When the internet first arrived, no one could define its total addressable market. The concept of e-commerce felt like the wild west. Websites were clunky, shoppers wanted to see what they were buying and honestly, could you really trust a website with your credit card? Yet today, e-commerce is ubiquitous (just ask my monthly Amazon bill), it represents the fastest growing segment of commerce and has redefined how we buy nearly everything.

That transformation wasn’t just about the internet, it was about enabling technologies. PayPal, for example, made it feel safe to transact online. Once that psychological and technical barrier fell, behavior changed. Some behaviors that once felt completely foreign, like buying groceries or furniture online, are now part of our daily lives. Convenience and reduced friction created confidence, and that confidence expanded the market. Now it's hard to imagine a world where these conveniences don't exist.

Two years ago, what was the TAM of a “coding agent”? Essentially zero. Now, with tools like Cursor and Replit Agents, you can build and deploy a website for next to nothing. The same goes for driverless cars. Who could define the TAM of robotaxis before they actually existed? Yet last week, I took a Waymo ride that was not only safer, but a smoother, more reliable experience than most Uber rides I’ve had. Plus the kids friggin' love it.

Markets don’t just shift, they expand when the right tools and user experience are offered. The pie grows when friction disappears.

The Next Expansion

That’s exactly what we’re building toward with LedeWire and why we think this new tool we've built is going to be so valuable. Think of how many transactions are lost every day because a reader hits a paywall and walks away. They're not abandoning your story because they didn’t value the work you put in, but because the commitment felt too high or the process too clunky. And the unfortunate part of that story is that a potential sale and introduction to a new reader was most likely lost forever.

We’re not just talking about a more efficient checkout flow, we’re talking about enabling behavioral change. When readers can access a single article or video instantly, without commitment or friction, curiosity takes over. The same curiosity that made e-commerce explode, the impulse to explore, to look for the right item (be it a new t-shirt or a story about a topic of interest), becomes the growth engine.

Ease of use is what expands markets. Just as “one-click checkout” unlocked trillions in commerce, seamless access to information can unlock enormous latent demand for quality journalism and storytelling. And in the process you've reached a new reader, maybe for the first time, and convinced them that you are a credible voice that's worth listening to.

This doesn’t replace subscriptions or long-term relationships, it fosters and amplifies them. By meeting readers in the moment when they’re actively seeking your insight, you remove the psychological friction that blocks connection. And when the product (your content) consistently delivers value, readers will come back, again and again, with trust already established. And they can then more freely share your work with friends that they also know are interested (we've got lots of data saying most readers won't even bother sharing articles if they are locked behind a subscribe only paywall). Ultimately we believe this frees writers to focus purely on the quality of their work, and in the long run will help grow your paying subscriber base.

That’s how the pie grows. Not by fighting over a fixed audience, but by removing friction and expanding the boundaries of participation.