Francisco Cortes's Profile

I have used gong for my sales class and it is truly magical. I am curious to know if maybe the scaling move should be less about other languages and more about new use cases such as presentation prep or interviewing.

Super interesting Tiffany! Curious to know how John Deere integrated this startup into their big corporate structure post acquisition. Did they leave it as a stand alone unit?

Very interesting article Vikram! What is the company trtying to do through its IPO, the obvious would be improving their technology or scaling their presence. Curious to know what is the next steps for them are.

Julia, this is amazing, very carefully thought out and reserached post, thanks.

Lots of questions come to mind, but most have already been discussed. I guess, the one thought that most lingers in my mind after your post and that hasn’t been addressed is what is next for Instagram, seems like they are already at the top of their game. How can they stay competitive as upstarts like TikTok come to compete? Are new data applications the way to stay dominant or is it some form of socially responsible self regulation maybe? Is it even more hyper targeted advertising? What is next for Instagram?

Thanks for the post Almas! Lots to be amazed, and some to be a bit scared by such as the facial recognition analytics. On the magic band, I wonder if this will become a status quo move for the industry. It is a bit invasive, but as long as it is within Disney’s domain it is fair game and a genius move to capture data from its captive audience. I see no point in competitors not copying Disney, but at the same time wonder if there are any significant patent barriers built up by Disney.

Fascinating Juan Carlos, two things come to mind. 1) Would love to hear about the work SpaceX’s competitors, such as Blue Origin, are doing to get some sort of private company benchmark. 2) Is there any cooperation with NASA in the digital arena, as in some knowledge transfer for the public good?

Very interesting narrative of Etsy Julia, had heard of Etsy and had always been curious of learning a bit more of what exactly they did. Agree on your point on scalability and am particularly concerned about the CAC and LTV behind these kind of lifestyle users beyond their very important growth aspirations that you talk about. Would be interesting to learn how Etsy views this prime market they serve for the long term.

Very interesting article Pranav. Beyond the own potential monetization startegy Clubhouse will take, some of which you mentioned, I wonder how they will retain users wanting to monetize themselves from their use of the platform. The obvious yet indirect ones are entrepreneurs wanting to pitch to potential investors and promotion by companies and influencers through word of mouth, but are there less obvious ways in which platform participants can extract value beyond some variant of service or product promotion?

As I read your breakdown of the economics and science behind Tinder’s business model, I have grown very curious as to how competing app’s economics work. My guess is not that different, and if for some reason they were, I wonder if it significantly helps or deters them from competing against Tinder. Great post Omar.

Rolando – very interesting article. Clearly something thta has set Nvidia apart from competitors like Intel has been its ability to dominate the gaming industry, which clearly was favored by the tailwinds created through home confinement during this years. I am curious to understand how they were able to take ahold of this segment from incumbent chipmakers, was it though technical or marketing differentiation that they could somewhat monopolize this market? What are the barriers to entry posed and defnesive moat that is created for other chipmakers to stay behind them? Given the gaming industry’s high growth one would expect there to be a strong incentive for existing players to move onto this sexy covid friendly industry segment.

Giulia – very insightful and well researched piece of writing. What I am left wondering after your assessment is how much of it was a result of the pandemic or accelrated by the pandemic and how much would have happened regardless of the pandemic? It is fascinating that many of the initiatives that you mention were put forth during the pandemic and built around the existing context, but I wonder how many of these changes would have had to happen regardless of the situation as brick and mortar retail migrates towards ecommerce.

Vartan – thanks for sharing the story behind something that has become so essential to our every day life here on campus. As I read you blog I cannot stop questioning what will be the evolution of this company as the pandemic comes to an end? Echoing Pranav, from your experience in the field, what do you see as the natural progression for a company that has been built in such an integrated manner to the current context? I imagine from yoru writing that the software solution it provides to genetic testing is the true value that will be sustained post pandemic.