B buy, more companies will take 6 months to a year to move a portion of their treasury reserves into Bitcoin as long-term holders, letting retail investors front-run the institutions.
“It's likely that there are more companies out there, and it'll take them 6 months to a year to make this move, but they will take a portion of their treasury reserves and they'll move it into Bitcoin. And these are long-term holders. These are not retail day traders”
Number
FastBite delivered food in 7 minutes when the industry average was 80
Avlok Kohli's FastBite hit a 7-minute average delivery time by having a driver circle with a few pre-made items in the trunk, versus an industry average of 80 minutes — an order of magnitude faster, which is why Square acquired it.
$7
Average food delivery time · minutes
“Yeah, and it was magical because back then the average delivery time was 80 minutes, you know, and our average delivery time for Fastbite was 7 minutes. So we were literally an order of magnitude better.”
Framework
Innovation is removing steps — the company absorbs the complexity
Avlok's definition of innovation: take away steps for the customer and you've made something magical. When Square launched the dongle, it removed the credit checks and paper forms a merchant faced — those steps didn't vanish, they moved to Square, which used software to handle them (per Jim McKelvey's 'The Innovation Stack').
“And by the way, that is innovation, right? Innovation is let's take away some of the steps and boom, you've got something magical. You know, just using an example from Square, when Square launched payments with a little dongle, the real innovation there was that they removed all of the steps that a merchant would have to go through to start accepting payments.”
Steal thisTo innovate, list every step your customer endures and delete the most painful ones — then build software so your company eats that complexity instead.
Framework
Idea sex and monetizing the bottom third (like Square did)
Altucher's idea-generation method combines concepts from two unrelated industries ('idea sex'). His current target is monetizing the bottom third of a sector the way Square let mom-and-pop stores accept credit cards, turning it into a roughly $12B company.
“Square is a great example. Square took the mom-and-pop store that couldn't accept credit cards because no bank would trust them, and Square enabled them to accept credit cards. So Square's the only company in the world that does that, and they became, I don't know, a $12 billion company because they were able to monetize the bottom third of, you know, mom-and-pop retail stores.”
Steal thisTo build a billion-dollar company, find the underserved bottom third of an industry and let them collect money.
Tactic
Validate demand by taking a real credit card on the spot
Instead of asking whether people liked the idea, the founders pulled up Square and charged real money the moment someone said they'd sign up. They hit ~70 paying accounts before they'd built anything, proving demand was real rather than polite.
“And he was like, well, I have Square on my phone. I can just take a credit card right now. Yeah. Let's see if this is real or if this is Polite. Exactly right. And so I think we got to like 70 accounts and then we're like, holy moly, now we actually have to ship something.”
Steal thisTest demand by charging real money immediately — pull up a card reader and take the payment before you build the product, to separate real intent from politeness.