BM post O2O

Is it faster to go from online to offline,
or from offline to online?

For a long time, the answer has been
going from online to offline.

That's because IT technology is not something
you can learn in the offline domain overnight,
no matter how hard you try.

Of course,
offline requires more upfront capital.
But even when offline fails,
inventory remains, so the risk is smaller than expected.
In fact, if cash flow is secured,
the efficiency relative to risk is higher.

However,
IT businesses have relatively very low upfront cost.
Literally, you only need labor cost.
But when they fail, nothing is left.
Only debt remains.
Despite that, the time to break-even is very long, the operating expenses are heavy,
efficiency is very low,
and there are so many variables that the interpretation of why something works or doesn't is also unclear.
So the hurdles to clear are higher than they seem.

Yet for an IT player who has reached the summit in spite of that,
for such a middleman,
they can literally manipulate offline as they wish.
The cash flow from earnings may be small,
but they unblock the channels along the path of offline users.


But the times have changed.

The hurdles that previously only specialized IT companies dared to attempt
have, through AI,
turned from unclimbable mountains
into hills that can sufficiently be crossed.


What's needed now isn't efficiency.
What matters is composing your own real, offline business
that is genuinely your own.