Hi All,
Another week! So Uber’s results are in and they did pretty well! I didn’t expect that but time will tell if they can sustain. Casper was a lackluster IPO and their share prices are way down too. I think market appetite for “tech” companies is on a downward trend for sure. Is Casper a tech company even?
A few interesting things that I saw this week, in random places:
Company Take Rates
From : Why it only costs $10k to 'own' a Chick-fil-A franchise. Who’d have thunk? Interesting read on franchises overall in case you have an interest
With that, lets get into this week’s reads
Facebook's Platform Opportunity A compelling from Ben Thompson on why Facebook should invest in their Audience Network, which apparently they haven’t done.
Okta Businesses @ Work 2020 | Technology Industry Trend Report : For anyone interested in workplace apps this was a good list of the who’s killing it in Biz@Work!
A good read for founders or product peeps : After 15 Years as a Product Leader, CEO and Now VC, Here’s the Advice I Always Share with Future Founders
Good Experiment, Bad Experiment : This was a great read on why we should not just setup random experiments. Experiments are in search of answers not for the same of themselves!
Simple pitch decks are in: Front Series C Deck - Mathilde Collin
Presentation from Ben Evans at Davos : I enjoy reading Ben’s blog and his newsletter and this presentation had some great insights
How to cause a virtual traffic jam on google maps? use 90 phones
Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2020 : What’s next for the industry
Noob Marketer on FB? Here is a good guide from Better Marketing : Facebook Advertising Decoded in 15 Minutes - Better Marketing
Time v/s Money. The core assumption here is that someone can actually substitute money for time. In other words you have enough to be able to do that! : Seneca on The Shortness of Time
The campaign to end dolphin deaths in the tuna-fishing industry was futile, however, because it was built upon guilt rather than shame. Jacquet writes, “Guilt is a feeling whose audience and instigator is oneself, and its discomfort leads to self-regulation.” Hearing about dolphin deaths made consumers feel guilty about their fish-buying habits, which conflicted with their ethical values. Those who felt guilty could deal with it by purchasing supposedly dolphin-safe tuna—provided they had the means to potentially pay more and the time to research their choices. A better approach might have been for the videos to focus on tuna companies, giving the names of the largest offenders and calling for specific change in their policies.
Things to Hang on Your Mental Mug Tree : Let go of assumptions in order to look at the world with different lenses
An interesting example which suggests there's a large amount of inference and context that goes into our contextual, metacognitive interpretation of advertising, is that in Eastern Europe under communism, if you advertised a product, demand often went down.
Why was this? If advertising works as we conventionally think it does, without contextual translation, how on earth can that happen?
But, under communism, anything that was worthwhile or desirable was generally in short supply. Consumers inferred that the only possible reason that the government might be promoting something was that they'd accidentally managed to produce something of such unremitting crappiness that people weren't willing to queue for it. Advertising in that context told you what not to buy.