Naval argues that the locus of economic power has shifted: expensive software favored thin, horizontal best-of-breed stacks that extracted rents, but cheap software shifts value to vertically integrated, opinionated end-to-end businesses. As a result, the primary constraint becomes users' and partners' trust in those integrated providers.
Naval (tweeted July 23, 2026) argues that when software was expensive, thin, horizontal, best-of-breed software stacks captured rents across businesses.
and the bottleneck moves to trust
Naval (@naval)
When software was expensive - thin, horizontal, best-of-breed software stacks extracted rents across every business.
Now that software is cheap - value moves to vertically integrated businesses that deliver opinionated end-to-end experiences.
— https://nitter.net/naval/status/2080052566377763071#m