Finance is now Marketing!
Everything is Hustle in Platform Era!
Thanks for your love ,affection and kind words of care. Archana and I have taken the second dose of covid19 vaccine. All of us have been facing and hearing about difficult stories of struggle and tragedy around us. Please feel free to reach out for anything.
Over last decade or so, I have been hard selling a career in marketing to First Year MBA students at IBS Hyderabad. Many of them see the “light” in first year, some during Summer Internship and many much later in 4th semester AND of course, some of them get away and take a detour to finance or HR or operations but many ultimately come home to marketing and sales. Do share your career transitions in the comments section.
Really if postmodern finance is primarily a matter of mass psychology, isn’t it … marketing? Advertising?
Matt Levine, Bloomberg Opinion columnist in Dogecoin Jokes Didn’t Help the Price
You may want to read more about evolving relationship between finance and platforms by clicking on the following links in the previous issues of RPML newsletter - Show Me the Money, Honey! ; Shape of Money ! ; and Shaping Money
DTW
During the Week, Elon Musk ran a twitter poll asking his followers - Do you want Tesla to accept Doge? BTW, 78% said yes!
and then he followed up with earth shattering , BTC busting tweet declaring the ugly break up between Tesla and BTC
Elon is definitely a genius and of course DogeCoin might be the first inter-planetary currency.
This flipflop might be easily explained through this brilliant graphic by my favourite business professor Scott Galloway.
If you take away carbon credits from Tesla’s reported accounting profits then it actually sinks into RED. Of course, the income from BTC appreciation adds to the drama. The loyal customers of Tesla are attracted to the promise of clean tech solution promised by Elon Musk who has to maintain his “Technoking of Tesla, Imperator of Mars” persona. The growing clamour of climate change impact of energy intensive (that to fossil fuels like coal) cryptocurrencies including BTC paints a not-so-pretty picture. Elon Musk has to decide what is the core business and how far the crypto and space narrative be stretched to maintain Tesla in public memory and keep the stock going up. He is definitely a genius and for a company which reportedly spends zero on marketing , he is definitely the biggest brand asset. His ability to raise capital is paramount for the survival and success of Tesla. And this ability stems from his God-like status among the tech community propelled by his tweets and show appearances (sometimes stoned).
Tesla produced half a million cars in 2020 as compared to 8.8 million units produced just by Toyota. Contrast that to 650 Billion USD market capitalisation of Tesla which is more than that of the four largest car companies globally plus the two aircraft manufacturers plus couple of airlines! Talk about disconnect between value and price.
From a start up perspective , closest encounters between marketing and finance occur in cash flow projections and many have played little creative while reporting those interactions.
The social media influence has led to rise of influencers and/or private groups dishing out investment advice and thus moving huge pile of cash in specific direction/stock. Frenzy around #Gamestop , AMC and other stocks was an indicator of future of investing which is driven by non-experts.Finance and social media combination is fairly close to driving under influence and Elon Musk has again been on the wrong side of regulations.
Those words costed Tesla and Elon 40 Million USD in fines and much more legal headache. He was almost on the verge of another such drama on the latest SNL episode but sort of refrained himself. Let me leave you with one more DogeCoin and Tesla meme. Do share your favourite memes on this complicated relationship.
OTW
Over the Weekend, I watched Alma Matters: Inside the IIT Dream on Netflix and was impressed by the storytelling. It is partly growing up, feeling low, stepping up, burned out , zest for life, character building and of course personal tragedies and achievements.
As Aru and I watched the series, both of us felt that it captures the life of anybody in that “searching for meaning” predicament. We also reflected on the Gift of Trampoline- a blogpost by Aru Bisht ( Follow and subscribe to her blog for more).
I have been blessed with a trampoline that if I fall , it will help me bounce me back into the world and on my feet again. However for a lot of people it is a concrete floor. If they fall, they would hurt themselves and also find it much harder to bounce back in this competitive and fast moving world. This however gives me a stronger purpose to use this privilege. I have been gifted with it.. If I don’t take the risk of doing something different that might be of small help to the world who would.
If you are a 16 year old or a 26 year old or even a 46 year old like me wondering about -What to do with your life? Naval Ravikant has a piece of advise that I found useful and have put it to use including writing this newsletter.
Everybody wants it immediately. But the world is an efficient place. Immediate doesn’t work. You have to put in the time. You have to put in the hours. You have to put yourself in that position with specific knowledge, accountability, leverage and an authentic skill-set in order to be the best in the world at what you do.
It looks like work to others, but it feels like play to me
The three part Alma Matters web-series ends with graduating students leaving for their next destinations at the end of their course work and I could not but feel nostalgic about many such moments over last two decades of being in academics. And it ends with the following voice over.
हम दीवानों की क्या हस्ती, आज यहाँ कल वहाँ चले ।
मस्ती का आलम साथ चला, हम धूल उड़ाते जहाँ चले ।
आए बनकर उल्लास कभी, आंसू बनकर बह चले अभी
सब कहते ही रह गए, अरे, तुम कैसे आए, कहाँ चले ।
किस ओर चले? मत ये पूछो, बस, चलना है इसलिए चले
जग से उसका कुछ लिए चले, जग को अपना कुछ दिए चले ।
दो बात कहीं, दो बात सुनी, कुछ हंसे और फिर कुछ रोए
छक कर सुख-दुःख के घूँटों को, हम एक भाव से पिए चले ।
-- - हम दीवानों की क्या हस्ती / भगवतीचरण वर्मा
Stay Safe and get Vaccinated ASAP.
I Love You
Shailendra
OTM
Opportunities through MountainSpeak are available at MindMate. Some of you have reached out for more information on MindMate and how to use it effectively. Meghana Bhaskarabatla, Behavioural Coach & the author of Mindmate. has kindly agreed to do a guided meditation followed by a walkthrough session of the mindfulness workbook - Mindmate over Zoom. Please reply to this email or comment below if you would like to attend this workshop on 23rd May 2021. They also share a lot of content related to the workbook on their Instagram page. Go check it out!
In finance Industry specially in NBFC its hard to survive as Company focus much hiw efficient u r in generating sales rather operational work or back office work.ultimately most of the freshers suffer with this scenario and struggles with tough sales process
Loved reading it though have little idea about cryptocurrency