He can guess the location of a Google Street View after seeing it for 0.1 seconds. You may have seen his ridiculous skills in viral TikTok videos.
Here's how he does it🧵
For the uninitiated, here is @georainbolt working his geo-locating magic (it's insane).
So, what's the strategy?
Jun 10 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
In 2013, Steph Curry had a breakout season while his 1st contract as a Nike athlete was up for renewal.
He left for Under Armour and since won 2 MVPs and 3 NBA titles.
Why did he leave? In part because Nike gave one of the worst business pitch meetings ever.
Here’s the story🧵
Let’s start the story in 2009.
The Golden State Warriors select Curry with the 7th pick in the NBA Draft. Curry just wrapped up a 3-year career at Davidson College, where he wore Nike shoes.
He also had a family connection to the company: his Godfather worked at Nike.
Jun 4 • 23 tweets • 9 min read
Fred Franzia created Trader Joe's $2 wine (“Two Buck Chuck”).
He comes from a wine family but hated the pretentious industry. Comparing an $80 bottle to his $2 brand, he asked, "Do you get 40x the pleasure?”
It’s now sold 1B+ bottles and makes >$100m/year.
Here's the story🧵
For the uninitiated, Two Buck Chuck wine is stacked to the skies across Trader Joe's 500+ stores in the US.
The partnership started in 2002 and has crushed it:
◻️ 5m cases sold a year ($100m+)
◻️ 6k bottles per day in some stores
◻️ 12% of California's wine market by volume
Jun 2 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
never forget that time Guy Fieri signed a Lean Cuisine frozen dinner and threw it into a crowd
Don’t care what the haters say, @GuyFieri is the GOAT
In the mid-1980s, the government initiated a plan to create a mobile dam to save the city.
After nearly 4 decades and $8B, the dam system — an engineering marvel called MOSE — is active and working (so far).
Here’s the story🧵
What is MOSE?
It’s a system of 78 metal barriers (20-30m long x 20m wide) built to block high tides from the shallow Venetian lagoon, which has an avg. depth of 1m (~3ft).
The English translation for MOSE (which alludes to Moses+Red Sea) is Experimental Electromechanical Model.
May 27 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Love this clip of a pre-famous 26-year old Gordon Ramsay listening, taking orders and learning from a more experienced chef.
Paying his dues:
Here’s Ramsay a few years later serving the same dish he learned (lobster ravioli) to Anthony Bourdain at his restaurant
May 23 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In November 2012, Mark Zuckerberg sent a cold email (below) to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel.
Not long after, Facebook offered to buy Snap for $3B. Spiegel turned it down and — today — Snap is worth $25B+.
LESSON: Never accept offers from strangers on the internet.
For more hard-hitting business history, check out my Saturday email: trungtphan.com/subscribe/
(Side note: Spiegel may be reconsidering that Zuck offer after Snap’s 30% after hours drop today)
May 21 • 18 tweets • 8 min read
Citicorp Center was built in 1977.
Located in NY, it was the world's 7th tallest building but had a big structural flaw: a very strong storm wind could knock it over.
The expert architects had no idea, until an anonymous Princeton undergrad cold called them.
Here’s the story🧵
Today, the 59-story structure is called 601 Lexington Avenue.
The tower was originally built to house Citibank's headquarters and construction ran from 1974 to 1977 (it cost $175m and was later called Citigroup Center).
The 45-degree roof is a stand out in Manhattan's skyline.
May 18 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
we will never financially recover from this
Blame @JohnWRichKid for this. Either way, its incredible how much money this hot dog vendor makes:
In 2013, Dell Inc was a struggling PC and hardware firm. CEO Michael Dell took it private in a $25B buyout and turned it into an IT infrastructure + cloud giant (re-listing as Dell Technologies in 2018)
The $4B that Dell put up in the deal is now worth $40B.
Here's the story🧵
We start in 1984, when @MichaelDell was a freshman pre-med student at University of Texas.
He was not a typical student: The 19yo launched a company called PC's Limited with $1k, selling computers (assembled from stock parts) from his dorm room. It was soon making $80k a month.
Apr 29 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Amazon market cap fell $200B to $1.3T.
AWS itself is worth $1T.
This means the market is valuing Prime, 3rd-Party Seller, Fulfilment Centres, One-Click Checkout, 2-Day Shipping, Logistics, Ads, Marketplace, MGM, James Bond, The Hobbit and Hot Tub Time Machine at only $300B.🤯
Amazon's Ad Business has a $31B+ run rate and is already the 3rd biggest digital advertise in the world (behind Google/FB and passing MSFT a few years ago)
On Hacker News: Amazon employee w/ less than 3 years experience making $300k a year working 2 hours a week.
I now need to find out if this is the same person as “I have 10 fully remote engineering jobs Hacker News guy”.
Through the 2010s, investor Bill Hwang (via his hedge fund Archegos Capital) quietly built one of America's largest fortunes.
In March 2021, Archegos imploded and Hwang lost $20B in 2 days. Today, Feds charged him with fraud (manipulating markets).
Here's the insane story🧵
Born Sung Kook Hwang, Hwang moved from South Korea to America as a child. He grew up in a religious household (father = pastor, mother = missionary) and to very modest means.
He taught himself English working night shifts at McDonald's.
WSJ reports that PE firm Apollo is participating in a bid for Twitter and that the social network is “in play”.
If true, this means Twitter is for sale and the Board’s duty narrows to one responsibility: maximize shareholder value (AKA get highest price).
Here’s a breakdown🧵
Quick refresher:
◻️ On Thurs, Elon offered to buy all of Twitter for $43B (he owns 9.1%)
◻️ On Sat, Twitter’s Board adopted a poison pill (if Elon owns 15%, existing shareholders get issued stock at a big discount and Elon’s stake gets diluted)