{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsignal-noise.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fthe-landlord-in-the-cloud-x8SX3lXE","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"The Landlord in the Cloud","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/96a10b54-3566-4ae1-87fd-fd8bff7bd182/f8c23ae5-e871-4c31-9ede-2ef659e784a1/signal-20and-20noise.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"<iframe src=\"https://player.simplecast.com/d8fc1ac2-7180-43dd-8883-b9b0a3102544\" height=\"200\" width=\"100%\" title=\"The Landlord in the Cloud\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"></iframe>","height":200,"description":"Across the country, small businesses — laundromats, restaurants, gyms — are quietly losing control of their own operations to a new class of software middlemen they never chose and can't easily leave. This week, we trace how 'vertical SaaS' platforms have embedded themselves between owners and their customers, their equipment, and their data — extracting fees, locking in dependencies, and rewriting the economics of Main Street from the inside. It's a story about monopoly that doesn't look like monopoly yet."}