It is hard to build a profitable internet business at scale in India, but not impossible. Let me talk about ixigo's FY2020 performance. But first, the back story (with @rajnishkumar)

It was 2016. We had 3 Million MAUs (mostly organic) and were getting closer to 20 crores annual revenue. We were trying to raise money because we had just 12 months of burn left in the bank.

Out of many conversations, I remember one with a VC in our office who asked us our CAC-LTV ratio. TBH, we didn't track it in those days because we always made money on the first transaction itself and didn't spend a lot on customer acquisition, but I remember the look we got !

Yet another one gave us advice - "Look it's been 10 years since launch, travel is done and dusted, why don't you guys try doing something else". We felt dejected for a bit but went back to work the next day - not the first or last time we would face rejections.

I met @shaileshlakhani (after many years) at an Unpluggd event in Bengaluru in early 2016, and we sat down to chat about ixigo. He was the first investor we met in a long time who saw us not for who we were but for who we could become.

A statement about Stephanie Hayden.

In January I became aware that Ms Hayden (who monitors this account despite being blocked) had made a series of defamatory allegations about myself and my wife.

The allegations were made on Twitter, via Hayden’s account, and were widely retweeted.

The allegations were that as a result of her making a police complaint, (1) the police were seeking to urgently speak to me.

Furthermore (2) that police has spoken to me on 26/12/20 and offered some kind of “robust” advice about my conduct on and off line.

Finally (3) that police attended my home address in November, where my wife mislead them as to my whereabouts.

Hayden commented about this at length on Twitter, said that both and I am my wife had lied, and that I had even given a false address in Hampshire.

I said at the time all the allegations were false.

The police “complaint” was nothing more than Hayden making yet another vexatious complaint to the police, as Hayden routinely does.

The police did not speak to me on 26/12/20, as alleged, or at all.

THREAD: Questions to Keir Starmer's spokesperson this afternoon 🧵

Does Keir want an elected head of state? "No." Is he a proud patriot? "Yes." His past support for abolishing monarchy? "We all reflect on what we said when we were in our 20s... Keir has been proud of what the monarchy has done to help the country through the pandemic."

On use of Union Jack by Labour: "The union flag represents the country that Labour wants to govern and that Keir wants to be the PM of. It’s a symbol of the country we want to lead. You can call that patriotism, you can call it whatever you want, but that’s what we stand for."

Added: "Keir believes in our union of the United Kingdom… The flag represents that union, but also it’s the wider point of how we are better together."

On leaked Labour strategy document: "It's not right to say it was presented as our strategy. That’s not what it was, and to claim otherwise is wrong. It was an external review shared with the party… but we will write our own strategy."

Over the last few weeks I've been sharing a series of behavioral tips that can be applied to everything from wealth management to marketing and everything in between.

I've compiled them all below in a thread:

Behavioral tip: Emphasize losses to discourage an unwanted behavior.

We’ve been taught to not say anything if we have nothing nice to say, so sometimes avoid talk of negativity.

Folks are more prone to act to avoid loss than seek gain so don’t be afraid to talk about dangers.

Behavioral tip: Keep it simple.

Excessive information leads to decisional paralysis.

Shoppers were more likely to buy when fewer food samples were offered.

Keep meetings uniform in focus and simple.

Behavioral tip: Put the client in control.

People are far more likely to follow through on a behavior when they’ve chosen it. Holds true experimentally in everything from eating veggies to doctor satisfaction.

Give two equally attractive alternatives and let them choose.

Behavioral tip: Make the desired behavior consistent with the user’s idealized identity.

JIF nailed this with “Choosey moms choose JIF.”

Who doesn’t want to be branded the kind of parent who is choosy about what they give their kids?!

Put folks in a box they want to be in.

Men are only allies/support women survivors when it doesn't make them have to reflect on the friends they keep or become self reflective of how they treat women.
A thread :

Im a sexual assault survivor and yes I am triggered every time another man is trending on a social media platform because of abusing women.
You know why? Because I see how quiet men get when this shit goes down when its "too close to home" and I just fuckin lose it.

In the 90's. I rented a room in an apartment from friend of a friend. it was a female friend recommending this guy, I felt safe.
But I wasnt. After a house party when i went to my room to sleep, my roommate and 2 of his friends came into my room and sexual assaulted me.

It was the most scariest shit I've lived through, and I've live thru some shit. I called the cops, I filed charges.1 of my best friends since I was 16 was at that party. When I told him what happened he said he wasn't surprised b/c my roommate bragged about doing things to women.

When I asked him to testify in court for me, he said he couldn't get the time off work... whats even more troubling is that he could have warned me. Got me out of there that night because of what knew. But I guess it's bros code, ya know?

I thought often during the latter Trump years about the contrast with Barack Obama's "stray voltage" strategy, which involved saying provocative and often flatly untrue things to prompt discussion of Obama's preferred topics for political gain.

How to Read Better and Gain More From It

// A THREAD //

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.”

— Charlie Munger

...but maybe you don't and would like to.

That's why I put together this thread.

What will I cover?

1) The biggest myths about reading
2) Why should you read
3) How to find time for reading
4) How to gain the most from your reading

1) The biggest myths about reading

Let's start with briefly debunking some of the biggest myths out there.

"I don't have time for reading."
- We all have the same 24 hours. The reading may not be the priority for you, but that's a choice. The choice you made.

"Reading is boring."
- It doesn't have to be. As @naval puts it: "Read what you love until you love to read".

"Reading is procrastination."
- If you apply what you read, this is non-sense. And if you don't... I still think it's time well spent.

# 💹 The effect of Currency Exposure on Shareholders Equity 💹#

When we invest, one important aspect to consider is our portfolio exposure to currencies. It is not important where the company is trading, but where and how is making business ‼️

Keypoints 🗝️:

- In which currency is the company getting paid?

- In which currency is the company paying their costs?

- Are they hedging?

- In which currency is their cash, investments & deposits?

I specially look at them in companies with business in LATAM, Africa or Asia. 🌎

One of the checks you make is looking at the "Other comprehensive income".

I remember that I was very confused the first time I look into a company from a developing country (Pakistan). 🇵🇰

It was a software company (Really good ones in Pakistan) and they seemed to be doing pretty well (Positive Income) but the equity was just decreasing. WTF?

Reason: They were very exposed to Pakistan Rupee!

⬇️Here you go ⬇️

They were collecting most of their cash in Ruppes...

If You Want a Voice in NYC Education, You Must Vote for Mayor in the Primaries - Deadline to Register for the Primaries is February 14.

https://t.co/VGqli10Owu

Thread 1/

The Next Mayor Will Determine the Fate of Public Education in NYC: The Mayor will determine whether the city cuts or protects education budgets and whether highly successful G&T Programs are abolished or made more accessible and expanded to every district in the city. 2/

He or she will determine whether 8th graders have access to Algebra, Arts and Regents level science classes and will determine whether NYC’s selective high schools stay selective or dole out seats via lottery. 3/

Mayor and other NYC Races Decided in the Primaries:

The election is not until Nov, but the vast majority of NYC elections are won by the winner of the Democratic primary. So most NYC elections are effectively decided in June. 4/

To Vote in a Party’s Primary, You Must Register to Vote as an Affiliate of that Party

To vote in the Democrat, Republican or any other party’s primary, you must submit a voter registration and check that you are registering with that party. 5/

Individual decisions will always supercede to those of masses.

One of the theories which justifies why ITC struggles to have a big rally as other stocks have.

FMCG stocks' analysis from a different
view

Thread:

It is always easy to convince 10 people that you have something valuable to offer than to convince the same thing to 1000 people.

The same thing happens with ITC too.

The total number of shares outstanding of various FMCG companies are as follows

PGHH : 3.2 Crores
Nestle : 9.6 Crores
Marico: 129 Crores
Dabur : 177 Crores
HUL : 216 Crores

And just have a guess at what might be the number for ITC.

ITC has 1229 Crore Shares outstanding!!!!

Obviously some portion is held by promoters and FII/DIIs and some portion is not available for trading on a daily basis because it has some lock-in period.

When does a rally happens in a stock?

When every investor is just trying to buy the shares and the supply is too low.

This is what happened in Ruchi Soya when the free float was so less that even a small demand caused the upper circuit in the stock.

Did you know:

—in old-timey-times women got abortions w no constraints?

—ads for abortion were so common in the 1800s they were blasé?

—native women controlled their fertility & men had no say?

Today's @OrdEquality ep will blow your freakin’ mind

There's this perception that women didn't have abortions in the past— that we were somehow better & more “moral” in the past— but, that could not be further from the truth.

Women have always controlled their fertility throughout the entire history of time. — Dr. @lmacthompson1

We interviewed @LorettaJRoss Prof, Co-founder @sistersong_woc & Godmother to the reproductive justice movement:

"Emperor Augustus was complaining about elite Roman women not having enough children... Roman women were using knowledge from Egypt to practice fertility control..."

"I discovered that the kidnapped, enslaved Black women who were brought over in the slave trade actually brought knowledge about abortifacients with them. And so, they were secretly controlling their own fertility on these plantations." — @LorettaJRoss on @OrdEquality

"Black women have been fighting for reproductive self-determination since our arrival in this country." —@LorettaJRoss on @OrdEquality

A quick primer on the #MorganWallen fallout for country radio:

To those stations that have pulled Wallen's music: You've done more than I expected the country industry to do at all. That matters.

But you have taken only the *first* step here. You do not get to now act as though you've washed your hands of a problem that is bone-deep.

This is, as our friend @AndreaWillWrite has noted, a moment for action. Not for hashtags or vague social media posts about how "this" is "not who we are."

Because you, country radio, know damn good and well that it is who "we" are. And it always has been.

So now you have giant racist sized holes to fill in your playlists.

What you do *not* do right now is fill those holes with other white dudes. Particularly not other white dudes you know are exactly like Chucklefuck McMullet but just haven't been caught on video.

You do *not* fill those holes in your playlist with callow calls for "unity" or bridging a "great divide" that come from white dudes who benefit most from the status quo because you, country radio, protect them at the expense of literally everyone else.

yesterday: somewhat viral post about shooting billionaires into the sun (and my stupid "WELL ACTUALLY" reply)
also yesterday: elon musk leaves twitter "for a while" and jeff bezos steps down

COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!

elon's gotta be off twitter for a while because they don't have wifi on the SunCrasher 9000, and bezos keeps stealing his phone anyway

elon thought he wouldn't need it because of starlink but THE SATELLITES ARE IN LOW EARTH ORBIT, MUSK, AND YOU'RE HEADED TOWARDS THE SUN

bill gates is the only one who still has internet access because he remembered to set up a long enough ethernet cable

(although tim cook joked that was just because his WinPhone doesn't have wifi support anyway)

zuckerberg asked if bill gates would let him use the network connection for a while and while billy g was fine with it, it turns out none of the other billionaires brought phones with built in ethernet ports

finally, the win95 phone comes up top!

What is carbon capture? And how does it work?

While carbon capture is regularly discussed in the media, no one really ever explains what it is.

Below is a quick thread discussing the technology behind traditional carbon capture 👇

Carbon capture is broadly the "capture" of CO2 emissions from a power plant or other type of industrial facility.

Technology is connected to the "tailpipes" of these facilities and is used to remove CO2 from the plant exhaust.

Once the CO2 is removed from the plant exhaust, it is typically pressurized and sent under ground for permanent storage.

This step is called "sequestration" and is why experts often talks about "carbon capture and sequestration" or "CCS".

So how do you "capture" the CO2 molecules from exhaust?

Currently, one of the most economic forms of carbon capture is called "amine-based" capture.

An "amine" is a special liquid chemical which selectively grabs on to CO2 molecules.

To get the amine to grab on to the CO2, the amine is put into the top of a large column, while the exhaust is put into the bottom of the column.

The exhaust bubbles up through the column, and the amine drips down.

The liquid amine and gas exhaust mix in the column.

How to rewrite bad writing 👇

After rewriting 400,000 words on my site...

Advice for blog posts, tweets, emails:

Great authors’ first drafts are bad—no better than yours.

However, they aggressively *rewrite* those drafts.

Your first draft is for messily generating ideas.

Your second draft is for identifying the best ideas then making them resonate.

The enemy of rewriting is being precious about what you originally said and how you originally said it.

You need to be willing to destroy.

Part 1. Write to be understood

Readers don't assess the quality of nonfiction by its elegance nor its complexity.

Instead, they assess:

[How strong your ideas are] x [how intuitively they understand them]

Unclear sentences distract from that understanding.

Technique #1: Use simple sentences

Write sentences that a thirteen-year-old could follow.

If they can understand you, so can everyone else.

That isn't to say children should understand the details.

Rather, children must be able to follow the logic of every argument.

#WednesdayWagner Hoiho! Missing your weekly thread on Wagner's leitmotifs and composing strategies? Here I am! This week, we start talking on a leitmotif that appears in every Wagner's opera:
ONE LEITMOTIF TO RULE THEM ALL (part 1 out of 3)
#TwitterCultural

#WednesdayWagner Although each Wagner's creation has its own "sound world", and although leitmotif technique was not exactly exploited since the 1st one, there is a short gesture/motive that appears in ALL Wagner's operas. Don't you believe me? Keep reading ⬇️
#TwitterCultural

#WednesdayWagner This is the recurrent leitmotif: the 4-pitch gesture that can be listened to right at the beginning of Lohengrin 
#TwitterCultural

#WednesdayWagner In this first thread, let's go through the first 3 Wagner operas ("Der fliegende Holländer", "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin") to identify this small but powerful melody
#TwitterCultural

#WednesdayWagner Note that I would just mention the main appearances of this gesture or melodic idea, without digging bar by bar into the whole operas
#TwitterCultural

1/ Thread: $GOOG 4Q'20 Update

For the first time, GOOG segmented its cloud revenues/income separately, and overall revenue was >20% in 4Q which led to +7% after-hours reaction yesterday.

Here are my notes from earnings/press release.

2/ In the last quarter, here is the segment-wise growth:

Search +17.4%
YouTube ads +46.0%
Google Network Members +22.9%
Cloud +46.6%

Cloud more than doubled in the last two years.
Other bets losses $4.5 Bn in 2020 (vs $4.8 Bn in 2019)

3/ Operating margin in Q4 ~28%
FCF margin in Q4 ~30%

One of the big takeaways was the core business was even MORE profitable than most investors thought since cloud had -42.9% operating margin.

$GOOG's search business is a good comp for Fed in terms of "printing" money. JK.

4/ "you can track takeout and delivery orders when you book or order from Google Maps"

"More than 0.5 million channels livestreamed on YouTube for the first time in 2020"

"videos in our new Shorts player are receiving 3.5 billion daily views."

5/ Google Pay app is now used by >150 mn people in 30 countries.

Cloud backlog $30 Bn now (from $19 Bn in Q3)

# of Deals >$250 Mn became >3x

Waymo is providing hundreds of fully AV rides per week

Retail searches >3x YoY

Cloud operating losses flat YoY