Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Netflixed

Blockbuster totally ignored Netflix as it penetrated the DVD rental market by offering DVD-by-mail made possible by the internet. But eventually, Blockbuster had to do something, so it allocated part of its budget to a new office staffed by young, ambitious types who understood the Netflix threat and wanted to take it on. The new guys at Blockbuster came out with a product that had a user interface pretty much identical to that of Netflix. They eventually found a formula that combined rentals by mail along with in-store coupons that Netflix could not match. Netflix's subscriber numbers began to drop as users shifted to Blockbuster.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Racing Towards Excellence

I wish I had read something like Racing Towards Excellence when I was much younger. Instead of getting the inside story on a number of things I just didn't know, I had to learn from my own mistakes. I highly recommend the book to anyone in their 20s or younger.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Sapiens

Yuval Harari's book Sapiens is just an excellent read. It's about three important periods of human history: the cognitive revolution (where our ancestors became able to use their minds to a level unseen in other species), the agricultural revolution (where our lifestyle changed dramatically) and the scientific revolution (where our standards of living as well as our potential to destroy rose tremendously).

Friday, April 10, 2015

Rosetta Stone

This isn't about Rosetta Stone the stock (I have no idea where that's going), but rather about Rosetta Stone the service. For the last year or so I've used Rosetta Stone to successfully learn a new language: Hindi.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Karsan Value Funds: 2015 Q1 Results

Karsan Value Funds (KVF) is a value-oriented fund, as described here. Due to securities regulations, the fund is not open to the public at this time. Should that change in the future, there will be an announcement on this site.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Behind The Cloud

Salesforce.com is a market darling, having taken the CRM industry by storm. Last year, the company had sales of over $5 billion, which is more than 30% above the year before, which in turn was more than 30% above the year before that. In Behind The Cloud, founder and CEO Marc Benioff discusses what he thinks are the key success factors that propelled his business to what it is today.