So Dollar Shave Club sold for a billion dollars after five years. They had a great commercial and resold razors made by the Korean company Dorco. They only have 190 employees. Their original investors are getting a 20x return. Who in their right mind would have stuck their retirement in Dollar Shave Club five years ago? On the other hand, I know of at least three incidents where a visionary husband took the family's retirement, invested it, and lost everything. Remember when Apple stock was projected to keep experiencing continual growth? Now they've lost 15 percent in the last year as their sales have flattened. Everybody who wants an iPad has one, and the Android market is nibbling away at the edges of the iphone market. "[T]he internet, mass transportation and globalization destroy everything. If you do not believe this change is about brand, experience and disruption, know that you can buy razors directly from Dorco, presumably the same brands sold by Dollar Shave Club." Currently the same forces that created Dollar Shave Club are attempting to similarly "disrupt" the university. They come in waves, but keep failing. What puzzles me is why an organization full of very smart people isn't able to organize effectively to resist these influences or come up with viable alternatives. There are times when I suspect that the University is a big box designed to hold potential troublemakers and keep them from using their mutant abilities for good. When someone interviews some of these billionaires and asks them what their life goals are, they don't have much to offer. For every Elon Musk who announces his master plan to cool the planet, you get brilliant people like Marc Andreessen, who apparently want to keep riding successive economic booms until one day they wake up and their youth and midlife is gone, and the battery status indicator on their mortality is down to 15 percent. Or you have Tim Ferriss, insanely popular and interesting podcaster and author who announced in a recent Google talk that his goal is not to be just an effective piece on the chess board, but to be a chess player who is controlling the action by creating an invisible army of super effective learners. That sounds like every armchair academic Marxist, ever. Or to look at another example, Malcolm Gladwell's recent podcast, revisionist history, is starting to address structural social issues that have not been as foregrounded in his many books. What is the point of a billion dollars? I know someone who sold his successful restaurant and opened a chain of 146 restaurants. He is making a ****-ton of money. Every time I have run across him in public he has been on his phone. He has gained weight and looks like hell. Maybe he's really happy. I know that being underemployed makes people miserable. Having a secure job you enjoy is a gift, and almost a fluke at this point in history. Letting yourself stagnate within that security blanket is a curse.
from Facebook http://ift.tt/2assa5u
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment