I. Every few years, this graphic from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), reproduced by Matthew Ball, makes the rounds: It shows how a 15-year decline in recorded music revenue, precipitated by the cannibalistic effect of free downloads, is being reversed by the rise of subscription fees from digital streaming providers (DSPs). As I […]
Category Archives: SAMPLE POSTS
Happy holidays everyone, This post will kick off an annual tradition where I provide brief summaries of blog posts published during the year. As always, I’ll discuss my thoughts on the business of scuttleblurb in my annual interview with LibertyRPF. Most of the text in the summaries below is extracted directly from the write-ups and […]
I have a post on APi Group and Amphenol coming toward the end of the month but before then I wanted to offer some thoughts on Charles Schwab. Nothing here is investment advice. Last week I was joking with my friends LibertyRPF and MBI that Twitter felt like a time machine taking me back to […]
Original post: some thoughts on Charles Schwab, published Mar. 12, 2023: In The Media Very Rarely Lies, Scott Alexander writes: the media rarely lies explicitly and directly. Reporters rarely say specific things they know to be false. When the media misinforms people, it does so by misinterpreting things, excluding context, or signal-boosting some events while […]
I plan to spend the next month re-surveying the payments landscape, mostly updating my views on companies I’ve discussed in the past but also maybe laying some groundwork on a few new names. The next few posts will be a loosely organized jumble of thoughts. I don’t know where this is going or how it […]
Before exploring the competitive concerns that have sent shares cratering nearly 60%, it’s worth reflecting on what it is that got people excited about Adyen in the first place. In a typical online transaction, a shopper’s credit card details are picked up and encrypted by a gateway, then routed to the appropriate merchant acquirer. The […]
When evaluating the competitive advantage of a data-based analytics business, three important questions come to mind: 1) Is the data proprietary? 2) Are the insights from the data critical? and 3) Does the data fuel a product feedback loop? Verisk began its operations in 1971 as Insurance Services Offices (ISO), a non-profit enterprise started by P&C […]
“He wasn’t just saving his own soul when he donned his coat and hat after dinner and went out again to resume his work – no, it was also to save some poor son of a bitch on the brink of letting his insurance policy lapse, and thus endangering his family’s security ‘in the event […]