Post Corona

Streaming video adds momentum to the flywheel. Movies and entertainment evoke powerful emotions. The NPS score (consumers’ emotional connection to a company) is negative to zero for ecommerce and internet companies, but it’s strong for SVOD (streaming video on demand) companies. Loving Fleabag means you’re more likely to buy your next toaster from

The forced embrace of telemedicine promises an explosion in innovation and opens a new front in the war against the costs and burdens of our broken healthcare system.

Cash is great for survival purposes, but the real gangster move is to be capital light, that is, to have a variable cost structure.

We are motivated to buy products and services that make us feel more successful and good-looking, so we can attract better mates. We pay irrational margins for products that improve our sex appeal.

This is a function of weak balance sheets and investors who have lost patience—the same culling we can expect in most industries. Also, being trapped at home increases inventory for Facebook and Google advertisers. Yes, you are “inventory.”

How have they done it? The algorithm is this: innovate, obfuscate, and exploit.

A large fixed cost—your lease—and little or nothing you can do about it, and because it’s a low-margin business with few sources of funding, there’s typically no capital cushion to survive lean times.

We need national service programs. I talk more about this in chapter 5, but in brief, we should start with the Corona Corps and expand from there. National service programs of all kinds, from military to education, provide exceptional returns on investment for both the nation and those who serve.27

two tech giants for whom media is not a core business, but just a part of the flywheel, a feature.