Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
Peak California Byrne Hobard
This is a provoking thought piece on the state of California and its prospects for growth. The author provides a few compelling arguments on why the state is no longer the best place to start a starup. From the housing crisis to venture capital investing, there are a few reasons to believe that the bay area is starting to lose its luster. While I don’t buy all the arguments, it’s still a good read.
The Servant Economy The Atlantic
What happened to all the “on demand” startups? Once Uber took off, there was a litany of these on demand startups that exploded. This post in the Altlantic analyzed 105 of these companies. These platforms may still have strong potential but the impact on society so far has been very small.
Counterintuitive Competitive Advantages Collaborative Fund
I really enjoyed this article on competitive advantage. Morgan Housel writes that there are certain advantages that are not intuitive at first but are extremely powerful. There are several examples provided on moats that go against conventional wisdom.
The New Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid Strategy+Business
It finally feels as though the debate about how to create social impact is getting louder than the debate about whether business has an obligation to do so. Since 1990, 1.1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty but wealth inequality has grown. This article covers how businesses and governments are now focused on the “bottom of the pyramid”, helping raise the standard of living globally.
What is Amazon? Zack Kanter
The title of this article might sound simplistic yet this was the best article I’ve read in a while. Mr. Kanter explains the nature of Amazon (as well as Wal Mart and retail as a whole) with many many great insights.
With every seller that signed up for Amazon Marketplace, Walmart’s prized vendor selection machine became more and more of a liability. Here was an entire organization optimized towards one constraint – shelf space – and that constraint had been almost completely removed overnight