Casey Botts's Profile

Thanks for the post @HBS123! I agree with all the points you and my fellow commenters make about the obvious benefits to robo-advising. There’s no question that it only makes sense to lower unnecessary costs and investor biases where possible. That said, it’ll be interesting to see how well firms will be able to integrate this technology before consumers start commoditizing the service. Do companies risk joining in on a race to the bottom? Going forward, even while embracing automation, firms will have to market the benefits of the professional, human advisor more than ever.

Thanks for the post Danny. Great points all around. It’s pretty troubling how much data is being collected without full public knowledge or consent. Even if Palentir is able to prevent major catastrophes, the means by which they did it is undeniably a slippery slope. The public should play a role in deciding how much they are willing to sacrifice privacy for safety. I remember listening a podcast where a company had designed and built a camera that could be flown above a city and provide authorities an ability to re-trace steps and find the perpetrators of shootings, kidnappings, bombing, etc when they occur. The company was allowed to work with authorities in Dayton, OH and Juarez to test its capabilities. Despite some really favorable results, the residents of Dayton ended up voting against the permanent integration of these cameras into the police force. They simply weren’t comfortable with 24/7 surveillance, no matter what it’s stated purpose was.

Thanks for the wisdom, Ronnie. It would be interesting to see if Wal-Mart is looking into ways that it could better understand customer intent before they walk into the store. Maybe they can develop an app-based shopping list creator where users can upload a shopping list prior to going to Wal-Mart. With more advanced notice, Wal-Mart could help guide customers around the store and towards certain products that they didn’t previously consider. It could also provide Wal-Mart some great insight if customers had an item on their list but didn’t end up buying it. How did the store miss out on that profit?

Not sure if the typical Wal-Mart customer would actually use an app-based shopping list, but hey, I’m an ideas guy.

Awesome post Chris! I definitely agree with you that there are huge challenges ahead when it comes to machine judgement on the value of human life (i.e., choosing to swerve into pedestrians to avoid a crash because). That’s one of the main arguments that is keeping military pilots in the cockpit for the time being.

That said, there’s no doubt that, if successfully executed, fully automated cars will reduce driving fatalities, traffic congestion, and driver stress. Hopefully car companies are planning to ensure that their systems are able to communicate across car maker. I also see opportunities for companies like Waze to start partnering with car companies and integrating their systems into the cars themselves.

Super interesting read. It’s a bit mind blowing to realize that our current education model (teacher up front lecturing students) has been the dominant form of teaching for hundreds of years with minimal change. There’s no doubt that our education system overlooks a ton of brilliant students because it’s unable to see beyond the lecture system. Altschool has the incredible opportunity to help open the public’s eyes to multiple forms of learning.

Along the same lines as Parvathy, it’ll be interesting to see how Altschool and it’s customers (schools, teachers, parents, students) are able to digest and utilize the data gathered through recorded classes. There’s bound to be a steep learning curve for Altschool to be able to translate data into results, especially when there are so many factors of academic success that fall outside of the classroom. Getting teachers to accept Altschool findings will also be a huge challenge. Teachers invest so much time and energy, it’s not difficult to imagine significant pushback if the data points to something counter to teachers’ intuition. It’s essential that Altschool and the teachers are on the same page.

All this said, Altschool is doing some really amazing things and I hope that they can succeed in pushing our education system in the right direction.

Awesome post Ronnie. Thanks for sharing. Is there any evidence of wine producers communicating with the rest of the California agriculture industry in search of ways to collectively reduce water consumption? I really like #DCarpenter’s point of looking for potential ways to reduce water consumption through a cap and trade program.

Thankfully, I don’t think people purchase wine with an educated eye. That may present an opportunity for winery’s to market new wine varietals with fancy new labels to the market. Maybe wineries can shift consumers’ tastes to warmer climate grapes without them realizing it.

Also, I wonder how wine consumers have reacted to Mission Bell Winery’s usage of treated wastewater on their grapes. Oh well. yolo.

Great post Hugh! Given the fact that most of MillerCoors business comes from sales of their more affordable beer brands, consumer demand for their beer is probably pretty elastic. Other types of beer that have much more taste differentiation will likely have an easier time raising prices when impacts from global climate change really start to kick in. To your point though, MillerCoors clearly has the scale to influence its suppliers to adopt more sustainable practices. I also really like DTeixeira’s point on looking for ways to engineer hops and grain that require less water. I’m sure they’re already investing heavily to find a solution there.

It’s awesome to see New Belgium taking a leading role in sustainable growing/brewing practices. With all of the micro-brews in Asheville, it’s another great opportunity for New Belgium to influence others at a grass roots level.

I wonder if the beer industry as a whole should be making an even stronger shift to canning its beers. I feel like it’s a more efficient way to package beer and results in less beer lost during the shipping process.

You bring up a lot or great points, Tom. Having spent most of my time in the Navy in shipbuilding procurement, the decision doesn’t lie with Navy Procurement or even DoD procurement, they lie with Congress and the White House. On top of that, with growing DoD budget constraints, funding for developing a more sustainable fleet falls well below the Pentagon’s desire to maximize our military’s defense capabilities. Defense contractor can point their fingers to the government all they want, but the truth is that the defense lobby works hard to keep business as usual and congressmen and women want to keep their constituents happily employed.

Let’s also not forget that the Navy is basically holding up the US nuclear vendor base on its own. Without the Navy, I’m not sure the US would be able to shift back building more commercial nuclear power plant if it wanted to.

Mike, big fan of your blog posts. Been reading them for years.

Really great read, Spencer. I wonder what kind of assumptions the city is putting into its 30-50 year plan. At what point do future residents and businesses decide that it’s no longer worth staying in Miami. At that point, I could see a vicious cycle where an exodus drives up the tax burden on current residences/business which then incentivizes even more residents and businesses to leave. The same goes for tourism. At that point, will the city of Miami be able to save itself? Do they have as much time as they think? Hey! At least they still have Dwayne Wade!

Great post, Zack. LEED certifications aside, the NFL has an amazing opportunity to simply bring awareness to its fanbase. It could easily put together and run a campaign against global climate change before the end of the season. Players could all wear green wristbands and/or cleats. They could talk on commercials about recycling and energy conservation. Once again, it seems as though the NFL is a step (probably more than a step) behind in standing behind the right message. I wonder how long it can get away with being passive players before the consumer starts to notice.

Really interesting post, Matt. There’s no single solution, but optimizing yields with big data is a great first step. Has there been any data released on how yields have improved for farms that have worked with Trimble?

To add onto Caroline’s point, I wonder how useful Trimble’s current product offering is to small farms. Do small farmers have the capability to optimize it’s practices as much as industrial farms?

All that said, I completely agree with you that Trimble could be doing so much more with it’s data. With huge changes in global agriculture on the horizon, Trimble has the unique opportunity to stay at the forefront of the industry for many years to come, simply by digging deeper into the data it already has.