"Most people didn't see the internet as a mass-market problem," Shwed says.
In a call, Gualandri told me, having "been there and done that," he had no intention to start another bank and instead was interested in solving what he thinks is a mass-market problem not currently addressed by single user "wallets" or debit cards.
With the coming of huge mass markets, the problem of fairytales' collusion with power grew deeper.
"If you've ever developed a mobile phone application and you're trying to address the mass market, there's a fundamental problem," he said.
As this mass market asserts itself, China becomes a problem for the United States not just for the exodus of tens of thousands of American jobs but for the potential to use economies of scale to keep those jobs, even if Chinese wages rise to American levels.
A few major players have started tackling the e-payments problem but a mass market solution is still a few years off.
Moving away from the mass market, he wrote, will only make the problem worse.
The explosion of smartphones and tablets into the mass market in the next two to three years will be a huge problem for many magazine brands".
But the same old problems hinder them now as a mass market product -- batteries take too long to recharge and require recharging too often.
Tesla aspires to enter the mass market but so far it has dealt with the battery problem by putting lots of them in a big, expensive car, thereby limiting it to a luxury niche.
