Mmhmm, Building Toys & Inflection Points
What I Learned at School This Week
Hey Y’all!
Here are a few things I chewed on this past week.
Hopefully something I share resonates with your journey in following your curiosities. If you come across something that catches your attention, I’d love to hear from you! Just reply to this email throughout the week (or whenever!).
Inching Towards $2T
It feels like just a couple months ago there was a flurry of buzz around the first-ever companies to hit a $1 Trillion market cap.
Oh right, that was just in January when Alphabet (Google) was joined by a couple other companies in the four-comma-club: Microsoft and Apple.
Well, now it seems someone is about to double up on that unfathomable number.
Apple is in the lead at $1.66T and Amazon is close-behind at ~$1.6T. Bonkers.
The Future of Screen-sharing
The founder (who does one of the best demos I’ve ever seen) describes it as “instant Weekend Update (Saturday Night Live).”
See it for yourself:
Inflection Points
Last week I referenced a podcast and article by VC, Mike Maples Jr.
This week, I listened to a couple episodes of his podcast, and was blown away by an episode (Living in the Future) where Mike is interviewed on Shane Parrish’s podcast. Shane is the founder of fs.blog (Mental Models is my favorite article from his blog).
If you are curious about how founders come up with start-up ideas (spoiler: they don’t, instead they look for “inflections points”), be sure to check out the episode.
The four inflection points are:
Technology
Adoption
Regulatory
Belief
Build a Toy
I’ve been digging the idea of a company or project that starts ‘as a toy’ and expands from there. Think about FB (niche for colleges), Tesla (energy enthusiasts), Twitch (gamers), the telephone (limited use because of its short range), the list goes on and on. Almost any massive company starts by being a toy.
The following article does a great job unpacking the concept: The next big thing will start out looking like a toy.
Here’s a snippet:
Disruptive technologies are dismissed as toys because when they are first launched they “undershoot” user needs.
10 Lessons from the CEO of Zoom
I’ve been consulting for Zoom since November, and joined them full-time this month. My first day was Monday. In a Q&A with their CEO, Eric Yuan, I took down some notes.
I was super impressed with his honesty, transparency and humility. It is rad to see the leader of one of the most successful companies right now, have such a kind and curious posture.
Here are my 10 (cheesy, but true) takeaways from the conversation:
The US is considering banning TikTok (here’s why I think it matters)
Chipotle launched a farm-to-table marketplace (summary by Robinhood’s daily email called “Snacks”)
Slack acquires Rimeto (“the enterprise directory reimagined”)
Uber bought Postmates for $2.65B (hope the delivery fee wasn’t 7% of that)
Ego is about who is right.
Truth is about what is right.
-Mike Maples Jr.
See y’all next week!
Cheers,
Brendan J Short