The eight step process in which startups go through to become these monopolies.
1️⃣ Market Domination Starts With Focus
Before growth, before funding, deciding which battlefield you intend to own is by far the most crucial element to being able to build a monopoly in the long run. Monopoly power begins with extreme focus, dominating a narrow market so completely that expansion becomes inevitable and somewhat seamless.
Example: Airbnb didn’t try to fix all of travel. Brian Chesky focused on one overlooked problem: affordable, bookable stays during peak events. Only after winning that niche did Airbnb scale outward.
2️⃣ Build Structural Advantage
Winning isn’t necessarily always about being better, it tends to be about being how hard you are to replace. Structural advantages create barriers competitors can’t easily overcome, from network effects to proprietary distribution. This is often referred to as “barriers to entry” in economic, and it essentially focuses on the crux of entry, and proves that a competitive edge shoudln’t necessarily aim to be quick and cheap, instead the latter if possible.
Example: Facebook’s growth fed itself. Each new user increased the platform’s value, creating a moat that made alternatives increasingly irrelevant.
3️⃣ Own the Customer Experience
Control comes from owning every meaningful interaction. Great founders don’t aim to outsource experience, they design it end to end, removing friction until the product feels inevitable. This is one of the lessons Brian Chesky learnt and emphasises a lot as “do things that don’t scale”
Example: Uber didn’t win on pricing alone. It won by making transportation reliable, predictable, and effortless — locking users into a superior default.
4️⃣ Engineer Lock-In
The strongest companies don’t focus on simply chasing attention, they earn dependence. Lock-in isn’t manipulation; it’s delivering so much embedded value that leaving feels irrational.
Example: Slack became the nervous system of modern teams. Conversations, integrations, and institutional memory made switching costly and disruptive.
5️⃣ Exploit Network Effects
Monopolies compound as time goes by, especially when we implement the points beforehand such as caring for client experience heavily X whilst building a sense of indirect lock-in. When each new user increases value for the next, growth accelerates without proportional effort.
Example: Airbnb’s host & guest loop reinforced itself. More hosts attracted more guests, which attracted more hosts a flywheel Chesky scaled intentionally.
6️⃣ Scale With Precision
Dominance isn’t built by scaling fast but instead it is built by growing deliberately. The best founders scale where control increases, not where chaos follows as this can be deemed as simply disruptive, but in the negative sense.
Example: Stripe ignored mass merchants early on, choosing developers instead. That focus secured infrastructure-level, allowing for a sense of dominance before broader expansion.
7️⃣ Define the Rules of the Game
True power emerges when you change the definition of success. Monopoly builders don’t compete within markets they aim to genuinely reshape the market into ways in which they desire to dominate with.
Example: Tesla didn’t just sell electric cars. Elon Musk redefined what EVs should be — performance, software, and infrastructure — forcing the industry to adapt. As well as publishing articles including every step within the process to build their EVs as they realised the market required some traction and this would gain attention and insights.
8️⃣ Protect and Extend the Moat
Dominance isn’t static. Monopoly founders constantly reinforce their position, extending moats faster than competitors can close them, meaning they’re always somewhat ahead, especially when things get exhausting.
Example: Amazon never stood still. Bezos expanded logistics, Prime, and fulfillment in parallel, making Amazon increasingly difficult to challenge at any layer.
