No entretanto (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.
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Mais um exemplo do tema em "If You Haven’t Bet on a Market, You Have No Business":

"A symptom of weak market definition is calling yourself as “a platform play,” as so many startups do: doing anything for everybody, without doing something truly important for someone specific.[Moi ici: Pensei logo nisto]
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Picking one or two markets is one of the toughest bets a startup can make because by picking one market you’re giving up others.
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Who wants to exclude potential customers?
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To really solve a problem and build your company means making a tough choice.
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So picking the right market — and ensuring you do get it right — should be at the top of your business launch to-do list."

No entretanto (parte II)

Parte I.

"“I do think you’ll see some dead unicorns this year”
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“There are a considerable number of unicorns that will become extinct.”
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The most likely scenario is the thing that has been driving growth (and valuations) for these companies ultimately comes home  to roost. And that is negative gross margins.
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And so most of the companies out there who are growing like weeds using a negative gross margin strategy are going to find that the capital markets will ultimately lose patience with this strategy and force them to get to positive gross margins, which will in turn cut into growth and what we will be left with is a ton of flatlined zero gross margin businesses carrying billion dollar plus valuations."

Trechos retirados de "Negative Gross Margins"

Dedicado aos caçadores de unicórnios (parte VI)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV e parte V.
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Em linha com a parte V, este artigo "Which Strategy When?":

"Most managers recognize that not all strategies work equally well in every setting.
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strategies of position, strategies of leverage and strategies of opportunity. What’s right for a company depends on its circumstances, its available resources and how management combines those resources together.
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Choosing a Strategy When does it make sense to choose one strategy over another? How do executives decide whether to build their strategies around position, leverage or opportunity? We will examine each f ramework separately.
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The Position Strategy When industries are stable, a strong case can often be made for a position strategy.
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Like any strategy, position strategy has an Achilles heel: change. When industries change, moving a fortress locked into a strategic position is tough.
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The Leverage Strategy In markets where change is moderate, leverage strategies often beat position strategies.
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So while position strategies are based on the fortress analogy, leverage strategies are more like chess, where competitive advantage comes from both having valuable pieces and making smart moves with them.
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A primary challenge of creating competitive advantage with a leverage strategy is updating the resource portfolio as industries change.
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The Opportunity Strategy In contrast to stable industries, dynamic industries are characterized by superabundant flows of fast-moving but often unpredictable opportunities.
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In contrast to the fortress and chess views of strategy, pursuing an opportunity strategy is like surfing.
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For companies pursuing opportunity strategies, competitive advantage comes from capturing attractive but fleeting opportunities sooner, faster and better than competitors."

Dedicado aos caçadores de unicórnios (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.
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Há uns anos, julgo que em pleno ano catastrófico de 2009, depois de um dia de trabalho, tiveram a amabilidade de me levar à estação de caminho de ferro de Vila Nova de Famalicão. Enquanto atravessávamos a cidade, recordo-me perfeitamente de conversar sobre o que víamos na altura.
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As casa estavam de pé, as ruas estavam transitáveis, no entanto, estávamos num cenário de pós-guerra. Em vez de ruínas físicas, nós víamos as ruínas do modelo de negócio do regime. Claro que na altura este tipo de pensamento era tabu, Sócrates ainda teria de disputar e ganhar as eleições legislativas desse ano. Trechos dessa conversa estarão algures enterrados aqui no blogue mas não os consegui encontrar.
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Imaginem agora que em vez de uma guerra numa cidade, se usa a metáfora de um fogo florestal para descrever o colapso de um modelo de negócio de uma sociedade. o que podemos aprender com a biologia?

"after a mature forest burns down, and nothing remains but charred topsoil, there is a standard growth pattern and cycle for the way species repopulate the forest. The first returning species are fast-growing grasses and shrubs. These opportunistic fast growth species provide low groundcover. Next, small softwoods start to fill in, also growing quickly and providing some shade canopy. Finally, the slow-growing hardwood trees begin to reappear, offering significant canopies over decades or centuries.
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[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue é precioso] At each phase of development, different organisms are best suited for the network of available ecological resources. Grasses thrive in the bright light and can withstand harsh, unsheltered conditions, but when hardwoods have grown in, these grasses don’t get enough light to thrive. Hardwood saplings aren’t as hardy and quick growing as shrubs, but once there is some groundcover, they can grow to great heights, achieving long life spans. Life’s early stage strategies don’t make sense as the ecological network matures, and later stage strategies don’t take hold until the local conditions are right. By the same token, economic clusters offer different value-capturing opportunities relative to their life stage."

O que os caçadores de unicórnios na Europa criaram, muitos deles autênticos Quintas-feiras, nas mãos das extractivas elites económico-políticas sem o saberem, foi uma paisagem competitiva adequada a um sistema ecológico maduro, pesado, burocrático... que já não funciona.
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Por que é que não se vêem mais empresas por cá a testar novas oportunidades, a bater com a cabeça na parede, a abrir novas categorias e sectores? Porque é muito penalizante a simples tentativa de fazer o papel de "opportunistic fast growth species provide low groundcover".
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Mas claro, é mais simples dizer que a culpa é da Merkel, ou do euro, ou de quem poupa, ou ...
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Trechos retirados de "The nature of value : how to invest in the adaptive economy" de  Nick Gogerty

Dedicado aos caçadores de unicórnios (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.
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Via Insurgente tive conhecimento deste artigo, "Tanto trabalho, ora bolas", na revista Visão.
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Um exemplo que se encaixa perfeitamente nesta série.

Exame aos dentes? Depilação? Unhas arranjadas? Despiste de diabetes? Enfim... é o liberalismo.
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BTW, no entanto, não conseguem, nem se importam que médicos e enfermeiros não lavem as mãos

Continua

Dedicado aos caçadores de unicórnios (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"As measured by flows of jobs and workers across employers, U.S. labor markets became much less fluid in recent decades.
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An aging workforce and a secular shift away from younger and smaller employers partly account for the long-term decline in labor market fluidity.
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But we also identify strong reasons for concern about the consequences of reduced fluidity for productivity growth and real wages.
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higher training costs as an important factor behind reduced fluidity. The economic consequences are likely to turn on why training costs rose. If they rose in response to technological changes, then returns in the form of more productive workers, better values for consumers, and higher profits presumably compensate for the extra training costs. In contrast, if they rose in response to policies that restrict occupational labor supply and insulate incumbents from competition, they are unlikely to generate net economic benefits.
That brings us to our third reason for concern: the role of government regulations and policies that hamper reallocation. For example, government restrictions on who can work in which jobs have expanded greatly over time.
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the fraction of workers required to hold a government-issued license to do their jobs rose from less than 5 percent in the 1950s to 29 percent in 2008. Adding workers who require government certification, or who are in the process of becoming licensed or certified, brings the share of workers in jobs that require a government-issued license or certification to 38 percent as of 2008. These observations suggest that training costs rose over time, in part, because regulations governing occupational labor supply became increasingly restrictive. In any event, the spread of occupational licensing and certification raises the cost of occupational mobility, one form of job mobility."

Trechos retirados de "Labor Market Fluidity and Economic Performance" de Steven J. Davis e John Haltiwanger

Dedicado aos caçadores de unicórnios (parte II)

Parte I.
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Algumas pérolas interessantes, bem na linha do que pensamos acerca da tríade:

"Poland’s economy has doubled in size since the fall of communism, while Ukraine’s has stagnated, because Poland made a far more urgent dash in the direction of free markets in labour, capital and trade. Estonia has been the top performing of the former Soviet colonies because Mart Laar, the historian who became prime minister in 1992 at the age of 32, had read only one book on economics, Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose and was in his own words “so ignorant” that he thought flat taxes, privatisation and the abolition of tariffs and subsidies constituted normal policy in the West.
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Mr Laar ignored the warnings from most Estonian economists, who told him what he proposed was as “impossible as walking on water”. There’s a common theme here. Germany’s postwar economic miracle happened because Ludwig Erhard abolished rationing and freed up markets in the teeth of expert advice. When the American general Lucius Clay said his experts thought these policies were a bad idea, Erhard replied “so do mine”, and did it anyway. When Sir John Cowperthwaite turned Hong Kong into a low-tax, free-trade enclave in the 1960s, he had to turn a blind eye to the instructions of his LSE-educated masters in London. Indeed, he kept failing to send them data so they could not see what was happening."

 Trecho retirado de "Try free enterprise in Europe"

Continua.

Dedicado aos caçadores de unicórnios

Quando uma empresa privada deixa de ter vendas suficientes para pagar a sua estrutura, finalmente tem de reconhecer que tem de mudar de vida, Ou fecha ou muda.
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A mudança, consciente ou inconsciente, passa sempre por um reencontro, ou por um retorno, ou por um reformular da sua missão. A quem servimos? Por que existimos? Qual é a nossa razão de ser?
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Se não conseguir recentrar a sua existência na missão, ou numa nova missão, o futuro da empresa vai durar o tempo que os credores permitirem, independentemente dos cortes que faça.
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Muitas vezes, o que vejo na reacção das organizações públicas a uma situação de receitas insuficientes para pagar a estrutura, está exemplificado neste recorte paradigmático:

Dizer desprezo é capaz de ser demasiado forte, quem quer saber da missão das bibliotecas escolares? Quem quer saber dos utilizadores das bibliotecas escolares?
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Valorizo que o ministro da Educação, socialista sublinho, tenha dado liberdade às escolas. No entanto, dizer que nenhuma criança vai morrer de fome por falta de livros está quase ao nível de dizer que basta o Corão.
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Concentração no interior da organização, salvar a estrutura, em vez de se abrir para o exterior, para a sua razão de ser.
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HT @Competia