About 15 months into the pandemic , many of us have started to reconsider our relationship with work and workplace. I have always held that work gives us meaning and identity but should not be seen as the only identity. With workplaces locked up for better part of year, some of us have started reevaluating and thus renewing our commitment to other communities to provide the necessary balance in life.
Many of us including I have faced personal tragedies because of Covid19 pandemic and continue to live in mortal fear for our loved ones. This time the pandemic has hit us closer home and hence the pain is real.
One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic- Joseph Stalin
We must fight the temptation to boil it down to numbers as it is then that we start to disconnect with humanity. When we are up close then we see the other as human and would find it difficult to ignore their pain.
Let us try to help others , one at a time. It would be a long slog but it would matter to them.
As always, I am grateful to you for reading, commenting and sharing this newsletter. Many have reached out to give feedback and ideas to work on subsequent week. My gratitude and love to all of them. Usually writing has always felt cumbersome and painful but the writing to friends and getting their response makes it fun and worthwhile.
AND if you are a friend of the RPML, do share it with others. You can add more of your friends to the Community of Platform’ed by using the following link.
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DTW
During the Week, news broke out that Michael Burry has about $534 million dollars in Tesla put options at the end of the first quarter of 2021 as per SEC filing by Scion Asset Management. To know more about Dr. Michael Burry and Scion Asset Management, read the book by Michael Lewis.
If you have not watched the movie based on the book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis , preview the trailer and watch it ASAP.
As far as Elon and Tesla are concerned, it is not the first short selling that Tesla is facing but this time it looks formidable as Michael Burry made 100 Millions dollars personally and another 700 million dollars for his clients by betting against the housing bubble in 2007-8. It was catastrophic for the sub-prime lenders and as many investment banks.
BTW, this is Elon getting his first supercar in 1999 , million dollar McLaren F1 supercar
And he got that kind of obscene money in 1999 by selling his startup x.com which was one of the earliest online banks which merged with Confinity Inc and later changed its name to PayPal and was subsequently bought by eBay for 1.5 billion dollar in 2002.
You see, it all comes back to platforms !
For the digital natives and even for Gen X, twitter has been go to place for covid19 related information and source of help. They have tried to provide reliable information, connect with others, and facilitate to follow what’s happening in real time.
Social Media platforms have been centre and front of the pandemic related information dissemination and of course have created bubbles of misinformation. As I wrote in my earlier newsletter on News Media, Platforms perform three functions of aggregators of news/views ; user engagement channel for news media ; and unfortunately as Arbiter of Truth !
One thing is clear that many businesses that we saw around before the #Covid19 Pandemic are not going to be around when things become NORMAL or the new normal as I keep referring it to in past newsletters. On the other hand, we would see increased concentration of market power with market leaders accumulating disproportionate market share in near future. Both FAANG (along with MS) in USA and BAT in China are doing extraordinarily well in terms of both revenue growth and market capitalisation.
The biggest financial inclusion platform available to Indian government is JAM - the trinity of JanDhan, AADHAR and Mobile. It remains to be seen as to how we can rapidly deploy it to provide monetary relief to millions of poor and unemployed Indians in rural areas to tide over the financial crisis arising out of Covid 19 pandemic.
Our lives have been impacted in more than one ways over last year and half - Work, Social and Wellness. Some of us are still Working from Home and I think we should be thankful and grateful for having hit the genetic lottery. WFH should be seen as a privilege and not as an imposition.
Platforms have been bringing tremendous value through supplier acquisition and lowering supply transaction costs thereby delivering superior value for end-users. And they have managed to do that through acquisition of consumers/users with whom they have an exclusive relationship at scale.
OTW
Over the Weekend, I finished reading Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Collin Bryar and Bill Carr. Both of them worked within Amazon at executive positions and led multiple projects including Amazon Web Services. They signify the importance of “Being Amazonian” and how Amazon as an enterprise has developed first principles which are repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. I was personally impressed by their emphasis on hiring well instead of just hiring fast. Amazon leadership believe that every new employee should raise the standard of the team hiring her. They called it ‘barkeeper programme’ when they started it in 1999. Presently , Bar Raisers have the responsibility of identifying candidates who have long-term potential to raise the bar at Amazon.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
― Jim Rohn
Write in with your thoughts and observations on how the platforms are reshaping businesses, societies, economies and more importantly, your life in this pandemic.
Please take care of yourself, stay socially distant, mask up, and wash your hands frequently. Get vaccinated ASAP.
I Love You
Shailendra
OTM
Opportunities through MountainSpeak are available at Navdeep’s online course at Udemy. He has made a 31 Types of Startup business model course which is specially designed after analysing more than 500 Startup unicorns and big tech companies world wide. Thanks Navdeep Yadav for offering a discount to encourage more readers to experience the course. For more such interesting discussions, check out his YouTube channel Redefine.
PS-
If situation would have been “normal“, I was scheduled to be in Garhwal Himalayas on the way to MadhyaMaheshwar and possibly would have posted a picture like this on my instagram handle but alas !
Hopefully somewhere in Mid September, this might become possible. If you are still reading and would like to be part of the experience , please join the WhatsApp group for regular updates.
Thank you sir, for highlighting the importance of platforms. With the current situation that everyone is facing, platforms have helped with ensuring business continuity and progress.
Great content once again sir. And yes the pandemic has taught us how to be evolving with our thoughts and the way we do business and yes platforms would definitely come a long way to help us in our daily lives.