The Current — Volume #011

Welcome — our goal is to provide a roundup of key stories and trends influencing the business landscape in the Sunshine State. We’ll bring the goods with strategies, tools, content, and tactics to help you visualize the future and chart the path to positive outcomes.

And of course, a few fun conversation starters for the (virtual) water cooler. Away we go.

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The Best Stuff We Have Read

To own or not to own delivery? Grocers reassess the Instacart dilemma.

The surging online orders that have been powering grocery sales throughout the pandemic have elevated a long-simmering conundrum for the supermarket industry. Hundreds of food retailers now partner with e-commerce fulfillment companies like Instacart and Shipt to manage the logistics of their delivery and pickup services. But in offloading those operations to third parties, grocers have also outsourced much of the customer experience. They’re also ceding control of valuable data about online shopping behavior. At the same time, these fulfillment companies have become essential to customer acquisition, and with the likes of Uber and Doordash now entering the space, it is likely that the channel only continues to rise. This article provides more context into the challenging strategic questions posed to grocers coming out of COVID.

How to Overcome Procrastination Based on Ancient Philosophy

People have been procrastinating for thousands of years. Just like you, they have put things off, they have delayed, they made excuses, they hoped deadlines would never come due. This caused them anxiety, it frustrated their colleagues and families, it created problems and most of all it wasted time. This article provides some advice for dealing with procrastination from the ancient philosophy, stoicism.

Biz 101

In this new section, we will provide a mental model, strategy, or tactic that a successful businessperson regularly leverages to drive outstanding results. Today, we explore a concept from one of the great entrepreneurs of our generation, Rich Barton. It is called power to the people.

Barton has founded three major companies: Expedia, Glassdoor, and Zillow, and is an active corporate board member holding seats at Netflix, Artsy, and Qurate.

These positions give him a unique insight into one of the most complex markets to understand: the consumer internet.

The thesis that drives much of his entrepreneurial and investment activity is what he calls: power to the people, which he explains in this presentation.

Power to the people is about making information that was previously very hard to find freely available to a broad audience, drawing a broad audience to access and updated the data, and then monetizing it through search. Investor and entrepreneur Kevin Kwok provides a comprehensive explanation here. But it is easy to see how this works in each of Barton’s businesses:

• Expedia: Prices for flights and hotels that you previously would have to get from travel agents
• Zillow: Zestimate of what your house is likely worth where before you would have to get it from a broker
• Glassdoor: Reviews from employees about what a company is like, whereas before you would have to get from a recruiter or the company itself

By aggregating all of this information, it provides power to customers that they did not have previously. This makes it an attractive place to spend time. With users spending a ton of time on these sites, it becomes a critical acquisition channel for businesses who pay for access to the customers.

Maybe You’re Wondering, “Who is Slalom?”

Slalom is a local-first company. With an 8,000-person international presence, we launched in Florida last Fall with the goal of becoming a driving force in our local community.

Thanks for reading!

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