wiki.keithl.com/PostCorona - moin

Post Corona

From Crisis to Opportunity

Scott Galloway

BeavLib 338.9 Portfolio/Penguin August 2020

1964/11/03 NYU Stern School of Business, UCLA(BA) 1987, UCB(MBA) 1992

This book is not about the virus, instead it is about business and social change caused by COVID lockdowns, and the super-acceleration of the Apple/Google/Facebook/Amazon monopolies.

Galloway is a monopoly-buster, taking aim at Google/Facebook/Amazon, suggesting that Apple acquisitions could make it more competitive against the other three. He may have thought the same about the other three, when they were scrappy startups twenty years ago. He's a business prof, and Stern is a business; high-performance professors attract high-tuition students.

• xvi "Nothing can happen for decades, then decades can happen in weeks" -- Scottish MP George Galloway
• xvii Ecommerce grew from 6% in 2009 to 16% in 2019, then grew to 27% in the 8 weeks after lockdown.
• xix Between 2020/03/01 and 2020/08/01 Tesla market cap grew 3x, dwarfing all other automakers

• xix During 11 boom years, 40% of Americans would have trouble covering a $400 emergency expense. Covid-19 recession lost 13% employment in 3 months, worst hit to <$40K households with 40% layoffs

• xxi Chinese word for crisis is danger character plus critical juncture character (not "opportunity")

• xxii "Online alcohol sales up 250%" ... but retail sales have presumably dropped, misleading factoid?
• p6 Cash is King: companies with cash will acquire more assets, companies using cash to buyback stocks temporarily had higher stock prices but will fail when sales drop.
• p10 WHO Mike Ryan "Prefection is the enemy of he good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection.
• p10 retail adage: your first markdown is your best markdown. Better to sell something at 80% of your budgeted price than wait another month to dump it at 60%.

• p22 60% of >$100K jobs can be done from home, 10% of <40K jobs, hence disparate outcomes