The archive
"Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn't mean they're Google" Evan Spiegel believes that his company has enough of a moat and a product differentiation that users won't jump over from Snapchat to Facebook (aka the "yahoo search" of media sharing) Right now, he couldn't be...
The first thing to note is that Jeff Bezos is a very intelligent man and that a move towards grocery has been in the works for a while now. But it's not a gamble, nor was it a binge purchase (unlike what a lot of us do on Amazon.com). There are a number of good reasons for the...
You may have noticed a very interesting feature, that's been widely liked (or love reacted to) by Facebook users, that has just made its way to messages and comments - FB reactions 😍 It has given users the previously unavailable ability to express their true emotions on social...
On May 10th of this month, SNAP Inc. will be hosting its first quarterly conference since its IPO. Why does this matter?
Netflix and Amazon should consider a 'grandparents' streaming plan. In the midst of COVID, senior citizens and older folk are unfortunately at high risk. So (on avg and as much as possible), they're trying to stay quarantined with limited exposure to other people.
To clear any misconceptions, this stream isn’t about some covert Tech perk like nap-pods or on-campus bikes that exponentially increase productivity amongst employees. I’m going to be talking about an important product strategy that Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify, not only have in...
The greatest “Easy” revenue lever that Netflix has is not letting folks share passwords / accounts. They didn’t care in the past because password sharing introduced new customers to the beauty of Netflix and non-linear television! They’d rather you watch house of cards vs not!
In December of last year (still feels weird saying that), Disney announced its intent to acquire 21st Century Fox. Before I go on to explain why movie theaters are royally screwed by this mega-merger, here are some basic facts that are important to digest: Disney owns a lot of...
A data-driven answer to our vaccine problems. Today, we can’t move our vaccines from point A to point B; public transportation is our fix. Summary:
What can you buy for $70 Billion? It’s not a rhetorical question. Let’s delicately walk through what you could theoretically purchase with Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth:
E-commerce is the future of shopping. Though some disagree, the majority of industry experts, CEOs, companies, and mom-and-pop-shop owners would tell you the same.
As Thanksgiving dinners begin for those in the US, here’s something that’ll impress even the most stringent of relatives - Ride-sharing is expected to be a $100B market in a matter of 3 years. For context, here are some comparisons:
No matter what you're doing, you need to closely watch what Zillow is up to. At this point you're thinking one of two things - either you're thinking "what in the world is a Zillow?" or "why should I care about a real estate-related company?".
H&M's free 24-hour suit rental removed one visible job-search barrier. The bigger opportunity is access to the rest of the interview stack: internet, devices, applications, coaching, and platforms like LinkedIn.
The difference in type of curve is why Salesforce acquiring Slack could be a good thing. Every company in the world buys Microsoft products (likely MS office/Windows/Azure). So - growing teams to now 115M users was quite 'easy'.
Parking citations in SF bring in around $100M in revenue for the city, which I don't find hard to believe considering how many tickets my housemates and I pay (I'd still argue we're above avg drivers) The cost for getting a car out of a garage after getting it towed = a...
KnivesOut Glass Onion was a fantastic movie -- quite different than the first, but fantastic nonetheless. I'm baffled that Netflix didn't release it in theaters (not really at least). Here's the rough math: - Knives out 1 did $300M+ in box office, with 25% of that marked as...
Counter-intuitive small things at work: when I send meeting invites for a 1:1 with someone, I used to always put the invitees (ex: Audrey’s) name first. So “Audrey <> Daksh” for example - and since I’d often be meeting with folks more senior than me (as is often true at a first...
Mind-boggling: DoorDash customers spend an average of $3.33 per day (based on '21 Q4 data). It may not seem like much, but that's equivalent to a rate of $1200/yr. Amazon prime member sales on avg stand at about $2K/yr for reference - and Doordash doesn't seem that far behind...
I know what you’re thinking - why would the general public pay a ridiculous $8.97 (the average movie ticket price for 2017), to just watch Mickey Mouse. Well, the reality is - in 2 years time, you will pay to watch content at Disney owned-and-operated movie theaters. Here’s why:
Google should Buy Snap Inc. Yes, you read that correctly. Google, the search engine giant, should buy Snap Inc, the exciting tech startup that was meant to rule the hearts of millennials. There were rumors about a $30 Billion proposition for the Search Giant to purchase the...
Lyft and Uber almost paused operations in California (TBD what will happen) - the dilemma that got us to this situation has to do with profitability. Uber for ex: grew incredibly fast under Travis K (one of the original co-founders). They expanded operations into the phones of...
It's quite unbelievable that the average age of a sitting Senator in the US is 63 years old - especially when you take into account that the retirement age is 66 years. In other words, 84% of America is younger than the avg US senator making laws to govern us.
I'm sure you read the title - Google wants to be in your home. Literally.
To understand a company's goals, we must first understand how the company sees itself. Google's mission, for example, is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful; in short, Google sees itself as an information giant. Facebook's mission...
Where do I begin? Well, now that I’ve started with that sentence - I can comfortably segue into any dimension of this incredibly interesting merger. T-Mobile and Sprint have announced plans to merge - the board of directors for both companies approved the move, along with their...
This one is short and to the point. I want you to imagine that you’re a 12-year-old with a younger brother - we’ll call him Mozzy (he’s 8). You currently have an allowance of $10. You give Mozzy $3, and you keep $7 for yourself because middle school expenses far exceed...
As you may have heard, or as the title may have prompted you to believe - Facebook just acquired a very young startup that launched their product 70 days ago. After hearing this, you're probably doing 1 of 2 things: 1. Hitting up your software developer friends to develop that...
To understand the first reason as to why CVS is purchasing an insurance company for $69 Billion, we need to take a step back. You need to understand how your doctor, your insurance, and your medicines are all interconnected (assuming you live in the United States). So, let's...
Tesla could become the next McDonald’s, and it would be a shame. No, Tesla isn’t going to sell dollar menu items...probably? As silly or as irrelevant as it may seem, just bear with me for 60 seconds. So, let's talk about McDonald's for a minute. If I were to ask you to state...
This title might have confused you. But it's true. So let me demystify what I mean by "Slack was the equivalent of biological waste" and explain why you should care.
Absolutely wild how Amazon Prime subscriptions (aka the prime 'membership fee') alone bring in $17B a year. That's roughly equivalent to the revenues of Uber and Lyft combined, and doesn't even include the amount prime members actually spend to purchase things
Let me tell you why. This is going to require a bit of audience participation. Not too much, but just a little bit - bear with me. Have you ever heard of Ray-Ban sunglasses? What about any of the following brands that make eyewear?
Berkeley's CS188 course is a practical public path into the mechanics behind AI: search, planning, probabilistic models, and reinforcement learning.
Implications of the ridiculous H1B decision - burgeoning tech hubs in other parts of the world. Talking to incredibly intelligent friends and colleagues, who have been constantly worried about what silly visa decision comes next - they're frustrated.
It's becoming clearer that Sam Altman was removed as CEO because of governance structures (maybe working as intended?) and not 'performance' in ANY typical sense.
TikTok has significantly reduced quality of life, particularly in Western markets. For something that takes up 12% of leisure time, it's uniquely dangerous.
Stripe setup a public-facing view of their impact over the Black Friday weekend -- they've supported $10.2B in transactions over 3 days (with a likelihood of reaching $15B before Monday is over). They handled 30,000 transactions a MINUTE with full reliability, and took perhaps...
It took Microsoft an additional $40 Billion in revenue capture to re-earn its 2021 COVID valuation. The takeaways are representative of the larger tech industry, how companies were valued in '21 /are valued today --> MSFT 2021 Revenue: $170 Billion MSFT 2021 Market Cap (Nov...
Notifications on your phone are really powerful real-estate - they have the ability to: (1) encourage an app-open (2) inform consumers of something new (3) and at-best complete a full purchase. So much so that (large) companies often have entire teams dedicated to deciding what...
One of the truly first 'wowza' / 'light-bulb' moments I had about how Tech companies operate was on my first team here at LinkedIn - we were working to make LinkedIn a better place for hourly & frontline workers As part of that mission, we'd test new features tailored to the...
I don't think we do not - and at this rate we likely will not - understand the compounding effects of broken global supply chains post Mar '20 Today, goods & people move from one place to another at a fascinating rate. A lot of business (aka part of the global economy) is...
Comcast/Xfinity - a sort of 'legacy' company that was heavily reliant on linear TV (aka cable) to make money - kicked off a recent strategy to change with the times. So they started offering a free streaming box (where you can watch netflix/youtube etc.) that unfortunately...
Slack is letting paid users message any other Slack user (yes that includes friends at other companies) A product with an NPS ('consumer favorability rating') similar to that of Netflix/Amazon/Airbnb, backed by the tech giant that is Salesforce, was always going to see...
Apple introduced it's Tile competitor a few weeks ago - Airtag! Super cool product in my opinion. TLDR - track your items now on the same app as 'Find my Friends'. So now your keys / backpack / camera will show up on there just like your other devices do.
An extension for the music streaming industry that may have a ton of money in it - 'album musicals'. A movie-like experience that connects each song, with a video backdrop that tells a story.
Tried pretty hard to stay away from TikTok - sounded toooo addictive for my liking and now Meta just brought its own version of Tiktok - called Reels - straight to my phone. They’d been testing this idea for a while, but the timing of the rollout is cool: right when there have...
So the USPS has been historically unprofitable (lost $8.8B in their 2019 fiscal year) - but that's really not a fair number to look at. The postal service is after all - a service, and looking for profits from an entity that ensures prescriptions, insulin, and stimulus checks...
Two factors that encouraged the success of Clubhouse: 1. Increased comfort levels with video (and audio) communication bc of COVID (ex: ease with muting / unmuting ) 2. Increased access to tools that enable video (and audio) communication (ex: a better WFH setup / better...
American Airlines (the entire industry and the company specifically) are not in great shape - a very understandable statement amidst COVID. Travel has slowed down. American Airlines (the airline) is expected to post a loss of $17 a share, with sales dropping more than half in...
Noticed a few things while wearing my Apple watch recently: Smartwatches, dating all the way back to the Pebble in 2012, have almost all adopted 2 key features: - water resistance - long battery lives
The future of Snap Inc. in one picture = bridging the virtual and real world through a camera (and I'm sure Meta won't be too far behind).
I think we're going to see a spike in vaccination rates over the next 4 weeks - driven by a large flurry of businesses that will require vaccinations to do business / enter (at least in the US).
There's a lot going on in the world - something quite insane that should be added to the list: A $20B public company may very well be completely fraudulent?