RLT's Profile

Thanks for an interesting read Colm. I think that given their options, Formula 1 did a great job in pushing for E-races. It seems like a good way to try to keep the season relevant while the lock-downs continue. The sport and the teams can at least get some media attention from assets that cant be laid-off, like the drivers. It will be interesting to see if the young demographic joining the E-races will actually follow the sport after covid-19, I am not very optimistic. Seems like the network effects are low. It feels like it goes the other way – because you are into the sport, you will play the video game.

Dear Andrea, thank you for a great post. Thank you for bringing the DIGIT perspective to what it seems to be a very traditional industry. I am actually surprised that such a large organization can be as agile and fast as you mention. I do not know much about O&G, but it seems like the industry as a whole is facing a very tough time, do you think that after covid-19 things will get considerably better for the industry? Putting covid-19 aside, It seems that the sector’s outlook is not very positive. However, covid-19 could be a good catalyst for company’s like shell to start ASAP streamlining their processes, implementing technology to get operational efficiencies and diversifying to other business lines. The challenge of downsizing or optimizing their traditional business unit seems complicated, but I think they are well positioned to face the challenge due to their excellent technical and human capital.

Interesting read. It will be interesting to see how Nuro takes advantage of covid-19 to position itself for success after it. You made really strong argument about how they could speed up regulation or generate brand awareness in the current context. However, I think they should be very careful in how they deploy its resources. If the product or regulation gets rushed and there is an incident involving a Nuro car, there could be negative long term consequences. They should be very deliberate in how they invest their resources thinking beyond the lockdowns, as you mentioned the company is not ready to scale productions and operations quickly, and one mistake could be very costly for their future. Anyway, given the amount of funding and how their product is well positioned for the covid crisis, and all the other points your mentioned, I agree they have a bright future in front of them.

Interesting read Walter.

I think this is a great example of innovation in a industry that runs on very archaic systems. For me the challenge is the integration of this new systems with the pre-existing ones. I get the privacy concern, but most of this operational data from the Airlines, is already available for Airbus. This just seems as a much better and efficient way to gather and package the information for insights.

I really see customers benefiting from this type of service. I worked for the Helicopter division of Airbus and I can tell you that customers love the product (because it is unmatched in terms of specifications) but hate the maintenance service, so anything that could help improve the maintenance supply chain would be a huge benefit for both parties.

About getting the data to design new aircrafts… let’s see if Airbus gives good use to the data. In the past they had the data to create amazing airplanes like the A380 or the A400M, however they made the wrong bet when reading the market trends.

Great read! Thank you Ali.

I am a huge music fan and I have been very pleasantly surprised by Spotify’s discovery functionalities. I wonder if Spotify will be able to monetize this in the near feature by charging new independent artists a fee to be included in these playlists. Sounds like a very efficient way to reach your target listener, however I also see this could be detrimental to the user experience if suddenly you are mostly exposed to “payed” content.

I did not knew Spotify had a platform for artists. Do you know how much they charge them for the data? Sounds like a powerful tool if you are planning a tour for example.

Great piece. Thank you Hames.

I had the chance to interact with QC a couple of time in the past. I think your articles did a great job in capturing the strengths of the tool. I particularly like the precise, data-driven and bench-marked analyses.

For its weaknesses, I agree with your assessment. I did not like QC inability to take into account contextual differences, spontaneous conversations, cultural differences, biases, etc.

I personally do not see many high-profile executives substituting a human coach (that will tailor made the training to the contextual differences mentioned above) with a product like QC.

Very interesting, this is the first time I hear about this company. Sounds incredible that they are using AI to identify fake shoes, I would love to hear more about that technology, specially because some knock offs are extremely high quality. For me it is hard to think of this company as a stand alone, but it could be a good acquisition for a large player with retail presence.

Very interesting read Megan. Sounds like Drizly faces a lot of challenges. On one hand competition from companies like Instacart that offer a one-stop solution (liquor, groceries, etc.) and the potential entrance of larger players like Amazon. On the other hand, it seems that they will face issues scaling the business, the revenue model is caped by the flat-fee. I wonder how this will impact their ability to raise future funding rounds. I am Drizzly user so I hope they make it. Thank you for a great article.

Great read Andrea. I agree with your analysis about the platform. Given the amount of data and users they have, I wonder if there are opportunities to expand their businessmen to a seller to seller model. By doing this they could potentially offer other products like car insurance, car guarantees or similar. There are some companies in LatAm like KAVAK that have a financial business on top of their auto marketplace. They assess and buy cars from sellers instantly at a discount and then resell them at market value on the platform. Do you think something like that could work? Anyway, it was a very nice article, buena joe wn.

Interesting piece Andrea. Mercado Libre’s story is very exciting. Online retail in LatAm is very different from the US. Challenges like poor internet infrastructure, inadequate distribution and low credit penetration make it a tough market. However, Mercado Libre has been able to successfully navigate through these challenges. For example, they were able to transition from desktop to mobile, helping consumers circumvent unrelieved broadband service. The question you raise about competition is a valid one, lets see if their local knowledge gives them an edge over players like Amazon.

Great piece. It will be interesting to see how DJI’s product offering and focus evolves over time. My guess is that there will be downward pressure on prices of recreational drone as the technology becomes commoditized and with the entrance of new competitors. However, the use of drones for industrial/business applications keeps increasing. Sectors like agriculture, oil & gas, movies, etc. are now heavily dependent on drones. I wonder if DJI will double down on the development of more sophisticated drones for these types of applications.