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.
A great presentation and separate post about a huge eCommerce business you probably haven’t heard of, founded only in 2015.
Its success is down to a team buying feature, social integration, gamification and live streaming.
These features have led to a daily active user (DAU) to monthly active user (MAU) ratio, a measure of engagement, of almost 50% – the highest, by some margin, among peers.
How to get attention: If you want to get famous for making big non-consensus calls, without the danger of looking like a muppet, you should adopt ‘the 40% rule’. Basically you can forecast whatever you want with a probability of 40%. Greece to quit the euro? Maybe! Trump to fire Powell and hire his daughter as the new Fed chair? Never say never! 40% means the odds will be greater than anyone else is saying, which is why your clients need to listen to your warning, but also that they shouldn’t be too surprised if, you know, the extreme event doesn’t actually happen.
Recession watch: … So the best approach is to emphasise the dangers of recession but claim this is at least 18 months away. If it happens sooner, you can say you correctly warned about the dangers. If there is no recession you can simply postpone your forecast and hope nobody remembers.
