I respect @Unilever's missionary orientation

Most B2C companies are mercenaries with no mission beyond shareholder value

But often things get lost in translation. Here are 5 things they got wrong 🧵👇🏴‍☠️💰

wsj.com/articles/unile… 1. Center on the category, not the brand

UL says all brands should have a purpose. But this runs risk of the disease of me as most CPG marketers are trained to worship at the altar of brand

Focusing on the category is key. Categories make brands, not the other way around

@elonmusk has offered to buy 100% of @Twitter

Is this good, or bad or somewhere in between?

As always, the question matters more than the answer
- Don't ask what it will be ask
- Ask what must be true for this to be good...
- ...and for whom?

🧵👇💰🏴‍☠️🛳️ 1. Going private will be good for the health of the biz
- Twitter revenue is up from $3.4B in '19 to $5.1B in '21
- Users (mDAU) is up 152MM to 217MM from '19-'21
- But operating margins cratered from +11% to -10%

Something is not right. It is easier to fix without a spotlight

Some #superconsumers are supers for life

Other superconsumers are supers BECAUSE of life
- You have a baby. You become a life insurance super
- You move to a new house. You become a Lowe's super Discerning the difference matters

Supers for life = highest LTV & your north star for strategy and category design
- Yes they are financially valuable
- But they are far more valuable strategically
- They guide your growth strategy...
- & biz model innovation & data flywheel

The content pyramid below was the product of several days of intense discussion, co-creation & refinement with @lochhead and @Nicolascole77 It's remarkable how well it mirrors each of our careers, as a 3x Silicon Valley CMO, Digital Writer & Entrepreneur extraordinaire and a management consultant who specialized in growth strategy

Thought leadership is the most valuable asset in my career. It helped me become...

- A senior partner in consulting
- A successful solopreneur
- An author and writer
- An exponentially better investor
- A better father and husband

The Content Pyramid is the key 🧵👇 Level 1: Consumption

I started reading the WSJ in my senior year of college when I started interviewing for jobs. But I didn't know what to read, nor did I fully understand what I was reading. This is despite my studying econ & poli sci @UChicago

Are Native Digitals who are expert languagers the new "nuclear deterrent" both in international relations and in business?

Does Porter's 5 forces need to add a 6th to include Native Digitals who can influence the world's consumers and business leaders to turn on a dime
🧵👇 My favorite course in college was War and the Nation State taught by Prof. John Mearsheimer.

He taught that nations were rational actors who would always seek to gain power at the expense of weaker neighbors, if they believed they could win with high probability and low cost.

This is not surprising at all. @Rivian is learning about pricing strategy 101 the hard way. 🧵👇

https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1499403777337708547

1. Raising prices is very hard in general. It's always better to start high and then come down.

@Ford is laying out the likely only path for long term survival for legacy automotive, which is separating the legacy ICE vs. EV business.

It's not just about making a great EV product (though that is important).

It's about innovating on 8 levers category levers. 🧵👇 You don't have to do all 8...but enough on both the product/offer & the business model

1. Radically different benefit, for a radically different problem

They can just use Tesla's version, just like every other software company has followed Salesforce's evangelism of the cloud

Creating a category is the ultimate growth strategy. But some people disagree and say Category Design is not for them.

We're not saying it is easy, but many of the reasons why some say they shouldn't create a category are flawed and false.

Here are the top 8 we've heard 🧵👇 1. You can't create demand out of thin air

Like the iPad?

2. It's too expensive

Versus spending hundreds of millions on price promotion?

3. It's not about categories, it's about communities

What about the Bored Ape Yacht Club wannabees?

I started my digital writing career by accident

~15 years ago, I was told I met all the criteria to be elected partner.

But my wife & I were unsure if we should have a 3rd child. The question was if I could serve my wife, 3 kids & my clients all at the same time
🧵👇 I realized that making partner was not the finish line, but the start of another race. I would be at the bottom of the partner totem pole again, depending on senior partners for opportunities. So when a senior partner said jump, I had to say how high

A few short questions predict the future of a business

- How likely are you to recommend this to a friend?
- Can you raise your prices without fear?
- Would you push all your chips in the middle for this?

But one of my favs is, “do you eat your own dog food?”🧵👇 'Do you eat your own dog food' tells you a lot about a company.

- Should you buy from this company?
- Should you work at this company?
- Should you invest in this company?

It's not just the answer that matters, but also the speed, forcefulness & emotion behind the answer

1x $PTON has been hit hard. Is it a buy or not?

@onepeloton is trading about where it IPO’d ~$27/share

In late 2019, it was a $9B market cap on $0.4B revenue for a ~22x revenue multiple

Now it is $9B market cap on $4B of revenue or 2.2x

That's cheap for a #CategoryCreator 2x But is $PTON is a #categorycreator?

#Categorycreator are valued at 5-10x revenue
per our @categorypirates analysis of @Fortune100 fastest growing

You can read about it here, in our #categorydesignscorecard, which I will apply in this 🧵

categorypirates.substack.com/p/the-category…

1x @Elonmusk made very clear on Q4 2021 earnings call that everyone is underestimating FSD's profit potential

As much as I love @tesla, I'm one of the skeptics

Not because I don't believe in the tech & @tesla...

...but b/c I've studied consumers for decades & context is king 2x Not all consumers are the same re: driving

- Some drive aggressively vs. cautiously
- Some are always early vs. late
- Some drive angry & competitively vs. carefree

Solving for FSD is hard enough. But who you are as a driver will determine whether or not you like FSD

I started dabbling in real estate investing 20 yrs ago
- I bought/sold ~10 single families, condos, multi-units
- Primary residence, rentals, timeshares, new & old
- I lost big during the 2008 crash

I finally hit a grand slam!

Here’s what I know now that I wish I knew then 🧵👇🏻 Step 1: Build a stomach for a longer-term horizon.

As immigrants, we grew up in a 2 bed/1 bath condo.

I hated how small it was. But my folks saved a lot…

…to pay for private school & college for my bro & me.

It taught me how to sacrifice today for tomorrow.

1x In 2019, I compared @tesla to @netflix in 2011 in both @barronsonline & on @CNBC

My premise was neither had a demand problem at that time and @tesla would rebound like @netflix had once wall street did the math

A lot of laughing & mockery ensued 2x Of course @tesla went up 20x since then. As always, ignore the mockery and focus on the math

In 2022, it now does seem like @netflix does have a demand problem now.

With US/Canada subs at ~75MM and US HH at 128MM, @Netflix is well past the steep part of the NA s-curve

HOW TO WRITE FOR @HarvardBiz ✍🏼

Writing dozens of articles for HBR is one of the most valuable assets of my career.

Here’s how I did it and the ten key tips & tricks to help 🧵👇🏻 1. I faced my failures.

For most of my life, I worshipped at the altar of higher education.

I believed if you could only get into a certain tier of university, your life was set.

BUT: 99% of what higher education provides is information via memorization. And information is nowhere near as valuable as Knowledge.