Tesla's Network Capitalism

Mike Maples explains how Tesla represents a shift from industrial capitalism to network capitalism.

"What is Tesla really? Tesla is a car company that's animated by network capitalism, not industrial capitalism. It's a software-defined car that's updated over the air, leverages machine learning, and leverages network effects with all the sensors in the network to help it self-drive better.

This is in contrast to companies like Nokia, which thought 'we need to sell the best widget.' In sector after sector of our economy, the software-defined network-centric companies at their core are going to keep winning. They're going to keep displacing companies that think of computers as just the thing that makes their industrial processes go faster.

For example, Burger King isn't a software-defined network even though it has computers. It uses computers to track how many hamburgers it sold today, but it doesn't use computers to reinvent food in any fundamental way. The companies we're investing in are leveraging network capitalism to reimagine and reinvent markets from the beginning."