Explaining Magic

Step Back, I'm Going To Try Magic

I'm pressed for time this week -- more traveling, this time for family rather than business -- so you'll have to forgive me for the lack of a fanciful set-up to the column. Bluntly, there were three article in my feed this week that prompted this take, and they are:

1) As part of a snarky listicle, the sentiment "data is the residue of possibility" (not an exact quote, but you get the gist), as part of a putdown of adtech and/or analytics. The idea being that great brand marketers just, well, know, and don't let the data drive when it comes to Having Big Ideas.

2) A rundown of how the FAANG Five (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have driven a disproportionate amount of the growth in the U.S. in the past decade, and how traders are starting to get worried about valuations, but are compromised from acting on that fear, because that's where the money is.

3) A story of how services that let people rent out their cars during unused portions of the day has mostly run aground, even while similarly disruptive plays for lodging and ride sharing have worked like gangbusters.

For many of the past 15 years, I've been at workplaces where we weren't just the pipe that provided service to clients, but also got to analyze what flowed through it. That vantage point, along with a middling ability to write, present and gin up concepts and theories, has kept a roof over my family's head, but it's also given me some clues about what works and what doesn't.

Spoiler alert: it's focus and effort.

In general, people get Big Ideas from a massive collection of little ones, measuring differences, sacrificing any sacred cows and moving on. That all takes work, especially if you don't have the best tools to use, but even if you don't, you still have to do it. The FAANG companies may have Big Ideas at their core, but for the most part, those ideas weren't unique; each one has competitors that they ruthlessly stomped with better execution and iteration.

That's why they are so highly valued. The market isn't in love with social media, cool consumer entertainment tech, e-commerce, streaming content and search. They are in love with companies that are constantly improving on the things that make money today, and using what they learn to make money tomorrow. Cutting values on companies that do these things is just superstition, and while there's money to be made from understanding when the public is going to move in that direction, it's a much harder buck. There's no reason to sell FAANG right now, other than the reason to sell, well, everything.

Which is why the folks who are trying to me-too on the AirBNB and Uber/Lyft paradigm of crowdsourcing of underused resources something of a non-starter, beyond the sheer logistics of trusting your car to not just a stranger, but that stranger's driving ability and care for other people's possessions... they don't have the same magic. Maybe they'll demonstrate it later, but until they do, look elsewhere.

That's because showing up for work and not just doing the job, but also figuring out how you are going to be better than you were the day before?

Doesn't just happen with a snap of the fingers...

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