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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
This is ignored by the discourse of “selling shovels in a gold rush.” The bulk of the tech economy is B2B services.

(And this doesn’t even work as a metaphor because the actual gold rush kindled railroads and national-scale banking not shovel manufacturers.)
“Startups selling to startups” is often assumed to be much more of a thing than it actually is, for what it is worth. The typical SaaS company’s book of business mirrors that of the accounting profession.

Startups hire accountants, but their revenue contribution not material.
That was a bit of accounting humor.
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
"How much would a generically smart liberal arts graduate know about this subject within 2 weeks of hearing it existed?" successfully predicts about 98% of articles.

(One can trivially cite the 2%, but they're not labeled "This is the one today which isn't mostly winging it.")
What percentage of articles written about, say, HFT were written by someone who could succeed at this challenge: "Draw me an order book. Any order book."
Related questions that would just be mean: “How many order books are there for Google shares? Within an order of magnitude is fine.”, “A retail investor does a market sell for five shares. Which order book is impacted and how?” “Same question, institutional investor, limit, 100k”
Read 3 tweets
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
In “That’s cute from a product development perspective but how did your regulators sign off on it” news, a Japanese bank has just introduced a CD which you purchase before the season which pays 1% APR if an underdog wins, 0.50% if they take 2nd or 3rd, and 0.02% otherwise.
I actually kind of love competing with sports betting and similar negative sum behaviors for banks, but I have to believe a lot of the serious people involved would not love that.
I wonder whether the bank hedged their exotic exposure here with an insurance company? “Hey can you make odds on an underdog winning a sports season.” “Heavens no, sir, do you take us for bookies?” “Oh it’s not that we’d actually suffer a loss if they won.” “Oh in that case.”
Read 3 tweets
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
Probably going to need a few tweets to translate this list of SaaS company stages, but it’s directionally accurate in businesses I’ve seen closely. Will round 100M JPY to 1M for convenience:
Pre-revenue: idea and market validation.
ARR to $1M: customer success.
ARR to $3M: building out the teams. <— I’d probably say “repeatable sales processes” specifically here.
ARR to $10M: hiring and education.
ARR to $30M: optimizing and expanding.
ARR to $100M: building the ecosystem <— this is the phase which I think is most “Choose your own adventure”; for many businesses it’s product line expansion and a few years of marching upmarket.
Read 3 tweets

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John Reade
@JReade_WGC
Gold: We've seen dollar-denominated #gold soften a little since the start of February, as this chart shows.
Gold: The major driver of this weakness in #gold was the strength of the US dollar, which looks relentless on this one-month chart.
Gold: ...and this is reflected in #old's performance against other currencies which generally have not seen the same softness since the beginning of February.
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John Reade
@JReade_WGC
#Gold is trading around $1300/oz at noon in the UK on Monday, holding onto most of Friday afternoon’s gains.
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John Reade
@JReade_WGC
Gold is at $1280.50 per ounce in early London trading, near the lower end of its three-day range. #Gold appears to be taking its direction mostly from US equity markets at the moment. 1/3
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John Reade
@JReade_WGC
Gold is trading quietly today at 1290/oz. The RSI, at 63, is in positive but not overbought territory and my colleague, Jaspar Crawley, points out that the spot #gold price has made a golden cross, with the 50-day crossing the 200-day (and with positive spot momentum).

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John Reade
@JReade_WGC
Gold: Its been a quiet move higher for gold over the past few days, but we are now sitting above the 50 day moving average (cash).

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A close above the 50 day moving average today could be a trigger for some short covering, but further price gains are probably needed to rattle the bulk of the shorts.

3/3
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John Reade
@JReade_WGC
Gold: Tomorrow marks the 10-year anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers and, consequently, economists, market commentators and journalists have been rolling out their thoughts on both the financial crisis and the subsequent decade.

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