Technology, Capital Markets, Corporate Governance, Leadership, Entrepreneurship
Category: Venture Capital
The TEK2day PropTech Outlook provides our perspective on where we believe the PropTech industry is headed over the next few years. Major themes include: I.) further industry consolidation and II.) AI-driven revenue opportunities and operating efficiency gains. The TEK2day PropTech Landscape (link at the bottom of this article) includes company names, descriptions, CEOs, 2019 revenue … Continue reading TEK2day PropTech Outlook & LandscapePremium
A recession is defined as an economic period where GDP declines for two consecutive quarters. We believe the next recessionary period will be different as a result of artificially low interest rates. The United States' proclivity to print money and maintain artificially low interest rates makes it difficult for institutional investors to find yield. Gone … Continue reading The Next Recession Will Prove Different for U.S. Equity Markets
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.
PE firms can’t cut their way to prosperity in perpetuity. Strategic Acquirers We applaud when strategic acquirers defeat PE buyers for coveted assets (for a list of strategic acquirers that do M&A well click here). Our rationale is that strategic acquirers are typically motivated to optimize acquired assets so as to maximize ROIC over the … Continue reading The PE Model Is Unsustainable
Facebook imagines a future in which consumers will pay for online and offline services with its cryptocurrency - Libra. Our view is that Libra will eventually enjoy broad adoption. The cryptocurrency floodgates are open, it’s primarily a question as to how Libra and others will be regulated. Regulation boils down to the size of the … Continue reading Facebook Calibra and Libra.
Much was made of Apple's chief designer Jony Ive stepping down last week. Rightfully so. What does it mean when companies aren't led by domain experts? "He’s not just a designer. That’s why he works directly for me. He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can … Continue reading When Companies Aren’t Led by Experts
Rideshare as a long-term investment? Right up there with owning an airline. Heck, even if the rideshare companies were operating at scale - running on autonomous vehicle fleets - would you really want to own that business? Depreciating assets, multiple competitors (it will be more than Lyft and Uber), and thin profit margins (we are … Continue reading Rideshare as an Investment? Don’t Be Spun by the VCs
CEO tenure is getting shorter and we believe a primary cause is less than optimal alignment between CEOs, Executive Team members and Corporate Boards. Alignment Scale Exercise On a scale of 1-10 (10 is best) where would you rate the level of alignment between yourself and your direct reports? Between yourself and your Board of Directors?You may … Continue reading CEO – Executive Team – Board (“CEB”) AlignmentPremium
Today’s announcement that Fiserv plans to acquire First Data in a $22 billion all stock deal continues the string of payments-related deals. More importantly it stresses what many know – that the incumbent payment companies are not innovation factories. Acquire in the absence of innovation – although I believe all companies should have an active … Continue reading Fiserv & First Data: Acquire in the Absence of InnovationPremium
We recently published an article: "Multi-Tenant Machine Learning at Scale". Think of this RPA ("Robotic Process Automation") post as a follow-up piece as told with pictures. Our perspective is primarily through the lens of an investor as to how we would value each of the three RPA business models. You may access a PDF version … Continue reading The 3 RPA Flavors
