Scott Galloway

To anyone who wants to learn more I highly recommend https://www.profgalloway.com - Basically a bunch of idealogy around why the big four need to be broken up.

Scott Galloway's relevant "No Mercy, No Malice" column "Resist and Unsubscribe": https://www.profgalloway.com/resist-and-unsubscribe/

> “WeWork is an extraordinary company. As such, we receive expressions of interest from external parties on a regular basis. We and our advisors always review those approaches with a view to acting in the best interests of the company,” a WeWork spokesperson told CNBC. To appreciate just how extraordinary a company it is, the Apple TV+ series "WeCrashed" is excellent. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12005128/ Also, Scott Galloway's "No Mercy/No Malice" did such a devastating analysis of WeWork's prospectus it caused the IPO to be delayed. It's a really entertaining read, see https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf/

https://www.profgalloway.com/jumping-the-spac/ Over in reality, the company’s operations burned $34 million in 2020, and they’re projected to burn $133 million in 2021. In the rest of the deck, Aspiration refers to its “EBITDAM profitability this quarter” and then uses EBITDAM throughout its financial analysis. Which is rich for a company whose entire (projected) profit model is dependent on explosive customer acquisition, which (to date) has been really, really expensive. And I just love comments like this hah This is a firm that registered less than $15 million in revenue last year. PayPal makes $15 million in revenue every five hours. It’s less than most NFL starting quarterbacks made in 2020 — Leo’s former girlfriend’s husband made over twice that.

He's written his prescription here: Twitter needs to move from an ad model to a subscription model, with subscription fees for accounts of a certain size. The platform would still be free for the majority of users, but accounts over 200K followers (or even 50K followers) should pay for the audience that Twitter provides them with. This would lead to better financial results because recurring revenue is reliable, profitable, and earns a higher multiple than transaction revenue. 5 Feb 2021 https://www.profgalloway.com/overhauling-twitter/

The best one, of course, is Bret Devereaux's acoup (https://acoup.blog). It's the only one I follow with any regularity. It's a weekly blog focussing on history and sometimes on its interaction with popular media, like GoT or EU4. Scott Galloway is also a great read. He writes about the digital economy and tech. (https://www.profgalloway.com/) I also enjoy reading Martin Tournoij's blog whenever he updates it (https://www.arp242.net/). He's the author of goatcounter and writes about tech and sometimes certain social issues in tech. Vedica Kant and Anmol Maini write about the Indian startup ecosystem at https://www.kuwi.news/ (it's a substack newsletter). I don't read it all the time but certain pieces are pretty good. And, finally, to plug my own self, I write about health economics, health policy, and systems thinking at Hawk Radius (https://hawkradius.com)

Everything being equal,isn't what Amazon did before anyone else? Burning astonishing amount of cash and create a massive monopoly. Prof Galloway, gave very interesting thoughts on similar approach followed by WeWork https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf

The "nobody expects anything from Harvard" statement might be a bit too strong. I've seen people say that Harvard has a responsibility to do more social good with it's massive endowment. Here's one example [1]: > Endowments over $1 billion should be taxed if the university doesn’t grow freshman seats at 1.5x the rate of population growth. Harvard, MIT, and Yale have combined endowments (approximately $85 billion) greater than the GDP of many Latin American nations. So maybe the issue isn't with expectations, but with incentives: to effect change in these old hierarchical systems, you need elitists to be anti-elitist; to make decisions against one's interests for the betterment of others. [1] https://www.profgalloway.com/how-i-got-here

no mercy / no malice https://www.profgalloway.com the fedex one was really good. edit: added the fedex comment

Reality may not be too far a departure from fiction. Great writeup by Professor Galloway on how this could have been a CIA job in the form of a Homeland treatment I found really fun to read: https://www.profgalloway.com/when-reality-becomes-fiction

Could this brilliant move be to divert attention from the other investments like WeWork? Wag the dog definition: To 'wag the dog' means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance. By doing so, the lesser-significant event is catapulted into the limelight, drowning proper attention to what was originally the more important issue. Scott Galloway on SoftBank and real estate investments: https://www.profgalloway.com/unicorn-feces

> Can’t wait to read about it from Matt Levine. And from Scott Galloway ( https://www.profgalloway.com ) :) Very interesting as what I understood was that, technically (SEC, SOX, whatever...), nothing of what Neumann did went against the rules, but maybe in this case the actions will be compared to the "spirit" of the (aggregated) rules? EDIT: and I guess that Softbank would be happy if Neumann would somehow lose shares/votes.

Probably to inflate the valuation, do a quick IPO of WeWork for 10x the actual value it should have, get their shares sold on high price, and wave to the fools that took the bait and bought an almost worthless stock. This whole ordeal was the best that could happen for the normal people, basically fell into the hole they themselves dug, because the economists etc. called their bullshit out loud. If you have not already, these are good reads from one of the critics of the whole scheme: 1. WeWTF - https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf 2. WeWTF, Part Deux - https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf-part-deux

There is a lot of drama unfolding. “We” planned to IPO, its last evaluation was $47 billion. After outsiders reported irregularities its evaluation plummeted quickly to $10 billion and the IPO is postponed until October, but probably shelved for much longer. We’s CEO knew the bubble was about to burst and sold his shares pre-IPO for $700 million. I recommend: https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf (from Aug 16) https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf-part-deux (from Sep 20)

I don't believe you're wrong. There is strong evidence that there are unrealistic expectations in the current iteration of the dating marketplace. I have no advice other than to be secure in your self, prioritize being the best person you can be for your own wellbeing, and make as much opportunity as reasonable to meet other healthy people open to relationships. Good luck out there. Fortune favors the prepared. The right person might not come along, but if they do, be ready to connect. High level, what you describe is the Instagram Reality imprinted on relationship expectations. People are chasing a fairy tale, not reality. https://www.profgalloway.com/a-fewer-good-men/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444819888720 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chia-Chen-Yang/publication/309419…

This seems a pretty good retelling of economic lore. The details of the banking and finance industry this past few weeks will take time to come to light. But what happened in 1907 has much better press and the long term ramifications as well. As read, JP Morgan absolutely had no need for a moral imperative back then. It was simply in his best economic interest to act as a financial backstop. If anything, the imperative is so strong and towards market concentration that maybe a great reason, in itself, for the FDIC to act instead of corporate interest. Some other great economic reads: From yesterday: https://www.profgalloway.com/venture-catastrophists/ https://archive.org/details/greatcrash19290000galb_z1d6 Galbraith is the standard on the Crash of 1929. Prof G builds on my points here and much further. One stark point between business of yesterday and now in SV is a degree of cutthroat business to the point of shortsightedness. I think that’s at the heart of what Prof G describes as the backlash against SV. They’ve forgotten it’s not always best to go with the absolute cheapest option in any negotiation-and it’s bad long term to author a contract with somebody that leaves the other party too short. It’s bad business because that other party is most probably not acting in their own best interests in that agreement. Or, when moving overseas, the business is leaving the local economy and contributing to the detriment of the very economy that gave rise to it. It’s in the…

Scott Galloway of NYU called it, and has been increasingly louder about it. Like he says, it seems like this is the turning point for many middle-tier universities. Once you start viewing colleges as brands and luxury goods, especially the Stanfords and Harvards, it becomes clear there’s a massive revenue shortfall for them. >This fall, I’m scheduled to teach MKTG-GB.2365 (Brand Strategy) in KMC 2-60 Tuesday nights at 6-9pm. It’s not going to happen. The room would normally be filled with 170 full- and part-time MBAs looking to garner the skills to build economic security for themselves and their families, and improve the world. Mostly the former. However, a room full of 170 NYT subscribers, sitting elbow to elbow, spells one thing — recurrence. So, while Liberty University will likely welcome kids back to campus, I speculate we, and anybody else that does not have their head up their a, will not. https://www.profgalloway.com/post-corona-higher-ed

I wouldn't give that much worship to Galloway it's not like he is always right or my guess even close to that (and nobody is). For example this post circa 2017 about the bubble. I can't tell you how many people have not called the bubble since the last bubble correctly. Galloway is one of them: https://www.profgalloway.com/every-seven-years Market was at 21,600 (very roughly) on the approx. date of that post and now is at close to 27,000. It did not go lower than 22,400 in the interim. To wit (that post): > There are several hard metrics for why we may be nearing full-monty bubble, including things my NYU colleagues spend a great deal of time thinking about, and understand much better. But you don't need a Nobel to see the similarities between 1999 and 2017. (Btw, NYU Stern has three active Nobel Prize winners… We. Rule. But that's another post.) Very generally if you are predicting a collapse ala 1999 you need to be a bit more accurate than that. I didn't do a great deal of work to find that post either, it was linked in the post you gave. Edit: Also love his being so proud of the anointed 3 active nobel prize winners. Would like to remind everyone that until recently the game in business was making money or a great product or being loved by your customers not winning academic awards and platitudes.

> Is it so simple? The highest marginal tax rate in the US is 50.3% (37% federal + 13.3% state in California). The highest marginal tax rate in Norway is 47.4%. Sure. It’s not simple. But you’re missing a lot of the picture too. People with high wealth and ownership can leverage massive loopholes (like taking a loan with stock as collateral) which means they pay very little effective tax on their “income”: https://www.profgalloway.com/earners-vs-owners-2/ The solution is surely not the status quo.

https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf-part-deux/ This was in 2019 and I can only assume everything has gotten even harder with free money gone and interest rates at 5%.

FWIW, I think Scott Galloway has an interesting take on this: https://www.profgalloway.com/work-from-office/ One of his arguments is that for younger employees, in that it provides an opportunity to create social connections. For example, it appears that ~20% of people meet their spouses at work.

> The US government has funded a bunch of early stage technologies Regarding title: FTFY The US government is probably the most successful venture capitalist in history. Scott Galloway defends this thesis admirably: https://www.profgalloway.com/welfare-queens/ I have a sneaking suspicion that the semiconductor industry as we know it would not exist without copious and frequent government funding.

You are spot on. And it’s getting worse: https://www.profgalloway.com/a-fewer-good-men/ Essentially, women want someone who is their equal or “higher status”. With big inequality, men at the bottom can’t get women, while most women compete for the small group of men at the top.

https://www.profgalloway.com/web3/ Another valuable insight into the dubious, duplicit world of crypto.

I like this quote about entertainment: "Two weeks ago, at the Code Conference, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel claimed “the total addressable market of content is infinite.” Netflix is spending $17 billion a year to validate his thesis. So far, they’re both right." https://www.profgalloway.com/stream-on-2/

Diamond branding taps into a much more fundamental obsession with scarcity, which manufactured objects cannot provide. Scott Galloway explores this really well in a recent post comparing NFTs to long-standing art world practices: "Scarcity has always been a function of bits, not atoms." [1] I wonder if synthetic diamonds that were organized into specifically limited editions would hold more value... [1] https://www.profgalloway.com/scarcity-cred/

By the way, confounding income with wealth is as bad as confounding market cap of a company and GDP of a country, e.g. GDP of India vs Apple's market cap [0]. [0]: https://www.profgalloway.com/scarcity-cred/

Relevant: https://www.profgalloway.com/uss-university Scott Galloway made a prediction last summer of what colleges and universities will thrive, survive, struggle, or face challenges given the current situation. Basically, the higher ed market will consolidate around more elite schools.

Not sure about now, but Scott held quite a few shares of Twitter [1] Quite ironic if he still does. But I still agree: splitting up what should not have been acquired is a good start. And a good way to piss off Zuck et al., way better than fines that will be a "cost of doing business". For starters, I think Instagram can survive alone, keep in mind these guys had a surprisingly small team just before the acquisition. [1] https://www.profgalloway.com/twtr-enough-already

What? The simpler answer is that professional investors concluded it was a bad business with shrinking growth opportunities at the end of the current administration. https://www.profgalloway.com/palanthiel-the-uncola