Year: 2016

Trump’s Carrier deal a positive step for workers

Mike Kwatinetz Economics, Unemployment ,

It saves at least 800 jobs at a 14x return to government

Let me start this post by saying I did not vote for Donald Trump and consider myself an independent. But, as my readers know, I can’t help analyzing everything including company business models (both public and private), basketball performance, football, and of course, economics. I have, to date, resisted opining on the election, as it appears to be a polarizing event and therefore a no-win for those who comment. However, I care deeply about the future of our country and the welfare of workers of all levels. Being in Venture Capital allows me to believe (perhaps naively) that I contribute to adding jobs to our country. All this brings me to the recent agreement reached between Trump and Carrier, as it may mark a shift in economic policy.

A key assumption in interpreting the value of the deal is how many jobs were already slated by Carrier to leave the country and which of these were saved. President-Elect Trump has claimed he saved 1,150 jobs. Trump’s opponents say 350 were never slated to leave the country. I’m not going to try to figure out which camp is right. My analysis will only assume 800 manufacturing jobs that were slated to leave the country now will remain in Indiana. This does not seem to be disputed by anyone and was confirmed by a Carrier spokesperson. My observations for this analysis are:

  1. Had those jobs left, 800 fewer people would be employed (which might be different ones than these but less jobs mean less employment).
  2. The average worker at these jobs would make $20 an hour plus overtime (some reports have put this as high as $30 per hour fully loaded cost to Carrier). The average worker at these jobs would make about $45,000 annually, assuming modest overtime.
  3. On average, assuming working spouses in many cases, family income would be an average of $65,000.

Given what we know, here’s why I think Trump’s Carrier deal is a good one for the U.S., and actually results in revenue to the government that far exceeds the tax credits:

Social security taxes are currently 6.2% of each worker’s wages. The employer matches that, resulting in about $5,600 in FICA tax income to the government per worker from social security. Medicare is 1.45% and is also matched, resulting in about $1,300 in Medicare taxes paid to the government.

The federal income tax increment between a $20,000 family income (for spouse) and $65,000 family income is about $4,000 (but depends on a number of factors). Indiana state taxes of 3.3% on adjusted gross income comes out to nearly $1,400.

To make the total relatively conservative, I’ve omitted county taxes, payroll taxes and other payments that various other governmental entities might receive. This should mean the total financial income to various governmental entities from these jobs remaining probably exceeds those calculated in Table 1 below even if some of my rough assumptions are not exact.

Table 1. Governmental Income per Worker

Table

So, the economic question of whether the subsidy Trump agreed to was worth it partly depends on how much additional income was derived by the government versus the tax credits of $700,000 per year granted to Carrier in exchange for keeping the jobs here.

Of course, there is also a multiplier effect of families having higher income available for spending. And if 800 additional people are unemployed, there are numerous costs paid by the government. We’ll leave these out of the analysis, but they are all real benefits to our society of more people being employed. It is important to realize how expensive it is for the government to subsidize unemployed workers as opposed to realizing multiple sources of tax revenues when these workers have good jobs.

If we take the total from Table 1, which we believe underestimates the income to governmental entities, and multiply it by the 800 workers, the annual benefit adds up to about $9.8 million. Since Carrier is getting a $700,000 annual subsidy, the governmental revenue derived is over 14 times the cost. And that is without including a number of other benefits, some of which we mentioned above. As an investor, I’d take a 14 times return every day of the year. Wouldn’t you? Shouldn’t the government?

This is not a sweetheart deal for Carrier

I won’t go into all the math, but it indicates that Carrier will spend tens of millions of dollars more by keeping workers in the U.S. rather than moving them to Mexico. Comments that the $700,000 yearly benefit they have been given is a sweetheart deal does not appear to be the case.

Why the Democrats lost the election

Trump campaigned on the promise that he would create policies and heavily negotiate to increase employment in America. While this is a small victory in the scheme of things and certainly falls short of retaining all the jobs Carrier wanted to move, the analysis demonstrates that spending some money in tax breaks to increase employment has a large payback to government. It also means a lot to 800 people who greatly prefer being paid for working rather than receiving unemployment benefits.

Is this approach scalable?

The other question is whether this is scalable as a way of keeping jobs in America. Clearly Trump would not be able to negotiate individually with every company planning on moving jobs out of the U.S. Some infrastructure would need to be created – the question would be at what cost? If this became policy, would it encourage more companies to consider moving jobs as a way of attracting tax benefits? Any approach would need to prevent that. My guess is that getting a few companies known to be moving jobs to reconsider is only an interim step. If Trump is to fulfill his promise, an ongoing solution will be needed. But it is important to properly evaluate any steps from an impartial financial viewpoint as the United States needs to increase employment.

Employment is the right way of measuring the economy’s health

My post of March 2015 discussed the health of the economy and pointed out that looking at the Unemployment Rate as the key indicator was deceptive as much of the improvement was from people dropping out of the workforce. Instead, I advocated using the “Employment Rate” (the percent of the eligible population employed) as a better indicator. I noted that in 2007, pre-downturn, 63.0% of the population had a job. By 2010 this had declined to 58.5%, a 450 basis point drop due to the recession. Four years later the “Recovery” drove that number up to 59.0% which meant only 1/9 of the drop in those working returned to the workforce. Since then the workforce has recovered further but still stands at 325 basis points below the pre-recession level. That is why the rust belt switched from voting Democrat to President-Elect Trump.

The real culprit is loss of better quality job opportunities

In an article in the New York Times on December 7, “stagnant wages” since 1980 were blamed for lack of income growth experienced by the lower half on the economic scale. I believe that the real culprit is loss of better quality job opportunities. Since 1980 production and non-supervisory hourly wages have increased 214% but at the same time manufacturing workers as a percent of the workforce has shrunk from 18.9% to 8.1% and there has been no recovery of these jobs subsequent to the 2007-2010 recession. Many of these displaced workers have been forced to take lower paying jobs in the leisure, health care or other sectors, part-time jobs or dropped out of the workforce entirely (triggering substantial government spending to help them). This loss of available work in manufacturing is staggering and presents a challenge to our society. It also is the button Donald Trump pushed to get elected. I am hoping he can change the trend but it is a difficult task for anyone, Republican or Democrat.

A condensed version of of this post is featured on Fortune.com 

The Importance of Lifelong Relationships

Mike Kwatinetz Thoughts

At my son’s convocation at Wharton, the incoming MBA class was asked to write the names of their five best friends on the left side of a page and then the five people with whom they would most want to start a business on the right side of a page. The lesson was that the key to success in business was to develop relationships so that the future version of that piece of paper would have as many overlapping names as possible on both sides of the page.

Earlier this summer, I was invited to speak to Brooklyn College’s 2016 graduating class. I wanted to emphasize the importance of lifelong relationships for personal and business success. For me, Brooklyn College was foundational to so many of my most important relationships. It is where I met my beautiful, brilliant wife Michelle as well as eight couples who all attended my son’s wedding late last year. As we wrapped up our 10th Annual Azure CEO Summit, I was humbled to see so many familiar faces that may have started as business acquaintances but have now become close friends. As I reflect on the importance of these lifelong relationships, I wanted to share my speech to the Brooklyn College’s Class of 2016.

Good Morning, President Gould, distinguished faculty, parents, and especially – the fabulous graduating class of 2016! It’s a great pleasure to be back in Brooklyn to greet you all today, as I now live in what’s known as Silicon Valley, California.

I want to focus on three things:

  1. Make sure your friends from Brooklyn College become friends for life.
  2. College is only the beginning of your education, post-college you must continue to learn or you will be left behind.
  3. Never forget that Brooklyn College helps people move up in society.

My beautiful, brilliant wife, who I met at Brooklyn College, is also here today. We recently celebrated our son’s wedding. One of the highlights was there were 8 couples attending where the origin of the relationship stemmed from our school days. And make no mistake about it; there is a difference in the depth of the relationship when you know someone from that early in life. So my first advice is: “Make sure you stay in touch with those you really care about from college”

Brooklyn College is for people who work hard, are smart and typically couldn’t have afforded to go to college were CUNY not available

It helps people move up in society

The close friends I met here all had parents with modest incomes. Yet, we are all very successful financially –but more importantly –in life.

In my case, my father was an immigrant who came through Ellis Island. He had to go to work and couldn’t even attend high school. My mother, the daughter of an immigrant, did have the opportunity to finish high school.

Brooklyn College allowed me to be part of the first generation from my family that could afford college. And it provided as good an education as any school in the country!

I became the CEO of a successful startup and then went to Wall Street where I became the Number 1 Analyst following the PC space, and after 10 years left Wall Street to co-found a Venture Capital firm. 

The trick for you to replicate what my friends from College and I have achieved is to leverage this great education and your superior intelligence beyond college. Senator Schumer mentioned the advantage you have because you know today’s technology. This advantage is ephemeral. Whether you’re going to grad school or straight to a job my second bit of advice is:

Never take anything for granted, the world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Within 5 years all that you know regarding technology will likely be obsolete. To keep up you must always continue to learn. That coupled with working hard is the way you will succeed beyond college.

Many of you may have noticed that governmental support for CUNY is diminishing and could impact the school. “So, once you do succeed, as I know you will, remember to give back to Brooklyn College so the next generation that wants to move up in society has the same opportunity as you

Thank you and congratulations.

Soundbytes

  • Speaking of long term relationships, I am both happy and sad to note that Dan Park, my editor and collaborator for SoundBytes is leaving his full-time position at Azure to take a senior operating role at Uber Canada. I’m happy for him but sad not to have him continue full-time at Azure. Fortunately, he has agreed to remain as an Azure Venture partner and to continue to work with me on this blog.

An Analysis of Kevin Durant’s Free Agency Decision

Mike Kwatinetz Golden State Warriors, NBA, Sports

There is much controversy over whether Kevin Durant should leave OKC and if so, what team he best fits with. In evaluating what makes the most sense for him I’d like to cut through emotional clutter and start with objectives:

  • To be rated among the best ever, a basketball player needs to win championships – which is why LeBron James left Cleveland originally and why Bill Russell (8 championships) usually gets rated above Wilt Chamberlain (2 championships) despite the fact that Wilt was clearly a much more complete player and why you don’t typically see the great Patrick Ewing, Allen Iverson or Elgin Baylor (all 0 championships) getting ranked that high among the greatest players of the century .
  • When you win championships, people soon forget how stacked your team may or may not have been – LeBron is sometimes referred to as a failure in his first Cleveland stint despite taking the worst team in the league to the NBA finals and few talk about how good Michael Jordan’s supporting cast was in making the playoffs even when he was playing baseball instead of basketball.
  • I believe Durant understands that and his primary objective is to win championships so that he can rank higher among the greats.

How can he best accomplish that?

  • Kevin Durant could stay in OKC because of the emotional concept that it’s “his team” and he should not abandon them. The idea being that helping them win is somehow better than helping someone else win. If he does, his chance of winning a championship would be less than 12.5% (1 in 8) since they would probably need to beat San Antonio, Golden State and Cleveland and it’s hard to rate them as favorites in any of those matchups.
  • If Durant went to Golden State they would likely win the Western Conference again and have an easier schedule than a Durant led OKC could have in the playoffs. They are already the favorite to win the title even without Durant and the odds of them winning would increase significantly should they land him. Golden State is also a perfect fit for him as it plays a team game that would improve the quality of his shot opportunities. How does a team simultaneously double team Durant, Curry and Thompson? So not only would this increase his chance of winning, it also would likely increase his shooting percent and his assists.
  • The other team that he could pick with the best opportunity to win would be Cleveland but there is no cap space there and it’s unlikely that this would be a fit.
  • The third strong opportunity is San Antonio. While this would be a fit, the path to a title would not be as likely as Golden State or Cleveland because several key players are aging. However, adding Durant would create a strong trio that could challenge Golden State and possibly would be favored over them. But not the overwhelmingly favorites that the Warriors would be with Durant. Also going from one small market to another would not add the media draw that would lead to maximizing endorsement income.
  • Although there are rumors of Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Houston and Miami also courting Durant, none of these teams would solve any of his objectives. None would give him a high probability of winning a championship and would solve even less for the emotional component of the decision.
  • The question that was rattling around all year was “Why would the Warriors want Durant.” The answer is obvious and even more obvious after their game 7 loss – he will make them better. Adding one of the 5 best players in basketball, who shoots for a high percentage, plays defense well and is team oriented makes any team better.
  • What about the argument that adding Durant would use up so much cap space that the Warriors would need to shed other key players? I agree that they would not be able to keep Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli. But the reality is that Ezeli is not a key player and they should not match the high price he is likely to get in the free market, regardless of whether or not they get Durant. By Durant (and in the future Curry) taking less than a max salary, the Warriors could make sure that they kept Iguodala and Livingston plus all starters (including Andrew Bogut) other than Barnes. The rest of the team could be filled in and I would predict the Warriors could attract others who are willing to take lower salaries in order to be on a championship team. So, I suspect the remainder of the supporting cast will be as good as this year. If Durant is willing to take a salary that enables keeping the 6 key players mentioned, then he will maximize his chance of winning a title. When the cap goes up next year, he and Curry could take higher, but not maximum, salaries so that the team around them could continue to include Iguodala and Livingston.
  • What about the argument that Durant should maximize his compensation? My answer is that he will maximize his compensation by taking a lower salary and going to the Warriors because his endorsement money will increase by far more than any salary he forgoes since he would be playing on the highest profile team in a major market and winning championships. To quantify the opportunity, Michael Jordan made more in 2015 from endorsements (12 years after his last retirement) than he did in all 15 years in NBA earnings. Curry is already proving that and can easily take a lower than max salary when his contract expires in another year as his endorsements will dwarf his salary. And winning more championships will only increase all the key players’ outside revenue dramatically.

 

The Ultimate Marketing Framework

Mike Kwatinetz Ecommerce, Marketing

Combining a Top Marketing Specialist’s Framework with Our Thoughts

We just spent several hours speaking with Marc Schwartz, an Integrated Marketing Specialist.  Marc has been in marketing for 25 years in various high level positions with companies like Kraft/Gevalia, Publishers Clearing House, Starwood Hotels, Wyndham, Pfizer and Sanofi. His experience spans both online and offline. In this post we combine his concept of a marketing framework with our thoughts on specific topics within that framework.

Creating a Marketing Framework

Marc points out that it is important for every company to have a marketing framework that has three common threads throughout:

  • Consistently build your brand throughout every step in the process.
  • Measure everything – “If you can’t measure it, don’t do it!”
  • Be customer centric – always think about how the customer will feel about anything you choose to do

Marketing can be broken down into 4 important steps and companies will likely need different people with different skill sets to address each step:

  1. Acquisition
  2. Retention
  3. Upsell /Cross sell
  4. Winning Back Customers

1. Customer Acquisition – The 40/40/20 Rule

Marc’s experience has shown that in acquiring new customers 40% of success has to do with targeting the right people, 40% with the nature of the offer and 20% with creative.  Worth noting while creative and messaging is critical, in direct marketing the right offer delivered to the right audience is the most important factor. Targeting is not about mass marketing but rather about knowing your potential customers and finding the most efficient way to reach them.

Targeting

One important thing I have found is that it may make sense to spend more money per potential customer (referred to as Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC) if you reach individuals who will be greater spenders on your product (this is referred to as Life Time Revenue or LTR).  For example Facebook charges more to find closer matches to your target demographic but spending more initially has led several Azure portfolio companies to acquire a stronger customer set which in turn increases LTR and and makes the higher spending worthwhile. The key is to compare the CAC of each particular acquisition channel to the value of the customer (Lifetime profits on the customer or LTV). When LTV is higher than the CAC that means the customer is profitable. But we discourage our companies from going after marginally profitable customers so I would encourage you to think in terms of LTV being at least twice the CAC (I won’t invest in a startup unless I believe the ratio can exceed 3X). Each acquisition channel can become less effective when going beyond a certain scale but that scale will differ dramatically with the products being offered. The determination of where to cap spend should be decided by gradually increasing your commitment on a successful channel until you find that the incremental spend is not yielding good incremental results.  It is important to avoid being a one trick pony so using multiple channels helps scale customer acquisition without hitting diminishing returns for a much longer period. Any channel that tests well should be utilized with the total spend being apportioned based on effectiveness (the ratio of LTV/CAC) of each channel.

The Offer

Each campaign should lead with an offer that is a strong value proposition for the target customer. The offer must have a very clear call to action. Saying “try my product” would not usually be viewed as a compelling offer. At Gevalia Coffee, the company offered a free coffee maker if you began subscribing. At Publisher’s Clearing House the company entered you in a contest where you could win $1,000,000. More recently, Warren Buffet offered $1 billion to anyone who picked every game right in the NCAA tournament (his risk of paying out is low as the odds of there being a correct answer among 100 million unique entries is less than one in 10 billion!).  Marc points out that his experience indicates there is a direct correlation between the value of what you give away and retention. The more compelling the offer, the lower the retention as more “cherry pickers” sign up so starting with a free month of a physical product can potentially backfire.  In fact, these days, there are bloggers who tell their following, “Go to this site for a free month of some product”. It would be surprising if your company recovered it’s CAC on this set of potential customers as followers of such bloggers will rarely become paying customers.

Therefore it’s important to find the balance between your brand equity and the value of the premium used.  While a lower valued premium will probably lead to fewer customers being acquired, it is likely to also lead to higher LTV for those customers and stronger brand equity. The key with this, as with everything in this blog post, is a continuous A/B testing philosophy to see what works best.

One note of caution: From early November through late December, the cost of virtually every form of marketing goes up due to increased purchasing that takes place for Christmas gifts. If your product won’t benefit from this, your annual plan should have the lowest spend (if any) during this period.

Creative

Marc ranks creative at 20% of the formula for winning customers. This is half the importance of proper targeting and the nature of the offer because great creative can’t overcome a poor offer or going after the wrong customers. However, the creative is where you get to explain who you are (your brand statement), why the offer has value to the target customer and your call to action. If the call to action is not clear enough than you won’t get the desired action. The creative needs to be A/B/C tested for best language, fonts, colors, graphics, etc. Every element of the creative has an impact on how well the offer performs. You also need to decide if different offers and/or creative should be used for different subsets of the target customers. One of the best examples of this that I have seen was a campaign that targeted graduates of various schools and led with something like: “Your Harvard degree is worth even more if you …” The conversion rate of this highly targeted campaign was more than double the norm for this company.

2. Optimizing Customer Retention

On Boarding

I’m sure you have heard the expression: “You only get one chance to make a good first impression.”  Your best opportunity comes after the customer has placed their order (although the acquisition process was the first step). For this section I’m going to assume you are sending the customer physical goods. Marc calls this first experience “The Brand Moment”. If you think of how Apple packages its products, they have clearly enhanced their brand through the packaging with every element of the package as perfect as they can make it. Opening their box certainly enhances the Apple brand. So you need to balance the expense of better quality packaging against the degree to which it enhances your brand equity. The box itself should be branded and can contain a message that you want to relate to the customer. The nature of collateral material, how many items, what messaging on the materials and the order they are placed in the box needs to be researched. Have you included easy to find information on how to resolve a problem? Should there be a customer support phone number to call if something is amiss? Is your brand position re-emphasized in the materials?  A good impression can lead to higher LTV, recommendations for other customers and more.

Communications

Marc believes the first step in communications should be to welcome the new customer. This would usually be through an email (or snail mail). Marc finds an actual phone call is highly effective but costly.  Obviously your business model will determine the appropriate action to welcome the new customer. The welcome email (or call) is an opportunity to re-emphasize your brand and its value to the customer. It’s important to communicate regularly with every customer. He actually found that placing a phone call can often improve customer retention even more than giving something for free.  To the degree that it makes sense, customers should be segmented and each segment should get their own drip campaign of emails.  Don’t over communicate!  This can be even more negative than under communicating and can cause churn. Of course if you can offer real value to the customer in greater frequency than do so – for example, customers that sign up to a “daily deal” product probably expect daily emails. There are some email platforms that automatically adjust frequency based on open rates (very low open rates are a good indicator of over communication with that customer).

Retention Offers

Various types of premiums can be used for retention. Much like those used in acquisition there should be careful testing of cost vs expanded LTV. For any offer, tests should be constructed that track how paired groups perform who haven’t received the offer vs those that have.  If the LTV of the group receiving the offer doesn’t exceed the LTV of the paired group by more than the cost of the offer than the offer should not be rolled out. Marc found in the past (in a subscription model) that if an offer is too valuable the company may see a large churn of customers in the month subsequent to the offer being received.

3. Cross Sell/Upsell

There are multiple ways to think about increasing a customer’s LTR:

  1. Keep them as customers longer
  2. Get them to buy more frequently
  3. Get their average invoice value to be higher, i.e. cross sell/upsell

The strategies I spoke about for retention actually focus on the first two of these. The third is an extremely valuable part of a marketing arsenal and I am surprised on how underutilized this tactic is among many companies. To begin, you need to have things in your product set to upsell or cross sell. The items should be relevant to your brand and to your customers. If you are already shipping a box to your customer as their base order, adding another item or shifting to a more expensive version of the base item typically makes the order not only higher in revenue but also can increase the Gross Margin on the order as shipping and fulfillment are unlikely to increase much, if at all (and these days shipping is usually absorbed by the seller). Every company needs to think about brand positive ways to make such offers.

When I was the primary analyst on Dell it was the early days of selling online. Dell quickly created a script that included several upsells like “add another x bytes of storage at 75% of the normal price” (and huge GM to Dell), “financing available for your computer”, etc.  Several phone manufacturers started to offer the ability to insure your screen against breakage (usually from a drop). What is interesting there is insurance sometimes covers things the company would have done anyway but is now being paid extra.

For clothing companies, saying “this blouse would go very well with the skirt you’re buying” or “for the suit you bought which of these three ties would you like to buy”, can substantially increase cart size and increase margin.  One company I’ve dealt with has an increasing discount on the entire order based on the total dollars you spend (net of the discount). Since it sells T-shirts, socks, underwear, etc., it’s easy to add to your order to get to the next discount level and given my personality I always wind up buying enough to qualify for the maximum 20% off.

4. Winning Back Customers

Cancel/Save Tactics

Customer service is usually the first line of defense for preventing customer cancellations. The key to saving a customer is to listen to his or her issue that is causing the cancellation and to be able to adjust your relationship in order to solve that issue. Most companies match each cancellation reason with a particular offer. A simple example is if a customer thinks the product/service is too expensive, a company may offer a discount.

Creating rebuttals and scripts

Your company should create a list of reasons why a customer might cancel. If a new reason why a customer cancels arises, add it to the list. For each reason they might cancel, you must prepare a rebuttal that addresses that issue. If she is receiving too many offers you can agree to cut the frequency to what she prefers, if she is unhappy with something you sent her you can agree to take it back or give a coupon towards the next purchase, etc.  Marc says the key is creating scripts and emails that address every reason for cancellation with a counter that you believe will make the customer happy (without too much cost burden on you). Once you have this in place, anyone who will be dealing with the unhappy customer needs to be trained on how to use the script and what escalation (to a supervisor) procedure should be used.

Winning back Customers

The least expensive customer to acquire is a previous customer. You know quite a bit about them: what they prefer, how profitable they were and more.  Given what you know, churned customers can be segregated into groups as you are probably willing to spend more to win back the high value group than a lower value one. For each group you need to go through the process of original acquisition, but with a lot more specific knowledge. So an offer needs to be determined for each group and creative needs to be created. The methodology should parallel that of customer acquisition with the difference being a defined target.

5. Summary

The steps of the framework have been outlined in detail. But there are a few more points to be made.

  1. SEO should be utilized by all companies as it’s the lowest cost of access to target customers.
  2. Work with a very strong agency partner who understands the fundamentals of marketing.
  3. Have a solid set of vendors for things like email, campaign management, etc.
  4. Data is crucial. Make sure you track as much as you can regarding every potential and actual customer.
  5. If you can’t measure it don’t do it!

SoundBytes

  • There has been much chatter this season about Curry becoming the 8th player with 50/40/90 stats – 50% field goal shooting, 40% 3-point shooting and 90% from the foul line. My partner Paul Ferris noted that if we raise this to 50/45/90 Curry is only the third. And the surprise is that the other two are Steve Nash (not a surprise) and Steve Kerr! Data for this observation was gleaned from BasketballReference.com.

Challenging the Argument for Homogeneous Classrooms

Mike Kwatinetz Education, Education.com

In our November post, “Transforming Education”, we discussed several issues associated with the U.S. education system. Two respondents (both former teachers) to the post had some very interesting comments (I’ve included them below followed by my observations). The first respondent, Seth Leslie said:

“I’ve always been a proponent of heterogeneous groupings in classrooms, but I’d be the first to admit that pulling it off in a way that benefits all learners is a huge challenge.  It takes a very skilled teacher, excellent curriculum and the right materials to make this work well.  But when it does work well, it’s awesome, and the relational/socio-emotional learning that occurs alongside of the content learning is super important in an increasingly collaborative and interconnected workplace.  It’s just so hard to do this well!

 One other point – no mention of teacher quality in your article.  This is also a factor that contributes significantly to student outcomes – as much or more than class size and family circumstances.

Technology seems to offer some interesting opportunities to schools and learning, but my experience tells me that too much effort goes into selling goods to schools, and not enough effort goes into ensuring that teachers are well trained and well supported in utilizing the technology effectively.  I’d love to tell you about my personal experience with my son Zach, who is in the second year of the 1-to-1 iPad program at his school.  In short, I’m not a fan (and I love technology!)

 Very interesting read, though, and your points make a lot of sense.  It’s frustrating that we as Americans produce so much to be proud of, yet we can’t seem to solve education.”

Although he is a proponent of heterogeneous grouping, he does acknowledge how hard it is to make it work. I, on the other hand, am against it because I believe the obstacles to it working outweigh the small number of cases where a great teacher might be successful in making it work. He also points out that teacher quality can be an issue.  I believe that this stems from not budgeting enough dollars to education, including teacher salaries. Finally, he has had poor experience with the use of technology in the classroom. I agree that this issue has yet to be solved. Simply putting technology into a classroom without integrating it into the learning experience and providing the training necessary for teachers won’t lead to success.

The second teacher that responded, Tatum Omari, is now the lead for Education.com learning products, an Azure portfolio company. She is also a supporter of heterogeneous grouping. Her comments follow.

“Hetero vs. Homogeneous grouping is definitely a complex topic. It can be incredibly hard to do well. Those that are able to pull it off well are usually teachers who have years of experience under their belt. The problem with implementation involves many factors, including the high rate of teacher turnover, and the fact that they don’t quite have time to build the necessary experience to master approaching classroom instruction that facilitates heterogeneous grouping. This requires instruction that utilizes whole group tasks that have low floors and high ceilings. Being able to consistently provide your classroom with tasks that are this rich and promote deep understanding because of their ability to be extended so easily takes quite a bit of skill. That said, to abandon it completely is problematic as there is much research to support that it is not only a worthy endeavor, but one that will be critical to the U.S. elevating our educational system, and our students, back to a place that is competitive with that of the achievements of other countries and our students back to a place that is competitive with that of the achievements of other countries.

The most successful countries, in terms of academic achievement, including Finland, Japan, and Korea, all teach to heterogeneous classrooms and do not practice ability-based grouping. This is because they prize the development of cooperative group achievement over that of the individual. As a result, all of their students experience a far more elevated degree of achievement. There are also some key negative consequences to ability-based grouping which include:

  • Lower expectations from teachers regarding the abilities of students that are placed in groups believed to have lower abilities. Research has shown that randomly distributed students of varying levels scored higher when their teachers believed them to be a group with a higher level of ability. In contrast, another randomized group scored lower when the teacher was led to believe that the students had a lower level of academic ability.
  • Less masterful teaching practices. When teachers are given the ability to use ability-based tracking and teach their students in homogeneous groups, they are less likely to provide all of their students with the type of rich tasks that provide low floors and high ceilings. That means that while the high group may periodically gain access to higher level tasks, the teacher instruction overall is aimed at the middle of the class and there the high students actually miss out on encountering that type of deeper learning throughout the day. In some cases that higher group will only work with the teacher 1-2 times per week which means they are bored a fair bit during the rest of instruction.
  • There can be borderline casualty students, assessed just below the entry requirement for the more advanced groups. This means students who are assessed at one point below what is required to be included in the high group, could be excluded permanently from the opportunity for the rest of their educational career.
  • The development of a fixed mindset by both higher and lower achieving students. Surprisingly the adoption of a fixed mindset can be just as detrimental for a high achiever as that of a low achiever. If the high achiever sees themselves fixed at “smart” they can develop anxiety which leads them to ask fewer questions so as to never appear to not understand or “not smart”. This keeps them from developing a flexible mindset where it is ok to problem-solve out loud and in a group.
  • Missed resources in terms of what students can learn from working and problem-solving together in a group. Often times high achieving students who are offered instruction in mixed ability groups score much higher than those instructed in homogeneous groups because their thinking is stretched when working in groups and looking at problems through different perspectives. The act of observing a fellow students possible wrong assumption, and then helping them to clarify, can help them grasp the concept on a much deeper level, as they are forced to take abstract mathematical concepts, and translate them into oral language which can be very difficult.

While, like Seth, Tatum makes strong arguments (many drawn from the book by Jo Boaler: “What’s Math Got To Do With It?”) that heterogeneous grouping can be beneficial under the right circumstances, I continue to believe that it does not work well in the US for the reasons she points out at the beginning of her comments: inadequate training, teacher turnover, insufficient resources, etc. However, I believe it is worthwhile to provide readers with these alternate points of view (and a reference that expounds on it) from very thoughtful teachers who themselves I’m convinced could make it work to the benefit of students. It seems to me from an aspirational view, heterogeneous grouping is ideal but not from a practical point of view given current U.S. classroom conditions.

Soundbytes:

  • Recently, a number of former players have stated that the lack of adequate defense is the reason behind Curry’s success. Personally, I think defense is actually stronger today than in the past but regardless, the best way of judging any player is by comparing him to his peers. At Curry’s current pace he will score over 50% more 3s in a season than anyone besides him has ever done. The prior record holder before Curry, Ray Allen scored 41.2% of his 3s in his record setting year. Stephen Curry is hitting 46.8% of his 3s this year despite taking more shots per game (which for most would lower their shooting percentage). To put this in perspective, at Allen’s percentage made, he would have scored 34 fewer 3s on the same number of shots Curry has taken this season to date. This equates to 102 less points And Allen was widely considered the best 3 point shooter ever prior to Curry! If we compared Curry to the league average 3-point shooting percentage for the season to date of 35.7%, then the difference becomes about 67 extra 3s made on the 3 point shots he has taken through 56 games played or an extra 201 points vs the league average (which equates to 286 points for the full season). I believe there are few record holders in any era that have such a large discrepancy vs peers (today’s NY times sited Wayne Gretzky and Babe Ruth as similar in producing outsize increases in a major record).

Top 10 Predictions for 2016

Mike Kwatinetz Predictions, Stocks

In my forecast of 2015 trends I wrote:

 “I’ve been very lucky to have a history of correctly predicting trends, especially in identifying stocks that would outperform. I say lucky because even assuming one gets the analysis right, the prediction can still be wrong due to poor management execution and/or unforeseen events. Last year I highlighted 10 trends that would occur in 2014 and I’m pleased that each proved accurate (see 2014 Predictions). Rather than pat myself on the back for past performance, my high-risk, A-type personality makes me go back into the fray for 2015. Last year’s highlighted stocks, Tesla and Facebook, were up 48% and 43%, respectively, from January 3 to December 31, 2014 vs. 15% for the Nasdaq and under 13% for the S&P 500. This year, I’ll identify more than two stocks to watch as I am probably over-confident due to past success. But because I’m not doing the level of work that I did on Wall Street, there is significant risk in assuming I’m correct.”

As I discussed in the last post I got even luckier in 2015 as my highlighted four stocks had average appreciation of 86% while the broader market was nearly flat. As we saw with the Golden State Warriors on December 12th, all winning streaks have to come to an end so bearing that in mind, I wanted to start with a more general discussion of 5 stocks and why I chose to highlight three and back off of two others (despite still liking their stories). The two stocks that I recommended last year that I’m not putting on the list again are Netflix and Amazon. The rationale is quite simple: neither is at the same compelling price that it was a year ago. Netflix stock, as of today, is up over 100% year/year while its revenue increase is under 25% and profit margins shrank. This means that the price-to-revenue and price-to-earnings multiple of its stock is about twice what it was a year ago. So, while I continue to like the long term fundamentals, the value that was there a year ago is not there today. Amazon is a similar story. Its stock is currently up over 100% year-over-year but revenue and profit growth for 2015 was likely around 20%. Again, I continue to believe in the long term story, but at this share price, it will need to grow 20% per year for three more years for the stock value to be what it was a year ago.

My two other highlighted stocks from last year are Facebook and Tesla. At today’s prices they are each at a lower price-to-revenue multiple than a year ago (that is, their stocks appreciated at a slower pace than revenue growth). But, in both cases, the fundamentals remain strong for another solid growth year (more below on these) and I would expect each to outpace the market. I’ll discuss my final (riskiest) stock pick below.

In each of my stock picks, I’m expecting the stocks to outperform the market. I don’t have a forecast of how the market will perform so in a steeply declining market, out performance might occur with the stock itself being down (but less than the market). So consider yourself forewarned on a number of accounts.

We’ll start with the three stock picks and then move on to the remainder of my 10 predictions.

  1. Facebook stock appreciation will continue to outpace the market (it is currently at $97/share). Most of the commerce companies in the Azure portfolio continue to find Facebook the most compelling place to advertise. Now many of the very large brands are moving more budget to Facebook as well. This shift to online and mobile marketing still has a long way to go and we expect Facebook revenue growth to remain very strong. In addition, Facebook has begun to ramp the monetization of other properties, particularly Instagram. If we start to see real momentum in monetization of Instagram, the market will likely react very positively as it exposes another growth engine. Finally, with the Oculus release early this year, we may see evidence that Facebook will become the early leader in the emerging virtual reality space (which was one of the hits at CES this year).
  1. Tesla stock appreciation will continue to outpace the market (it is currently at $193/share). Last year Tesla grew revenues an estimated 30%+ but order growth far exceeded that as the company remains supply constrained. The good news is that revenue growth in 2016 should continue at a very high level (perhaps higher than 30% year-over-year) and the stock’s price-to-revenue multiple is lower than a year ago. The new Model X has a very significant backlog (I’ve seen estimates as high as 25,000-30,000 vehicles). Since this would be incremental to Model S sales, growth could accelerate once capacity ramps. Additionally, both service revenue and sales of used Teslas are increasing as well. When this is added to distribution expansion, Tesla appears to have 2-3 years of solid revenue growth locked in. I’m not sure when the low priced vehicle will be announced (it is supposed to be in 2017) but a more modest price point for one of its models could increase demand exponentially.
  1. GoPro stock appreciation should outpace the market in 2016 (shares are currently at $10.86). On the surface this may appear my riskiest prediction but there are solid reasons for my thoughts here. I believe investors are mistakenly comparing GoPro to a number of tech high fliers that collapsed due to valuations based on “air”. GoPro is far from that. In fact, I believe it is now a “value” play. To begin, unlike many tech high fliers, GoPro is profitable and generates positive cash flow. Its current book value is over $6 per share (of which $3.73 is cash with no debt). It is trading at less than 1x revenue and about 15x 2016 earnings estimates. Despite the announced shortfall expected in q4 and a number of downward revisions, revenue should still be up about 15% in 2015. While the current version of its camera has failed to meet expectations (and competition is increasing), the brand is still the leader in its space (action video). If new camera offerings advance the technology, this could help GoPro resume growth in the video arena. The brand can also be used to create leverage in new arenas. The three that the company has targeted are: content, drones and virtual reality. Of the three, I would significantly discount their ability to create a large content revenue stream and believe virtual reality products may prove difficult (and even if successful, will take multiple years to be meaningful). However, the company is very well positioned to earn a reasonable share in the UAV/drone market (which was about $1.5B last year and could grow 50-100% in 2016). The primary use of drones today is for photography and video and the majority of the ones we saw at CES were outfitted with a GoPro camera. Given the GoPro brand and distribution around action video, I believe that, if they are able to launch a credible product by mid-year, the company will be well positioned to experience reasonable growth in H2 2016 and the shares should react well.

The remaining predictions revolve around industry trends rather than stocks:

  1. UAV/Drones will continue to increase in popularity. In 2015, the worldwide drone market reached about $1.5B and there is no sign of slowing growth. When I think about whether trends will continue, I base my analysis on whether there are valuable use cases. In the case of drones there are innumerable ones. We’ll save the detailed explanation for a full post but I’ll list several here:
    1. Photography: this is a major use case for both consumers and professionals, namely being able to get overhead views of terrain either in photos or in video.
    2. Security: as an offshoot of photography, drones offer the potential of having continuous monitoring of terrain from an aerial view. This enables intrusion detection, monitoring, and tracking.
    3. Delivery: although current drones are not yet able to carry significant payloads, they are close to having the ability to follow a flight path, drop off a small package and then return. As innovations in UAV hardware and battery technology continue, delivery will become more of a reality in the future (which companies like Amazon, Google and others are counting on). This will also require some type of monitoring of airspace for drones to prevent crashes.
    4. Consumer: consumers will purchase drones in droves not only for the simple pleasure of flying them but also for various types of competitions including racing, battling and obstacles.
  1. Political spend will reach record levels in 2016 and have a positive impact on advertising revenue. Political advertising is expected to reach a record $11.4 billion in 2016, up 20% from the previous presidential election year. While the bulk of spending is forecast to go to TV, 2016 will be the first election year in which digital ad spending will exceed $1 billion (and if the candidates are savvy may be even higher). Adding 2015 spending, total political advertising in this election cycle could total $16.5 billion or more. About 50% of the total spending typically goes for the national election and the other half to backing candidates and issues in local races. During the 2015-16 election cycle, $8.5 billion is expected to be spent on broadcast TV, with $5.5 billion coming from national races and $3.1 billion spent on state and local contests. Cable TV is forecast to see $1.5 billion in spending, with $738 million coming from the national contest and $729 million from local races. Online and digital spending is forecast to total $1.1 billion, with $665 million going for national races and $424 million spent on local contests.[1]
  1. Virtual/Augmented Reality will have a big year in 2016: With the general release of Oculus expected in 2016, we will see an emergence of companies developing content and use cases in virtual reality. Expect to see the early beginnings of mainstream adoption of virtual reality applications. In addition, augmented reality products were heavily on display at CES and we think they will begin to ramp as an alternative to virtual reality. Both virtual reality and augmented reality are similar in that they both immerse the user but with AR, users continue to be in touch with the real world while interacting with virtual objects. With VR, the user is isolated from the real world. For now, expect VR to remain focused on entertainment and gaming while AR has broader applications in commercial use (i.e., real estate, architecture, training, education) as well as personal use.
  1. Robotic market will expand to new areas in 2016: Outside of science fiction, robots have made only minimal progress to date in generating interesting products that begin to drive commercial acceptance (outside of carpet cleaning, i.e. the Rumba). This year could mark a change in that. First, carpet cleaning robots will expand to window cleaning, bathtub cleaning and more. Second, robots will be deployed much more generally for commercial applications (like they already are in the Tesla factory). And we will also see much more progress in the consumer entertainment applications highlighted by the emergence of actual giant robots that stage a monumental battle akin to ones previously only created visually in movies.
  2. A new generation of automated functionality will begin to be added to cars. Tesla has led the way for this and already has a fully automated car on the market. Others are now attempting to follow and perhaps even surpass Tesla in functionality. In addition to the automation of driving, the computerization of the automobile has led to the ability to improve other capabilities. One demonstration I saw at CES was from a company called Telenav. They gave a proof of concept demonstration of a next gen GPS. Their demonstration (of a product expected to launch in Q2 or Q3) showed a far more functional GPS with features like giving the driver alternate routes when there are traffic problems regardless of whether route guidance is on as it determined where the driver was going based on tracking driving habits by day of the week. Their system will also help you buy a cup of coffee in route, incorporate messaging with an iPhone (with the drivers voice converted to text on the phone and vice versa) for communicating with someone you’re picking up, helping you find a garage with available spots, etc. all through the normal interface. Telenav is working as an OEM to various auto manufacturers and others like Bosch are doing the same. And, of course, several of the car manufacturers are trying to do this themselves (which we believe will lead to inferior systems).
  3. The Internet of Things will further expand into kitchen appliances and will start being adopted by the average consumer. We’re going to see the launches of smart refrigerators, smart washing machines, ovens, etc. Earlier this month, Samsung released its new Family Hub refrigerator which uses three high quality cameras inside the fridge to manage groceries, identify foods you have or need, and track product expiration dates to cut down on waste. It also has a screen on its door that can interface with other devices (like an iphone) to find and display the current days schedule for each member of the household, keep a shopping list and more.
  4. Amazon will move to profitability on their book subscription service and also improve cloud capex. Amazon launched its book subscription service with rapid customer acquisition in mind. Publishers were incentivized to include their titles as the company would pay the full price for each book downloaded once a portion of it was read. This meant that Amazon was paying out far more money than it was taking in. We believe Amazon has gone back to publishers with a new offering that has a much more Amazon-favored revenue share which results in the service moving from highly unprofitable to profitable overnight. The Amazon cloud has reached a level of maturity where we believe the cash needed for Capex is now a much smaller portion of revenue which in turn should improve Amazon cash flow and profitability.

 

 

 

 

[1] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/political-ad-spending-hit-114b-2016/143445

Recap of 2015 Predictions

Mike Kwatinetz Uncategorized

Our forecasts for 2015 proved mostly on the money (especially for stocks). For context, the S&P 500 was down very slightly for the year (0.81%) and the Nasdaq was up 5.73%. I’ve listed the 2015 stock picks and trend forecasts below and give my evaluation of how I fared on each one.

  1. Facebook will have a strong 2015. At the time we wrote this Facebook shares were at $75. The stock closed the year at roughly $105, a gain of 40% in a down market. Pretty good call!
  2. Tesla should have another good year in 2015. At the time we wrote this, Tesla shares were at $192. They closed the year at roughly $241, a gain of 25%. I’m happy with that call.
  3. Amazon should rebound in 2015. At the time we wrote this, Amazon was trading at $288. It closed the year at $682, a gain of 137%. Great call but still trailed my next one.
  4. Netflix power in the industry should increase in 2015. At the time we wrote this, Netflix was trading at $332 but subsequently split 7 for 1 making the adjusted price just over $44/share. Since it closed the year at $116 the gain was 144% making Netflix the best performer in the S&P for the year!

The average gain for these 4 stock picks was about 86%. The remaining predictions were about trends rather than stocks.

  1. Azure portfolio company Yik Yak, will continue to emerge as the next important social network. I also mentioned that others would copy Yik Yak and that Twitter could be impacted (Twitter stock was down in 2015). Yik Yak has continued to emerge as a powerhouse in the college arena. After attempting to copy Yik Yak, Facebook threw in the towel. In November, Business Insider ranked leading apps with the highest share of millennial users. Yik Yak was at the top of the list with 98% indicating its importance among the next generation.
  2. Curated Commerce will continue to emerge. This trend continued and picked up steam in 2015. Companies mentioned in last year’s post, like Honest Company, Stitchfix and Dollar Shave Club all had strong momentum and have caused traditional competitors like Gillette, Nordstrom and others to react. Additionally, Warby Parker and Bonobos also emerged as threats to older line players.
  3. Wearable activity will slow. I had expected Fitbit and others to be replaced by iphone apps and that still has not occurred. On the other hand, the iWatch has fallen short of expectations. This is not a surprise to me despite the hype around it. Still, this prediction was more wrong than right.
  4. Robotics will continue to make further inroads with products that provide value. I also highlighted drone emergence in this forecast. We have seen robotics and drones make strong strides in 2015, but regulatory hurdles remain a real issue for both consumer and B2B drone companies.
  5. Part-time employees and replacing people with technology will continue to be a larger part of the work force. This forecast has proven valid and is one reason why employment numbers have not bounced back as strongly as some expected from the 2008/2009 recession.
  6. 3D printers will be increasingly used in smaller batch and custom printing. We have seen this trend continue and even companies like Zazzle have begun to move part of their business into this arena to take advantage of their superior technology and distribution.

I also mentioned in the post that the Cleveland Cavaliers would have a much better second half of the season if LeBron remained healthy. At the time their record was 20 wins and 20 losses. This proved quite accurate as they were 33 and 9 for the rest of the season.

I’ll be making my 2016 predictions in another week or so but it may be hard to match last year!