The Razor’s Edge

March Madness: PagerDuty Earnings, Just Eat Takeaway Ready For Pick Up, and GoPro or Go Home

This week’s the Razor’s Edge takes a March Madness theme, as we break down a bracket of ideas. 

 We start off with PagerDuty, breaking down their very solid Q4 report and FY 2022 guidance, as well as the swagger management had on the call. Then we each pitch a new idea. Daniel talks up the favorable economics of Just Eat Takeaway (in the process of buying out GrubHub), and Akram pitches GoPro as a growing subscription business positioned perfectly for a reopening tailwind. We quiz each other on the theses and try to boil down what truly matters for each pitch.

Topics Covered

• 3:00 minute mark – PagerDuty Earnings review – confidence, use case expansion, bundling, valuation, the point product vs. platform elements, and when is it worth talking to management

Just Eat Takeaway Ready For Pick Up

• 20:00 – The basic bull argument
• 27:00 - The value proposition for customers and thinking through customer behavior
• 36:00 – The founder-led angle
• 46:00 – Working through the competition
• 51:00 – Distinction in our investing styles

GoPro or Go Home

• 54:30 – The GoPro case
• 1:03:45 – Subscription economics for GPRO
• 1:09:00 -  How big of a post-COVID play is this and what about this over-extrapolating?
• 1:15:00 -The Gamestonk context and why it helps or hurts the case
• 1:17:30 – Time horizon for the GoPro trade

Some related items to read:

• Not Boring on the beginning of the end.
• Marc Barros on GoPro vs. Contour
• Daniel's Just Eat Takeaway pitch
• Akram's GoPro pitch

Streaming Endgame, The fuboTV Bear Case, And The Rise Of Audio With Andrew Freedman

One of our regular areas of focus on the Razor’s Edge is the streaming space, and there are few people who are following that space as closely as Andrew Freedman of Hedgeye. To the point where his name has come up on our episodes more than once. So it was long overdue to have him join the Razor’s Edge to share what he’s seeing.

We focus on what’s going on in streaming and whether all the new entrants will have the endurance to make it in the long-term. We then drill into the story around FuBo, a company that Andrew has been vocally bearish about. We wrap up streaming with a look at Netflix’s next act, and then look into the new emergence of live audio as a competitive opportunity, and wrap up with a few questions sourced from Twitter followers.

Topics Covered

• 3:00 minute mark – What’s interesting about streaming right now, and the rise of the laggards
• 13:00 – Is the streaming winnowing coming?
• 22:00 – The pace and rhythm of great content
• 27:30 – The FuBo bear case
• 33:30 – FuBo’s target audience and other bull case points
• 43:00 – The direction of sports programming and why this won’t be a replay of Netflix circa 2011 or Roku circa 2019
• 48:30 – Netflix’s next act
• 56:30 – The audio space, and/or “Spaces” – Twitter, Spotify, Clubhouse, Facebook
• 1:08:00 – Listener questions – Pinterest in a reopening environment; ROKU vs. TWTR in 10 years; Square buying Tidal; MTCH vs. BMBL

Andrew's work at Hedgeye: https://accounts.hedgeye.com/products/communications_pro/558!559

Hedgeye’s Terms of Service: https://www.hedgeye.com/terms_of_service

Definition of some terms:

• SVOD – Subscription Video on Demand
• AVOD – Advertising based Video on Demand
• OTT – Over the Top, TV delivered over the internet rather than through traditional cable (also an ‘80s movie)
• RSN – Regional Sports Networks
• VMPVD - Virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributor

Covid Conundrum: Zoom's Earnings, Bellwether Warnings, and PagerDuty Preview

Just over a year ago, we released an episode of The Razor’s Edge called Correction City. As we lap the beginning of the pandemic, we also are starting to glimpse the end, and the market is starting to look like a long, strange trip. Bellwethers are moving lower, rotations are happening, and 40% revenue growth guidance isn't what it used to be.

We talk Zoom - one of the stocks that the market and we have been following most closely since last March - and then process the other major shifts in the market. We finish with a look at PagerDuty's upcoming earnings, which also leads us to Snowflake's imposing position.

Topics Covered

• 4:00 minute mark - Initial review of the week that was
• 9:00 - ZM’s report as a bellwether
• 13:30 - What’s ahead for ZM
• 20:30 – The importance of annual guidance on the Q4 call
• 25:30 - What changed for the market, and what distinguishes Zoom from other SaaS winners
• 33:30 - Wal-Mart’s (WMT) warning
• 40:00 - What’s going on this week
• 48:00 - Looking out a year ahead positioning wise
• 58:00 - PagerDuty’s outlook and earnings preview
• 1:04:30 - Snowflake’s positioning
• 1:07:30 - Humility in the face of the weighing machine

 

Ramp Co-Founder Karim Atiyeh On The Corporate Spend Market And Ramp's Position

This week on the Razor's Edge, we speak with Karim Atiyeh, a serial fintech entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Ramp, a fast-growing spend management fintech company. He talks about the company's positioning and alignment with customers, what he learned from his time at Capital One after the credit card giant acquired his previous company, and what it was like launching a product a month before the pandemic began, from a New York office no less.

Topics Covered

• 3:30 minute mark – Ramp’s target market and the distinction between focusing on transaction fees and spend management
• 10:15 – Selling into the finance department and the effect on organizations
• 14:45 – Ramp’s origin story and the opportunity for spend management in the market
• 20:00 – Price transparency vs. dynamic pricing in SaaS
• 23:15 – The fintech ecosystem
• 28:15 – The importance of integrations, with Slack as an example
• 34:15 – Launching a company in the face of COVID
• 41:15 – The return to the office
• 43:15 – Hiring during and after COVID
• 48:15 – Remote effect on the workplace dynamic for new hires
• 51:45 – Business spending changes during the pandemic
• 54:45 – COVID Peak for many businesses
• 1:05:15 – Peak Screen time/audio
• 1:15:15 – The meme-iverse and the loudest voices in the financial social media ecosphere, and bitcoin
• 1:21:15 – Karim’s investing takes, and Shopify

Talking The Twitter Trade, Analyst Day, And The Big Picture

It's been a wild and, finally, fun ride for Twitter over the past 11 months. While everything feels like smooth sailing now for bulls, even as of our last episode on the stock post ex-President Trump ban in January, things weren't so clear. Despite that, the set-up was good enough for Akram's Razor to open an options trade into the earnings call (and for Daniel Shvartsman to open a small long position, which is a separate story).

We break down what happened with Twitter but also more of the mechanics of the options trade; why that trade, why Q4 and not Q3, whether to hold it into the call itself, and what's left for Analyst Day this week. All of this happens within the context of the broader macro environment and what growth investors might start extrapolating as we (fingers crossed!) round our way out of the full COVID environment this year. So we bring a dollop of that context into the discussion as well.

Topics Covered

• 4:00 minute mark - How does event-driven trading of options fit into a broader portfolio strategy?
• 12:00 - Reviewing our record on Twitter and how/when Akram's views flipped over 2020 - the importance of narrative shifts, product adoption/development, having a variant view, and understanding the other side of the trade
• 22:30 - Twitter's setup going into the start of 2021
• 28:45 - Why not own the biggest growth stocks instead of a Twitter?
• 34:30 - Market participants' tendency to extrapolate in the short-term, and the misuse of 'compounding'
• 40:00 - Defining mania
• 48:00 - The strum and drang around Twitter at the beginning of 2021 and the March options trade
• 1:04:00 - The Q4 reaction and what's left for the analyst day
• 1:11:00 - Twitter's differentiation in the subscription space
• 1:22:00 - The importance of understanding the process
• 1:27:00 - Peak screen time

The Future Of Meetings: Online vs. In-Person vs. Hybrid, with Meetup CEO David Siegel

Amidst a year of web acceleration, changing habits, and questions about what legacy the pandemic will have on our day to day lives, it helps to go back to roots. One company that has both been through its share of web-usage cycles and has an interesting view on the state of the world is Meetup, and on today's episode we speak with their CEO, David Siegel.

The company, founded back in 2002, has seen a lot over the years, and saw several years worth of activity in the past 18 months - a divestiture from WeWork (which had bought the company a couple years prior), a pandemic that required reversing a fundamental business policy, and a pandemic that placed more urgency on the need to meet with others, even as it made it harder to do so. We speak with David about the past 12-18 months, the future of meetings, how much of our online meeting environment will stick around, what Clubhouse and the audio bubble might mean for meetings, and the importance and challenge of online moderation and community management.

Topics Covered

• 3:00 minute mark - Background on Meetup’s model
• 9:00 - The COVID + WeWork period
• 12:00 - The WeWork relationship/divestiture
• 15:30 - Why WeWork/Meetup didn’t work
• 20:30 - What does it mean for Meetup to go all digital
• 24:00 - Meetup differentiation
• 27:30 – Modern web moderation and how to tackle that issue
• 31:00 - Talking through pandemic effect on meetings, and how do the new online tools and in-person integrate?
• 42:30 - Combinations and SPAC liquidity in the market
• 44:15 – Advertising/promotion as a business angle

Check out David's new podcast here: https://www.meetuppodcast.com/

 

AI And SaaS Valuations with May Habib, Founder/CEO of Writer

We haven’t covered artificial intelligence much on The Razor’s Edge, but it’s a theme that is only going to grow in market salience over the years to come. May Habib, this week's guest, has firsthand involvement with that theme. She is the founder and CEO of Writer, an AI business writing assistant. She explains her company's pivot to us, as well as sharing a little bit of Writer’s secret sauce, taking us through the COVID effects on the company and its end market, and casting light on the start-up funding market and where AI might go in the years to come. And given her background in wealth management and investment banking, we couldn’t let her go without asking for her take on the markets, especially semiconductors and SaaS, but also of course Twitter. 

Topics Covered

• 3:30 minute mark - Background on Writer and its target userbase
• 9:00 – Writer’s  pivot in product and the coincidence with COVID
• 11:15 - How the pivot affected the AI models and the sales approach
• 15:30 - Differentiation for Writer and tailwinds in the business
• 19:00 - How building a SaaS has changed and the importance of a pivot
• 23:00 - Looking back on Covid
• 26:00 - Post-Covid World and the growing need for writing
• 29:30 - The global angle and the role of English 26:00
• 32:30 - AI replacing jobs 29:00
• 34:30 - Talking markets – semiconductors and SaaS – COVID hangover, and the future of work from home

We referred to In Defense Of The Pivot on the episode: https://upfront.com/thoughts/goat-in-defense-of-the-pivot

Digging Into The Rare Earths And EVs Rush With Don Lay

The 2020-21 bull market has seen many familiar themes recycled amidst a very liquid public market environment. The rare earths market, and its flag bearer Molycorp, may not have been the most obvious boom to re-emerge, but here we are. Molycorp's descendant, MP Materials, came public via a SPAC last year and is trading at a higher valuation than the legacy company ever did.

To break down the recent moves and what it means, we speak with Don Lay, VP of Corporate Development at Medallion  Resources, a rare earths technology company based in Canada. Don was previously CEO of the company and has a lot of firsthand experience to share. We go through the ins and outs of this story, including China’s market position, the import of electrification in cars, and how MP Materials is back on the scene.

Topics Covered

• 3:15 minute mark - Background on Don as well as MP and rare earths boom
• 8:45 - The Senkaku Islands incident
• 12:00 - Processing the rare earth minerals and the market power there
• 15:30 - Where China’s competitive edge comes from and Lynas's role in the industry
• 24:00 - The challenges of developing a greenfield rare earths project
• 26:30 - Demand for rare earths
• 30:30 - The end of the internal combustion engine
• 35:30 - Explaining MP Materials’ revival
• 41:30 - Where is the market power in rare earths
• 46:00 - How the rare earths market might evolve
• 51:00 - Where electric and hybrid vehicle demand goes and what it means
• 55:00 - How the EV frenzy affect operations for rare earth miners
• 1:00:00 - How this compares to past bubbles
• 1:03:00 - Tesla's position
• 1:08:00 - Background on Medallion
• 1:14:00 - The environmental costs

 

Breaking Down The GameStop Game

GameStop has become one of those rare market stories that has transcended the world of finance and entered pop culture; the most recent example might be the negative oil pricing last April. It's a fascinating and weird story for a number of reasons, and whether or not it has knock-on effects in the market it is an important story.

To break it down in an emergency episode, we speak with Jaime Lester, an experienced long-short professional investor who has been on the podcast before. He's done extensive work on GameStop, so we start with the fundamentals, before zooming back out to all the other factors. Those other factors all spin back to the start - do the fundamentals actually matter, and if not, why is that a problem?

Topics Covered

• 1:00 minute mark - Gamestop fundamentally
• 10:00 - Underlying forces at play here
• 17:00 - The tether between value and price
• 24:30 - The consequences of this environment
• 31:00 - Why is this time different
• 38:00 - The Reddit dynamic

Netflix Flexes On 'Em

We talk Netflix again this week. As you may recall, Akram published a lengthy report late last year on why Netflix was and would remain the king of streaming. The company reported earnings last week, and it was a bit of a royal flex, as they beat on subscriber numbers and boasted that they would not need to raise debt capital going forward. The stock popped 17% the next day. So what did the market miss going in, and what does that mean for Netflix and peers going forward? We break it down, answer a few listener questions, and try to figure out what Netflix’s story going forward will be.

Topics Covered

• 2:30 minute mark - Quick quarter reaction
• 12:00 - Why is Netflix winning
• 21:00 - How the story is shifting
• 27:30 - What Netflix’s margins actually say
• 38:00 - Netflix’s moat and the competition
• 47:00 - Forward outlook for NFLX
• 51:00 - Praise for management
• 55:30- Discoverability challenge for Netflix
• 1:05:30 – Netflix’s content strategy
• 1:10:00 - The fate of the theater
• 1:14:30 - Netflix’s tech positioning
• 1:24:00 - Pressure on the competition

#37: Twitter's Post-Trump Future

There's something about Twitter that leads to market knee-jerk reactions and, depending on how you look at it, opportunities for investors. After Twitter decided to permanently ban the sitting President from the platform, a lot of questions came up, and the market's immediate answer was to sell the stock off to the tune of a 6.5% drop.

Thus, we invited Rajiv Sud, a former Twitter employee and ad-tech veteran as well as a private investor and previous The Razor's Edge guest, on to break down the news. We also answer listener questions and call out the events Twitter shareholders should pay attention to (hint: think February, not January). It's a fun one, and while we don't have a contents list this week due to the short turnaround for recording, you can get a sense of the questions we answered here.

#36: SPACs and COVID Winners with Shift Technologies Co-CEO, George Arison

Happy new year! We kick 2021 off on the Razor's Edge by looking at a couple of the biggest trends from 2020 – COVID market distortions and SPACs. Our guest is George Arison, Co-CEO of Shift Technologies, an online used car seller. Used cars were a surprisingly hot market in 2020, in part spurring Shift to move up their calendar to go public by a year. They went public via a SPAC. So our conversation centers on the two topics; how wild was 2020 and how do you plan for the following year; and why go public with a SPAC and what was that like?

Topics Covered

• 2:30 minute mark – Background on George and on Shift
• 7:30 – Where does the value add or competitive advantage come in?
• 12:00 – What the “value” part of the used car market looks like
• 14:15 – How Shift interacts with/competes with dealers
• 18:00 – What 2020 has looked like for Shift
• 29:00 – How the go-public plan shifted for Shift in 2020
• 33:00 – The SPAC fit and the questions raised
• 37:00 – What do SPAC negotiations look like?
• 40:00 – Surprises in the public market
• 43:30 – Planning for 2021 after the COVID rush
• 49:00 – What about the COVID hangover

#35: The Last Catalyst For Tesla, With Mark Spiegel

Tesla entered the S&P 500 yesterday. What does that mean for the long-running bull vs. bear battle? A month after posting our interview with a bull - Rajiv Sud - we speak to Mark Spiegel, one of the longest-tenured, loudest, and most notorious members of TeslaQ, the short Tesla camp. The question, after a ruinous 1100% run over the past 14 months and a wild market in general, is whether there’s still electricity left in the bull case, or whether the bear case might finally bag its whale. Along with asking Mark about that and his portfolio management, we also touch on a few other topics ranging from micro-cap long ideas to inflation to Mark’s twitter presence, and I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation.

Topics Covered

• 5:00 minute mark - The state of TSLAQ
• 9:00 - Tesla's Q3 - a sign of the bull thesis or dim hope?
• 17:00 - The competition bear thesis and what's taken so long?
• 22:00 - Last year's Q3 take-off for Tesla shares
• 25:00 - Tesla's advantage
• 29:00 - The regulatory landscape
• 36:00 - Managing a short Tesla position
• 42:00 - On the long side, a few micro-cap ideas - DAIO, AVNW, EVOL, JCS
• 53:00 - Twitter presence
• 1:01:00 - The broader EV bubble - why not short elsewhere?
• 1:11:00 - The Musk fervor
• 1:20:00 - Portfolio juggling
• 1:25:00 - Fighting Tesla's hero journey
• 1:29:00 - Tesla's broader influence and the role of the SEC
• 1:32:00 - The onset of inflation and the gold hedge (GLD)

#34: PagerDuty and Slack Deliver, At Last: What Next?

Third time appears to be the charm. After seeing the football get pulled away from investors after Q1 and Q2 earnings, Slack and PagerDuty brought much cheer to shareholders, in the spirit of the holiday season. Slack has agreed to a deal with Salesforce.com and PagerDuty reported another solid quarter that finally woke the market up to its consistent growth opportunity.

We break down all that news. To do so, we bring on previous guests Jens Schumacher, CPO at Sajari, and Justen Stepka, co-founder of Enterprise Fund, both Atlassian alums, as well as Rich, a cloud CRM CEO.

Topics Covered

• 3:00 minute mark - Initial reactions to the deal
• 16:00 - How does this fit into Salesforce?
• 21:00 - Slack's future development as part of a bigger company
• 29:30 - Was this a defensive move for CRM, especially for pricing?
• 43:30 - Who loses in this deal? Zendesk, e.g. and Microsoft
• 49:00 - How big a deal was (and how hard was it to make) Slack Connect?
• 54:00 - Who else should have bought Slack? Google and Zoom discussion
• 1:05:00 - PagerDuty Earnings recap
• 1:15:00 - When does ServiceNow make their play? And breaking down the integration issues and what that means for a moat.

 

 

#33: In The Streaming Wars, What Game Does Disney Want To Play?

Famed activist investor Daniel Loeb wrote a letter to Disney management arguing that the time to go all in on streaming is now. We've been following the streaming wars pretty closely, and we decided to break down the letter and then reconsider Disney and Netlfix's positions a year after Disney+'s launch, and 8 months into a pandemic that has accelerated the streaming game. The question came down to 'what battleground do these companies want to actually fight on'? 

Topics Covered

• 2:15 minute mark – The need for capital and Disney’s studio business history |
• 10:00 – The SaaS parallel and Disney’s flywheel  |
• 16:30 – The new bundle, different from the old bundle? |
• 24:30 – The 5d Chess around the streaming wars  |
• 27:00 – How enduring is the event model, theaters or otherwise? |
• 30:00 – Costs in the new content world |
• 35:45 – the looming presence of the big fish and how much growth is there still out there |
• 43:00 – Takeaways for Netflix and Disney |
• 53:00 – What sort of game are we playing |

Works cited or that are relevant:

• Daniel Loeb's letter to Disney - https://www.scribd.com/document/479149667/Third-Point-Letter-to-Disney-October-2020
• Akram's Razor's reaction piece - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4380091-disney-field-of-streams
• Doug Shapiro - https://medium.com/swlh/one-clear-casualty-of-the-streaming-wars-profit-683304b3055d
• ProPublica - https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-customer-service-reps-for-disney-and-airbnb-who-have-to-pay-to-talk-to-you

#32: Slack's Tricky Position and the Tesla Bull Case (Along With A Counter)

We continue our conversation with Rajiv Sud, ad tech veteran and private and public markets investors. In this episode - essentially parts 2 and 3 of our conversation - we start with Slack and its challenges, as well as its surprising similarities to Twitter. We also quiz Rajiv on his time at AdMob and his outlook for the private tech sector, before concluding with a breakdown of his Tesla bull thesis.

Topics Covered

• 3:00 minute mark – Slack’s position
• 6:00 – the two-front war, with Intel as an example
• 9:00 – Slack’s marketing challenge, and it not being enough to be the product winner
• 17:00 – Creating the urgency around Slack’s product
• 21:00 – The marketing pitch
• 24:00 – Chat as an engagement tool, and the fit with subscription businesses
• 29:00 – A use case for Slack
• 34:00 – A Twitter content play
• 39:00 – AdMob buyout questions
• 43:00 – Private market – what is Rajiv seeing? Competition and ninja tools
• 49:00 – How does the SaaS competition play out among smaller companies?
• 59:00 – The VC need for exits and how that affects the broader market
• 1:07:30 – Rajiv’s Tesla bull case – software focused
• 1:12:00 – The Elon Musk factor for Tesla bulls
• 1:17:00 – Dissecting the fully autonomous driving future – who gets there first?
• 1:25:00 – And once we get there, who is actually the winner?

 

#31: But Twitter's Quarter Was Really Good! With Rajiv Sud

Oops, it happened again. A company we follow closely on The Razor’s Edge reported earnings, met or beat expectations, and then sold off heavily along with a major market sell-off. Last time it was PagerDuty, this time it’s Twitter.

To work through the quarter and perhaps the angst and anxiety around it, we speak with Rajiv Sud. Rajiv is a Silicon Valley veteran, with time logged at Google, AdMob – which was bought out by Google while he was there, at TellApart, and then at Twitter after Twitter bought TellApart. He’s been out of Twitter for about two years but as a shareholder and a frequent tweeter, he still follows the company closely. We break down the company's ad server issues and why they may be in the past, the deliberate approach the company takes to product releases, and why Jack Dorsey is maybe fine as Twitter's CEO.

Topics Covered

• 4:45 minute mark – Q3 Reaction
• 8:00 – One-off effects of a weird 2020 for comparison’s sake
• 14:30 – The challenges with the ad server and what changed
• 19:30 – The Jack Dorsey question
• 24:30 – The stand-alone nature of each company’s ad stack
• 28:30 – The ad-tech graveyard
• 30:30 – The MAP delay
• 36:30 – How Twitter engages users, and the step-up from occasional to active
• 41:30 – When does this scale, or the rising expenses
• 53:30 – Differences between Google and Twitter from an insider’s perspective
• 58:30 – Twitter’s engagement and the upside or money left on the table in the subscription ecosystem
• 1:01:30 – Controlling the narrative

#30: SPACs, Influencer Investing, and 2020's Wild Market Swings, with Jaime Lester

This week’s episode is a conversation with Jaime Lester. Jaime has been a professional investor for more than two decades, has a lot of experience with short selling, as evidenced from our conversation with him back on episode #3, on Invitae. We revisit Invitae during this conversation, but we're more focused on the overall macro picture. Whatever happens in the last 8 weeks of the year, it's been a wild ride, and it's worth taking a wider view to understand everything.

We cover SPACs, influencer investing, the manic element, the line between fraud and pivoting, and why this does not resemble the great financial crisis.

Topics covered

• 2:20 minute mark – high level take on what makes this market different
• 11:00 – Blowing up the GFC comparison
• 21:30 – Fundamental restructuring
• 27:30 – The manic trading element
• 33:45 – Why the new traders are winning
• 41:30 – Staying out of the way
• 52:30 – The SPAC phenomenon and what is fraud in the current market?
• 1:03:30 – Influencer Investing and Invitae
• 1:17:30 – The cult of the founder
• 1:24:30 – TAMs: Valuations as compared to TAMs, how much do TAMs mean for a business’s prospects over time?

 

#29: Catching Up On Twilio's Big Moves With Captain Twilio and Justen Stepka

Twilio has had an exciting fall. First, Microsoft announced Azure Communication Services, viewed as a shot across the bow at Twilio in the developer driven communications space. Then, Twilio had its first investor day in three years, refreshing investors on their trajectory. Lastly, Twilio announced the purchase of Segment, a customer data platform that signals Twilio’s climbing of the value chain.

To break it all down, we bring on Captain Twilio, an experienced investor whose portfolio features one stock, Twilio, and Justen Stepka, our frequent guest and an Atlassian and, more relevant to today’s conversation, Docker alum who has firsthand experience with Segment as a user. This is a fun conversation for anyone following Twilio, and it also adds interesting perspective on business strategy and SaaS valuations.

Topics Covered

• 3:15 minute mark - The Segment value proposition
• 9:15 - Recapping Twilio Signal and what it says for Twilio’s strategy
• 13:15 - So why did Segment sell?
• 19:15 - How Segment fits in
• 24:15 - Single customer risk as well as enterprise opportunities
• 28:45 - The analytical edge that comes from a data tool like Segment 
• 31:45 - Build vs. buy and microservices architecture vs. monolithic when thinking about data
• 36:45 - Entering another giant’s territory…the pending showdown with Salesforce
• 48:15 - The right valuation approach and what metrics (and dollars) matter most

References:

Segment blog on gross margins: https://segment.com/blog/the-10m-engineering-problem/

Jeff Lawson interview with Ben Thompson: https://stratechery.com/2020/twilio-acquires-segment-what-is-segment-an-interview-with-twilio-ceo-jeff-lawson/

#28: On The New York Streets With A Ride-Share Vehicle Supplier

This week’s The Razor’s Edge goes back out to the streets. We speak with Ali Naqvi, owner of a ride-share car supplier in New York, about his experience with the COVID lockdown, what he’s hearing from his customers – rideshare drivers – and the state of New York. While a few work from home comments pop up hear and there, this is more focused on the state of Uber and Lyft’s end markets and what that might mean for a broader economy. Ali is a lifelong New Yorker and has a rolodex of celebrity encounters and Al Pacino quotes to pull from, and this is a fun conversation.

 

Topics Covered

• 2:15 minute mark - Background on the business
• 6:00 - Recounting the COVID story from March onward, dealing with vehicle returns
• 12:40 - Drivers still on the road throughout - the adjustments needed
• 22:00 -The hit to rider demand
• 27:30 - Uber's support (or lack thereof)
• 36:00 - The scene in New York now for rideshare demand - why it was worse than it seemed, why there are reasons for optimism now
• 54:00 - The outlook for New York City, the effect of the social unrest, any crime knock-ons, and where does the city go from here?