Technology Value Chain

How apps are delivered

Technologies don’t exist in a vacuum.

In order to deliver apps, you chain tech components together (in a “value chain”) to build them. Some of these, like electricity, are commoditized, meaning they’re cheap and highly available. Others, like cloud services, are productized - cheaper than you can build yourself and not core to your value proposition. Still, others, like a proprietary compression algorithm, are “secret sauce” and must be coded by you.

The law of complements

One of the most fundamental laws of technology microeconomics is that increases in the supply of one technology drop the unit price of that technology, which then causes the value of related technologies to increase. ...