10 Comments

Interview: Ali Ghodsi, Databricks CEO- This was really good. Ali telling his story about his life. And, the Q&A that they get into regarding hiring and tech company decisions. I own Snowflake [Databricks competitor], but I am now a HUGE Ali Ghodsi fan!

Expand full comment
author

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the feedback! 💚 🥃

Expand full comment

Working Age Populations, Demography- COOL GRAPH! I would love to hear/read someone provide a narrative around what the graph is telling us and more importantly, Why. I understand it on the surface, but why are the trends happening? And, I think there is a little statistics on statistics going on there. It is not a criticism, just me loving number clarity. It is looking at changes in rates of change. [I think.]

Put differently for example- Why is the data forecasting that the US continues to go up, and China is going down? I don't know if I was expecting that.

Smart people come rescue me with an attempt at an explanation. I will not hold you to it. We can call it a straw-person narrative.

Expand full comment
author

I think a lot of demographic changes are baked in when you look at the population pyramids. Hans Rosling was a master at visualizing this kind of data. I still need to read his book, but there are good video of his presentations online.

Expand full comment
Aug 4, 2021Liked by Liberty

Re: AWS, Azure, GCP spin. I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter. I could guess, but much prefer to hear your answers to the questions you posed.

As an aside, you have noted previously that AWS does not receive the attention it deserves since Amazon is seen as an ecommerce retailer first. In your Amazon earnings highlights, AWS received only two lines of attention. This is not a criticism, merely an observation and possible explanation for why AWS feels like value hiding in plain sight.

Expand full comment
author

Indeed, and the reason why it got little attention is because it got little attention by the analysts in the call. If they had had better discussions about it, I'm sure I could've found better things to highlight ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They're doing so many things at all levels of the stack, it's pretty much impossible to even know everything they do at any time. I think most investors/analysts just lump it all under the big "AWS box" over there, because there's also so much to follow with the rest of the company (logistics, ads, Alexa, etc).

Expand full comment
Aug 4, 2021Liked by Liberty

Thanks for the reply. I think you're right, AWS is seen by the investment community as an obscure black box.

Are you willing to provide your thoughts on a AWS, Azure, GCP spin?

Expand full comment
author

I'd have to think about it a bit more -- kinda why I asked the question.

If I have thoughts, I'll share them in a future edition.

Expand full comment
Aug 4, 2021Liked by Liberty

As George Carlin put it: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs

Expand full comment
author

I miss George sometimes...

Expand full comment