Nike: The brand of brands.

When it comes to brands, they're top dog. When it comes to returning money to shareholders, less so. At least this year.

As Nike have pursued the quest to become as close as an apparel company can be to a tech business, their share price has tanked – this year by over 30%.

A former executive's LinkedIn post went about as viral as a LinkedIn post can go, lamenting Nike's turn to e-commerce and performance marketing thanks to their current CEO, the former head of ServiceNow, and advice from McKinsey.

Very Down Round areas. 

Links:
Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction - Massimo Giunco

Nike: The brand of brands.
When it comes to brands, they're top dog. When it comes to returning money to shareholders, less so. At least this year.
As Nike have pursued the quest to become as close as an apparel company can be to a tech business, their share price has tanked – this year by over 30%.
A former executive's LinkedIn post went about as viral as a LinkedIn post can go, lamenting Nike's turn to e-commerce and performance marketing thanks to their current CEO, the former head of ServiceNow, and advice from McKinsey.
Very Down Round areas.  Links:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nike-epic-saga-value-destruction-massimo-giunco-llplf/">Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction - Massimo Giunco</a></li>
</ul>

The number one podcast about tech business and culture, from James "JR" Hennessy and Raph Dixon.

Down Round

Nike: Barefoot is Illegal (PREVIEW)

Apple's profit from "Services" is set to surpass profits from iPhones within a couple of years, which is pretty crazy, really.

Of the ~$80-90b Apple make a year in "Services", around 25% of that comes from Google handing over north of $20 billion per year to be the default search engine in Safari.

For years, Google has been freaked out by the prospect of Apple building their own search engine, as outlined in Raph's piece here.

A judge has now ruled this is ILLEGAL. What will come of this? What's the deal with seach?

Links
Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case – The Verge
Raph's piece on Apple Maps and its role.

Apple's profit from "Services" is set to surpass profits from iPhones within a couple of years, which is pretty crazy, really.
Of the ~$80-90b Apple make a year in "Services", around 25% of that comes from Google handing over north of $20 billion per year to be the default search engine in Safari.
For years, Google has been freaked out by the prospect of Apple building their own search engine, as outlined in Raph's piece <a href="https://raphdixon.substack.com/p/everyone-screwed-up">here</a>.
A judge has now ruled this is ILLEGAL. What will come of this? What's the deal with seach?
Links
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us-doj-v-google-antitrust-search-suit">Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case – The Verge</a></li>
<li><a href="https://raphdixon.substack.com/p/everyone-screwed-up">Raph's piece</a> on Apple Maps and its role.</li>
</ul>

Google's Apparently Illegal Monopoly

It's quarterly earnings season, and some of our favourite tech companies are looking a bit shaky. Not because they're not making money – they are – but because they're spending it on new data centres and AI research. 

In this episode, we take stock of the current earnings reports, and touch on a few interesting tidbits like Amazon's softness in e-commerce and Intel's moment of reckoning.

Also, when we recorded this, markets were teetering on the edge of meltdown. So get ready for some adjacent chat there.

It's quarterly earnings season, and some of our favourite tech companies are looking a bit shaky. Not because they're not making money – they are – but because they're spending it on new data centres and AI research. 
In this episode, we take stock of the current earnings reports, and touch on a few interesting tidbits like Amazon's softness in e-commerce and Intel's moment of reckoning.
Also, when we recorded this, markets were teetering on the edge of meltdown. So get ready for some adjacent chat there.

You Gotta Spend Money To Make Money

Meta this week released the latest update to their LLM, Llama 3.1. It is ostensibly a "frontier model" on par with its OpenAI, Anthropic and Google rivals. 

The difference i: anyone can download the model and the weights and run it, and build on it wherever and however they want, without paying Meta a cent.

Why? 

Glowed up Mark Zuckerberg wrote an article to explain his reasoning; the boys dissect: what the hell is going on?

Links
Open Source AI Is the Path Forward – Mark Zuckerberg

Meta this week released the latest update to their LLM, Llama 3.1. It is ostensibly a "frontier model" on par with its OpenAI, Anthropic and Google rivals.  The difference i: anyone can download the model and the weights and run it, and build on it wherever and however they want, without paying Meta a cent.
Why? 
Glowed up Mark Zuckerberg wrote an article to explain his reasoning; the boys dissect: what the hell is going on?
Links
<ul>
<li><a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2024/07/open-source-ai-is-the-path-forward/">Open Source AI Is the Path Forward – Mark Zuckerberg</a></li>
</ul>

Nike: Barefoot is Illegal (PREVIEW)

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