Disclaimer: At the time of writing I personally own stocks in the company.
Everyone is chasing more pixels.
This company is deliberately doing the opposite — and that’s the point.
In this essay you’ll find:
Why the Kindle (and the screen-company inside of it) turned into a billion-dollar business
How displays created giants
How Ynvisible Interactive Inc. is positioned to copy the “Kindle-Strategy”
TL;DR (for busy founders & investors)
Big display companies fight on resolution, color, and refresh rate
Kindle won by being worse on purpose and creating a new category that they can dominate (“Category of One” / “Blue Ocean”)
Another company is going even further down that path: Ultra-cheap, printed, flexible displays unlock entirely new markets
Logistics, medical diagnostics, retail labels, and industrial use cases are just the start
Manufacturing scale — not tech — is the real moat (tech is a pre-requisite though)
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A Very Short History of Display Companies (and How Value Was Created)
Almost every major display company was built by riding a technological step-change — not by incremental improvement.
1. CRT Era:
The First Screen Empires (1930s–1980s)
The first real display revolution came with CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) technology.
Enabled black-and-white, then color television
Mass adoption changed how people consumed information and entertainment
Dominated by companies like RCA, which became one of the most powerful industrial players in the U.S.
In 1985, RCA was acquired by General Electric for $6.28B — at the time, one of the largest mergers ever, eclipsing even oil & gas deals.
Key takeaway: Screens became one of the most valuable consumer-facing technologies on earth.
2. LCD & Plasma:
Flat Screens Change Everything (1990s–2000s)
The next wave came with LCD and plasma displays. This shift enabled:
Flat TVs
Laptops
Early mobile devices
Lower power consumption and portability
Companies that mastered this transition scaled rapidly, as screens moved from living rooms into offices and backpacks.
Key takeaway:
Each display generation didn’t just improve screens — it expanded where screens could exist.
3. LED & OLED: The Arms Race Begins (2010s–Today)
Then came LED and OLED. This is the era we’re still in:
higher resolution
brighter colors
faster refresh rates
thinner panels
This wave created modern giants:
Samsung transformed from a component manufacturer into a ~$400B tech empire
LG, Sony, BOE, and others poured billions into R&D and fabs
But this era also introduced a problem:
Progress became incremental, expensive, and brutally competitive.
The market consolidated.
Only companies with massive capital survived.
Key takeaway: At maturity, display markets become capital wars — not innovation playgrounds.
4. The Kindle Moment:
Category Creation Beats Competition (2010s)
In 2010, something unusual happened.
A company entered the display market and deliberately scored worse on every key metric:
no color
low resolution
slow refresh rate
This sounds like a bad strategy - until you realize that’s exactly the Kindle.
Instead of competing with phones or TVs, it redefined the job-to-be-done:
“Make reading on a screen feel like paper.”
E Ink (the producer of the Kindle screens) didn’t replace other displays — it added a new vertical.
The result:
a category of one
a multi-billion-dollar market
near-total dominance by a handful of players
Kindle & Samsung analyzed through category of one / blue ocean vs red ocean framework
Key takeaway: The biggest wins often come from redefining what a screen is for.
Now comes the uncomfortable question:
What If You Made Even “Worse” Displays?
What if you built displays that score lower than Kindle
…but unlock use cases that don’t exist today?
That’s the bet Ynvisible Interactive is making.
Their screens aren’t meant for phones.
They aren’t meant for tablets.
They aren’t even meant for e-readers.
They’re meant for places where screens don’t exist at all.
The Invisible Data Problem
Think about a warehouse.
Thousands of identical boxes.
Each box carries critical data:
origin
destination
status
handling instructions
And yet… all of that information is invisible.
We tried:
sticky notes (they get lost and are prone to errors)
QR codes (require a phone + scan —> friction)
Now imagine if the box itself showed the information.
Traditional screens?
too expensive
too fragile
too power-hungry
Ynvisible’s printed displays can change that equation entirely.
Why Ultra-Cheap, “Bad” Screens Are Actually Powerful
These displays:
are flexible like paper
don’t shatter when dropped
only use power when the image changes
can theoretically cost cents, not dollars
Below ~$0.30 per unit, everything changes.
Now you can put a display on:
shipping boxes
medical test kits
industrial equipment
retail price labels
road signage
This isn’t replacing screens — it’s adding screens where none existed before.
That’s an additive market, not a competitive one.
That’s how E Ink turned into a billion dollar company - by enabling the Kindle (eReader) use-case.
From Science Project to Real Company
Ynvisible didn’t start with scale.
For years they survived on:
R&D contracts
prototypes
licensing IP
Manufacturing is 100–1,000× harder than prototyping
— and that’s where most deep-tech companies die.
The turning point came in 2022 with a leadership change focused on execution, not research - they’ve done enough R&D to have something that can be turned into a business.
Results since then:
25,000+ outdoor fuel price signs deployed
industrial maintenance labels in Europe
medical diagnostic indicators entering regulatory review
product revenue > R&D revenue
That’s not hype — that’s transition.
The Real Breakthrough: Manufacturing Credibility
Here’s where it gets interesting for investors.
Ynvisible partnered with CCL Industries, the largest label manufacturer in the world.
This matters because:
Global enterprises don’t buy from small factories
They buy from suppliers with proven scale, reliability, and logistics
CCL brings:
global manufacturing footprint
procurement power
cost optimization
instant credibility with companies like Walmart, VW, Amazon
Think Foxconn for Apple — but for printed displays.
Ynvisible keeps the tech.
CCL handles scale.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)? Close to zero.
Economics That Actually Make Sense
Some quick numbers (rounded for sanity):
Gross margin: ~30%
2024 revenue: ~$1M
Break-even revenue: ~$17M
One medical diagnostics platform alone could bring the following:
$10–20M annual revenue
repeatable
long product lifecycles
Once a display is designed into a product, it stays there until the product dies.
That’s the kind of revenue founders love — and investors will, too.
Why This Is a Founder-Level Insight
This isn’t really about displays.
It’s about:
deliberately choosing to be “worse”
expanding markets instead of competing in them
understanding that manufacturing is the real moat
turning invisible data into visible, monetizable surfaces
The biggest opportunities often don’t look impressive on spec sheets.
They look boring.
Cheap.
Low-resolution.
Until they quietly become everywhere.
Final Thought
E Ink didn’t kill smartphones.
Kindle didn’t kill books.
They expanded what screens are for.
Ynvisible is betting that the next massive wave of value comes not from better screens
but from putting screens where nobody thought they belonged.
That’s a bet worth watching.
How to apply the key take-away:
I want you to take home something home (besides an investment case): Here’s how you can implement the Kindle Strategy (Category of One, Blue Ocean Strategy, whatever you wanna call it).
For Investors:
Use this framework to analyze the products of your investment targets: How does their strategy look like in this framework?
For Business Owners:
Use this framework to check your competitive edge: Do you compete with others or do you play in a field on your own?
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