In the wake of the school shooting in Florida and NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s statement that the right to bear arms is “granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright,” a slew of companies from Delta Airlines and Hertz to MetLife have ended discount programs with the NRA. Now people are calling for…
On New Year’s Day, Gene Munster, former Piper Jaffray analyst and currently a venture capitalist at Loup Ventures, predicted that Amazon will buy Target. This prediction got picked coverage in hundreds of publications yesterday. Let’s look at why analyst types make predictions like this, how accurate those predictions are, and what they do for the…
it seems as if every community in North America is now vying to host Amazon’s second headquarters. These municipal pitch documents, located as they are at the intersection of politics, business, and fantasy, are solidly built on a ratio of one part statistics to five parts bullshit. I took a close look at the pitch…
Whole Foods has loyal, upscale customers who might be nervous about its acquisition by Amazon, so the company sent people a reassuring letter by email. It’s one of the most vacuous communications I’ve ever read. Now that Amazon is buying Whole Foods, will the retailer focus on online buyers? Will it expand its selection, including…
Jeff Bezos’ latest Amazon shareholder letter is striking in its clarity, directness, honesty, and meatiness. That’s unusual in communications from a CEO. Here’s a look at what’s great — and not so great — in this 1800-word letter. It’s well organized, with an effective lead In a read-on-screen world, you should start everything with a summary, but that summary doesn’t…
Much of the Internet was down for three hours last week. Because of an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud-based service that powers Internet companies, hundreds of services like Medium, Slack, Quora, Reddit, and Kickstarter stopped working or worked poorly. Amazon’s Web geeks then bungled the response, focusing on jargon rather than clarity and empathy….
Self-publishing is much faster than traditional publishing. But can you create a quality book that way? Yes, but only with a disciplined process and the right support team. Here’s my insider’s account of how Shel Israel and Robert Scoble pulled it off with their new book book, The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything. Shel…
Customer knowledge is the most valuable business commodity in our future. Facebook already knows your heart, Google your intentions, and Amazon your purse. With LinkedIn, Microsoft will know your brain. You don’t get a say in the matter. Why did Microsoft agree to buy LinkedIn for $26 billion? If you listen to their CEOs, Satya Nadella and Jeff…
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just released a very clear shareholder letter. He’s very clear and direct about Amazon’s successful products. But when it comes to culture, he’s opaque and oblique. That speaks volumes. I’m a fan of shareholder letters (like Warren Buffet’s) where the CEO lays out what happening in clear simple language. Bezos’ 9-page letter lives…