What I wrote last week
Good Business reads
Measuring the Moat. An absolute belter. If you want to understand the bases of competitive moats without paying thousands of dollars for a degree, read this one article instead. Oh and it’s marvelously free.
Google’s pivot away from bank accounts shows why finance is a tough industry for tech giants. The article cited the fear of damaging the cloud business and the regulatory scrutiny as the reasons why Google is abandoning its plan to get into the financial world. But there is perhaps one more reason. Google may have concluded that their organization isn’t set up to do well in the financial world and the likes of Apple or PayPal are far better positioned to compete. Why risking billions of dollars when the upside doesn’t look that likely?
Inside the Rise of the Game-Changing ‘Chipotlane’. “Digital represented a $916 million business for Chipotle in the second quarter of 2021. When Chipotle collected $262 million in digital sales in Q2 2019, it marked a 99 percent year-over-year rise and was more than it produced in all of 2016. The Chipotlane doesn’t have a menuboard. It’s a digital order drive-thru pickup lane where guests who pay in advance arrive and get their food from a quick handoff. Restricting Chipotlanes to digital orders stripped friction out of the process. And it avoided past concerns that kept Chipotle from ever seriously considering the channel, fast casual perception or not. New Chipotlanes continue to open with sales 20 percent higher than traditional formats. They operate with 200 basis-points higher restaurant-level margin. This incremental profit comfortably offsets the $75,000–$100,000 cost of a Chipotlane and yield cash-on-cash return of at least 500 basis points above standard locations, BTIG analyst Peter Saleh said.
LRT Capital Q3 Investor Letter. It includes a nice write-up on Tractor Supply and was written by an intern
Other stuff that I found interesting
Facebook to act on illegal sale of Amazon rainforest. Significant changes only happen when those in power put it to good use. As in this case. It’s a waste and pity that in some cases, powerful entities like Facebook take no action because they fear backlash or hit to their bottom line.
The great Koh Kong land rush: Areas stripped of protection by Cambodian gov’t being bought up. The amount of forest loss has increased markedly in Cambodia in recent years. The same phenomenon has happened in Vietnam for years. What good is technology when we can’t preserve the Earth and natural landscapes for future generations?
iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
Writing In Public, Inside Your Company. This makes me think a lot about what I can do at work to make writing more popular
Stats
Almost 78% of all new cars in Norway in September were battery electric vehicles
40% of US shoppers will start their holiday shopping earlier this year than they did last year. 22% have already begun, with another 22% planning to get started before Black Friday, per Klarna
Minh Quang Duong 