Strong / valuable businesses are built on *real value*. *Real value* in the case of many valuable tech companies is generated from *expertise*.
Expertise is distinct from the value of *product*. A company may be famous for its product, but its real value lies in the expertise behind that product. For example, Amazon was initially famous for *selling books*; it quickly identified that its expertise was in *selling online* (with its logistics capabilities / marketing conversion efficiencies etc.) so turned to selling everything; as it grew further it then identified it had built expertise in scaling server infrastructure so turned to selling servers (AWS); with huge scale it then identified it has built expertise in advertising (via its valuable data) so turned to selling advertising (AMS) etc. etc.
Today Amazon isn’t an online book retailer, it’s essentially several different companies with several different products - all built around different expertise. To get a glimpse at its businesses, read Amazon's financial statements.
It’s important to flag therefore that a business’s product can often be a distraction (i.e. at any point in time a business may well be selling the product, and therefore not achieving its full value) and that a business should always consider what its *expertise* is to discover its *real value*.
Real value lies in expertise NOT product. Product is an output of expertise; product choice can be wrong. Understand that the first product isn’t necessarily the best output of your expertise and don’t be distracted by finding the most valuable output from your expertise.
4 Steps to building real value
Step 1: understand what your expertise is
Step 2: embrace / externalise / share that value
Step 3: build / market test products around that value
Step 4: iterate & constantly challenge your product (commercial output) choice. Make sure you're not still just selling books.