Tech Business
How Salesforce Makes Money: The Enterprise Blueprint
How Salesforce makes money: $39.4B of FY2026's $41.5B is subscriptions, locked by $72.4B of contracted RPO and sold by a $14.3B sales machine.
Colson
Articles by Colson
SaaS Economics
Product-Led vs Sales-Led Growth: The Economics
Product-led vs sales-led growth is a cost structure, not a philosophy. Salesforce spends 34.5% of revenue on sales, Atlassian 21.8%. The 10-Ks explain why.
Tech Business
How Stripe Makes Money: The Payments Take Rate
How Stripe makes money: the 2.9% + 30¢ headline is a collection number. See the take-rate waterfall, what interchange takes, and the thin spread left.
SaaS Economics
SaaS Pricing Tiers: How to Design the Ladder
SaaS pricing tiers, decoded: 2026 price cards from Slack, Notion, Figma and Claude, computed step ratios, fencing rules and the anchor-tier evidence.
SaaS Economics
Cloud Cost Economics: Why Your Bill Explodes
Cloud cost economics, decoded: why $0.09/GB egress, cross-AZ fees, and idle capacity inflate the bill, and which levers actually cut it. Filing-cited.
Tech Business
How Reddit Makes Money (and the AI Data Deals)
The Reddit business model runs on ads plus AI data licensing. See how a $2.2B ad engine and AI data deals reprice the whole company, read through its filings.
Market Maps
The Bundling Playbook: How Tech Giants Win
Bundling strategy for tech giants turns distribution into pricing power and switching costs. See how M365, Prime, Apple One, and Workspace starve rivals.
SaaS Economics
SaaS Valuation Multiples: What Drives the Number
SaaS valuation multiples price growth durability, not current revenue. See how growth, NRR, gross margin, Rule of 40, and rates move the multiple.
Tech Business
How Palantir Makes Money: Government and AIP
Palantir's business model spans government and commercial AI platforms. See how a $4.48B, 82%-margin machine funds the AIP bet, read through the filings.
Tech Business
How Airbnb Makes Money: The Marketplace Model
How Airbnb makes money: the marketplace business model revenue take-rate that turns $91.3B of bookings into 83% gross margin and $4.6B free cash flow.
SaaS Economics
Vertical SaaS: Why Niche Software Wins
Vertical SaaS fintech revenue is the second engine that beats the TAM ceiling. See how Toast, Procore, and ServiceTitan turn niche software into payments scale.
Tech Business
How Shopify Makes Money: The Take-Rate Engine
How Shopify makes money: the take-rate engine behind merchant solutions, why payments now drive 73% of revenue, and the margin question, read through the 10-K.
Market Maps
AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: The Cloud Wars
AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud market dominance: how a three-way cloud infrastructure oligopoly splits share, growth, and margin, read through the filings.
Tech Business
How Uber Makes Money After Years of Losses
The Uber business model and profitability, read through its filings: a 26.9% take rate on $193B bookings, $9.8B free cash flow, and the take-rate ceiling.
Tech Business
How Spotify Makes Money (and Finally Profits)
How Spotify makes money: a thin music-streaming margin widened by price hikes, ads, and audiobooks into €2.2B FY2025 operating profit, read through filings.
SaaS Economics
AI Is Breaking Per-Seat SaaS Pricing
AI is breaking per-seat SaaS pricing. See how consumption and outcome pricing re-rate SaaS revenue, with cited 2024-2026 vendor terms and a shift map.
SaaS Economics
Burn Multiple: The Efficiency Metric That Matters
Burn Multiple: The Efficiency Metric That Matters. How much cash you burn per dollar of new ARR, the benchmark bands, and why it beat growth-at-all-costs.
Tech Business
Microsoft and OpenAI: The Economics of the Deal
Microsoft OpenAI deal economics, decoded from the filings: how much cash actually left, what recirculates as Azure revenue, the 27% stake, and the $38B cap.
Market Maps
The AI CapEx Arms Race: Who Is Spending What
The AI capex arms race 2026 has four hyperscalers guiding ~$725B in spend. See who spends what, and why depreciation is the real story below the headline.
FAANG Strategy
NVIDIA: How the AI Chip Leader Makes Money
NVIDIA data center revenue gross margin AI infrastructure decoded: ~75% margins, 90% from one segment, and the customer concentration that makes it fragile.
Tech Business
Open Source Business Models That Actually Work
Open source business models that actually make money: managed hosting, open-core, and support. The patterns that work, read through SEC filings.
Market Maps
The AI Infrastructure Market Map
The AI Infrastructure Market Map reads the stack through 2026 filings: chips, capacity, model labs, apps. Value concentrates where supply is scarce.
SaaS Economics
Free Trial Activation and SaaS Growth
Free trial activation, not signups, drives SaaS growth. Activated trials convert at 35-65%; unactivated at 2-8%. The funnel framework and benchmarks.
SaaS Economics
Why SaaS Gross Margin Is Destiny
SaaS gross margin sets the ceiling on CAC payback, R&D budget, free cash flow, and valuation. See why 80% vs 55% margin builds two different companies.
SaaS Economics
Usage-Based Pricing vs Seat-Based Pricing
Usage-based pricing vs seat-based pricing: one lifts net revenue retention through expansion, the other buys forecast predictability. A strategy call, not billing.
SaaS Economics
LTV Models: Where Founders Lie to Themselves
The LTV lifetime value formula founders use in SaaS inflates the number with blended churn, revenue instead of gross profit, and an infinite horizon. Fix all three.
SaaS Economics
CAC Payback Period: The SaaS Metric That Matters
CAC payback period is the SaaS metric that matters most: months of gross profit to earn back a customer. Benchmarks, the gross-margin lever, and a payback ladder.
IPO & M&A
Strategic Acquisitions vs Product Tuck-Ins
Strategic acquisitions vs product tuck-ins: a deal buys a market or a feature, and pricing them the same is how acquirers overpay. A fit matrix and real deals.
IPO & M&A
AI Startup Valuation: Cost Structure Matters
AI startup valuation turns on cost structure: gross margin, inference compute, and who controls the cost floor. Why software multiples meet utility economics.
IPO & M&A
How to Analyze a SaaS IPO
How to analyze a SaaS IPO: score growth quality, retention, the path to profit, and valuation with a 5-test scorecard built from real S-1 filings.
SaaS Economics
Rule of 40: What It Actually Tells You
The Rule of 40 SaaS metric forces growth and profit into one number. Read what a 42 actually tells you (and what it hides) through real 10-K filings.
IPO & M&A
Customer Concentration Risk in SaaS Filings
Customer concentration risk in SaaS hides in two quiet places in every filing. Here's how to size it, where it detonates, and the checklist to read it.
IPO & M&A
Stock-Based Compensation in Tech IPOs
Stock-based compensation in tech IPOs is the largest non-GAAP add-back. Read it as dilution, not a freebie, with cited S-1 and 10-K figures.
SaaS Economics
Gross Retention vs Net Retention in SaaS IPOs
Gross retention vs net retention in SaaS IPOs: NRR sells the growth story, GRR shows the foundation. Read both, and watch which one a filing hides.
IPO & M&A
How to Read a Tech S-1 Like an Operator
How to read a tech S-1 like an operator: skip the narrative, go straight to revenue mix, retention, SBC, and customer concentration. A read-order scorecard.
Tech Business
Netflix vs YouTube: The Real Competition
Netflix vs YouTube competition in television advertising streaming: who wins the living-room screen and the ad dollar, read through both companies' filings.
Market Maps
AWS Margin Compression and the Cloud Reset
AWS margin compression is real: revenue grew 20% but operating income only 14% in FY2025. Read the cloud reset and AI capex squeeze from the 10-K.
FAANG Strategy
Apple's App Store Economics Under Pressure
Apple App Store commission economics face the EU DMA, Epic, and DOJ. How regulation is rewriting the highest-margin slice of Apple Services, via the filings.
FAANG Strategy
Google Search AI Overviews: The Tradeoff
The Google AI Overviews monetization tradeoff in numbers: 58% fewer publisher clicks against 19% Search growth in Q1 2026. Who actually pays.
FAANG Strategy
Microsoft Copilot and Enterprise Lock-In
Microsoft Copilot enterprise lock-in strategy, read through the filings: how Copilot attaches to Windows, M365, Teams, Azure, and GitHub to raise switching costs.
Tech Business
Netflix Ad-Supported Tier: Why It Changes Everything
The Netflix ad-supported tier isn't a discount: it's a margin-and-TAM play adding a second revenue stream per member. Read Netflix's own filings.
Market Maps
Amazon Prime and the Subscription Flywheel
The Amazon Prime subscription flywheel: how a $49.6B fee buys frequency that monetizes through seller fees and ads, read through Amazon's filings.
SaaS Economics
Apple Services Revenue Margin: The Engine Inside iPhone
Apple Services revenue margin is 75.4%, turning a quarter of sales into 42% of gross profit. Read the margin engine through Apple's own FY2025 10-K.
IPO & M&A
Meta's Open-Source AI Strategy Explained
Meta's open-source AI strategy commoditizes the model layer, funded by a ~$200B ad engine. The full play, read through Meta's own SEC filings.
FAANG Strategy
Google's AI Strategy Is a Distribution War
Google's AI strategy isn't a better model, it's distribution: Search, Chrome, Android, Cloud. Read the playbook through Alphabet's filings and capex.