Hi All,
COVID-19 scares the stock market! We truly live in a very mobile world now! Getting back closer to home (well at least for me) here are the richest places in the United States! These dollar values however are not cost of living adjusted so don’t really paint a clear picture of the purchasing power parity. Out of sheer curiosity I looked at this listing in Darnestown, MD. While prices are all over the place there are definitely a lot of affordable places. The whole list in case you are curious…
With that sad reality and the hope that knowledge is power lets get into this week’s dozen:
Ben Thompson compares Harry’s (DTC company) acquisition by Shick, draws parallels and finally ties it down to reducing competition in the market. Speaking of tax products while I have not used Credit Karma’s tax filing they definitely target (at least initially) an underserved market (younger folks who don’t want to pay so much, simple income structures etc ) for what essentially should be a free product and they go lengths to hide it! In some ways this is a simple “competition elimination” issue but as Ben Thompson mentions, there is a way out. Kill or spin off tax filing products and Intuit essentially has access to 100M customers! Lets see how the regulators rule on this one!: Email Addresses and Razor Blades
This article was a good articulation of how the future of education is changing. Yes, indeed there is a future : How Technology Is Changing the Future of Higher Education
A good read on wikipedia. The comparison to Encyclopedia Britannica, other competitors and why it survived! Good read! : Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet
This article from a16z speaks about the economic challenges of AI, gross margin contributions, compares and contrasts AI (not considering it as software) and potential workarounds for this :
The New Business of AI (and How It’s Different From Traditional Software)
This article from Intercom on outcomes not features really resonated with me. We really don’t stop to think about what we’re shipping. Even when we do the “outcome” is harder to tie to a business goal. Proxy metrics are a good solution: Ship outcomes, not just features, with the Product Impact Framework | Inside Intercom
On self-checkout, I can definitely attest to how, sometimes, the experience can be painful and how they’re built to stop folks from walking away without paying. I still prefer to use them because I feel they are probably faster, I don’t need to talk to anyone (and I can do away with the fake pleasantries and just do my “job to be done”. Maybe I am not a typical customer. That being said, there are days that I really don’t want the cognitive load and prefer to have someone else do it for me. The short answer for me (assuming NO checkout isn't the norm) is I think we’re going to always have a mix of cashiers and self-checkout machines (and more so as they improve) :
Self-checkout is terrible: why Walmart, Target, and others still do it
They say that curiosity killed the cat. But the cat had 9 lives. Maybe the cat didn’t die at all? ;) Curiosity is the key to a happy life! Curiosity Is the Secret Sauce to a Healthy Life | Elemental
This article from Alex Danco on postmodernism was a great read! Have we truly lost the ability to create like we used to? Are we just building on “top” of what we have? And if so, really what’s so wrong with that? : Progress, Postmodernism and the Tech Backlash
The upside to this approach is that it gets you somewhere. But the way you get there, for the most part, is through combinatorics: trying out new skins and new interfaces for a deck of perpetually shuffled cards. The postmodernist looks at a mega success story like Uber, and sees a triumph of innovation. Uber seized a window of opportunity to reinvent transportation as an on-demand service. It's mobility on tap, like running water. Who wouldn’t want this?
Then the modernist looks at Uber and asks: but where is the progress? It’s still the same car, and it still needs a driver. It moves the same speed, burns the same gas, and gets stuck in the same traffic. What has actually changed?
This read on The American Cloud was in some ways an eye opener. I mean intuitively we all know this and we just kind of go on living in our “matrix” world of large cities. We don’t care where the water comes from, the food, the gas, the electricity, our phones. Yet, stop it all for 5 minutes and we panic. The plumbing behind the scenes, so that you and I have our city dweller lives is astonishing. Ask yourself this question. Do you know where your food comes from? My answer is sadly, no. Do I care? Absolutely. But how do manage by “busy” life and optimize for the effort I’ll need to understand what lies beneath the surface of the American Cloud? : America still has a heartland, it's just an artificial one
Are you in decline, professionally?
Entrepreneurs peak and decline earlier, on average. After earning fame and fortune in their 20s, many tech entrepreneurs are in creative decline by age 30. In 2014, the Harvard Business Review reported that founders of enterprises valued at $1 billion or more by venture capitalists tend to cluster in the 20-to-34 age range. Subsequent research has found that the clustering might be slightly later, but all studies in this area have found that the majority of successful start-ups have founders under age 50.
What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of. I need a reverse bucket list. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form.
This article from NFX really speaks about every company/cowboy coming into the market with a “data” play and why one needs to clearly understand this
What Makes Data Valuable: The Truth About Data Network Effects
What is marketing from David Perell. What products do you care about that go above and beyond? Food? Hygiene? Cars and Travel?
For example, fashion brands advertise their long-term outlook with expensive real-estate. A brand who pays for prime real estate is less likely to screw you over than a bare-bones, pop-up fashion store. When a company goes above and beyond for their customers, they’re showing a long-term commitment to them.