This is borne out in my experience with a company that had moderate layoffs + completely replaced the executive team. Despite the gut renovation, the company didn't change much in practice because our core business model was the only thing that couldn't change. We just became more effective.
I worked at Google from 2010-2015. When I looked for another job, I wanted to avoid the thing that bothered me about working at a FAANG. I didn't have a clear understanding of how my contributions affected the bottom line. In fact, when I left, I asked a bunch of current employees the same question: "Did Google make money on my employment?" I got every answer you can imagine.
"Of course they did, you helped grow an ecosystem with network effects, so the value you added was intangible but incalculably large."
"Of course they didn't. You grew the output of a product that people can use for free, so your work was mostly a loss leader."
Anyways, when I looked for a new job, I had a simple requirement. I wanted to work for a business model that I wanted to improve. Etsy fit the bill. A marketplace for small businesses to sell unique goods. I could feel good about improving this business model: improving our top line meant that more small businesses got sales. I can live with that.
Flash forward a year, and Etsy was in serious trouble. Growth was decelerating. Our core product was neglected in favor of newer offerings that had a long way to go to get traction. So we had some major gut renovation: new CEO. New CTO. New CFO. Two rounds of layoffs. A bunch of people left because the culture was gone. You think to yourself, "OK, that's it, the foxes are in the henhouse. What's going to change?" And it turns out that you can't change that much! Our core business was to connect small businesses making special items to a global audience. So that's what the foxes had to work with: A two-sided marketplace where they needed to please both the existing sellers (so that they didn't just shut down their shop in favor of all of the other marketplaces they were using) and improve the site for our buyers. So they brushed the dust off of the core marketplace, assigned a bunch of people to focus on improving sales, and the results speak for themselves. Even ignoring Covid-related effects, our marketplace was healthier, growth was accelerating, and morale was up. And some of the people that left because it wasn't the same anymore? They came back. We have a lot of "boomerangs" from that era.
I like point of incentives that OP brought up, you can also see that in some things that Etsy sellers hate. For example, the people who made Etsy set the fees way too low. It's hard to walk that back. So you can see the executives try to find ways to bring the fees more in line with what Ebay or Amazon might get. The best they've come up with is improving an offering and restructuring the fees at the same time. "New: off-site ads are new and improved, and if you get a sale, we charge %12" type stuff. If you're a seller that's mad at Etsy, that's the kind of thing that you're going to complain about - us following our own incentives.
Based on a few years trying to drive this for a major high tech some time ago: The two sided markets are the holy grail if some managers are to believed. When you are The Market it can be pure gold. But if there are no barriers to entry it gets difficult. For small companies barriers to entry can be difficult. For large companies engineering them requires very careful consideration of anti-trust law. So starting small one can speculate on may dominate the market eventually but that takes a lot more stamina than most companies have. And some companies embark on this platform pathway as a way to avoid facing the troubles at their core. They start the journey not well provisioned and it does not end well.
I worked at Google from 2010-2015. When I looked for another job, I wanted to avoid the thing that bothered me about working at a FAANG. I didn't have a clear understanding of how my contributions affected the bottom line. In fact, when I left, I asked a bunch of current employees the same question: "Did Google make money on my employment?" I got every answer you can imagine.
"Of course they did, you helped grow an ecosystem with network effects, so the value you added was intangible but incalculably large."
"Of course they didn't. You grew the output of a product that people can use for free, so your work was mostly a loss leader."
Anyways, when I looked for a new job, I had a simple requirement. I wanted to work for a business model that I wanted to improve. Etsy fit the bill. A marketplace for small businesses to sell unique goods. I could feel good about improving this business model: improving our top line meant that more small businesses got sales. I can live with that.
Flash forward a year, and Etsy was in serious trouble. Growth was decelerating. Our core product was neglected in favor of newer offerings that had a long way to go to get traction. So we had some major gut renovation: new CEO. New CTO. New CFO. Two rounds of layoffs. A bunch of people left because the culture was gone. You think to yourself, "OK, that's it, the foxes are in the henhouse. What's going to change?" And it turns out that you can't change that much! Our core business was to connect small businesses making special items to a global audience. So that's what the foxes had to work with: A two-sided marketplace where they needed to please both the existing sellers (so that they didn't just shut down their shop in favor of all of the other marketplaces they were using) and improve the site for our buyers. So they brushed the dust off of the core marketplace, assigned a bunch of people to focus on improving sales, and the results speak for themselves. Even ignoring Covid-related effects, our marketplace was healthier, growth was accelerating, and morale was up. And some of the people that left because it wasn't the same anymore? They came back. We have a lot of "boomerangs" from that era.
I like point of incentives that OP brought up, you can also see that in some things that Etsy sellers hate. For example, the people who made Etsy set the fees way too low. It's hard to walk that back. So you can see the executives try to find ways to bring the fees more in line with what Ebay or Amazon might get. The best they've come up with is improving an offering and restructuring the fees at the same time. "New: off-site ads are new and improved, and if you get a sale, we charge %12" type stuff. If you're a seller that's mad at Etsy, that's the kind of thing that you're going to complain about - us following our own incentives.