Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, February 15

• How Ben Thompson built Stratechery into a one-man publishing empire: Ben Thompson has established himself as one of the smartest analysts and clearest thinkers on the media and technology industries. And he has built an interesting, rather unique business, self-publishing his Stratechery blog and subscription-based email newsletter from Taiwan, where he lives. “I felt I had insight to offer that people would find valuable,” Thompson told Recode Senior Editor Peter Kafka, by focusing on writing about technology and business strategy and not just products. Thompson was working at Microsoft when he started the publication in 2013, and launched his subscription business — currently $10 per month, or $100 per year — in 2014. “The internet enables niche in a massively powerful way, where you can focus and be really good at one thing,” Thompson said. “And because you’re not constrained to a geographic area, you can reach the entire world. I have subscribers in 30 countries.” How many subscribers? “A lot.” Kafka asked: What about joining up with a venture capital firm and collecting a big paycheck as a “public intellectual” as others have done — a group that includes famous dot-com-era analyst Mary Meeker, who’s now at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Benedict Evans, who built a following on Twitter and now works at Andreessen Horowitz. “That seems like a better life than having to schlep $10 subscriptions.” “People underestimate the scale of the internet,” Thompson said. “Certainly I work hard, but the amount of work I’m doing today is the exact same amount of work I was doing three years ago. The only difference is my income is 100 times higher. And it’s because that $10 scales, and it scales very, very well.” “And I’m glad those VC guys are interested, but they’re also all subscribers — I can assure you of that.”

• SoftBank of Japan Will Buy U.S. Private Equity Giant Fortress: Over its three-decade existence, the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and its founder, Masayoshi Son, have been known for ambitious and sometimes head-scratching moves. Now, SoftBank is nearing its most unusual move yet: It is buying Fortress Investment Group, an American private equity giant that oversees around $70 billion in assets. That business is a radical departure from the technology and telecommunications holdings for which the Japanese company is known. But the acquisition is intended to energize SoftBank’s other enormous new endeavor: a $100 billion technology investment fund that threatens to roil the private equity world. The move highlights the immense ambitions of SoftBank’s brash founder, Mr. Son. The 59-year-old mogul, who is one of Japan’s richest men, has sought to shake up the American telecommunications industry and recently sought to win over President Trump by announcing intentions to create jobs in the United States. SoftBank will be paying $3.3 billion for Fortress, a premium to the company’s stock market value of $2.3 billion. As part of the agreement, SoftBank has the option of bringing in partners to help cover the cost of the deal and who may want to become investors in Fortress funds, too, thus increasing assets under management. The deal frees up Peter L. Briger Jr. and Wesley R. Edens of Fortress to focus on their strengths as fund managers — several of their private equity funds have produced double-digit returns over time — without having to deal with the headaches of running a public company. As leaders of a public company, they struggled mightily to bolster their stock, more so than their competitors. Recently, the firm shut down its flagship hedge fund.

• Airbnb Wants to Spend Some of the $3 Billion It’s Sitting On: Airbnb Inc. is on a mission to be more than a home-sharing platform. It wants to be a flight booker, an itinerary planner and a vacation-home manager. To become a global travel behemoth, Airbnb is considering a combination of acquisitions and partnership deals to quickly grow its portfolio, according to three people with knowledge of Airbnb's plans. The company's targets are in luxury tourism, airfare aggregation, group payments and guest-management, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Airbnb hasn't authorized them to speak publicly. Airbnb is also focused on doing deals in China and India, the people said. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Airbnb's board met to approve the purchase of Luxury Retreats, a vacation-home management company in Montreal. The sale is expected to garner no more than $300 million in cash and stock. Airbnb is also in the process of purchasing the group-payments company Tilt. Airbnb declined to comment on the deals because they are not yet public.  New product categories would generate alternative revenue sources for Airbnb. Over the last few years, after pressure from regulators, Airbnb agreed to place limits on how long hosts can rent their homes to travelers in certain cities. Officials in London, New York, Amsterdam, San Francisco and Barcelona have claimed Airbnb’s short-term rentals violate local zoning laws and displace long-term residents. The policymakers continue to seek laws that could place considerable restrictions on Airbnb’s money-making ability. Airbnb became profitable in the second half of 2016, when revenue at the company increased more than 80 percent that year, Bloomberg reported. Airbnb expects to remain profitable in 2017.