Denner's Digest - 2022-11-21

Interesting interview between Garry Tan & Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport. A masterclass in how to think about business, scaling, and long term vision. There's so much in here that resonates with my opinions, so I'm biased! Flexport is 1% of global freight. This means that every single ship that enters the US has a container managed by Flexport! Quite an amazing statistic in its own right. There are insights into how Ryan thinks. Network effects comes up: one importer using Flexport leads to 16 factories in the first year (up to 36 in 6 years). He talks about optimising the core loop of freight to make it easier & cheaper. And the opportunities for upselling neighbouring products, like insurance and financing. I love the comparison of Flexport with electricity. You flick a switch and the light comes on, but you're really influencing a power station somewhere. Flexport wants to own everything else in distribution such that it's automatic. Companies should focus on products & markets, not on logistics. Ryan references military concepts in relation to organisation & leadership. The Marine Corps comes up. Team of teams gets a mention. And several points about alignment and ownership in dynamic & complex environments. It's packed with nuggets and well worth the time to watch.

Nice little article on techniques to seed product ideas. Who doesn't love a topic compressed into a 2x2 matrix? What this does is frame some of the thought processes that people jump through. Often the "I'm going to solve X" is poorly thought through because X lies in a (currently) popular domain in which the person has little to no experience. I've been thinking about my future career path recently. One option I'm seriously considering is to "put my money where my mouth is" and start something myself. So product ideation is something that's been on my mind. I may just keep banging my space tourism drum. Space X take some Boston Dynamics robots to the moon. Tourists have telepresence to those using the Starlink satellite system. And now you can wander round the moon without leaving home.

This is an interesting metaphor: the bright sunshine of success creates a dark shadow of doom. When a business is successful look for the shadow that casts. Ignore this and continued success isn't guaranteed. Given the current state of the tech industry you have to wonder how many were shadows ignored? A significant part of business success is luck (more on that next time). This blinds business leaders from the fragility of their ideas. Luck is like the water on the road on our sunny day, glaring in the eyes of the driver. If I strain the metaphor a little further!

Morgan Housel has moved to my high signal reading list. This article discusses the difference in the nature of knowledge. How some of it is cumulative, building on the learnings of the past. And some of it is cyclical, seeming to forget what has happened before. On a regular basis too. This reminds me of the University of Chicago "The Craft of Writing Effectively" video. In it Larry McEnerney explains how writing needs to change as you move out of education. One point McEnerney suggests is that it is a group of people that defines knowledge. That group changes over time with new people enter and existing members leave. And that means that knowledge changes. You'd think that writing would help carry knowledge through the changes in the group. But the changing group can, and do, disregard previous knowledge. Housel supposes that this is particularly influenced by knowledge that involves emotion.

I have no idea why we haven't taken this path earlier? Farm buildings. Factories. Warehouses. There are lots of buildings where solar could be added. What am I missing?