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Month: July 2021

Fire Sale on Addison and Clark

by Jeff Carter
This post is by Jeff Carter from Points and Figures

The Cubs are my favorite baseball team and have been since I was a little kid.  My father was more of an American League guy.  Ted Williams was his favorite player and the Detroit Tigers were sort of “the team” in his town growing up.  In my small neighborhood when I was at the impressionable age of 10 and under, the Cubs were the favorite team.  Virtually every other neighborhood in my town was White Sox country.  Ernie Banks, like a lot of Cubs fans of my age, was my favorite player.  But, I loved Santo, Williams, and Fergie too.

2016 was an amazing experience for me.  I went to almost all the World Series and playoff games.  I went to Game 7 with guys I had known since early childhood.  We had a blast.

Yesterday, they traded away a lot of those players we cheered on and developed a fondness for over the years.  Rizzo, Bryant, and Javy Baez…..it saddened me.  Everyone saw it coming.  Baseball is a business.  Statistics and rules make it so teams figure out when players will be at their career peak.  It also makes everyone see the writing on the wall when players will be unloaded.  The Cubs weren’t the only sellers yesterday.

A huge part of the problem is the way MLB is structured.  Luxury taxes, limits on all kinds of activities for teams to make revenue, and other constraints really tie the hands of teams.  I think it hurts players, and more (Read more...)

Early Innovation Stack at Pardot

by David Cummings

Recently I read Jim McElvey‘s excellent The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time. In the world of business books, Jim is especially unusual with his quirky, fun writing style complete with eclectic analogies on every page. The big idea is that startup success isn’t one breakthrough idea — e.g. using a credit card reader plugged into the headphone jack of an iPhone at Square — but rather the aggregation of a number of ideas that coalesce over time.

Wildly successful startups stack one innovation on another, without consciously thinking of it as innovation, all in an effort to make the customer happy. Only once success is achieved, it’s possible to look back and see the different innovations that emerged. Here’s what he cites as the innovation stack for the company Square (market cap $100+ billion) that he co-founded:

  • Simplicity
  • Free Sign-Up
  • Cheap Hardware
  • No Contracts
  • No Live Support
  • Beautiful Software
  • Beautiful Hardware
  • Fast Settlement
  • Net Settlement
  • Low Price
  • No Advertising
  • Online Sign-Up
  • New Fraud Modeling
  • Balance Sheet Accountability

These are easy to see now, but back in 2009 this was anathema to the credit card processing industry. The provide the best customer experience possible, innovation was required across multiple dimensions.

Now, let’s apply this thought exercise to the early days of Pardot (company founding through the first five years):

  • All-in-One Marketing Platform –
    By incorporating the most important marketing modules like email, landing pages, forms, automations, and integrations into a unified platform, (Read more...)

Early Innovation Stack at Pardot

by David Cummings

Recently I read Jim McElvey‘s excellent The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time. In the world of business books, Jim is especially unusual with his quirky, fun writing style complete with eclectic analogies on every page. The big idea is that startup success isn’t one breakthrough idea — e.g. using a credit card reader plugged into the headphone jack of an iPhone at Square — but rather the aggregation of a number of ideas that coalesce over time.

Wildly successful startups stack one innovation on another, without consciously thinking of it as innovation, all in an effort to make the customer happy. Only once success is achieved, it’s possible to look back and see the different innovations that emerged. Here’s what he cites as the innovation stack for the company Square (market cap $100+ billion) that he co-founded:

  • Simplicity
  • Free Sign-Up
  • Cheap Hardware
  • No Contracts
  • No Live Support
  • Beautiful Software
  • Beautiful Hardware
  • Fast Settlement
  • Net Settlement
  • Low Price
  • No Advertising
  • Online Sign-Up
  • New Fraud Modeling
  • Balance Sheet Accountability

These are easy to see now, but back in 2009 this was anathema to the credit card processing industry. The provide the best customer experience possible, innovation was required across multiple dimensions.

Now, let’s apply this thought exercise to the early days of Pardot (company founding through the first five years):

  • All-in-One Marketing Platform –
    By incorporating the most important marketing modules like email, landing pages, forms, automations, and integrations into a unified platform, (Read more...)

Early Innovation Stack at Pardot

by David Cummings

Recently I read Jim McElvey‘s excellent The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time. In the world of business books, Jim is especially unusual with his quirky, fun writing style complete with eclectic analogies on every page. The big idea is that startup success isn’t one breakthrough idea — e.g. using a credit card reader plugged into the headphone jack of an iPhone at Square — but rather the aggregation of a number of ideas that coalesce over time.

Wildly successful startups stack one innovation on another, without consciously thinking of it as innovation, all in an effort to make the customer happy. Only once success is achieved, it’s possible to look back and see the different innovations that emerged. Here’s what he cites as the innovation stack for the company Square (market cap $100+ billion) that he co-founded:

  • Simplicity
  • Free Sign-Up
  • Cheap Hardware
  • No Contracts
  • No Live Support
  • Beautiful Software
  • Beautiful Hardware
  • Fast Settlement
  • Net Settlement
  • Low Price
  • No Advertising
  • Online Sign-Up
  • New Fraud Modeling
  • Balance Sheet Accountability

These are easy to see now, but back in 2009 this was anathema to the credit card processing industry. The provide the best customer experience possible, innovation was required across multiple dimensions.

Now, let’s apply this thought exercise to the early days of Pardot (company founding through the first five years):

  • All-in-One Marketing Platform –
    By incorporating the most important marketing modules like email, landing pages, forms, automations, and integrations into a unified platform, (Read more...)

5 lessons from Duolingo’s bellwether edtech IPO of the year

by Natasha Mascarenhas

Duolingo landed onto the public markets this week, rallying excitement and attention for the edtech sector and its founder cohort. The language learning business’ stock price soared when it began to trade, even after the unicorn raised its IPO price range, and priced above the raised interval.

Duolingo’s IPO proves that public market investors can see the long-term value in a mission-driven, technology-powered education concern; the company’s IPO carries extra weight considering the historically few edtech companies that have listed.

Duolingo’s IPO proves that public market investors can see the long-term value in a mission-driven, technology-powered education concern; the company’s IPO carries extra weight considering the historically few edtech companies that have listed.

For those that want the entire story of Duolingo, from origin to messy monetization to historical IPO, check out our EC-1. It has dozens of interviews from executives, investors, linguists and competitors.

For today, though, we have fresh additions. We sat down with Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn earlier in the week to discuss not only his company’s IPO, but also what impact the listing may have on startups. Duolingo’s IPO can be looked at as a case study into consumer startups, mission-driven companies that monetize a small base of users, or education companies that recently hit scale. Paraphrasing from von Ahn, Duolingo doesn’t see itself as just an edtech company with fresh branding. Instead, it believes its growth comes from being an engineering-first startup.

Selling motivation, it seems, versus selling the fluency in a (Read more...)

Easily confused

by Seth Godin
This post is by Seth Godin from Seth's Blog

There are countless arguments about words that we often don’t understand the way someone else might.

Words like education, learning, merit, talent, skill, privilege, smart and successful.

They might not mean what we think they do.

Well-educated isn’t the same thing as smart.

Talents are different than skills.

Learning is not the same as education.

Successful isn’t the same as rich.

Agreeing on what we mean is a great place to begin.

JC Parets, Founder at All Star Charts, Joins Me on Panic with Friends to Discuss the Bull Market, Risk Management, and Why You Can’t Teach Away Crazy (EP.160)

by Howard Lindzon
This post is by Howard Lindzon from Howard Lindzon

Happy Saturday…

This week JC Parets joins me for a second time on the ‘Panic’ Podcast and we take a deep dive on the markets.

I love looking at charts but few read them better and with more enthusiasm than JC.

You can listen to the episode here on Spotify or Apple.

If you want a more detailed background, read on below.

Guest: JC Parets
Profile: Founder at All Star Charts
Where to Find Him: LinkedIn, Twitter
What JC Parets Is Panicked About: “I’m panicked about nothing.”

Episode Summary:

JC Parets is a good friend of mine who I first met back when I started Stocktwits, and he’s back for his second Panic with Friends episode. You can listen to his first appearance here. As the founder of All Star Charts, JC lives and breathes all things charts. If there’s a chart in front of him, you can bet he’ll have a strong opinion about it. His company –All Star Charts– is a technical analysis publication for everyone from hedge funds, to financial advisors, to individual investors. I was more than happy to bring JC back on to get his perspective on the markets and have a few laughs with him in the process. It’s fun to have market pros with such infectious energy like JC on that I can talk to for free, but I’d be happy to pay for his ideas and thoughts too. In this episode, JC (Read more...)

Talking Duolingo, Robinhood, China and more with Alex Wilhelm | E1257

by jasoncalacanis
This post is by jasoncalacanis from Jason Calacanis

Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

00:00 Alex Wilhelm from TechCrunch
00:45 Intro
03:40 IPO dynamics: Robinhood & Duolingo
12:34 Linode – Receive a $100 cloud credit at https://linode.com/twist
14:04 Robinhood IPO, what’s the strength of the business?
20:53 Duolingo the success of DTC edtech
23:35 LinkedIn Jobs – Post your first job for free at https://LinkedIn.com/TWIST
25:09 Can consumer subscriptions continue to succeed
28:25 Google’s growth (at what cost)
33:05 Why companies are more efficient early on
37:24 Masterworks – Skip the waitlist at to invest in art using promo code TWIST at https://Masterworks.io/twist
38:51 Startup fundraising environment
42:46 Amazon’s rapid growth
47:35 China’s actions on Tech & Bitcoin
1:04:19 Apple talk
1:12:32 Why tech companies are vertically integrating
1:14:05 Digital Acceleration & going back to work

Check out TechCrunch: https://www.techcrunch.com

FOLLOW Alex: https://twitter.com/alex
FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

News! Robinhood/Duolingo IPOs, Big Tech earnings, China & more with TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm | E1257

The post Talking Duolingo, Robinhood, China and more with Alex Wilhelm | E1257 appeared first on Jason Calacanis.