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Author Archives: scuttleblurb

[TWTR] Twitter

One possible explanation for why Twitter has been slow at developing new products is that for many years this was a muscle it didn’t have to exercise.  Twitter got so big so fast, receiving national attention in SXSW less than a year after it was separated from a failing podcasting directory in 2006, that its […]

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[SNOW] Modern data systems: part 2

There are some obvious benefits to combining data from different sources: a spike in call center volumes can be traced back to a database error that prevents purchase orders from going through; a purchase order from one brand can be correlated against another to promote cross-selling; a marketing department can combine first party data from […]

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[MDB] Modern data systems: part 1

A relational database organizes data into tables of rows and columns and links those tables through shared identifiers (keys).  This architecture gained traction in the 80s and 90s, when applications were monoliths supported by single servers, and the data structure backing them – the tables, fields, and data type of each field (integer, string) – […]

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[IAC; ANGI] Yet another IAC write-up

I’ve heard it said that in its early days the consumer internet was treated as another place to replicate tried-and-true practices from the offline world.  Newspapers and magazines were thriving under a hybrid subscription and ad-based model, so it made sense that even as it collected ad revenue from service providers, Angie’s List charged consumers […]

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[FVRR, UPWK] Freelance marketplaces

In his seminal paper The Nature of the Firm, Ronald Coase posits that in cases where it is difficult to reliably procure labor or draft and enforce contracts that unambiguously cover the full scope of future activities, a firm will handle production itself rather than rely on arms-length market transactions.  For example, hiring freelancers to […]

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[MKTX, TW] Market infrastructure: part 3

During the mid/late-90s, electronic trading networks eSpeed (acquired by NASDAQ) and BrokerTec (acquired by NEX, which was then acquired by CME) rolled out central order limit booking (CLOB) for the inter-dealer trading of US Treasuries.  Today, more than 80% of dealer-to-dealer Treasury volumes are electronic, the overwhelming majority of which is executed via CLOB. The […]

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scuttleblurb business update (2020)

I recently did an interview with my friend @LibertyRPF. It will serve as a substitute for my 2020 year-end review since it contains everything I wanted to say (and more). With permission from @LibertyRPF, I have reproduced the interview below. You can access the original here. Interview with David Kim a.k.a. Scuttleblurb 𝕊𝕡𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕒𝕝 𝔼𝕕𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 #𝟙 Scuttleblurb is one of […]

[SPGI, MCO] Market infrastructure: part 2

Banks, regulators, and fixed income investors rely on Moody’s and S&P to provide a consistent and standardized metric of credit risk across names and over time.  As I explained in The Self-Reinforcing Standards Moat: …ratings underpin the risk weightings that banks attach to assets to determine capital requirements, dictate which securities a money market fund […]

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