YouSaid · the spoken record

Kevin Landis

lines on the record: 73
first: 2021-02-05
most recent: 2021-02-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I guess what I would say is that the world is a much bigger mess than you realize. It really is chaos out there. And there's a lot of things that are far from perfect. And that's actually a good thing because it means that you can go out there and you can find ways to improve it. And I think the example that everyone can relate is that generations of people complained that they couldn't get a cab and then somebody created a ride hailing service where you could and got rich doing it. So yes, it is a big mess out there and we can't complain about it. Our job is to say to ourselves with the conventional wisdom is usually wrong about something maybe more than one thing. Our job is to figure out what the prevailing wisdom is wrong about and then act on that.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You need to understand what it is that you have to offer other people. You need to get to know yourself and figure out what it is that you can offer others. And if it's not enough, then you need to cultivate that. You need to work on what can you become. And once you've figured that out, then you can make your way in life. I think a lot more effectively. But it's not about finding a job that you can get that pays well. That's only one component, right? I mean, the perfect job is one where, or the perfect career is one where you enjoy it. So even when it's not payday, you still enjoy going to work. You're good at it and other people value it. If you can get those three things to line up for you, it's going to click. You can't do that unless you really know yourself.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think I would give the same basic advice no matter what your career interest is, and that is so much of life, whether it's your career and what business you're going to be in, it's not really about money. Money is a construct that any economics professor will tell you, it's only there to facilitate ever more complex bartering. And you're always bartering what it is you can do for somebody and what it is they can do for you. And you're making all of these trades. And so before you start sitting down and figuring out how to barter,”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah. And you really want to meet the great DiMagio. That was the great. But the hero of this story has his own hero in this great DiMaggio that he hears about on radio.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the way I won the argument, at least in my version, I won the argument, was that I said, I can always go read Moby Dick. Good luck five years from now getting your head around quantum physics. And so, you know, I never went back and read Moby Dick. So the next book I'm reading will be going out for a walk, a long walk with a podcast. And Moby Dick is up next.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A great book for me was free to choose by Milton Friedman, but I guess close runner-up behind that is Freakonomics, which is just a wonderful way of just being creative in how you frame the question is really, really important. And I got a lot out of that. Now, the next book, I have to tell you, the silver lining from the pandemic was getting in the healthy habit of going for long walks and listening to books on tape. So I've listened to the great guest being asked finally and enjoyed that a lot. But when I was a senior year in college, I got into an argument with a guy who was a sociology major and sciences versus humanities. And I made the case that really, if you're going to learn the sciences, you have to do it while you're at university.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A couple of books that I really enjoyed early on had to do with individuals overcoming adversity. So the Count of Monte Cristo and the Old Man in the Cold Man in the Sea is still kind of my favorite and made me enough of a Hemingway fan that I later on I read several of the other books and the one that stuck with me was for whom the Bell Tolls said in the Spanish Civil War and had a great lesson that there are times when you need to be decisive and you're going to regret doing the thing you know you need to do. I like reading strategy books. So Michael Porter's competitive strategy is a classic it provides a great framework for a lot of your competitive thinking but if you've already read that I recommend the art of war kind of a classic and on the economic side I think”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I didn't work at the elbow of Da Vinci or Michelangelo or anything like that, but I did read. Wisdom of Buffett. He's great at actually being a bit of a disruptive radical and disguising it as being a very conventional kind of homespun avuncular guy. But both of those people gave really well-reasoned explanations for why it was that the emperor has no clothes. And that's one of those great lessons in life that they don't tell you when you're a kid growing up is that the adults are kind of making a lot of this stuff as they go. And it's not quite such an orderly place as you're led to believe.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I love there's one called cautionary tales that talks about disasters and how they happen. And then finally, hardcore history is a kind of a niche, sort of a military history game, which is great to get your strategic gears turning.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“000 to Gomorrah. And so currently I'm screaming Gomorrah, which has got me thinking that I can almost speak Italian. And it's just very dark. And so I need to break out of that rut because that's not a good place to be. So the other great thing that I saw the other day was a biography on Ulysses S. Grant. And it was a wonderful look. When most people look at that period in US history, they focus on Lincoln. Grant was a wonderful strategist. And it was a great example, too, of an individual who wasn't really a big success in life until he found his role. And when he found his role, he became a big success. And that was wonderful. And I'm a big fan of the planet. Podcast over on NTR. But of course I did listen to Odlot the other day on their story on TSMC and I thought that was well done.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I have to say that, like a lot of people who like complex business and drama and true crime stories, the Breaking Bad put us all on a really dark path. And for me, that path went from breaking bad to narcos to Ozark.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's when growth really is the most valuable. And if you can identify growth and see it where other people don't yet appreciate it, you're going to be making some of the best investments of your career right during those times. And so, yeah, you look at 08 and 09. That was probably a really good time to get into Netflix of your really good time to get into Apple. In boom times, everybody looks like a gross story. And that's wrong. And yeah, during a bust, it looks like no one's growing. That's also wrong.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, somebody said once that, you know, calling something a commodity, that's not a dirty word. Certain commodities, you know, there were times when you really wanted to own oil. There were times when you really wanted to own cotton futures. If you think of growth as a commodity, then growth is most valuable like any commodity. It's most valuable when it's scarce. Well, in the midst of a recession, growth is really scarce. And a lot of the mainstream companies that were a good year was when they grew 4% and a bad year was when they didn't grow at all. Those companies might be shrinking. And a lot of the other companies that thought that they could grow 10% every year are struggling to grow 1 or 2%.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd be even happier today if I hadn't let that stock just run right out of my grasp. So, yeah, one scenario here is that that crowd takes some of my best socks out of my hand by making them too expensive.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There could be a harm. And you could, or you could paint all sorts of scenarios, right? What if the Robin Hood crowd did your favorite stock right through the ceiling, up to a point where you just absolutely can't justify it? And so you do the rational thing and sell it. And then it keeps going up. So everyone thinks about like, oh, this is going to crash. It's going to be terrible and all that. I look at this and think, how many people got forced out of Tesla because that crowd pushed that stock up so fast and they'd have been better off if the stock didn't look so explosive to the upside and they just made a lot of money over time. I look back at Amazon. That's been out of my portfolio for the last 10 years.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, first off, I'll just comment that as an active investors, we can't complain that the market gets it wrong from time to time. I mean, if markets were always right, then we would have to go find a way to make an honest living somehow. So as for the Robinhood crowd, I love those guys when they're buying stocks that I already own. But, you know, I don't get to have it both ways. If people get over excited about something.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That takes place in any workspace where people make each other more creative by this sort of relaxed interaction. That's the thing that I think we're going to find has So we need to get the right mix of that. So I think there'll be a lot of offices that'll tell you that you only need to come in a couple of days a week and you can work from home some other days.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's much harder to hide that. So I like that. This came partly from a conversation I had with a woman who went from being a consultant to an employee. And she said, you know, actually, consultants do really well when they get hired because every time that they have a meeting or a project, they're looking for what's the deliverable at the end. And they always come through with something. And they force people to define what it is they need and what it is they want. Now that's not the only thing there's a lot of other stuff that maybe the softer side, the more creative side where just hanging around other people and thinking about things and bouncing ideas off each other, that's really great. I guess maybe the journalistic equivalent of that is where do good story ideas come from. They get ideas get tossed around and people think about things and magic somehow happens.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one thing that I think changes, I'm looking for silver linings, right? So one thing that I think that changes that's a really good thing is that people are focused a lot more now on deliverables. So when we're just going to have a Zoom meeting and we're going to talk about X, Y, and Z, we're going to get to the end of that Zoom meeting and we're just going to say, all right, well, we're going to come back around in three days and meet again. And this is exactly what people need to have achieved or brought back to the table here. So I guess the co-worker who just sort of hangs around and chit-chats with everybody and tries to look busy and tries to be in meetings and all that doesn't actually contribute that much, but it's just trying to make sure he gets his job. That guy's in trouble because in the age of Zoom meetings and all of this and working from a distance, you can't hide the fact that you're not delivering the good.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right to bundle daycare and food with learning your ABC? Probably. Seems to work. Is it natural to bundle together learning differential equations and organic chemistry with learning how to go out and do your own laundry and shop for your own groceries? Maybe, but which part of this picture needs to be disrupted and rethought and which part of this picture is working just fine and ought to be preserved. That's a great exercise for all of us to go through.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely right. You could argue that the university experience, a lot of it is about learning in the classroom, but a lot of it is about getting on with life and leaving the nest. You can also argue that for elementary school, a lot of it is about learning, but a lot of it is simply daycare. So parents can go to work. You could argue that in a lot of zip codes that it's actually about making sure kids are not food insecure. And it's actually a great way to make sure that you're investing in more ways than one in the next generation. So one of the things that's happening is people are stepping back and looking at the educational system and saying, well, there's more than one function going on here. Which of these functions can be done better and differently? And are these naturally bundled together?”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's clearly a workaround. And I think that's causing a lot of people to ask some very good questions and figure out what's the better way to do this and are we just getting stuck in our old ways of doing things or not?”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is such that you've got people who have, through no fault of their own, are great advocates of supporting education and find themselves being defenders of the status quo. And so I guess one great commentary I heard about a company one time is they said, the guy said, this was a great company. They just forgot to evolve. I would look at our educational system and say they kind of look like they forgot to evolve. This pandemic now is maybe going to give them the necessary kick in the pants to hurry up and evolve and figure out how to make it better. I mean, my old alma mater, UC Berkeley, they've got students living on campus or living off campus close by, but doing distance learning from their apartment rather than moving back to their parents' house. That's a little odd.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think those examples are both trends that were happening already, but the pandemic accelerated them. One of the things that's happened here is that our daily lives have been so disrupted that almost anything is on the table. We're willing to rethink things and we're willing to go try new things. And so that's overcoming the inertia. I mean, inertia is really tough. You've got something that's not broke. Why fix it? And that's why you pay your cable bill every month and figure next month. I'll work the other thing out. And that's really true with education. Unfortunately, the state of education”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that somebody once called a successful startup company an overnight success 10 years in the making. And if you think about how long we had cell phones before one day you looked around and noticed that everybody had a cell phone, for me that was, gosh, in the early 1980s when I was a college student, nobody had a cell phone. By the end of the 80s, anybody in sales had a cell phone. Just how different things were from one decade to the next.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely right. So, this falls into the category of a solution in search of a problem. What Creed developed was the ability to work with silicon carbide, and they struggled for years to try to figure out what's the end market where silicon carbide really pays. And they thought it was LEDs for a while. But then what they found was that you didn't have to make the perfect LED using silicon carbide. You could make a cheaper LED using other technologies and other materials. And you could do it in China. And so never mind all that. And that was a really daunting challenge for them to get through that. But they did.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it just happens that there's this company that's been struggling since I kid you not, the late 1980s. It's called Cree. And based in North Carolina, and they have been struggling their way down this really difficult learning curve of how do you work with this exotic material. And they have finally found themselves in the exact right place at the exact right time because power electronics made with silicon carbide perform much better and give you better electric vehicles. So you don't need to decide if you want to buy Tesla or you want to buy lucid motors or you want to buy NEO. You want to get exposure to this trend. You can buy Cree and we have. And that's one of those stocks is performed really well but still has a fairly modest market cap and still has plenty of headroom. And we're really excited about that. That.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The company that fights with no one and wants to be everybody's partner. And it gets themselves in the middle of that trend and kind of finds their niche within that ecosystem. And so I'm excited about the move to sort of the on-demand streaming and I'm excited about Roku's position on what's still a really, really big wave. So that's one example. Another great example, I think, is when we look at EVs, electric vehicles, one of the things that you have to dig a little bit to get this appreciation is the voltage and the current requirements for electric vehicles are different and that requires different materials technology. And so a lot of the more efficient electronics are not built on silicon, but they're built on silicon carbides.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, there's always a collection of revolutions that are sort of underway within tech. And you hear about what's getting disrupted today and what's in mid-disruption and what's in early disruption. So despite the fact that Netflix has been at it now for many, many years, we're still kind of in maybe the middle innings of streaming. And the fact that cable companies are still in business and still pushing the old business model is evidence that there's more to come. The old saying is history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. What I would say is that today Roku rhymes with Netflix. Roku was that company that when I talked about it three, four years ago, I got a blank stare. And today more and more people recognize the name and kind of understand what they do. And they fit that pattern of”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is something. They know a lot of things that I don't know. What can I learn from this person? And usually it's not about them divulging some facts and figures. It's about them sincerely, honestly sharing their opinion. Those guys over there are a bunch of bozos. These guys over here are the right guys. By the way, the real talent of leaving company X and going to company Y. That's the kind of stuff I like to get. So yes, working closely with startup companies gets you that.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You is that well, it gives you sort of a peek behind the curtain, and you see how much chaos is actually present at most companies and how many fires they have to put out every week while still focusing on the big picture. And so you'll learn a few things that are really important. And then along the way, yes, you will get valuable scuttlebutt. One of my favorite is one of my favorite observations is you ask people their opinions on things. You'll get much more valuable information than if you just ask them for a data point. Everyone thinks that insider insight is all about who's going to make their quarter, who's going to miss their quarter. I really couldn't care less. That's the wrong game to play and get in trouble for playing that game anyway. What you really should be doing when you're talking to somebody is ask yourself, this person's an expert.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. Because in the commercial world, it's not that public companies only transact with public companies and private companies only transact with private companies, right? It's all mixed together. And one of the things, of course, that being on a startup board.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's what makes it so interesting. And so having worked on the job many, many years ago as a young kid and realizing that I was supposed to come up with a number, I kind of understand now that it's not all about buttoning up your spreadsheet. Sometimes it's about leaning back in your chair and staring up the ceiling and asking yourself, just how big could this market become? How big is this opportunity? That's the key thing there. When you see a company that's in the right place at the right time, they're on the right track, then the question is just how much bigger could this market become? How much? How high is up? And if you've got a good feel for answering that question, then you're going to be in some really promising stocks. And a few of them are going to work well for you. And that's what's going to make that difference.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The shortest answer that I can give you to that question is what are we doing being right? And that's going to happen a fair amount of time, a fair amount of the time anyhow. You know, I go back to my early days as an analyst at a market research firm. And when people said, well, how big is this market going to be and how do you determine how big this market's going to be? Nobody knows. Nobody really knows how big upside is. The markets that you can understand really, really well are the already establishments. Do you want to know how big is the market for automobile tyres? There's somebody who's got all that data. You want to know how big is the market for dental floss and toothpaste. Somebody's got all that data. And you know what? That's not where you want to invest. It's really boring. If you want to know the market for a new generation of small satellites, nobody really.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, the argument is that pick any great investment in technology and what you're going to see is that those stocks performed best when people were just figuring it out and adding it to their portfolio. There was a moment where somebody would say, and an ABC corporation never heard of them. And then, oh, ABC, I think I figured them out. Oh, yeah, I'm in on that idea. I like that. And if I look back over the years, Some of our best years performance-wise were when other people were falling in love with the stocks that we already own. But we made those investments in years where we didn't necessarily perform that well. So you make your best investments in year two, and maybe you get all the return out of it in year four when people catch up to your way of thinking and start to agree with you.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That becomes just absolutely unsupportable on the valuation side and the numbers just don't seem to work. You can pull your hair out, you can shake your head, or you can just say, all right, well, that's the power of optimism. That's the power of when people really believe in something, they will really support the hell out of it and find other examples of that that you can put in your portfolio that haven't been discovered yet and that haven't gotten all of that psychology behind them just yet.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, Tesla's a great example of when you're right, even if forget why you're right. If a stock is working, maybe the best thing for you to do is just turn off your computer and go to the beach and let it keep working for you. And so, you know, shame on me for thinking that I was overly clever when the market was really, really frothy. And so I thought I'd get cute. And on a really, really down day I would buy some beaten-up Tesla shares and then write some covered calls against it. And the worst I could do was, you know, make X percent. And of course, then it rallied right past that and I got taken out of the stock. And that was just me trying to prove to myself once again that I'm not a very good trader. And I should stick with investing. When you see a company like this,”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they're on their way to $100 billion. That's a better rate of return, but you've got to be comfortable that you've done your homework and it's not a household name. And people might look at you funny if you tell them that you own this crazy stock named Cheg or Roku, and that's okay.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we saw these again in the 90s and at other times when people just want to pile into tech and they pile into the names that they already know. And because they get comfort in those names, they feel like they understand them because they're familiar with them. Turns out those aren't actually the same thing. But okay, fine. There are moments when people do that. But taking a longer view, there is a better moment when people are craving growth and they're seeing that to go get a company that has robust growth for years to come, you can't take the people who are already worth a trillion dollars or more and populate your portfolio just with those names. You need to find companies that maybe they're only $20 billion in market capital.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, it turns out that a $20 billion market cap can go to $40 billion just as easily as a $1 trillion market cap can go to $2 trillion. And in fact, in some cases, even a little bit easier. You know, it is true that there are moments.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's very scared as he says it. I kind of feel like I see bubbles everywhere I look. And what I'm realizing is that's just a normal natural part of the environment. There are bubbles all the time everywhere. And you're just not noticing them because when they pop each one isn't necessarily big enough to take down the whole system. Most companies fail. Most companies don't get there. The actual survival rate is a lot lower than you think it is when you do the real accounting of it. And working with startups teaches you that pretty quickly. That's okay. Lots of stocks are overpriced. That's okay because the benefit to getting a few companies to be really successful in solving it, getting it right. Those benefits are worth it.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, somebody asked me the other day about do you see bubbles? And I said, Of course I do. And I realized there's the Haley Joe Osnett character in the movie The Sixth Sense where he finally confesses to, he says, I see dead people.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can hail a cab no matter where we are. That's great. It solves some problems. But I think a lot of us are just sort of uncomfortable with the idea that a lot of this amazing technology is really useful in keeping current on our Instagram feed and posting selfies all over the place. That's not a good look. I mean, even if you look good on your Instagram, that's not a good look just being all about that.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. If you look back at the 1990s, one of my favorite examples is sort of creative destruction was we disintermediated travel agents. There were a lot of people who worked as travel agents. There are still a few, but they're really kind of high-end concierge folks. Everybody can go online and book their own travel, right? In fact, when I fly on Southwest Airlines, I disintermediate travelocity and just go straight to the southwest side. So that's a great efficiency. But yeah, and it's not just the late 1990s with everyone wanted a website. Having a website for certain things, that was really, really good. But even since then, look at what the tech industry did with transportation. The right hailing services Lyft and Uber fixed a really, really daunting problem, which was that there's nothing wrong with the cab. It's just that it's not here. The cab dispatch function just never evolved to where it ought to be. So now that we have GPS in our phones.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are going to be a lot of other great examples. I think we go to space again. We're going to find better ways and better materials for insulation. Heat shields are serious business in space. And I think 10 years from now we'll have much better insulators. That means we're going to be much more energy efficient. And again, that's going to help with global warming. So there's a lot that we can do. Really, really some daunting challenges, but we can get to work on them.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I always tell people go stand out in front of your house on trash day and watch this big heavy truck going from zero to 10 miles an hour and back down to zero all the way up and down your block. Think about all that wasted energy. And if that truck had an electric drivetrain, they wouldn't have to hit the brakes. They just ease off the accelerator pedal and you would regenerate and store all that energy each time they come to a stop. So in other words, one of the biggest untapped sources of energy out there is the momentum in these vehicles. So the minute you electrify you, you start to harvest that. Basic ideas like that are really a big thing. I think, yes, taking a lot of the waste out of the system and a lot of the waste in energy, that's going to get us a long ways towards climate change.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Focus on duty instead of call of duty. So yeah, I guess electrification of transport is a big deal. Yes, you're still using power, but I think the part that people are kind of learning from direct experience on their personal vehicles is that the great thing about having an electric drivetrain is that you can harvest all the energy that's built up in your vehicle's speed.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And somebody was actually right in all of the hype that they were generating. And I think it'll be this way again. And in the meantime, markets will do their damnest to give us lots of opportunities to hurt ourselves financially.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was this great encapsulation again of just how you can kind of get off track when you've got a bunch of smart people working on something. If you're working on making crops grow on some stupid online game that has limited value on the other hand, if you're actually working on making crops grow, maybe that's better. So I like that and I like that people are looking at companies and not saying, well, what did you do over the last five years? But what are you going to do in the next five years? That's the right way to look at it. It's the better way to look at it. I guess I would caution folks. A lot of these companies aren't going to make it. A lot of these companies are going to fall short of their lofty goals. That's probably okay. I mean, it's okay that pets.com blew up because now you've got Amazon. So for better or for worse, you've got Amazon. Somebody made it. Somebody made it work.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Driving towards. I'm actually kind of encouraged that a lot of the striving and the looking forward, what can we do has to do with solving really big problems. How do we go to space again? How do we Elon Musk wants to go to Mars? That's good for him, but how do we send lots of other people there? How do we bring people back? And how do we solve climate change? There's some really big things. There's an old quote a few years ago somebody said we were promised flying cars and instead we got 140 characters.”
2021-02-05 · Masters in Business · Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source