1/ GameStop is one of the most fun businesses to study for both its success and failure.

Relative to other specialty retailers, it dominated up until the financial crisis, but has since done very poorly.

But unlike Tower Records or Blockbuster, it is still in business

2/ Thanks to the tailwind gaming has provided, its revenues have grown long-term but EBITDA and margins have been terrible as the gaming world has digitized over the past 5 years.

3/ As I learned in @joosterizer book One Up, their early physical retail edge rested on counterpositioning: doing things Walmart and others couldn't:

1. Accessibility
2. Deeply trained expert staff
3. Tailored loyalty program
4. Custom inventory management for used game sales

4/ Accessibility

There are 5,500 GameStop stores, often more than one in the same mall (mostly because of EB acquisition). Can always find one.

They install ramps--not for wheelchairs, but for strollers because parents are the real buyer

5/ Trained Staff

As @joosterizer told me recently, try to go into a GameStop and stump a staff member. They can help you navigate much better than a generic retail employee. Creates loyalty and trust that wouldn't be possible if they didn't just focus so specifically on games.

Have been lucky to meet with or study hundreds of companies in 2021.

Here's an ongoing list of company attributes that I find interesting...

1. Operations Focus

“Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” A grand vision is great, but the best companies are often focused on challenging but tangible near term goals. If a founder can’t move from vision to on the ground details quickly...bad sign

2. Life’s work

To borrow a concept from @nikiscevak, it is thrilling to find someone doing their “life’s work.” When someone's personal path lines and formative experiences line up with the problem a company is solving, I get excited. "Life's work" is a source of perseverance

3. Synchronized team

Well managed internal communication is a huge advantage.

This is often evident

1) in internal routines, words and phrases with unique meaning

and

2) consistent answers to questions about the company’s plans from a variety of different insiders

4. Jobs as a product

I like when management teams view jobs inside their business as a product to be built, designed, and sold like any other product.

Everyone is struggling to hire great talent, so a differentiated strategy in hiring matters as much as anything.

Starting to collect important questions for 2021 and beyond in this thread.

Please send questions you are interested in too!

1. Will demand for compute continue to double every few months? Tons of implications for semiconductor design and manufacture.

2. What will be the next major use of mRNA vaccines? What will our new understanding of protein folding lead to?

3. How will better data and workflows improve our health care system (prediction, prevention, price of care, outcomes, compliance)?

4. Will we fully unbundle undergrad and graduate school into the information/learning component (which should be a fraction the cost for multiples the quality) and the networking component?

5. Digital art creation and collection make sense to me, but how will digital art be displayed?