Listen to this episode from Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy on Spotify. My guest today is Shishir Mehrotra and the topic of our conversation is the bundle: offering access to multiple products, services, or providers for a single bundled price. This topic is full of incorrect pre-conceived notions, and as it turns out, the bundle is one of the most powerful ideas in business. Properly harnessed it is good for everyone involved. Shishir explains the ins and outs of bundles in this conversation. Shishir ran product at YouTube for years and sits on the Spotify board of directors. He founded and now leads Coda (which is “A Doc” spelled backwards) in 2014, to bundle together productivity apps like docs, spreadsheets, databases, and applications. I love this wonky, detailed conversation which has me thinking differently about many businesses and business strategy. Please enjoy.   This episode is brought to by Koyfin.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:08) – (First question) – The arc of his career (3:32) – Why he has an interest in bundling (7:45) – The concepts of superfan, casualfan, and nonfan businesses (11:05) – Using Spotify as an example of bundles (13:24) – The first myth of bundling: Bundling is bad for consumers (17:53) – The second myth of bundling: 1st vs 3rd party providers and the bundlers (23:03) – Low usage but high Marginal Churn Contribution (MCC) business (24:26) – How insurance fits into these models   (26:37) – Myth 3 of bundling: How this impacts consumers (32:12) – How marginal costs play into the thinking of bundling (34:54) – Myth 4: Bundling things that have nothing to do with each other (39:51) – How bundling companies can apply this into their product development (43:21) – Strategic advice to companies building bundles (49:01) – How price and pricing power play into advantages for certain bundlers (54:16) – How does bundling play into his investing thesis (56:47) – Most interesting bundles he’s observed             (58:44) – Eigenquestions: The Art of Framing Problems (59:14) – What the future of this trend is (1:02:24) – What is an eigenquestion (1:06:29) – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

An interview with Coda founder Shishir Mehrotra about documents, go-to-market, and competing with Microsoft, plus bundling, Spotify, and Passport.

Shishir Mehrotra, Co-Founder and CEO of Coda, recently unpacked his thoughts on bundling in a writeup that combines mathematics and up-close examples to challenge common misconceptions about bundling (https://coda.io/@shishir/four-myths-of-bundling). He presents the four myths here in detail, and speaks on current bundles and what he believes bundles will look like in the future. He also discusses his experience with Microsoft and Youtube and the idea behind the name “Coda”. Shishir Mehrotra, Co-Founder and CEO, Coda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishirmehrotra/ Jeena James, VP of Developer Products, HeadSpin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeenajames/ In each HeadSpin Corner episode, our VP of Developer Products Jeena James talks to experts and thought leaders at HeadSpin and in the industry about what’s new in the testing community, the latest industry trends, how to achieve digital business success, and more. You can find more episodes here ➤ ➤ https://bit.ly/3bwrmHK ABOUT HEADSPIN HeadSpin is the world’s first Digital Experience AI Platform that combines cloud-hosted and on-prem global device infrastructure, test automation, and ML-driven performance & quality of experience analytics for mobile, web, audio, and video. HeadSpin empowers engineering, QA, operations, and product teams to assure optimal digital experiences across delivery channels throughout the development lifecycle. Learn more ➤ ➤ https://bit.ly/3eKVsJt 0:10 Tell us a bit more about yourself, what have you been up to, and an app you absolutely love now? 2:08 How has that [the journey starting a company, moving on to Microsoft, then Google, then starting a company again] been? Tell us a bit more about one thing you unlearned and one new thing you learned.  4:50 What gave you the idea of bundling? What was the opportunity that you saw that you felt you had to go deeper into this topic? Is there a body of work that is actionable? 12:08 4 Myths of Bundling 13:52 Terminology 14:10 (Myth 1) How does bundling produce value for both consumers and providers? 19:25 (Myth 2) How should revenue from bundles be allocated? 24:43 (Myth 3) What can we do to allow consumers to properly value a bundle? 28:47 (Myth 4) Are the best bundles narrow or diverse? 34:45 Recap of all 4 Myths 34:25 Did you look at why [Myth 4] is? Is it possible that the consumer is not a single consumer but a unit of consumers, so you are actually maximizing CasualFans hat can be CasualFans in a family or in a group of people consuming the same content? 36:43 What are your thoughts on Netflix in that case, where you do have profiles and you don’t have to necessarily pay for a single profile, you can have 5 profiles? Would you call that a bundle, or would that be in its own category? 41:56 How does bundling apply to a SaaS platform? Where have you seen [bundling] work very well? Where do you feel like people could have thought a little more while trying to bundle or show a la carte? 47:15 What will bundles look like in the future? 51:47 What are your thoughts on how Google and Apple’s been thinking about bundles (Apple Arcade, Google PlayPass, Google One)? Have there been massive or monumental shifts in [bundling] consumption with Shelter-in-Place and Work-from-Home going on? 55:48 What does Coda stand for?