Stealing Signs - Issue 04 (12/13/19)
AWS, Uber, Loops, Salmon, and Amtrak
Worth Reading
Reinventing AWS for The Cloud’s Next Generation
John Furrier, SiliconANGLE
“Jassy’s vision is an AWS cloud that extends everywhere, there is the need for compute, storage, networking and artificial intelligence that are accessible from anywhere. Simply put, it’s an “Amazon anywhere” strategy. In the cloud. At the edge. Even in your data center.”
An interview with Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) mixed with insightful commentary from the interviewer. I especially like the following quote from Jassy, “Enterprises and startups are much more willing to take risks on new business ideas because the cost of trying a bunch of different iterations of it is so much lower in AWS and the cloud.” Also included in this piece is important, and likely accurate, commentary on the war between Microsoft and Amazon to win the DoD’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. An explanation for why Microsoft may have been chosen can be found in this article from last week’s issue of Stealing Signs.
Uber’s New Menu Management Tool
Paul Hou, Uber Eats
“The inability to reuse the same item multiple times in our Menu 1.0 data model was problematic, leading to technical debt and unnecessary complexity. With contextual overrides, Menu Maker allows users to make prices overridable when a menu reuses a specific item. For instance, suppose that normally, a restaurant sells fries for $4.00 as a standalone item, but they’re free when sold as a side. In other words, depending on the context, fries can either cost $4.00 or $0.00”
Great insights into feature decisions and implementation for the newest version of Uber Eats’ menu management tool - Menu Maker. I was surprised to learn that one of the biggest issues in their transition from Menu 1.0 to Menu Maker was scalability - some tools were built with outdated software libraries and engineering patterns, and 1.0 included business logic specifically written for that version, which needed to be updated. I assumed that if Uber had mastered anything it would’ve been scalability. Maybe a reflection of their initial projections for the success and adoption of Uber Eats. Seems they did not have high hopes!
I particularly enjoyed their solution to item version control since the Uber team has to approve some changes like item price, and changes made by the restaurant can then pile up while changes are pending and Uber is reviewing. Uber just locks the item and any dependent entities when a change is made until the change is approved. One change at a time. KISS comes to mind here.
Should You Let Your Small Customers Go?
Jason Lemkin, SaaStr
“...if your smallest customers are among the happiest … at least keep a small team on them. One rep, a customer support rep, and a little bit of the dev budget. 1000+ super fans in a strategic asset.”
Jason offers compelling arguments on both sides of this question. At the end of the day, if they’re happy and require little maintenance/few resources, keep them. He surfaces a very important point at the end of the piece: if you let your small customers go entirely, that DNA is lost from the company forever. It’s extremely difficult to re-inject the SMB DNA after the team has optimized for larger customers. Super, super important consideration for startups and small co’s - impacts every aspect of the business -- hiring, marketing, sales, operations. I’m interested in the inflection point here - when is the right time to get rid of small customers? I imagine it could be quantified using sales metrics, but I’m also interested in understanding the psychological and cultural impact. I bet there are some good case studies on this transition.
Growth Loops are the New Funnels
Brian Balfour, Reforge
“Funnels create strategic silos. Funnels create functional silos. Funnels operate in one direction...The fastest growing products are better represented as a system of loops, not funnels. Loops are closed systems where the inputs through some process generates more of an output that can be reinvested in the input.”
A nice outline of why “loops” are more effective models for growth than “funnels.” Examples in this piece include growth loops for Pinterest and SurveyMonkey.
I surfaced this way of thinking a few months back with this article that illustrates competitive advantages as “flywheels.” It’s a very helpful framework for analyzing how businesses grow/make money and forces you to think about how the different pieces of a company work together, vs. analyzing things like customer acquisition, retention, and product development in isolation.
The Case for Federal Innovation-Based Growth Centers
Robert D. Atkinson, ITIF & The Brookings Institute
“...one has only to examine the history of U.S. technology hubs such as Boston, the Bay Area, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle to see that the federal government has often played important, if not decisive, roles in helping new tech centers attain critical mass.”
A strong case for a federal “growth centers” program that ideally spreads innovation jobs and young talent across the country. I have little doubt that a substantial portion of these dollars, roughly $700M/year per city for 10 years, would go to VC. This observation has been true of the startup and venture worlds for years now - early stage companies are moving to the coasts and venture dollars are following. Maybe this is a solution. I’m not well-versed enough in public policy to speak to the viability of this program. It seems highly ambitious, likely too ambitious. But seems like a good starting point.
<stuff> Weekly!
LOL Weekly - “That Salmon is a Hero”
Per Axbom
“I need a full length Atlantic Salmon. For science.”
Lol. Great thread and actually quite interesting.
Funding Weekly - Resumes: Out. Project-based Learning: In.
“Riipen helps post-secondary students and young professionals connect and engage with employers through authentic project-based experiences.”
I’m pretty bullish on the hiring and recruiting space. I believe a big company will be built here in the near future that significantly disrupts LinkedIn and traditional HR processes, whether it is a marketplace, social product, merit-based solution, introduces new mediums to display skills/capabilities, or some combo of these things, like Riipen. The project-based approach has been around for a while and has not had success, so I’m a bit skeptical. Not sure exactly what it needs to be successful. Something will break through.
Baseball Weekly - “I was gonna clean my room until I got high”
Marijuana is no longer considered a banned substance by Major League Baseball (MLB). This means marijuana will no longer be included on drug tests. Previously, major league players were allowed to use marijuana but were still tested for it, and faced possible punishment depending on their test results. Minor league players were not allowed to use marijuana whatsoever.
Good context for just how popular marijuana is among MLB players - a quote from ESPN MLB Insider Jeff Passan:
The most popular question asked at these Winter Meetings was not: “Where is Gerrit Cole going?” It has been from minor league players to their agents, asking “When can I get high?”
A bit tongue and cheek, possibly, but it’s very popular among professional baseball players.
Video Weekly - Amtrak’s Grand Plan for Profitability
Wendover Productions
Fun Fact #1: Amtrak has never made a profit
Fun Fact #2: Amtrak’s route from New Orleans to Los Angeles loses $456 per passenger
Art Weekly - Ornitographies
Xavi Bou
“ORNITOGRAPHIES ARISES FROM THE AUTHOR’S CONCERN FOR CAPTURING THOSE UNNOTICED MOMENTS AND FROM THE INTEREST IN QUESTIONING THE LIMITS OF HUMAN PERCEPTION.
Xavi Bou focuses on birds, his great passion, in order to capture in a single time frame, the shapes they generate when flying, making visible the invisible.”
Some really cool long exposure work.
