NASDAQ 100
67 companies
Apple
Consumer Electronics / Technology
Apple defied every Silicon Valley orthodoxy - and captured 80% of smartphone industry profits with 25% market share. The lesson: boundaries aren't bar...
Netflix
Entertainment / Streaming
Netflix has died and been reborn three times - DVD rental (1997-2007), streaming service (2007-2013), global content studio (2013-present). Most compa...
Amazon
E-commerce & Cloud Computing
Amazon mastered what kills most companies: strategic reallocation across time horizons. From 1997-2000, Jeff Bezos executed the Pacific Salmon strateg...
Microsoft
Software & Cloud Computing
Microsoft's transformation under Satya Nadella represents one of the most successful metabolic pathway shifts in business history. By 2014, the compan...
Airbnb
Travel & Hospitality Technology
Airbnb's origin story reads like a case study in biological stress response. In September 2008, three founders had $5,000 in the bank, $20,000 in cred...
Intel
Semiconductor Manufacturing
Intel created the x86 architecture in 1978 and spent four decades running the Red Queen's race - investing $15-20 billion annually in R&D just to main...
Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC)
Semiconductor Manufacturing
TSMC didn't invent semiconductors - it invented trust at scale. When Morris Chang proposed a pure-play foundry in 1987, every major chip company rejec...
Shopify
E-commerce Platform & Technology
Shopify started when Tobias Lütke wanted to sell snowboards online and found every platform inadequate. So he built his own - then realized the infras...
Alphabet (Google)
Technology / Holding Company
Alphabet's 2015 restructuring promised moonshots at scale—autonomous vehicles, longevity research, delivery drones. Google would become a holding comp...
ASML Holding
Semiconductor Equipment
ASML holds a 100% monopoly on the machines that make modern computing possible - and impossibly expensive. The Dutch company's extreme ultraviolet (EU...
Bombardier
Aerospace
Canadian aerospace company that developed the C Series aircraft program before selling it to Airbus in 2018 for effectively zero dollars. The Bombardi...
Starbucks
Coffee Retail
Starbucks' Australian failure represents the definitive case study of the Phenotype Fallacy - copying the visible expression of success without unders...
Texas Instruments
Semiconductors
Texas Instruments made a decade-long bet on 300mm wafer manufacturing when competitors hesitated, investing $5-7 billion annually in fab capacity. The...
Zoom
Video Communications / SaaS
Eric Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 after leaving Cisco WebEx, detecting signals others missed: terrible video quality, desktop-first products in a mobile-...
Coinbase
Cryptocurrency
Coinbase doubled revenue to $6.6 billion in 2024 while transforming from pure transaction exchange to diversified infrastructure platform—a textbook c...
Costco
Retail / Warehouse Club
Costco disrupted retail not with technology or logistics, but with a $60 membership fee. When the company launched in 1983, conventional wisdom said t...
DoorDash
Food Delivery
DoorDash processed $80 billion in gross order value across 2.6 billion orders in 2024, generating $10.72 billion in revenue (up 24.2%) and its first a...
Intuit
Financial Software
Financial software company known for its innovative approach to failure through 'failure parties.' When a project is killed, the team throws a party t...
Nvidia Corporation
Semiconductors / AI Hardware
Nvidia briefly touched $4 trillion market capitalization in July 2025—the first company ever to reach this threshold—before settling at $4.4 trillion...
PayPal
Financial Technology / Payments
PayPal's story is about strategic focus under pressure. During the 2000 dot-com crash, the company demonstrated what biologists call 'shivering thermo...
Tesla
Automotive / Electric Vehicles
Tesla went all-in on battery electric vehicles in 2008 when every other automaker was hedging. That single strategic bet—choosing speed over optionali...
Unilever
Consumer Goods & FMCG
Unilever generated €60.8 billion revenue in 2024 ($65.7B USD), up 1.9% with 4.2% underlying sales growth driven by 2.9% volume increases across Person...
Adobe
Software/Design
Adobe spent $20 billion trying to acquire Figma in 2022 - the price of admitting that building browser-native design tools would cost more than buying...
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)
Semiconductors
AMD's stock was at $3 in 2014, its CPU architecture was failing, and extinction seemed inevitable. CEO Lisa Su made the ultimate company-betting decis...
Amgen
Biotechnology
Amgen's $33.4 billion revenue in 2024 surged 19% year-over-year, driven primarily by the $27.8 billion Horizon Therapeutics acquisition. The deal adde...
Applied Materials
Semiconductor Equipment
Applied Materials ships the machines that make the chips—$27.2 billion in equipment revenue for 2024, representing 73% from semiconductor systems. Thi...
ARM Holdings
Semiconductor IP/Technology Licensing
ARM Holdings designs the processor architecture used in 95% of smartphones, nearly all tablets, and billions of embedded devices. The company doesn't...
Atlassian
Collaboration Software
Atlassian provides collaboration software including Jira and Confluence. Platform economics create network effects within organizations with viral dis...
Autodesk
Design Software
Autodesk provides design software including AutoCAD and Revit. First-mover advantage in CAD with network effects through file format standards.
BigCommerce
E-commerce
E-commerce platform BigCommerce provides substrate like coral reef - merchants build stores on infrastructure, creating ecosystem where BigCommerce ex...
Block
Financial Technology
Block operates Square payment processing and Cash App peer-to-peer payments. Two-sided network effects with platform economics enabling cross-selling.
Booking Holdings
Online Travel
Booking Holdings operates online travel platforms including Booking.com and Priceline. Two-sided network effects where more properties attract more tr...
Box
Cloud Storage
Cloud storage Box competes through enterprise lock-in - workflow integrations act like parasitic roots, making extraction costly once embedded in IT i...
Broadcom
Semiconductors & Infrastructure Software
Broadcom's market capitalization crossed $1.5 trillion in late 2025—the biological equivalent of a blue whale achieving dominance through strategic ho...
Cadence Design Systems
Electronic Design Automation
EDA software simulating chip designs before fabrication—testing billions of transistor interactions virtually. Prevents silicon failures like termites...
Cisco
Technology / Networking
Cisco closed fiscal 2025 with $56.7 billion in revenue and a remarkable milestone: over 54% now comes from software and recurring subscriptions, up fr...
Cloudflare
Internet Infrastructure & Security
Cloudflare provides CDN, security, and edge computing services. Network effects where each new customer improves performance for all users with econom...
Confluent
Data Streaming
Confluent commercializes Kafka - event streaming that moves data between systems in real-time through distributed queues. Like mycorrhizal networks sh...
CrowdStrike
Cybersecurity
The July 2024 global outage—8.5 million Windows machines crashing simultaneously, $10 billion in customer losses—should have destroyed CrowdStrike. In...
Datadog
Cloud Monitoring & Analytics
Observability as sensory nervous system: Datadog's $3.3 billion 2025 revenue (28% year-over-year growth) comes from selling enterprises their own prop...
DocuSign
Digital Transaction Management
DocuSign provides electronic signature and digital transaction management. First-mover advantage in e-signature with network effects where each signed...
Dropbox
Cloud Storage
Scatters file fragments across data centers like squirrels cache nuts—redundant storage in multiple locations, reconstruction possible even when indiv...
Dynatrace
Observability
Distributed sensors monitor application health across cloud infrastructure—octopus-like nervous system for software, detecting performance anomalies a...
Elastic
Search and Analytics
Search and analytics engine built on Elasticsearch—distributed data indexing like cataloging library shelves. Open source core with commercial extensi...
Electronic Arts
Video Games
EA develops interactive entertainment including FIFA and Madden. Economies of scale in game development with network effects in multiplayer games.
Fastly
Cloud Infrastructure
Edge computing network caching content at geographic perimeters, reducing latency by storing copies near users like muscle cells stockpiling ATP for i...
Fortinet
Cybersecurity
Vertical integration through custom silicon: Fortinet's proprietary ASICs deliver 5-10x better firewall performance than competitors while reducing po...
Kraft Heinz
Packaged Foods
Kraft Heinz generated $25.8 billion revenue in 2024, down 3% with organic sales declining 2.1% as consumers shifted away from processed foods toward f...
Lululemon
Athletic Apparel
Lululemon creates premium athletic apparel through vertical integration and community building. Mutualistic networks with ambassadors and resource par...
Meta
Technology / Social Media
Meta exemplifies both the power and peril of thermal regulation at scale. Q3 2025 revenue hit $51.24 billion (up 26% year-over-year), demonstrating th...
Micron Technology
Semiconductors
Micron's $13.6 billion quarterly revenue in Q1 2026 (up 57% year-over-year) reveals what happens when commodity markets hit genuine scarcity. DRAM pri...
Mondelez International
Packaged Foods & Snacks
Mondelez International generated $36.4 billion revenue in 2024, up 1.2% with 4.3% organic growth across brands including Oreo, Cadbury, Milka, and Tob...
MongoDB
Database Software
MongoDB provides document-oriented database platform with flexible schemas. First-mover advantage in NoSQL databases with strong developer network eff...
Monster Beverage
Beverages
Monster Beverage capitalized on energy drink growth through Coca-Cola distribution partnership. Convergent evolution with Red Bull and mutualistic net...
Okta
Identity Management
Okta provides identity and access management with first-mover advantage in cloud-native identity. Platform economics through integration network.
Palo Alto Networks
Cybersecurity
Platform consolidation as predatory strategy: Palo Alto Networks roiled cybersecurity markets in 2024 by offering customers deferred payments to aband...
Qualcomm
Semiconductors
When mobile phones consumed too much power for x86 chips, Qualcomm's ARM-based processors filled an ecological niche Intel couldn't occupy. This is ad...
Roblox
Gaming Platform
Roblox operates gaming platform with multi-sided network effects. More players attract more developers in exponential feedback loops with platform eco...
Roku
Streaming Platform
Roku provides streaming platform with two-sided network effects. Platform economics create high-margin advertising with first-mover advantage.
ServiceNow
Enterprise Software
Market dominance through ecosystem entanglement: ServiceNow's 44.4% market share in IT service management isn't defended through product superiority a...
Synopsys
Electronic Design Automation
Synopsys doesn't manufacture chips—it creates the software that makes chip design possible. The company holds 38% of the $15 billion electronic design...
Ulta Beauty
Beauty Retail
Ulta Beauty's 2024-2025 performance demonstrates resource partitioning mastery—occupying the niche between Sephora's prestige-only model and mass reta...
VeriSign
Internet Infrastructure
VeriSign operates .com and .net domain registry with monopoly position. Extreme first-mover advantage with network effects from established standards.
Volvo
Commercial Vehicles & Equipment
Volvo Group's 2024 results—SEK 526.8 billion revenue with 12.5% adjusted operating margin and SEK 85.9 billion net cash—fund a phase transition most i...
Workday
Technology/Enterprise Software
The cloud HR company that turned a 7-year head start into a $70 billion business - then watched competitors converge on the same solution anyway. Fou...
Worldpay
Financial Technology
Payment processing and merchant services provider (part of FIS) handling card transactions, alternative payments, and omnichannel commerce solutions f...
Zscaler
Cloud Security
Zscaler operates cloud-native security platform for zero trust architecture. First-mover advantage in cloud security with network effects strengthenin...