One idea keeps surfacing across his deals. Alejandro Betancourt López hunts for the spot in an industry where margin collects, takes a position there early, and waits for the rest of the market to catch up.
He reaches for old examples rather than new jargon to explain it. The trick is owning the point everything else has to pass through, even when that point looks dull or worthless at the time.
Refineries and ships
His favorite comparisons come from history. Standard Oil didn’t try to own every oil well; it controlled the refineries that all crude had to move through. Aristotle Onassis didn’t own the oil at all. He owned the tankers that carried it.
Both men sat at a bottleneck and let demand come to them. The lesson Betancourt López draws is that whoever holds the narrow passage sets the terms for everyone trying to get through it.
Permits as the modern bottleneck
Spanish ride-hailing offered a textbook version. Every vehicle a platform wanted on the road needed a VTC permit, so the permits themselves became the gate to the entire market.
Control the gate, and the price of passage is yours to name. “It’s the way you place yourself in any industry, that can capture that margin and create that value for yourself or for the investors,” Betancourt López said of the approach.