Changing the shape of the playing field: Content and the attention economy
The ability to propagate a viewpoint at scale – changing the shape of the playing field – is new in financial markets, and it is a big deal.
Intangible assets need maintenance too
“Soft” assets like brand and software are typically (but not always) created by investing through the income statement where the investment in the assets is expensed rather than capitalised as an intangible asset. This concept is widespread in investing and well understood. What I find really interesting is how this plays out in the explicit …
Brasilian Hotels, Airbnb, And Other Thoughts
I recently spent three weeks in Brazil, my second trip in three years. It is a great country, and I have some general thoughts on it below. However, one thing that really stood out to me this time was the burgeoning supply of Airbnb apartments. The last time I travelled was in the July prior …
The Evolution Of A Hypothetical Start-Up
I’ve been pretty busy lately on a couple of projects. As always, inspiration strikes at the strangest of times and I have been assembling some thoughts on the challenges faced by growing businesses, from the perspective of an investor who has followed a couple of reasonably large ones like Nearmap and Xero through their many …
The Challenge Of Selling A Managed Fund
I have a friend who is starting a funds management business. I joked with him that, in order to market to investors, he should say that he is a long-only value investor that believes in Warren Buffet, only holds high quality stocks for the long term, real money is made in the holding, lower prices …
Revenue Is A Trailing Metric
An interesting discussion I heard recently was “how can we enhance an organisation’s ability to hit its targets”? The natural response is to ask “how do you hit a target” and the answer of course is that you can’t. You can’t go out and hit a target because the target (sales, in this case) is a …
Some brief thoughts on ownership
I recently read a letter from Edelweiss Holdings that has both prompted some new thoughts and sharpened up some old thoughts about a crucial concept in finance – ownership. The whole letter is worth a read, but this quote in particular threw bare some implicit assumptions that I had largely taken at face value: “A …
The Domino’s Pizza Mystery
I tried to order pizza from Domino’s Pizza (ASX: DMP) on the weekend – strictly for due diligence purposes, you understand. Eight Meats pizza, gluten free base, barbecue sauce. Price: $18.95. Plus $2.10 Sunday surcharge and a further $2.95 for the gluten free base. Add a second pizza – the Godfather, from the same range …
An Update on the Henry Morgan saga
Following the surprise appearance of an article in AFR this morning about the results of a lawsuit against my web host, Dreamscape, and the law firm that represented me, BTLawyers Brisbane, I thought readers might be interested in a brief timeline of events. Mid-last year I began writing a series of posts about Henry Morgan (ASX:HML), Benjamin Hornigold …
The Greatest Business On Earth
I have discovered what I believe to be literally the best business on Earth. Facebook? Google? Alibaba? Fraud manufacturing? Nup. It’s the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) corporate database, ASIC Connect. This thing is a moneymaking machine. Let me put this to you. Zero customer acquisition and marketing costs – if you need a corporate report, …
