Berkshire Hathway 2019 Investor Letter
Warren Buffet’s investor letters are legendary for his clarity of thinking and telling it how it is - gives a good overview of their position and thinking in this economic climate.
When Data Creates Competitive AdvantageNavigation MenuAccount MenuSearch MenuClose menuSearch
Many executives and investors assume that it’s possible to use customer-data capabilities to gain an unbeatable competitive edge. The more customers you have, the more data you can gather, and that data, when analyzed with machine-learning tools, allows you to offer a better product that attracts more customers. You can then collect even more data and eventually marginalize your competitors in the same way that businesses with sizable network effects do. Or so the thinking goes. More often than not, this assumption is wrong. In most instances people grossly overestimate the advantage that data confers.
Do You Really Trust Your Team? (And Do They Trust You?)
Trust is a frequently used word. Just in the last month, consider how many times you’ve used it in thinking about your team ....
Gokul's SPADE Toolkit: How to implement Square's famous decision-making framework
A technique for making difficult decisions—formed in my time as a Google and Facebook exec, and widely deployed at Square.
Brookings: 90 percent of high-tech job growth happened in 5 metro areas
The result: Wealth and productivity are becoming even more concentrated in fewer, primarily coastal cities. One-third of the nation’s innovation jobs resides in just 16 counties; half are concentrated in 41 counties. These jobs are high-paying and contribute to overall faster wage growth in the areas they’re located, than in areas with fewer innovation jobs. They also result in a lot of secondary work — jobs created to help serve those workers.