bad bad consultant

Math or Maths?

Hi there,

As a parent, I constantly worry about my kids growing up to be entitled isht-heads.

And so recently, I was reading an article about how American kids are drowning in self-esteem (article in The Blurb).

Here is one interesting excerpt.

Apple of your eye

We dug through Apple’s trove of patents, acquisitions, earnings calls, recent product releases, and organizational structure for concrete hints about how the company will approach its next self-reinvention.

We dig into the team and more in our Apple Strategy Teardown.

It’s long, so you can also download the PDF.

I can haz inflection point

This is some masterful consulting.

Thanks to an anonymous subscriber for sending this over.

And remember, the past is always horizontal.

Forget online shopping

With its newly published patent, Walmart looks to bring the physical store directly into consumers’ homes and eliminate delivery gaps entirely.

The patent outlines tools and systems for an “unattended retail storefront” that would live right inside your residence — giving you access to buyable goods from the “retail-access portal” installed in your wall. Read about it here.

Bracket battle

Round 3 of our latest bracket opened earlier this week, and the votes are pouring in. Here’s what’s happening so far:

• Uber and Baidu are neck and neck
• Facebook is pulling ahead of Nvidia
• Tesla is trailing behind Alibaba

So, which company would you invest in and hold for 10 years? Vote now.

So this was bothering me

As I read the article excerpt about entitled American kids above, the author used the word “maths” versus “math.”

So which is it? Click below to vote.

Jet, upstarts, and everything

In 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek executive editor Brad Stone published “The Everything Store,” one of the first in-depth looks at the rise of Amazon.

In 2015, he wrote a cover story about a hot new company that promised to disrupt Amazon (see The Blurb for the article).

That company was Jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart for $3.3B in August 2016.

One of the conversations I’m most excited about at A-ha! is the fireside chat between Jet.com president Liza Landsman and Brad that is happening on Dec 13th at SFJAZZ.

Save $500 off your ticket using discount code jetme.

PS. Check out Brad’s newest book “The Upstarts,” which chronicles how Airbnb, Uber, and other Silicon Valley disruptors are changing the world.