Technology, Capital Markets, Corporate Governance, Leadership, Entrepreneurship
Category: Leadership
We at CEORater have highlighted the importance of CEO personality in terms of its influence on corporate strategy, operational and financial performance and thereby implications for stock prices. Don't take our word for it, there's plenty of published research from various academic institutions including the work of David Larker and Charles O'Reilly, both of Stanford … Continue reading Cult of CEO Personality & Implications for Stock Prices
We attended Polaroid Day at MIT Museum this weekend and were reminded of the genius of Edwin Land, co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. "Like visiting a shrine" is how Apple co-founder Steve Jobs described meeting Land. Polaroid's Board did a great disservice to Land and his company. Film Forever Polaroid's original instant camera - 1947's … Continue reading Polaroid Day & “Polavision” Instant Video
Over the past several years as I've read articles about Uber, WeWork and a number of technology startups, my takeaway is that many of these companies lack focus. They lack a focused mission. They lack strategic and operational focus. I understand the argument that institutional investors want growth in the absence of yield, but too … Continue reading Growth at All Costs Leads to A Lack of Focus
We are working on a project that has me thinking about the "long tail". For those who took Statistics you may recall that the long tail is the portion of the distribution where occurrences appear far away from the distribution's center. A long tail business strategy is one where the service provider makes hard to … Continue reading The Long Tail Will Differentiate You
How Not to Build A Company Consider this one of our corporate governance articles. Reading about WeWork one can't help but wonder "Where were the adults in the room? Where was the Board?" Here is a partial list of WeWork's gaffes. WeWork founder and former CEO Adam Neumann and the Board creating and approving a … Continue reading WeWork
Incentivize Prospective Participants with A Seat at the Table MoviePass shut down on September 14th. We do not have first-hand knowledge of MoviePass’ ever-evolving business model. However, we do know that MoviePass never quite figured out how to properly incentivize movie theaters to drive audience participation. When building new network businesses, it makes sense to … Continue reading If You Build It They Won’t Necessarily ComePremium
When is the correct time to sell your company? Many entrepreneurs and CEOs struggle with this question. A blueprint unfortunately does not exist. Below are signposts we have observed primarily across Application Software, FinTech, InsurTech, Information Services, IT Services and Technology-Enabled Services. The company participates in a mature end market and continued growth is dependent … Continue reading Is It Time to Sell Your Company?
Some years ago many insurance carriers wrote tranches of long-term care (“LTC”) life insurance policies which have proved to be toxic. These “toxic” LTC policies - primarily written between 1999-2004 - were at the heart of a scathing critique of General Electric (tkr: GE) last week which ultimately accused the company of accounting fraud. While … Continue reading Toxic Long Term Care Policies: A Bane for Many. A Boon for Some.
We recently wrote that “Scale Matters in Tech”. Technology companies that have captured the number 1 or number 2 position within a particular vertical enjoy Economies of Scale including: 1.) automatically getting a seat at the table for sales bakeoffs, 2.) job seekers naturally gravitate toward market leaders, 3.) prospective acquisition targets will find you, … Continue reading Three Activist Investor Targets
One of the services we provide at CEORater includes a CEO Personality Profile derived from Natural Language Processing applied to earnings call transcripts. Research out of Stanford University - Charles OReilly and David Larcker - demonstrates a correlation between CEO Personality and company outcomes. Separate efforts apply similar analytic methods toward evaluating institutional investors. Institutional … Continue reading When Evaluating Institutional Investors Ferraris Are A Red Flag.
