Business | Buzz Chronicles

1/ Vanna’s a widow maker... waging war with her & Gary is exhausting... we were able to take a textbook short at 3803 and take a profit On half at 3771. We will look to add more in a similar way on tomorrow morning’s likely vanna rally again... looking for exuberance once again

2/ in that 9-10am CST window. The growing chorus of bulls emboldened by Vanna’s continued support the last few days gives me confidence that this opportunity will be there again. W/Gary & Vanna behind them the retail exuberance is rising to a fever pitch. This is exactly what we

3/ want to see. But what happens when their backup is gone?? Who’s going to buy this market at these increasingly higher levels this week. Better yet who’s going to buy it @ lower levels when they are forced to sell next week? Not Vanna. She’ll be @ the beach. It ain’t cool bein’

4/ no Jive Turkey so close to Thanksgiving (OpEx)... Bear Steepening of the yield curve took a breather yesterday & so did the stair steps, which was a bit discouraging, no 2 ways about it. But those pressures are far from over. But... remember w/ Vanna still at 1/2 force SPX was

5/ still just unchanged. W/out EOD vanna flows where would the market have been yesterday? The NDX generals continue to be violently shot 1 by 1 as the rotation continues. The last generals will be BTC & TSLA. Watch them closely... listen closely into the rally. The fear of Covid

Aloke Bajpai
@alokebajpai

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.

Nick Huber
@sweatystartup

The wealthiest person I know prints millions out of thin air in the real estate business.

This is what he does...

A thread.

He finds a distressed retail plaza. Let's say 50% of the space isn't leased.

On a 300,000 sf plaza that might mean 150k square feet is vacant.

If asking rent is $8 per square foot per year, that means the building has a "potential revenue" figure of of $2.4MM.

So in this retail center 50% is leased and 50% is vacant. So the actual revenue, right now, is $1.2MM.

Most retail leases are whats called "Triple Net" or "NNN". This means the tenant pays the taxes, insurance, maintenance and CAM (common area maintenance).

They basically pay all of the landlord's expenses (except debt service on any loans he/she has, of course).

Commercial properties are valued based on something called a "cap rate".

The equation is:

net operating income / (cap rate) = value

The cap rate is a %.

Think about it as the return on your money, annually, as a percentage, you spent to buy a property.

Sumit Grrg
@sumitgrrg

I just read all of Jeff Bezos's 23 letters to Amazon shareholders. And here's a thread with just one key-takeaway from each of these letters.

So if you're an artist or an entrepreneur looking to get some insight into the mind of this genius, read this right now.

1997: Focus relentlessly on your customers and long-term growth.

1998: Here are the 3 criteria Bezos wants managers to consider when hiring (to set the bar high):

1. Will you admire this person?

2. Will they raise the average level of effectiveness of the group?

3. Along what dimension might this person be a superstar?

1999: How to think long-term? Think: it's good enough today, but it will get so much better.

2000: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” - Benjamin Graham

We aren’t 10% smarter when the share goes 10% up, nor 10% dumber when it goes down. We want to be weighed, & we're always working to build a heavier company.

Braveheart
@FreeedomPerson

Parler is gone, but the evidence is not. Current @Microsoft employee & fmr Snoqualmie city council candidate Kevin Ostrem (1/26) @parlertakes

Parler is gone, but the evidence is not. Current @Microsoft
employee & fmr Snoqualmie city council candidate Kevin Ostrem @parlertakes (2/26)

Parler is gone, but the evidence is not. Current @Microsoft employee & fmr Snoqualmie city council candidate Kevin Ostrem @parlertakes (3/26)

Parler is gone, but the evidence is not. Current @Microsoft employee & fmr Snoqualmie city council candidate Kevin Ostrem @parlertakes (4/26)

Parler is gone, but the evidence is not. Current @Microsoft employee & fmr Snoqualmie city council candidate Kevin Ostrem @parlertakes (5/26)

Dan Rose
@DanRose999

I learned an important lesson in business when I launched a new retail category early in my career at Amazon: Fail Fast! I spent 18 months shipping a product that should have taken a few months, delaying the oppty to learn and adjust to our initial failure. Here's what happened:

I was originally hired at Amazon on the business development team. After a year I got recruited to help ship a new computer store and run merchandising. I jumped at the opportunity to launch a new business and learn new skills. Amzn was great at creating these opportunities.

Two weeks after joining the retail team, I was in a meeting presenting our pro forma P&L for our computer store launch. I was forecasting inventory turns and gross margins. It was exciting to be thrown into the deep end. I felt like I was at a start-up inside of a start-up.

Our store was predicated on a deal w/ HP that had been part of their earlier bid to win our datacenter biz. Amzn had driven a hard bargain, and when HP couldn't go any lower on server prices they offered to pay us $10M to be our anchor tenant in a new computer store.

HP's consumer business was getting disrupted by Dell who had invented configurable on-line ordering + on-demand manufacturing. HP thought they could fight back by leveraging retail distribution. They would plug their yet-to-be-developed configuration engine into our front-end.

Andy Coates
@AndyWoodturner

Went to make coffee. Opened fridge to get milk. Now...I was a refrigeration engineer, I had my own domestic appliance business, and I've seen things that would make your hair curl, but...the scene I was greeted by was frankly fucking horrific... 1/?

Everything in the fridge, butter, milk, eggs, some bacon, jars of stuff (except the mustard) had been torn to shreds...and was wet, from the milk presumably, and had turned black...2/?

I just stood and stared. The egg shells were there but broken, empty, and dry. The egg box in shreds. The butter had all gone and the lid had tell-tale holes. The unopened bacon all gone. The tray in tatters...3/?

I'd have taken a picture but it was disgusting...because...there were things in there that weren't in there on Friday. Turds. 6mm long, ovoid turds. I knew what they were obviously, but their presence INSIDE THE FUCKING FRIDGE was, is, troubling...How?4/?

A closer look, and this wasn't pleasant, what with all the black rancid milk and turds, revealed what looked like a hole at the corner of the interior, just under the evaporator..WTF! 5/?

$Alex Lieberman \u2615\ufe0f$

Alex Lieberman ☕️...
@businessbarista

Audience Building 101

Every company in the world is an audience company.

Whether it's a Media, VC, or DTC business, if you're not building audience Day 1, you're not prioritizing the right things.

Here's my framework for thinking about & building a killer audience 👇

I call it the Audience Funnel.

The concept is simple, but it allows you to...

1) Think strategically about building your own audience

2) Analyze the relative strength of other companies' audiences

3) Understand the similarities & differences of different audience channels

The Audience Funnel is divided into three tiers, which include:

1) Rented Audience

2) Owned Audience

3) Monetized Audience

Tier 1: Rented Audience

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁: This is your top of funnel. It allows you to build mass awareness & is key for developing a relationship with your audience.

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀: High shareability, high discoverability

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀: You don't own your audience

Examples of Rented Audiences

- Social networks (IG, FB, Twitter, TikTok)
- Video platforms (Twitch, YouTube)
- Search engines (Web content)

Examples of Businesses with Big Rented Audiences

- @BuzzFeed (Instagram)
- @GoPro (YouTube)
- @charlidamelio (TikTok)

Akiva Cohen
@AkivaMCohen

Looks like we need to spend some time talking about the Parler lolsuit against Amazon and why it's deader than a Mitch McConnell comedy special. They've brought three claims - antitrust, breach of contract, and tortious interference. None will survive. Here's why

Here's the meat of their intro: Amazon isn't being fair to us. They're holding us to a higher standard than Twitter - they say we allow violent content, but look what Twitter does!

There are a few problems with this approach. First, there's a factual problem: Twitter and Parler take very different approaches to moderation. Hell, *that's Parler's entire pitch.* So "we're the same as Twitter, why are you treating us different" isn't going to fly

ALSO, the hashtag was mostly people saying "these folks are calling to hang Mike

Five minutes of scrolling a search for #hangmikepence, a gallery: pic.twitter.com/40hsyJNK50
— Jawafawa (@jawafawa) January 11, 2021

And ALSO also, did anyone notice any prominent right wingers complaining about losing tens of thousands of followers yesterday? You know why they did? Because Twitter has been active in deleting accounts that violate its TOS

Nick Huber
@sweatystartup

Want to know how to get brokers to bring you deals first?

Want to build a machine that can buy real estate while you play golf?

Have a very professional and organized METHOD for closing on a property.

It's a system. And here's how we do it.

A thread 👇👇👇

The thing is most sellers (that I deal with) have never sold a property before.

They don't know what to expect. They don't know how it works.

So they naturally have unreasonable expectations and there is a lot that can get lost in the shuffle.

And it creates stress.

And most brokers are working several deals at a time. And they aren't at liberty to tell a buyer how to do business.

So their hands are tied.

And for that reason a lot of closings are shit show. They are delayed. They end up with lawyers huddled up on Thursday night at 10pm.

And for that reason its YOUR JOB as the buyer to take charge.

Set the expectations.

Set the timeline.

And be a professional.

Step one:

Get a signed letter of intent that lays out the terms for your attorney to draft a contract with.

Step two (5 minutes after signed LOI)

Send out an email linking all of the parties and outline their role and a timeline.

Camino Mortera
@CaminoMortera

There is a world shortage of chocolate. People are dying because they do not eat enough chocolate. A company, AstraChocolate, one of the few companies that knows how to manufacture chocolate bars, enters into contracts with governments worldwide. 1/

Most of these governments agree to fund AstraChocolate's efforts to research and secure production of highly nutritient chocolate bars. In exchange, AC promises it will deliver X chocolate bars per day to governments once they are produced. 2/

Because edible, safe, chocolate bars need to be approved by national and international regulators, their production and manufacturing takes a while. To ensure a smooth supply chain, AC and other similar companies use factories all around the world. 3/

In Europe, AC uses mainly three manufacturing sites: one in the UK, one in Germany and one in Belgium. In its dealings with governments, AC has promised to deliver 500m of chocolate bars to the EU and 100m to the UK by March 2021. 4/

Now this is a mighty task and there are bumps along the way. Nobody has ever produced edible, safe, super-nutrient chocolate bars at that speed and under that much public scrutiny. So AC and other, similar companies, like Cfacao-BionChoc run into some supply problems. 5/

(((Jonathan Robinson))...
@jon_m_rob

After thinking on it over the weekend, I have a couple of thoughts about this panel (both a bit negative + a tad contrarian it seems, though maybe just among the 6 panelists):

What is the future of public opinion polling? Register for tomorrow\u2019s live panel of #polling, #media, and #surveyresearch experts as they discuss what we can and should expect from #publicopinionpolls. https://t.co/6YHlSinIez @pete_enns @doug_rivers @jennagiesta @pollcat pic.twitter.com/Ucq9rSsFkX
— Roper Center (@RoperCenter) January 20, 2021

1. A constant refrain I hear from public opinion researchers is that the public wants (& practitioners should focus on) public opinion polling on policy & political 'issues', not election / candidate polling

The argument is reminiscent of anti-fast food dietary rhetoric. People should / do want issue polls because this is the 'healthy' way to engage in public opinion as opposed to the "guilty pleasure" of election polling

I think people are drawn to election polling because who ends up being an elected official is insanely consequential to the lives of many Americans. Political leaders also help "determine" the ideological focus of our politics, especially among co-partisans

It makes sense that researchers love "issue polling". We are really deeply interested in politics and what the public thinks and it's repercussions on politics. It also adds important extra dimensions to our work, especially when elections aren't ongoing.