Must Reads 280

šŸ“ Good Enough, Good, Better, Best and Greatest.

Good Morning Must Readers! #280 is introducing a new ongoing segment in Must Reads called Deep Dive of the Week where I break down the story and why itā€™s important but you wonā€™t need to click through for more.

This weekā€™s themes include:

  • Engineering Success

  • Work Performance Questions

  • Brand New City By Billionaires

  • AI For Good, AI For Bad

  • How Music Artists Are Fighting Back

Work Focus

Ā» The 5 Simple Questions To Ask This Week To Improve Prioritisation & Performance 5ļøāƒ£ - 5 Questions to ask, when to ask them and how to get the best out of your colleagues

Ā» Scooter Explained šŸŽµ- If you are into pop music you have likely heard about the powerful artists leaving Scooter Braun, what has been lacking is the reason why, Scooter is creating a mini-major record label to compete with the majors and potentially tackle known issues. Scooterā€™s time as a manager has ended but with his artistā€™s insights, experiences and acumen of buying up rights (Sorry T-Swift fans) will Scooter and his team be able to make music a more effective business that helps artists not hinder them? I suspect so.

Ā» Neurodiversity Explained šŸ‘ - A nicely explained piece on neurodiversity & DEI.

++ Trivia - How many titles are available to stream against all of the streaming platforms?
(A) 1million
(B) 1.35million
(C) 2.0million
(D) 2.35million

Ā» Platform To The Rescue šŸ“±- Cameo is often overlooked as a platform actors rely on. In the ongoing strike, cameo has seen a flood of actors wanting to create short videos for their fans to make some income while they cannot work or promote their work from the strike. When Jay from the inbetweeners has earned over a million from his videos other actors will dream of making this too. I suspect Cameo will see more premium stars join or attempt to create their own version until the middle of next year.

šŸš€ If you need to improve your own professional performance or your team needs a boost, I offer coaching, consultancy and company advisory work & have some availability this month & until the end of 2023.

Tech Focus

Ā» Googleā€™s Struggles To Reshape The(ir) Web šŸ•øļø - Google has dominated the web for years, from organic search (and advertising against keywords and behaviours), thanks to crawling the web the most often, offering resources like YouTube & Android it monetises through ads and long term agreements and docs platform. Google has attempted to integrate AI across its portfolio and the early signals suggest itā€™s losing its way and could be picked apart piece by piece by smaller companies over the next three to five years.

Ā» AI Eats šŸ“²- Uber Eats is working on an AI tool that is going to help its customers order more effectively and cut through the noise on the platform. With the reliance on their restaurants will uber be able to help control orders and guarantee demand to keep both the eater and restaurants happy? I predict AI will help some but hinder many, especially with balancing some people happy to wait up to 60 mins for food and others who want food in 15 minutes. Good, better, best might just become good enough, good, better, best and greatest.

Ā» Intro To New Video Streaming Platform Kick šŸ“¹- Thereā€™s a new kid in town called kick, it already swooped in and snapped up major streamers (from Twitch and other platforms) with unique terms (95% rev to creator & 5% to kick) but what not being said is its connection to bitcoin and betting company Stake. You will see Kick everywhere soon, with promo videos, big talents and they have entered sports sponsorship Everton (football kit sleeve) while their parent company sponsors the front too.

  • Yes, thatā€™s right, some of techā€™s big players include:
    Michael Moritz - former journalist & famous Sequoia Capital VC,
    Laurene Powell Jobs - the billionaire activist and business exec (& Steve Jobs's widow) is known for funding big and going against the grain investor.
    Reid Hoffman - LinkedInā€™s founder (& AI evangelist) has famously been outspoken about the issues around cities, around politics and is one of the leading minds around network effects.
    Marc Andreessen - the Netscape creator & arguably the most powerful VC - Marc is incredibly intelligent and studies history, he recently spoke to Joe Rogan on cults and their power alongside investing in WeWork founder Adam Neumannā€™s new venture living flow which builds communities
    & Chris Dixon - the A16z VC & Web3 KOL

  • All have invested millions into Flannery Associates who are creating a new city outside of San Francisco - which is made up of an agricultural region 60 miles northeast of San Francisco

  • The selling points include clean energy, brand new infrastructure & an under-served area of California

  • Rather than Google attempting to build a city major investors and those who shaped the internet are attempting to build their own city (itā€™s easier to build one than fix one - SF is famously struggling and many see it as too much politics and not enough return)

  • This is twofold, (1) a great way to influence change and create a new way of doing it (2) an experiment to see if you can build something IRL that can be a model to build out and scale.

Ā» The Truth Behind The Dā€™Amelio Empire & Why Venture Capital Makes Sense āÆļø

Life Focus

Ā» WhatsApp Newsletter šŸ§ Ā - For the last two years I have toyed with the idea of turning must reads into a WhatsApp group (I attempted a telegram channel bit before it grew) or into a TikTok channel. Well, this Spanish town has rightly and smartly shifted its marketing from a website or app into where people liveā€¦WhatsApp. WhatsApp was used for everything in Spain, booking restaurants, booking salons and arranging gatherings. This is both smart and experimental while being able be to tracked. This should be a theme in the coming years - more chats over apps.

Ā» Loneliness & The Self Checkout šŸ›’Ā - The pandemic did a few things but made a number of people realise how lonely they are and the LA Times has a great article connecting loneliness and many choosing to opt out of tech like self-checkout at the supermarket and grocery chains to have micro-interactions with people.

Ā» Banksyā€™s Pull šŸ–¼ļøšŸ“󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁓ó æ- An incredible 180k people have gone to see the Banksy exhibition in Glasgow. Bansky is incredibly popular and part of the power of their art is their mystique and not knowing much apart from the big bang artworks they create. Having worked in the luxury art market, Banksyā€™s pull and creativity will be something Marketers have to study and a method many other artists will struggle to replicate.

Ā» How Raye Blew Up On Social Channels But Importantly Told Her Powerful Story āÆļø

++ Trivia Answer - it is (D) 2.35m (across the 167 streaming services) expecting to go up to 2.7m. Too much quantity not enough quality!

Thanks for reading again this week & have a great week!

Danny DenhardĀ 
Ā» Thanks for the great feedback on my new site previewed last week and on my offerings,

PS If you are struggling with your presentations and need a new template this is a brilliant pack from a friend of Must Reads Illiya Vjestica Ā