Nintendo

  • A really insightful and bearish essay on Nintendo.
  • However, the “Nintendo is Disney” thesis is deeply flawed. It feels more like a desire to apply a pattern than to find a real analogue. Elements of Nintendo certainly represent Disney, but they represent Disney insofar as both companies are best in class creators of four-quadrant, multi-generational content. Otherwise the businesses are fundamentally different, their management styles fundamentally different, and their approaches to content itself are fundamentally different, too.

Tik Tok

  • TikTok is a phenomenon.
  • Their rise had a lot to do with a huge advertising campaign in the US
  • This stat is staggering – for a period in 2018 nearly 22% of all ads seen by U.S. Apple device users on Facebook ad network came from TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin”
  • As the article points out this actually provides more evidence of Facebooks dominance.

Food delivery and competition

  • Brilliant article on the monopolistic power of food delivery businesses especially as they begin to vertically integrate and merge around the world.
  • Losing money to acquire market power, or to steal from investors, is a form of counterfeiting, because it drives honest competitors that have to generate a profit out of the market“.

Rapid Covid Testing

  • There was a lot of excitement about the FDA approving a rapid (15 minute, $5) SARS-CoV-2 test.
  • This is an interesting analysis of when such a test would be useful and when not?
  • In short – if the true infection rate of the population you are testing is very low (<1%) it won’t be useful.
  • Which means using such a test on cruise ships, as some have suggested, won’t work.

The story of ICE

  • A great post about the history of Intercontinental Exchange and its founder Jeffery Sprecher. Its success was based on a few factors.
  • (1) “Sprecher gave away 80% of the company to his customers as an incentive for them to trade at his venue.” 
  • (2) “the company had a lucky break when Enron went bust.”
  • (3) Lots of deals meant diversification especially into oil trading and clearing. 20 deals in the past 15 years. Three criteria drove these – enhance network, new content, turnarounds.
  • It also comes down to three insights – analogue to digital, using regulation as an opportunity and the power of data.
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