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.

1. If you turn on CNBC, you'll hear a narrative that reckless retail investors from Reddit are destabilizing the stock market by driving up prices for GameStop and other stocks.

This is BS.

Follow along if interested.

2. Market instability was created by hedge funds and other "sophisticated" investors that SHORTED MORE GAMESTOP STOCK THAN WAS EVEN AVAILABLE FOR SALE

Retail investors are exploiting instability created by the hedge funds

They didn't start the

3. The primary "victim" of the retail investors, hedge fund mogul Gabe Plotkin, worked SAC until 2013.

What happened in 2013? SAC pleaded guilty to insider trading and paid a $1.3 billion fine.

Plotkin then left to start his own firm.

4. Plotkin made massive returns by doing a lot more shorting than most hedge funds & no one complained

But this week he was bailed out by his old boss, SAC founder Steve Cohen, and another hedge fund mogul, Citadel's Ken Griffin to the tune of

5. Cohen & Griffin now own a significant piece of Plotkin's firm. So they have an interest in Plotkin navigating out of his current predicament. They also may have exposure themselves.

This is where things get

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.

1. A company that has been brewing just outside our Top-5 for some time now is the electroporation (EP) company MaxCyte. Modelio assesses it as one of the best investments to capture the growing gene editing and gene therapy space, especially in allogeneic ex-vivo treatments.

2. We estimate that MaxCyte stands before a huge inflection point that will accelerate both growth and profitability. We have seen signs of the accelerating underlying activity by the fact that they in the last two years have added 9 of their 12 commercial agreements.

3. What makes MaxCyte unique compared to other “pick-and-shovel” businesses is their claim to milestones and royalties, something usually reserved for pharmaceutical companies.

4. As per the January update, MaxCyte has a potential pool of $950m in milestones, and a 2-3% (our estimates) of sales in royalties, that excludes licenses and consumables for the machines.

5. Reviewing the partners' pipelines, we think milestone revenues will unleash themselves in 2021 and beyond as they move further into clinical trials.

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.

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)

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/

Financials are strange businesses. On a sale, money goes out from the pocket rather than coming in.

Growth comes first. NPA comes later.

Aavas Financiers says: “What Kills Others Makes Me Strong”

Buckle yourself up as we’ll take you through the 19-20 AR

1/

Challenges for Aavas:

~People, Process & Branch intensive
~Caters to Tier2 to Tier 6 towns
~Underwriting difficult
-Lack of docs
-No CIBIL records
-Mostly catering to EWS and LIG category

Now let’s run past the AR to find the cues to their success

2/

Aavas Financiers

A Fast-growing Small Housing Finance Company in a Large Growing Housing Finance Market in India

A Fast-growing Small Fish in a Large Growing Pond

3/

~The Chairman
~The CEO
~The CFO

See what they say

4/

~Strategic Objectives
~Credit Risk Appraisal Framework
~How Aavas is Being Different

Belgian snapper Regine Mahaux took these pics in April of 2010. The same month that the brokeass TV reality host got his quickie refund from the government. He was the top Chapter 11 filer in America in the last 30 years. https://t.co/EnSFwjsHVo

"he was far more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life."

"a president who routinely promotes his businesses in an official capacity while they haul in hundreds of millions of dollars from mostly unknown sources is a clear case of corruption"

After he lost the election he desperately raised $250 million using a variety of scams and false campaigns.

Beneath all the bluster, bullshit and braggadocio, he was always on the grift. Racing to stay one step ahead of creditors and tax investigations. When the cultists wake up they will see it was all about a pitchman pretending to be President to make money.

Here's our Sunday Wrapup
- Our 2021 Spring Previews are out (will be linked below
- Bike shortages will be a real thing this year. We're already feeling it with some brands.
- We're upset/scared/frustrated about Covid, and are limiting appointments to urgent repairs only.

City Bike Preview--> Breezer, @VSFManufaktur, @gazellebikesusa
Affordable transportation. Reliable & built to last (with 10 year warranties). Fun and easy to ride every day.

Gazelle E-bike Preview--> Ultimate Series (Completely Amaazing, and new!), Medeo Series (sporty and fun), Upright Series (Maximum Dutchiness).
--
Good availability on most models, limited availability on Arroyo Elite and EasyFlow

Family Cargo Bike Preview--> @ternbicycles @UrbanArrowcom @larryvsharry @babboe_bakfiets
--
So many amazing choices to have fun with your family while getting stuff done. Our family is rolling with a Larry vs Harry Bullitt, and a Tern GSD in 2021.

Cargo Bikes for Business -->
This is a new opportunity for local businesses to take advantage of an incredible $2000 grant toward an electric cargo bike. We're here to consult with you on the best way to move your business forward, on a

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/?

So I bought two accounts on your service--one for personal use, and one for business use. Please react, large companies!

Microsoft: WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING OH MY GOD PLEASE KILL ME AND END MY TORMENT

Slack: You're my favorite two daily active users.

Google: Fuck your business account, why would you pay us? What is wrong with you?

LinkedIn: Has either account tried premium?

1/ #Anghami HQ relocating to Abu Dhabi
Thread time >

8 years ago when @EddyMaroun and me launched @anghami , we wanted to build a business that would hopefully get some traction & show that 🇱🇧 can build a tech startup in a competitive field such as music.

2/ Why? Because it just didn't exist in this part of the world! We needed music 🎶 and so did plenty of arabs who had to pirate for the lack of a legal service.

3/ Building music service is no simple feat, especially when it has to be available on every device, be local, contain a 57 Million songs legal library , be fast, be different ⚡️.

4/ It becomes even harder when you have to build a payment network from 36 telcos across the region - and amass over 80 million users.
What's the hardest part in building all this?

5/ The talent!
The people who spend endless hours working to build the vision and constantly churn fix after fix to make it sparkle.
That talent came mostly from Lebanon, 90% of the team hailed from my country 🇱🇧. And made us absolutely proud!

Time for #PapersThatMakeYouGoHmmm! A weekly summary of new ML papers from arXiv that make me think one or more of:

1. That looks useful!
2. That's an interesting approach!
3. A business could be built around this!
4. How did they do that?!

Argument Schemes and Dialogue for Explainable

Neural Fitted Q Iteration based Optimal Bidding Strategy in Real Time Reactive Power

A design of human-like robust AI machines in object

Single Shot Multitask Pedestrian Detection and Behavior

Time for #PapersThatMakeYouGoHmmm! A weekly summary of new ML papers from arXiv that make me think one or more of:

1. That looks useful!
2. That's an interesting approach!
3. A business could be built around this!
4. How did they do that?!

How can I choose an explainer? An Application-grounded Evaluation of Post-hoc

Validating Label Consistency in NER Data

A two-stage data association approach for 3D Multi-object

Neural Networks, Artificial Intelligence and the Computational

After 5126 failed prototypes over 5 years, any inventor would have given up

But Sir James Dyson stayed put and

- Invented a product which completely transformed the market
- Set up a company with 7 billion $ revenues
- Became the richest man in UK

A thread on Dyson 🧵

1/

1970s - James Dyson was a UK born industrial designer. He was fed up using the traditional vaccum cleaner with disposable bag which would stop working because of dust clogging

He tried using a cyclone based system which would extract the dust without clogging

2/

He even constructed a small prototype & connected it with the traditional vaccum cleaner with bag removed. It seemed to work decently

He presented the concept to many. But most of them rejected saying if the idea was so great, big companies would already have thought of it

3/

1979 - But Dyson didn't give up. He was able to raise an initial investment from another inventor friend and via some loan from the bank

He started developing the cyclonic vaccum system in the shed behind his house.

4/

Between 1979 and 1984, Dyson developed 5126 prototypes before getting the right one without a bag finalized

He tried licensing this invention to the companies in UK and US who can manufacture and sell the product. And give Dyson some royalties on sales

5/

SAGA MEGATHREAD

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