For a few years in the 2010s my iPhone case had a yellow sticker with LOL written on it. I'd appeared at a conference with a woman from Buzzfeed, when Buzzfeed was the darling of media industry, whose business model suggested a way forward for news beyond the platforms; that's how long ago this was. Anyway, we were in the green room and she put some of their emoji stickers on a table and me and the rest of the people in the room descended on them, pretending we'd give them to our kids but knowing full well it was us, the ones who should know better, who wanted the association.
That was then. And Jen Topping has written a good bit on the meaning of Buzzfeed to today's media companies in her excellent Business of TV newsletter.
I'm wary of lessons, which is funny cos I was a teacher. But park that. I just think it's rare that the success or failure of one thing is directly useful with another thing to the extent that Thing 1 can be used as the model or proof of concept for Thing 2. Let's give this sceptism a name: the Drive to Survive of Everything, or something along those lines.
But this needs a slight clarification, to do with closeness. Drive to Survive itself was successful due to F1, Covid, America, drivers in helmets and probably a few other very specific factors. The further you move from that specificity the risk of failure rises quickly.
That said, this feels true in the YouTube era:
Firstly, and most obviously, be wary of investing and building a business based on any sort of assumption that a tech company’s strategy will remain the same, or that they will remain aligned with the success of your business.