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- The Connection Newsletter 66 - Relentless.com
The Connection Newsletter 66 - Relentless.com
The Connection Newsletter 66 - Relentless.com
Hello!This is edition #66 of The Connection, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!) Glad you're here.One of my favorite articles this week was about Amazon’s most ambitious research project: the convenience store. It was co-written by Brad Stone, author of the book, The Everything Store, which tells Amazon’s origin story.
There were the typical Jeff Bezo-isms you’d expect in an Amazon story: six-page press releases to conceptualize the finished product, pivots after years of research, and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on a seven year project to do what 7-11 has been doing for years.
The allure of Amazon and Bezos has become so great, we barely bat an eye when hearing about this kind of investment. We think: “Oh, crazy old Jeff Bezos. That guy… always playing the long game.”
This may be true, but I can’t help but think about the dozens of people who tackled this audacious project because Amazon wanted to grab their slice of the $12 trillion grocery industry. All those researchers and designers and product managers and engineers. They dedicated three years executing on the vision of a reimagined grocery store, only to be told the concept wouldn’t work, and they were changing direction to a convenience store.
"“It was one of those Amazon things,” another employee recalls with regret. “We love it—let’s change everything!”"
Of course, this is the risk when you work at a company like Amazon, or any company that’s audacious enough to “disrupt” another industry. Rejection and failure is the cost of doing business. Cutting bait is part of the game. It’s no one’s fault.
It’s humbling to read about how even Amazon, with its infinite resources, can go through all this gyration and thrashing and still fall short.
The lesson for all those foot soldiers on the ground, the ones executing the day-to-day strategy: we have to keep rolling with the punches. We have to care enough about a project to will it into existence... but have a short memory if it fails.
A short memory is not easy. It reminds me of the Jack King quote, popularized by the movie, Rounders: “Few [poker] players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.”
Your future wins are built on how you handle yesterday’s losses.
Onto this week’s articles:
Make sure to hit "Display Images" above to see puppy pics.
Grindr had dreams of making the world better for queer people. Then the owner sold it to a Chinese gaming company, weak leadership stepped in, and the company traded its mission for metrics. H/t Akiva
According to a 2018 report, only 14 of the 132 venture-backed unicorns in the United States had female founders; now, more than a third of them are in the beauty space.
One nuance I feel the article missed is that dramatic changes in technology and distribution enabled companies in the beauty space to reach unicorn-status valuations.
When Emily Weiss pitched d2c Glossier to investors (now worth $1.2 billion) the common response from investors was “oh, beauty, cute!” I’m sure there was a lot of looking down on the beauty space and/or down on female founders.
Just as true, however, was that Weiss and other beauty companies took advantage of peak social media influencer marketing and the low-cost of distribution and acquisition it allowed, to make this kind of success possible. Investors simply may not have had the saavy or knowledge to understand the beauty industry now how model-channel fit (the perfect alignment of a low-friction monetization model with a low-CAC channel).
What started off as an Instagram grew into a social-media marketing agency (Jerry Media), earning $30,000 per sponsored post (as of a Forbes report in 2016) for brands like Burger King, Bumble, Hinge, Oprah, USA Network, Syfy, and more. The company also profits off its own products, including a popular Cards Against Humanity knockoff game called What Do You Meme and their own tequila brand. The staggering amount of success a media company can create built off the back of stealing content and then finding ways to monetize is just another signal of how distribution is just as powerful, if not more so, than the product itself.
I don’t know much about Ariana Grande (and earned the ridicule of cousins when I referred to her as “Adriana Grande”). I enjoyed reading about her in this profile. My favorite quote:
Grande has a preternatural gift for impersonating other singers and actresses—a talent that has made her a surprise darling of the nighttime-television circuit. (After watching her host Saturday Night Live three years ago, Steven Spielberg texted Lorne Michaels to sing her praises.) Grande credits her healthy vocal technique to having learned to mimic Celine Dion, in particular, whose seamless blending through her registers and careful vocal placement have given her greater durability than many of her peers. “I learned how to make it sound like I was belting and being loud without actually belting and being loud,” Grande explains. “The voice is expensive, and if you’re spending it properly, you’ll be able to keep spending it.”
Kanye West’s contribution to rap and hip-hop will last a lifetime (check out my notes on Cole Cuchna’s Dissect podcast, where he breaks down My Dark Twisted Fantasy). But it’s his foray into fashion and specifically, footwear, where he’ll generate the bulk of his income, thanks to maintaining ownership of his brand after leaving Nike and taking Yeezy to Adidas where Scooter Braun helped ink a lucrative deal: 15% royalty on wholesale and a marketing fee.
When you learn to play the game, some people can make an extra $1,000 a month stringing together low-paying tasks ($0.05 here, $2.00 there). Is it criminal that Amazon can get away with paying people less than minimum wage?
Perhaps, but I’d argue that being able to make three dollars an hour is better than nothing, especially when the opportunity cost is just mindless Instagram scrolling or watching reruns of The Office.
Great case study on all the work required to get stakeholders to the table and aligned on one possible solution to a complicated, emotional problem.
Fred Rogers and his writers used this framework on every script of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, great for talking to children. It's how they went from a line like: "It is dangerous to play in the street. "to"Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing."
State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand
Rephrase in a positive manner,
Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust.
Rephrase your idea to eliminate all elements that could be considered prescriptive, directive, or instructive.
Rephrase any element that suggests certainty.
Rephrase your idea to eliminate any element that may not apply to all children.
Add a simple motivational idea that gives preschoolers a reason to follow your advice
Rephrase your new statement, repeating the first step
Rephrase your idea a final time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand.
Thanks for reading!Last thing: Is there anything I can help you with? If there's any way I can help out, please let me know. Or if we just haven't chatted in a while, I'd love to hear from you. Just reply directly to this email.
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