Howard Schultz
Schultz didn’t build a coffee brand — he built a vertically owned cultural tollbooth.
Coffee
The drug the modern working day is built around.
- 2
- in business
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- average
- 21 min
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- across the network
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Starbucks
Howard Schultz · 1971
Starbucks is the world’s largest coffeehouse chain. It was founded in 1971 in Seattle as a coffee bean wholesaler. Howard Schultz transformed it into a company-owned coffeehouse chain serving espresso-based drinks. As of November 2022, it operated 35,711 stores in 80 countries. It held an IPO on June 26, 1992, raising $271 million to double its store count. It credits its growth to rejecting domestic franchising and positioning stores as social hubs — driving the second wave of coffee culture.
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Meituan
Wang Xing · 2010
Meituan is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Beijing that operates a platform for local services, including on‑demand food delivery, in‑store services, consumer reviews under Dazhong Dianping, hotel and travel bookings, and instant retail. It monetises through fees on its platform, taking a commission on food delivery orders and charging merchants for booking and in‑store services. Meituan’s rapid user growth is driven by its extensive coverage of local services, its integration of food delivery, in‑store services, and hotel bookings creating a one‑stop shop, and its large merchant base of 14.5 million active merchants providing network effects. Meituan faces regulatory scrutiny in China, its 2021 post by Wang Xing triggered a 7.1 % share plunge and anti‑monopoly investigation, and the company has been subject to scrutiny by Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. Meituan demonstrates the power of a diversified local‑services platform, its ability to scale across cities and internationally shows the importance of network effects, and its regulatory challenges highlight the need for compliance awareness. Meituan offers a case study in rapid scaling and diversification, but its regulatory risks caution investors.
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ABB
Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown · 1988
ABB is a post-merger industrial incumbent whose value lies in proven, regulated, physical infrastructure — not software, platforms, or scalability stories.
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AbbVie
AbbVie didn’t win the autoimmune market with science — it won with patents, pricing, and settlements.
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Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
ADNOC is expanding oil production while the rest of the industry retreats — not because it ignores climate change, but because it answers to no one but Abu Dhabi.