Operating at the Intersection of Technology and the Capital Markets
Tag: MSFT
Core AI services (machine learning, deep learning, NLP and more) provided by the three cloud infrastructure giants (AWS, Azure, GCP), enable technology companies of all sizes and companies in general to build powerful AI-powered applications and services that previously were the exclusive domain of large Enterprise Technology companies. That paradigm has changed forever. Today, companies … Continue reading AWS, Azure & GCP Have Democratized AI
Director & Officer ("D&O") insurance premiums spiked and coverage narrowed last year as a result of COVID-19. As vaccinations are distributed COVID-related underwriting risk will begin to soften which will be reflected in lower premiums and broader coverage. All of this is to say do not expect every mid-to-large-sized company to be fully back to … Continue reading Back To The Office Will Look Different Compared To 2019
We compared Product Development/ Research & Development investment as a Percentage of Revenue for 20 Technology companies across a variety of subsectors. Our comparison focused on the December quarter. Click HERE to download the table as a PDF. Tickers mentioned: AAPL ADBE ADSK AMZN CRM CSGP FB GOOG IBM ICE MSFT NFLX ORCL PYPL SHOP … Continue reading We Compared Product Development Investment for 20 Tech Companies
Salesforce (tkr: CRM) president and Chief Operating Officer Bret Taylor may soon succeed company founder Marc Benioff as Chief Executive Officer. That's the rumor as reported by a number of news outlets this week. If true, Taylor's operating experience - particularly on the product side (Taylor was Salesforce's Chief Product Officer prior to becoming COO … Continue reading Is Salesforce COO Bret Taylor The Company’s Next CEO?
"Be careful with me, I'm fragile. I'm easily broken." So go the lyrics to "Trip My Wire", but those words could just as easily describe the frail legacy technology infrastructure that underpins so many commercial processes from home and auto titling to financial trading systems, digital health records, government databases, customer databases and so on. … Continue reading A Better Tripwire Is Not The Answer
Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft each grew headcount in 2020 with all but Alphabet accelerating headcount growth. Big Tech has a hunger for software engineers, architects, designers and data scientists. These skilled employees are working to scale sophisticated cloud platforms, applications and services that increasingly leverage advanced automation and analytics powered by artificial intelligence/ … Continue reading Big Tech’s Hunger For Talent
Microsoft's (tkr: MSFT), LinkedIn business unit specializes in entity data and related content similar to ZoomInfo (tkr: ZI). Given ZoomInfo's inflated valuation, Microsoft would likely unlock significant shareholder value were it to spin-off LinkedIn as a separately-traded business. A 20x multiple (par for the course in today's richly-valued Software market and a haircut to ZI's … Continue reading A LinkedIn Spin-Off Could Unlock Significant Value For Microsoft
We highlight the example of Amazon's AWS unit leveraging Snowflake - a competitor and partner - to drive AWS revenue. Tickers mentioned: AMZN, GOOG, MSFT, SNOW. Snowflake makes a living providing cloud-based Data & Analytics tools to data scientists and analysts. Snowflake's offerings sit on top of AWS, Azure and GCP. Certain of its offerings … Continue reading Leveraging Competitors To Drive Your Revenue
Cerner, Epic, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and more will spearhead the Vaccination Passport. Tickers mentioned: AAPL, AMZN, CERN, CHNG/UNH, CRM, FB, GOOG, MSFT, ORCL, RAMP One could argue that we already have National ID cards. Our digital footprint serves as a unique identifier and is easy to aggregate using cross-device tracking technology served up by Google, … Continue reading A Vaccination Passport Is Coming. Digital Currency and A National ID Card Are Next.
The CEORater "Quality" Portfolio is an experiment which we began running at the end of 2018. The portfolio consists of a mix of Software, Information Services and Fintech companies, half of which are led by founder CEOs (we generally prefer founder CEOs). The question the experiment sought to answer was "How would a basket of … Continue reading CEORater “Quality” Portfolio Outperformed in 2020
