Hi All,
Hope your week is going well and you all are staying Corona free. I came across this article which is about Democratic Presidential candidates stance on ātechā issues and make no mistake there is a lot to be fixed but I wonder if this a case of let me take the tech issue at hand and force it just to win or do any of them truly care? While I agree tech has to be āfixedā some of the suggestions are plain absurd to downright āWTF are you thinkingā.Ā
Laughter is the best medicine especially when coated with sarcasm :) so then which Altcoin is this? š
Squeeze on Twitter: "What Altcoin is this?ā¦ "
This weekās chart: The world economy.
I long to write about tech like a lot of folks out there that I admire and Iām trying to write more about my views on tech. This is a start so go easy on me :)Ā
Amazon and Groceries - The Holy Grail of retail
Amazon recently opened a larger format grocery store as I am sure a lot of you read. As I was reading that announcement I could not help but think of this announcement in terms of jobs to be done (read this article from Clayton Christensen for context and the Jobs-to-be-done framework)Ā
The article is 7 years old and the fact of the matter is that grocery stores are going nowhere as are probably not movie theaters (not that I personally go anymore). In the grocery/retail format the job to be done differs and could be because of:
A forgotten item
Weekly shopping
Daily shopping
Pre-prepared meals
Now tie this back to the original reason that Amazon focused on online groceries. No labor costs and no retail space costs. That didn't work but they learnt a lot from that experience:Ā
People probably want to touch/feel groceries
People are A-ok to buy prepared meals (Amazon go stores)
People are not ok to buy groceries
People are A-ok to self checkout (in fact self walkout!!)
So then the barrier to online grocery shopping can potentially be bridged by two avenues
A physical grocery store
Having the customer feel the product without the grocery store. How does one do this? Imagine drones that would allow you to āfeelā and keep or return the goods if they are not to your standard. Say you need a pound of tomatoes. The drones carry 2-3 pounds and you just put back what you don't want. The drone weighs and charges you appropriately
Now this also adds a new dimension to the problem. How much selection does the human generally need to āchooseā a pound. Aha, the cameras are carefully capturing that information in the ācashier freeā stores which will enable them to figure that out.
The only remaining problem is store selection. Why does this matter? Because the size of the store (and thus cost of real estate) depends on selection. Staffing depends on selection. If Amazon can figure out which fresh products have the most returns then it can stock those more and figure out how to assess customer quality before, well uh ādroningā them over.
The key problem then becomes what retail has been doing for years. Which is storefront aisles to ātemptā you into a chocolate. Things you may forget to buy and things you just didn't know you need.Ā
Once again a problem Amazon is well suited to solve as you start shopping. (you got tomatoes are you in need of spaghetti?)Ā
The key lesson for other grocers is that Amazon is not āgiving upā. Do not mistake Amazon opening a store as a defeat. If the current grocery stores do not experiment - and some are, such as Krogers with autonomous delivery) they will be left behind in theĀ Amazon ādataā dust.Ā
This weekās professionally written dozen:Ā
Transport and Trade. A lot of this is kinda obvious but well written in this article on Transportation, divergence, and the industrial revolution.Ā Ā
A reduction in transportation costs in a trade network by a factor of two increases the potential value of that network by a factor of sixteen. While a power of exactly 4.0 will usually be too high, due to redundancies, this does show how the cost of transportation can have a radical nonlinear impact on the value of the trade networks it enables.
What does this mean for the Uberās and Doordashes of the world?Ā
Autonomous cars will scale the value of the network to a maximum of 16x until the next improvement?Ā
Autonomous (as we all know) is an important driver!
Food delivery and grocery delivery can also leverage such scale if drones can extend distance traveled, especially unencumbered.Ā
Transport is king, network effects are too but transport rules.
This framework on writing good strategy documents was interesting. Inputs are the key and most strategists (business or product) spend too much time in the outputs (which framework do I use). You can paint a pretty picture but how accurate is it? Great strategies depend on great inputs ā hereās how to find them.
I was (and I no longer am) a believer in DTC markets anymore. I guess I was too blind to notice that DTC was just a āme tooā market. My original thinking was around demand. The younger generations donāt care too much about brands so it made obvious sense to get a DTC company going around everyday essentials but when CAC > LTV (Facebook ad loads) recurring revenue is not guaranteed. Virtually nothing to keep a buyer back. No moats whatsoever and no consumer loyalty. The reason that Shick tried to buy Harryās was primarily to kill in store competition : A Potentially Unpopular Opinion on the Future of DTC
This article from Sarah Tavel was a brilliant read on marketplaces. The insight that profitability depends on how much bigger the #1 player is over the #2 player was very interesting. Food Delivery Wars: 3 Takeaways From The UberEats, Postmates, Grubhub, DoorDash Ecosystem ā How Itā¦
When you tell a colleague I got your back what do you really mean?Ā Ā
Collaboration Culture is "Got Your Back" Culture ~ Team Training
10 tips on how to leverage the internet to build a personal brand from David Perell.Ā
Becoming a Citizen of the Internet
Great insight from Alex Danco on VC funding and how the āgameā is played : VCs should play bridge
Paul Graham has some great tips on writing essays : How to Write Usefully
Let's put them all together. Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible.
Notice these are all a matter of degree. For example, you can't expect an idea to be novel to everyone. Any insight that you have will probably have already been had by at least one of the world's 7 billion people. But it's sufficient if an idea is novel to a lot of readers.
How you view life has a large impact on how you live and prepare for your life : Finite and Infinite Games: Two Ways to Play the Game of Life
Wow just wow : Inside a Secretive $250 Million Private Transit System Just for Techies
Juan HernĆ”ndez says tech shuttles are āa great perk ā just not for him.ā Hernandez works a 40-plus-hour week as a contracted janitor at Facebook. As such, he doesnāt have access to the companyās shuttles.
Most days, he sets his alarm for 3 a.m. and is on the road by 4:00 for a 40-minute drive from San Franciscoās Bernal Heights neighborhood to Facebookās Menlo Park headquarters. His shift used to start later ā which was better for his family, HernĆ”ndez says ā but because of traffic, his commute took twice, sometimes three times as long.
This website has a cool list of marketing examples! Marketing Examples
Thank you for reading!