Luca Barberis

Writing

Notes on growth, go-to-market, and software strategy. Two running threads: Only Habit Pays, on where software is going, and The CRM Series, applying it to the CRM. Notes collects book reviews and shorter pieces.

01

Selected

Live Shopping Outside China and South East Asia: Buzzword or the Future of Ecommerce?

August 2026

A third of China's online shopping happens in a live room. In the US, under 1%. Twenty-one markets, one answer: median income.

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Beyond UX/UI

Only Habit Pays · Part 2 · July 2026

Every menu, form, toggle and dashboard turns into a sentence. A matrix of what each one sounds like.

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AI Killed CRM Data Entry. That Was the Easy Part.

The CRM Series · Part 2 · June 2026

The invisible-CRM wave automated the chore reps hated, and left the two jobs that actually run a CRM in place.

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The Death and Rebirth of the CRM

The CRM Series · Part 1 · June 2026

A dissection of the software every company pays for and nobody opens. What AI kills, what keeps it breathing, and what grows back.

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When Intelligence Is Free, Only Habit Pays

Only Habit Pays · Part 1 · June 2026

A working theory of where software is going, from the farce we're living in now to a Tuesday eight years out.

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Religion vs Strategy: A JD.com Indonesia Post-Mortem

Post-mortem · August 2025

Seven years, more than $120M a year in losses, 2-3% of the market. Why the model that won China lost Jakarta, and what it says about how people decide.

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02

Notes

Book reviews, working notes, and shorter pieces.

Double down or venture: an art for decision makers only

Strategy, growth, marketplaces · September 2026

Every growth machine carries its own plateau, and you can compute it: new accounts divided by churn. Whether the fix is more of the same or something new is an art, and it belongs to whoever holds the portfolio. Eatigo, JD.ID and ZALORA from the inside, tested against the research.

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The Sales Organization

Sales, incentives, compensation, management · September 2026

Three layers have to be there to win: operations and structure, a performance culture, and sales incentives worth chasing. The framework, the tradeoffs inside each layer, and the salary, incentive and payback arithmetic that decides which version a company can afford.

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Book review: The Machine, by Justin Roff-Marsh

Book review · September 2026

Roff-Marsh wants sales run like a factory. A decent manual for the plumbing, a weak theory of sales performance: incentives trump processes, and talent is heavy-tailed.

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