Must Reads 271

Good Morning Must Readers, This week’s newsletter is newsletter #271. We are going to dive into the following important themes

» The Number 2 Problem - How the mythological role of number 2 (often the COO or Chief of Staff) is often a poisoned chalice and deliberately manufactured that way. Political intelligence is often not enough to perform badly gets these number 2 into issues…

» Amazon ➕ Small Businesses 📦- Amazon is planning on partnering with numerous small businesses to deliver parcels in dense areas, maximising their logistics and partnerships with local communities. Is this smart, yes, will this help Amazon grow? It’s a scale play and in the US it can be hard for quick delivery and to hire enough drivers to handle the demand (until autonomous delivery becomes a real thing) this approach enables Amazon's growth and could help local SMEs to cross-promote their services if they can.

» The Blurring World Of Sports Business & Investment 🤑 - I have to admit Ryan Reynolds has done a brilliant job in (re)branding himself, scaling his business efforts and leveraging his acting and showing off his (& his teams) storytelling skills. In recent years buying and selling his alcohol business and mobile business, invested in Wrexham and turned it into a hit FX/Disney+ show and now investing with his (actor &) business partner Rob McElhenney into Alpine f1 team. They also partnered with Michael B. Jordan's investment firm in the deal. Athletes and actors have transitioned from being paid to endorse, to creating (& co-creating), into investing in startups and sports teams. This won’t go away and we will see this increase as other investment companies (like VC) aren’t in the sports spaces and waiting for investment winter to end. Keep an eye out for athletes and brands buying in to new leagues (not always creating one like the Rock did with XFL) and investing in brand new teams from soccer to pickleball to the new golf league by Tiger Woods

The Future Today » Self Driving Cars

» WhatsApp Cat & Mouse 💬- WhatsApp is a secure app, it sells itself on its e2e secure connections and enables large groups to form. One use case WhatsApp (& other chat apps) is battling with is the Taliban and being able to remove them from the service. Telegram is also struggling with political or groups and organisations using its service to cause issues and disruptions. Begs the question how do you police a free and closed off network…

» Stories Everywhere 🪞- Telegram (the Russian chat app) is introducing stories into its app. Telegram is leading the way in features and ability for anyone to grow a group or community (some for good causes others not so much). It’s an important move as so many networks rushed towards stories, it increased usage but the quality of experience drops. With most app companies they are recycling product features to create a sense of parity, however, as Telegram has such rich features and communities are thriving on there will stories be addactive or will it decrease the quality

» Drone Advertising Use Case 🍷 (thanks to Must Reader Chris for sharing)

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» Discord Crime Issues 🚓- (Podcast) The Comm aka…How kids use discord servers (Telegram and even Minecraft) to show off their criminal activities, with images and videos (chasing clout). Many young members believe Discord is far safer to show off these activities, unfortunately, there is a lot of ignorance when sharing online (why hasn’t anyone learnt from private SnapChat’s being leaked). We will see this raise the more popular and mainstream this becomes and platforms like Discord and Telegram have the battle to work out to close these for doing the right thing or to leave up and drive huge usage numbers (for advertisers who won’t love the content anyways)

» Influencer News Issues 🚨(video ⬇️) - There is a continued issue of how news is delivered and how people are choosing to consume their news (from news outlets, social media & journalists). Taylor Lorenz (who can be seen as a divisive journalist) has a good short video where she explains why a press style trip for influencers to a Shein factory led to controversy and PR approved narratives. We are going to see more people consume their news from influencers and “influncenews” (yes I just made this term up) as they speak our language, make it understandable and make it relevant to us.

Company Culture Corner

• » Weaponized Incompetence In Work 🗣️ - This isn’t new but once its branded and appears on TikTok and Reels many employees are highlighting issues within the workplace

• » Employees Vs Employers Happiness 🙃- Surveys are often only as good as how transparent they feel, this is an interesting survey as employees are unhappy and employers believe people are happier. We are going to see this while the hybrid battle aka the forced return to the office mandates keep changing.

• » How To Build Connected Teams 👥 - Good pod from a friend of Must Read Bruce on how teams can be built for connection and how happy or unhappy are people at work currently

• » Don’t worry every company has a know-it-all, here’s how you can tackle them 👀

Have a great week and I’ll see you next week.

Danny Denhard

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