Food Delivery and Marketplaces Converge

I continue to see the surplus of food delivery companies and F&B marketplaces on an impending crash course. Is DoorDash a retailer, a logistics company, a brand, a restaurant or even a media/data company? Their vision is likely to be a bit of each and this will be accomplished under a build, partner, buy framework.  Like numerous other industries, the idea of a horizontal play has turned vertical and we’re starting to see each encroach the other’s territory. The challenge in the future will be how to become the super app that customers interact with daily. This fight for share is not without challenges. The average smartphone user has 80 apps on their phone, but they only use ~9 apps per day and 30 apps per month. This means that 62% of those apps don’t get used much, if at all. 

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DTC Startups – The Bear/Bull Case

Brands aren’t built overnight. Some of the most successful brands (Nike, LVMH, etc) have taken years to achieve the awareness (and more importantly relevance) they have now. In the case of LVMH, there is a key element to owning a piece of European heritage that has driven the company to be the largest luxury goods company in the world. Louis Vuitton owns much of their own supply chain. As an example, over the past couple of years they opened a manufacturing center in Texas to create leather goods here in the US that further allows them to create local stories around their products.

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Twitter – Did they Have a Choice?

When Twitter ($TWTR) announced last week that they were permanently suspending the President’s personal account I was surprised  – but I really don’t think they had an option. It’s very clear that Twitter’s growth has been heavily influenced by Trump and I expect the company will see user attrition as a result. Already, over the last few days, their stock has been falling. That said, there was no way out here. The simple fact is that Twitter makes money from advertisers and this cohort is about as risk averse as can be. Brands don’t want to be next to controversial rhetoric so they often will blacklist platforms or services that could be considered threatening. During my time at Jarden when I was overseeing our global advertising, we were constantly tweaking our buys to avoid anything that could be considered controversial.  If Twitter had done nothing, while their user base would likely have remained robust, their earnings would have fallen precipitously as advertisers abandoned the platform. This, also likely would have been a jolt to the stock – and ultimately their business model. 

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A New Airline

Happy New Year! When I see a chart like the above, it’s unfathomable to believe that it’s a good time to be in the airline business, let alone be a startup trying to enter the capital intensive sector. But that’s what David Neeleman (the founder of JetBlue) plans to do. History is littered with failures of upstart airlines due to a myriad of factors that make it an extremely difficult sector to compete in. Today’s 3 large legacy carriers (Delta, United and American) are the result of years of consolidation and currently control ~50% of the US market. 

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