đ°What was in the News?
đBye-Bye Bezos: The famed founder and CEO of Amazon will step down from the company after 26 years. Love him, hate him, donât care about him? Fine, but it is impossible to deny the impact Bezos has had on the world. If anyone actually thinks Bezos is completely stepping down from Amazon is out of their mind. Bezos is setting his sights high and I mean really high with his rocket company, Blue Origin, but that doesnât mean Amazon is on itâs own. Either way, I am sure Amazon will be fine with or without Bezos, but letâs look back at the things Bezos has gifted us:
Amazonâs market cap = $1.7 tn (#3 in the world)
1997 annual report letter to shareholders
Excessive communication is a sign of dysfunction and top-down advice is not a strategy for innovation but a deterrent. To Bezos, everyone should be working towards the goal together.
đUI Path: The clear leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a type of software based on artificial intelligence to automate certain business tasks, raised $750 million in a Series F at a post-money valuation of $35 billion. UI path recently submitted a registration to go public in December, similar to Affirm who recently went public after raising a large round. Read more here.
đWhat goes up, must come down:ï»ż GameStop loses $18 billion in value this week after skyrocketing more than 600% in the past few weeks. WSB influence may be losing steam as AMC dropped 60%, BlackBerry is down 10%, and Nokia is down 15%. No one can doubt the power this âlittleâ Reddit thread has had on the financial world and the ripple effect it has caused.
đ€Meeting Recap
Thank you to Chris Clifford for speaking this week. I personally really enjoyed the talk and hope you all did too. I thought the emphasis on relationships in Venture was an important takeaway, the willingness to try and fail, his story of breaking into the TechCrunch event and some of his book recommendations. I have left links to those books here (Venture Deals and Blitzscaling).
Quiz on financial statements, what is Venture?, and the Tesla Earnings Report: I hope the quiz was helpful in some way. We are going to continue to do these (shoutout to Valarie and Max for putting it together).
Congrats to Taylan and Shannon who both scored 100%, great stuff!
Seminar on Spreading Financials: I know this isnât the most riveting stuff, so feel free to leave feedback in the idea.problem box I just created in the Box. If you have any feedback, feel free to share it anonymously there and it will be acted on or responded to at the next meeting.
âšHighlights of the Week:
Everyone who came to the meeting on Wednesday night. It would be too much to list all of you, but ya know who u are.
Joe Hopkins for recruiting four new members
đźWhat to Look forward to:
Next week will be a social meeting on Thursday at 6:30pm. Jeopardy, group games, breakout rooms, letâs try and have some fun over Zoom and get to know each other a little better.
There will be an optional Wednesday meeting for those interested in learning more about spreading financials and analyzing earnings reports.
Next week earnings include: Alteryx, Crispr, Redfin, Zillow, MGM, Affirm, Blackline, KKR and Ares, JFrog, and UBER
Quote of the week: âI believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if youâre going to innovate.â