Related posts: [KMX – CarMax; CVNA – Carvana] Moat, Growth, and Competition (Mar. 30, 2018) [CVNA – Carvana] Fat tail investing (Aug. 13, 2020) As previously discussed, the cost structure of used car retailing has become less variable, more fixed over the years. CarMax pioneered this transition in the early ‘90s, applying the lessons of […]
Diabetes is a disease caused by the body’s inability to produce or effectively use insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that carries glucose into the body’s cells and stores excess glucose in the liver. Its absence can trigger a hyperglycemic state, where blood glucose levels rise to abnormal levels, which can lead to long-term […]
Trupanion is a pet medical insurer that promises its members the best value, not the cheapest price. It runs a cost-plus model, targeting a 71% claims ratio (% of premiums paid to vets) for each category, so that if it turns out that vet costs for 3-year old German Shepherds in 97214 run at, say, […]
With 60% of rooms supplied by a fragmented set of independent hotels, the European hospitality market is set up to be aggregated: no individual hotel is large or prominent enough to effectively bargain against an aggregator or attract guests on their own, and coordinating action among a diffuse set of players is challenging. A hotel […]
I recently did an interview with my friend @LibertyRPF, who publishes an insightful newsletter covering tech, science, investing, and various other topics. It is one of my morning staples. You can access the original interview here. Q: Hey David! It’s been a little over a year since we last did this [see 𝕊𝕡𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕒𝕝 𝔼𝕕𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 #𝟙 for our first […]
Related posts: Nvidia (NVDA): Part 1 of 2 Nvidia (NVDA): Part 2 of 2 Intel’s audacious shift from memory chips to CPUs, as recounted by former CEO Andy Grove in Only the Paranoid Survive, is widely celebrated. During the early 80s, Japanese chip companies – owned by large electronics enterprises that cross-owned banks that supplied […]
Dear friends and subscribers: While I consider this my most productive year from a research standpoint, the business side of things was mixed. Scuttleblurb is on track to surpass $300,000 in subscription sales this year, more than I could have imagined when I launched nearly 5 years ago. But growth has slowed and subscriber trends […]