2025-01-02 · ESSAYS
Learnings from ByteDance
Translated by Claude from the Chinese original.
- No boundaries: The market is a company’s boundary; demand is a product’s boundary; impact is work’s boundary.
- Efficiency above all: The core of competition is ROI, not cost level.
- Look forward: Competition only drives up costs. Revenue doesn’t come from competitors—it comes from users.
- Escape gravity: Every company has a sphere of competence. If another company’s gravitational pull is stronger than yours, don’t operate within that sphere.
- Supply and demand are the core of markets: The happiest situation in business is when one group needs your resources, while another group is willing to provide other high-value resources to exchange for capabilities from you. That’s why multi-sided platforms beat two-sided ones, and two-sided platforms beat tools. A tool is merely a localized means to an end.
- Focus on facts: Fantasy doesn’t help reshape reality. Reality has evolved based on the laws of physics—it is necessarily rational.