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Credit, Candy Crush, and Historic Dynasties

June 18, 2023

Welcome to Colossus Weekly, our curated list of content from the business and investing world.

Best of the Week

The latest from Michael Mauboussin covers the relevance of ROIC as a metric and its impact on total shareholder returns.

Pair with: Our conversation with Michael on market power and capital allocation.

Steven Sinofsky explores the history of technology platforms and looks at how platforms are fuelling innovation and creating ecosystems today.

Pair with: Our conversation with Ben Thompson on platforms, ecosystems, and aggregators.

This profile of Netflix’s global head of television offers a unique glimpse into how shows are created and distributed. Learn why the ideal show is like a gourmet cheeseburger and how Netflix plans to keep growing in a crowded field.

Pair with: Our Business Breakdown of Netflix.

 Invest Like the Best - Scott Goodwin

Guest: Scott Goodwin – Managing Partner and co-founder of Diameter Capital Partners

A masterclass on the global credit cycle with the co-founder of one of the fastest-growing firms in credit investing. Hear Scott discuss the sources of alpha in credit, how Diameter has built a unique culture, and why speed of capital matters so much.

Pair with: A Conversation with Jonathan Lewinsohn (Podcast | 59 mins)

This conversation includes more insights into the credit markets and Diameter’s approach, as we hear from Scott’s co-founder.

Invest Like the Best is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors. Tired of running your own expert calls to get up to speed on a company? Tegus is the gold standard for research, delivering unmatched access to timely, qualitative insights through the largest and most differentiated expert call transcript database. With over 60,000 transcripts spanning 22,000 public and private companies, investors can accelerate their fundamental research process by discovering highly-differentiated and reliable insights that can’t be found anywhere else in the market. As a listener, drive your next investment thesis forward with Tegus for free at tegus.co/patrick.

Business Breakdowns - Mobile Gaming

Guest: Eric Seufert – Author of Mobile Dev Memo

Mobile gaming now represents 50% of the overall gaming market and has allowed game developers to reach entirely new demographics. We break down how this happened, cover the major inflection points and technological developments to date, and discuss how regulation and privacy standards will shape the future of mobile gaming.

Pair with: The Calculus of Fun (Podcast | 70 mins)

Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins break down the rise of mobile and social gaming, how advances in analytics and data science enable game developers, and the role of app stores and distribution models.

Business Breakdowns is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors, and provider of Canalyst. Tired of calculating fully-diluted shares outstanding? Access every publicly-reported datapoint and industry-specific KPI through their database of over 4,000 driveable global models handbuilt by a team of sector-focused analysts, 35+ industry comp sheets, and Excel add-ins that let you use their industry-leading data in your own spreadsheets. Tegus’ models automatically update each quarter, including hard-to-calculate KPIs like stock-based compensation and organic growth rates, empowering investors to bypass the friction of sourcing, building and updating models. As a listener, you can trial Canalyst by Tegus for free by visiting tegus.co/patrick.

Breakdowns Research

Read our research on the history and competitive landscape of the mobile gaming industry. Prepared by Jefferson Rumanyika ahead of Matt’s conversation with Eric. 

Founders - Family Dynasties

Rothschild. Rockefeller. Morgan. As some of the most powerful and influential families in history, their names alone evoke a sense of power and awe. Dive into the stories of the individuals that built some of the world’s greatest business dynasties and learn why some dynasties thrive while others stagnate and fall.

Founders is brought to you by Meter. Meter is the new way for businesses to get internet and WiFi for any commercial space. Meter handles everything, including dealing with internet service providers, installation, hardware, software, configuration, and ongoing management and maintenance. Founders and executives love Meter because it saves them money, while IT teams love Meter because it saves them time. Simply provide an address and Meter handles the rest for one monthly rate and no upfront costs. Internet and WiFi should be as easy to switch on as water or electricity. Meter makes that real. Learn more at meter.com/Founders.

Making Media - Web Barr

Guest: Web Barr – founder and CEO of Hi Barr Media

Need something to listen, watch or read? We've got you covered with a range of recommendations from the cerebral to the entertaining, the timeless to the topical, from business to art. Our secret weapon? Web Barr – our favorite curator of interesting and esoteric content.

Pair with: BlackBerry (Video | 120 mins)

The Office meets The Social Network in this telling of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.

Making Media is brought to you by Scribe. Scribe is the magic behind Colossus transcripts. One of the best decisions we made at Colossus was transcribing all of our audio into a searchable transcript library. We had been using another provider up until the summer of 2022 but we were constantly having issues with accuracy if our audio was just the slightest bit impaired. Whether it's training sessions, internal Q&As, or for media purposes, the value of transcripts is huge. And we are not alone. Scribe is the transcription service that powers all of S&P Global - like CapIQ - and the client list includes our friends at Tegus. Go to joincolossus.com/scribe to unlock 150 minutes of free transcription and test their capabilities.

Web3 Breakdowns - Scott Johnsson

Guest: Scott Johnsson – General Partner at VBCap

An important episode at a critical time for the industry. The SEC's charges against Coinbase and Binance are a declaration of war against the industry. We dive into the charges against the exchanges and explore the all-important question – when is a crypto token a security?

Pair with: SEC Framework on when Crypto is a Security (Article | 25 mins)

Read the SEC’s guidance on applying the Howey test to digital assets.

Web3 Breakdowns is sponsored by OKX. OKX has over 730 spot trading pairs, 280 derivatives markets, and 1000 options markets. It processes 400,000 requests per second with 99.95% uptime. That’s why over 20 million day traders and institutional traders choose OKX when they want to trade. Discover the world’s most powerful crypto exchange today at okx.com.

Thanks to John Rodriguez, Erick Mokaya, and Jefferson Rumanyika for their help and research this week.

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