![lag time local by flywheel onlne lag time local by flywheel onlne](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/5f/1a/97/5f1a971c12c97d0aef25d844e447e4c5.jpg)
However, three recent thing pushed me over the edge to write something about ANGI: Long time readers will know that IAC is one of my favorite companies (I've probably written about them more than any company outside of the Liberty complex) and I follow everything they do closely. I've been thinking about writing up ANGI for a while now (I even briefly mentioned them as one of my big losers last year and why I thought they were showing signs of being a real winner despite a rocky start). More than any other company, IAC has probably done the most to educate investors on the benefits of these flywheels and how profitable they can be (between their investments / spinoffs of MTCH, TREE, EXPE, etc.), which makes it ironic that IAC's largest asset, ANGI, is almost certainly currently undergoing such a virtuous cycle and investors could not care less. Investors today know that buying a marketplace as it gets its virtuous flywheel going can result in huge gains. There are plenty of recent success stories in the marketplace business: ETSY (stock up >6x over the past 3 years), GRUB (acquired after a bidding war earlier this year) Zillow (stock an absolute rocketship as iBuying gains legs), and plenty of others. Even when that fails, often a marketplace can prove an interesting strategic acquisition for a larger competitor because they own the top of the funnel / a lot of demand that can be really valuable to another business. Then, their profitably can inflect upwards massively and all of the sudden the stock looks dramatically cheap (this is basically describing t he flywheel effect, made probably most famous by Jeff Bezos' description of Amazon's flywheel in Everything Store). Marketplaces realize scale economics very quickly, so these companies can look extremely expensive for years until they finally hit scale.
![lag time local by flywheel onlne lag time local by flywheel onlne](https://sc01.alicdn.com/kf/Hffdfd79dd9cb462990d60da587c5e17d2/200623145/Hffdfd79dd9cb462990d60da587c5e17d2.jpg)
Have there been other lessons to be learned in the past year? Sure, though honestly those other lessons are both more difficult and less profitable than that first lesson.Īmong those other lessons has been that buying emerging marketplace companies before their moat becomes clear can be very profitable. If the past few years have taught investors anything, it's one simple rule: buy pre-deal SPACs, pray that they announce a merger with anything that can vaguely be construed as an electric vehicle company, and profit.