BB is an excellent and well-executed business model. 1. Do something that doesn't scale: provide clean, reliable feeds for everything + whatever new thing clie

BB is an excellent and well-executed business model. 1. Do something that doesn't scale: provide clean, reliable feeds for everything + whatever new thing clients want 2. Package the above in a way that's easier to explain/sell: a device (and now, API) 3. Control the interface It establishes and grows a moat by 1. It eased sales and prevented competitors from stepping in between them and the customer (and therefore eventually being able to cut Bloomberg out) via 2 & 3. Consequently, it turns any potential competitor's value calculus into either (a) attempt to reimplement a subset of Bloomberg's offering, thus inviting the "Why not buy an integrated solution?" customer comparison and fighting against integrated pricing economies or (b) reimplement the entire Bloomberg offering from ground up, which is pretty much impossible. And the entire time a competitor is spending time and effort on (a) or (b), Bloomberg is collecting use patterns and new feature requests from its actual, day-to-day users.