In the startup world, the best way to become a Hare and get a high valuation is to talk up the giant total addressable market (TAM) of your product. Nothing gets a tech investor more excited than a company with bold plans to take over the world! Rational people often Continue Reading
Ian’s Brief #8: Vaccine Edition
Obviously, the big story of the week is the great news around the Pfizer vaccine. I have a number of thoughts about what this means which means it’s time to combine them all into a Brief. Revisiting Sell the News A few months back I predicted that a vaccine announcement Continue Reading
Why the Polls Were Wrong and What We Can Learn From Them
As of the moment I write this, we don’t know who will be the next President and probably won’t for a few days. What we do know is the projection sites and the state polling were off base again and the election was much closer than anticipated. For example, using Continue Reading
Providing Life Support to AIG
To make an (perhaps poor) analogy, AIG is like a patient with a lot of pre-existing conditions. It’s overweight (expenses are too high), has high blood pressure (too much operational leverage), and eats too much processed sugar (in too many underperforming businesses). With AIG’s recent decision to separate the P&C Continue Reading