What We’re Reading
A few good pieces the Collab team came across this week …
Strategy
How Apple became a $1 trillion company:
Apple did it the old fashioned and the new fashioned way – great products, great marketing, incredible innovation, brilliant people, global supply chain, incessant improvements and updates, buybacks and dividends, R&D and M&A, domestic hiring and international outsourcing, wild creativity and diligent bean-counting. They had it all and used it all. It’s an amazing story. Many of us were able to be along for the ride.
Diligence
Son pondered that pitch for 30 seconds before saying “OK” and shaking Aron’s hand, sealing a deal to lead a $250 million investment round in the startup. The deal done, Son led Aron to the front door and bid him goodbye. “He is a man of few words,” Aron says. “He doesn’t say much. He will just shake hands and that’s it.”
Location
One of the paradoxes of Silicon Valley is that this internet technology revolution is supposed to get rid of the tyranny of place and geography. And yet, it was all happening in one place. There is, however, always a tipping point with network effects. At the beginning, they are very positive, but at some point they can become negative.
For richer for poorer
Sad:
More than a third of borrowers said college loans and other money factors contributed to their divorce, according to a recent report from Student Loan Hero, a website for managing education debt.
In fact, 13 percent of divorcees blame student loans specifically for ending their relationship, the report found.
Marketshare
It handled more payments last year than Mastercard, controls the world’s largest money-market fund and has made loans to tens of millions of people. Its online payments platform completed more than $8 trillion of transactions last year—the equivalent of more than twice Germany’s gross domestic product.
New business
Your margin is my opportunity:
Amazon has now posted two consecutive quarters of triple-digit growth in its “Other” segment, which consists primarily of revenue earned from advertising, according to yesterday’s earnings release. This segment is expected to surpass $10 billion in revenue this year, making it Amazon’s smallest but fastest growing business.
Have a good weekend.