Technology, Capital Markets, Corporate Governance, Leadership, Entrepreneurship
Tag: Facebook
The SEC ought not allow companies to issue supervoting or non-voting shares - a method companies use to enable founders to exercise control beyond their share ownership. To my knowledge it has only been a few, high profile Technology companies that have used this trick. Alphabet (tkr: GOOG) split its stock into three classes in … Continue reading Supervoting Shares = Poor Corporate Governance
Things Will Get Worse for Facebook Before They Get Better. A Second Act Is Required. Our thesis is simple. User growth has slowed and in the recent June quarter declined. We expect this trend to continue in the near-term as the following factors negatively impact Facebook’s business. Declines in User Trust and Engagement: The Cambridge … Continue reading Facebook – Things Will Get Worse Before They Get BetterPremium
Disruption Rarely Announces Its Arrival Ask Curtis Stevens - the gentleman who was knocked on his posterior by Gennady Golovkin in our header image - if he saw the punches coming. Ask former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer if back in the early 2000's he knew SaaS/cloud-based service delivery models would dominate the software landscape. Ask … Continue reading Disruption – It’s the Punch You Don’t See that HurtsPremium
Technology news items that caught our attention this week: Waymo to launch robo-taxis in Europe: Link Phoenix AZ as petri dish for autonomous driving: Link Kroger is launching a fully driverless delivery service: Link In the “Service, Maintenance, Repair” category: the US Army is using machine learning to predict when combat vehicles need repair: Link … Continue reading Technology News from the Week: June 25th 2018
Facebook has removed access to legitimate applications such as Apply Magic Sauce due to the backlash from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Unfortunately, when a negative event occurs the corporate response is typically one that overshoots and overcorrects, a ham-fisted approach (Hulk smash!) rather than a logical, methodical approach. Rather than take the time to educate … Continue reading Facebook Collateral Damage
The Facebook uproar - wow! I’m shocked that people are shocked. We put our lives online for the world to see – the temptation for nefarious actors to act is there. We can’t be surprised at the result. What happened? Facebook and UK-based Cambridge Analytica (“CA”) are at the eye of the storm. What occurred … Continue reading The Facebook, Cambridge Analytica Uproar – Nothing New Here
Human Capital is Key “It’s people! Soylent Green is people!” shouted Charlton Heston’s Robert Thorn in 1973’s Soylent Green. Fast forward 45 years and people remain central to the process. Although the process we refer to isn’t recycled human foodstuff but rather the global economy where Intellectual Capital provides economic sustenance and Human Capital is … Continue reading It’s People! It’s People!
Yes if You Ask Us While AT&T moving to acquire Time Warner and Disney (and Comcast?) moving to acquire Fox are interesting deals, it’s more interesting to us what the next chess move may be in a world that increasingly values content (live sports and premium original content in particular). We recently wrote about and … Continue reading Is Apple Disney’s End Game?
We recently posted an article that in part detailed our view on non-voting share issuances (hint: we despise them). In the spirit of healthy follow-up, I shared my view with SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. Read my note to Chairman Clayton HERE.
We Have Entered an Unprecedented Era of Shareholder Tolerance It is interesting that corporate boards and institutional investors are willing to tolerate “Distracted CEOs” and founder CEOs who wish to exercise outsized control of the companies they founded. Both are examples of poor corporate governance. Our definition of a Distracted CEO is the CEO that … Continue reading Distracted CEOs and CEO OverreachPremium
