My Daily Notes

My unfiltered thoughts from 11/08/2017

Scott Moore’s experience with Personal Capital. My thoughts:

• He notes it seemed “superficial and scripted”. Me-That is why I want to create trust. That would be the worst comment I could hear about my business.
• He noted the advisor they assigned him felt like a pushy salesman.
• My thoughts: Stories like this remind me that how a customer experiences your product is HUGE. That one article will probably dissuade people from trying Personal Capital.

Favorite quote I heard today

Passive and brilliant gets crushed by reasonably bright and aggressive as hell. -Colin Cowherd

• Makes total sense. My worst mistakes in investing have been because I was not aggressive enough.

How Business Titans, Pop Stars, and Royals Hide Their Wealth per NYT.(Wow)

Parity, a wallet software company for Ethereum, said $280 million dollars could be lost due to a bug in the software.

• Bloomberg’s Matt Levine has a great line:

People often talk about blockchain technology as a way to make things — payments, securities ownership ledgers, etc. — more secure. But actually existing blockchain applications in the wild — the actual cryptocurrency systems that are used to store millions of dollars’ worth of value — have a security record that would cause any regular bank to shut down in disgrace.

TJX, the parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and Homegoods, is continuing to pay its workers in Puerto Rico, even though the stores have not opened back up. Mad props. 🤙

Cheddar(on demand business news) partners with WeWork. I have never watched Cheddar, need to check it out.

• I like their website, it is clean and well laid out. Loads fast, no ads.
• Subscribed to their newsletter. I already receive at least 4 business newsletters. I will see how they stack up.
• Update: The more I browsed their website, the more I like it. It is fast and clean compared to other business sites.

The WSJ has an article about the shakeout in coffee shops. Some thoughts:

• Total # of coffee shops in U.S is 33,000. This includes Starbucks.
• The main point is that everybody, grocery stores, gas stations, and independent shops are now selling specialty coffee.
• The supply of places consumers can get coffee is now higher than demand. Just like Under Armour, they were early to the athletic wear business, but since anybody can copy their product, soon supply caught up, prices fell, and margins collapsed. Again, no meaningful differentiation.
• I remember years ago when it was cool to get special coffee drinks. They were not sold everywhere. Todey, even McDonalds has a nice selection at good prices.
• Both Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks are slowing new store openings. Those at least have brand awareness.
• In my view, it is a hard business to create meaningful differentiation. Most vanilla lattes taste the same to me.
• It reminds me of the craft beer business. I can’t tell a d/f among them. All IPA’s taste mostly the same. How does one create an advantage? Sam Adams can spend money trying to gain share of your mind, the small guy trying to grow, can’t.
• The article notes that larger companies can pour more money into technology such as mobile apps that make ordering easier. YUP.

Mixergy podcast about dropshipping. He interviews Anton Kraly, owner of Dropship Lifesytle coaching program. Skeptical???, but was an interesting listen.

Snap’s quarterly loss more than triples to $443.2 million. Go deeper. Some highlights below:

• They are overhauling their signature app, making it easier to use.
• They took a $40 million writedown on unsold spectacles.
• 3rd quarter revenue rose 62% to $207.9 million, below analyst estimates.
• Average revenue per user: $1.17 in the latest quarter, up 84 cents from this time last year, but missed analysts estimates of $1.30.
• Snap added 4.5 million daily users, bringing total user base to 178 million.
• They moved to an auction based advertising model instead of direct sales. This drug down ad prices but the number of advertisers spending grew nearly 5 fold.
• My thoughts-Trying to get ad business away from Facebook and Google is proving to be difficult. EVERYONE knows this. Is it worth a taking a flyer on? My initial thought is YES. Will it wallow for years like Twitter? Possibly. Will it go to zero? Not likely, in my view. Will it be worth as much as Facebook, ever? Probably not. So somewhere south of Facebook and north of zero?

Have a great day,

Caleb | SAM