Molson Hart

There are also chain restaurants that do well, though it's worth mentioning they're both tough industries. Yes, they have a scale advantage and a brand advantage, but they're much weaker than claimed. Their tech advantage is almost non-existent. /end

Thanks for your thoughtful response! I think the big delta in our views is value of scale. I posit it's the most defensible source of moat+manifests in many advantages WW can enjoy. Some smart folks will agree w/me on scale and some like you will disagree. Time will tell. :)

Man, if that's your final response, I'm calling it a cop-out. If you can't explain why scale is going to deliver returns, it ain't!

it's more of a Quora-length response (and my 3 year old needs to go to the park...) but here are some thoughts:

Massive brand advantage. They can pay much less for a Google PPC than peers. Big CAC advantage. Scale gives them leverage over suppliers which means better lease terms (many layers here but don't have time or expertise to give the dissertation this one deserves).

Their scale (and growth) also gives them an advantage in much lower capital vs peers. Scale (and actually understanding how to develop software) give them massive edge in technology. This is the point I've most avoided b/c it's nuanced...

If there's one lesson from the past 20 years of tech it's the compounding value of writing good software. Paul Graham and many others have done it better than I can ever. My favorite example is Mailchimp...

Mailchimp has never had any radical tech, just good software that's gotten a little better every few months for 15 or so years. https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/13/mailchimps-ben-chestnut-on-bootstrapping-a-startup-to-700m-in-revenue/ …