Nuggies: The Next Gamestop?
Thursday, February 11th, 2020
Welcome to the thirty-fifth edition of Nuggies, an email newsletter that aggregates articles and commentary on business, economics, startups, and more, in bite-sized nuggets sent right to your email weekly. Created by and for college students.
Our quote of the week comes from Steve Jobs, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking.”
This Week’s Articles:
Investing in Clubhouse, Andrew Chen (a16z)
Read the investment memo from Andrew Chen, Partner at renowned venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), on his decision to invest in the new social media craze, Clubhouse. Clubhouse is an audio-only social media app that has raised $110 million to date, and currently is in a private beta. This memo walks through Chen’s decision to invest, what appeals to him about Clubhouse, and what makes this social media app different. (Hint: it completely abandons the ad/data based business model that has made social media the giant it is).
Read it here, and if you’re on Clubhouse, follow us (@koehl and @tommypero) and reach out. We’d love to host a room for Nuggies readers sometime!
EV Company With Almost No Revenue Posts 3,000% Gain in 8 Months, Bloomberg
Should we even be surprised anymore? This article covers Blink, the electric vehicle charging company who is almost 20 times more overvalued than Tesla, by a value-to-sales metric. Despite posting just shy of $1 million in revenue (compared to a competitor that posted $140 million) and considerable headwinds in the business model, Blink’s stock has surged in the past year. The rally makes sense, however, in the context of recent stock market behavior: all stocks in an industry that is growing rapidly get bought up, regardless of most fundamentals. Just look at what happened (is happening?) in the fuel cell industry.
Read it here
Figma - Worth the Hype? Absolutely, Clouded Judgement
The pattern on complex desktop software moving to collaborative, cloud-based software hosted in browser continues. Figma takes much of the functionality of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and XD and brings it to a collaborative, online environment.
This piece explains how Figma got it starts and the tailwinds at its back as well as how design typically works with engineering at tech companies.
Read it here
This Week’s Tweets:
This Week’s Wildcard (an extra, interesting nugget):
Here is a list of Chinese telecom giant Tencent’s holdings. They may be the best holding company (investment firm??) ever.
This Week’s Question:
Is Clubhouse worth $1 Billion?
What are we listening to this week?:
This week, we’re listening to Surf by Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment.
In 2015, a young Chance the Rapper hot off the success of his second mixtape Acid Rap decided to make a contemporary jazz album with his band, The Social Experiment. They group secured uncredited features from the likes of Quavo, B.o.B., J. Cole, BJ the Chicago Kid, Joey Purp, and Busta Rhymes and then released Surf for free on iTunes. It’s a fun album worth revisiting and we’re hoping we get this Chance back sometime soon.
Thank you for reading! Nuggies is created by Thomas Pero and Spencer Koehl, two undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame.
If this was forwarded to you, please subscribe here:
If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, please feel free to reach out to us at tpero@nd.edu and skoehl@nd.edu, or on twitter, @tpero_ and @spencerkoehl
While this is a labor of love, if you would like to support our efforts please share this with friends and on social media.