Business history and operating math on today's AI and markets news. Founder, Operating. Saw Facebook start at Harvard. Newsletter below.
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Tim Cook's first quarter as CEO, reported October 18, 2011, was Apple's first miss since 2004: $28.27 billion against $29.69 billion expected, on 17.07 million iPhones versus about 20 million. Beating by $1 billion buys Ternus room to explain a $1.2 billion China miss.
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Brett Harrison is building an exchange where AI inference providers keep moving prices to their marginal cost. Next he wants auctions for three-month inference contracts. When compute trades like a commodity, the buyer who can switch wins. @BrettHarrison on @theinformation
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On February 16, 2005, Greenspan told the Senate long-term yields had fallen while the Fed hiked 150 basis points, and he called it a conundrum. A 10-year holding 4.91% through an 8% oil drop is that conundrum in reverse, with bond buyers demanding more pay for time.
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Howard Marks on October 2008, when Oaktree was buying and everyone else was selling: "It's by doing the things that other people think are nuts. That's how you make the big money." His catch is that you have to do it and be right. When you're the only buyer, the seller takes your price.
@InvestingCanons
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Same Fed survey, same 2025 data: renters' median net worth is $10,600 and homeowners' is $458,900, about 43 times more. Most of the gap between those two economies is a deed.
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Cipher has signed 700 MW across three campuses, about a fifth of that 3.4GW, and guides them to roughly $914 million of average annual NOI. The other 2.7GW is a spot in the ERCOT queue until a tenant signs a long lease on it.
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Power by the Hour began in 1962 on the HS.125 jet's Viper engines, a fixed price per flying hour with replacements included, and services grew to about half of Rolls-Royce's revenue. Billing robots by the hour puts every breakdown on Tutor's books, which is why plants will sign.
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Pan Am signed for 25 Boeing 747s at $525 million in April 1966, the biggest order in airline history then, and spent years trying to fill them. $895 billion in commitments against $33.2 billion of nine-month revenue is the same bet that demand arrives on schedule.
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The Blue Lagoon began in 1976 as discharge from the Svartsengi geothermal plant pooling in the lava field, and psoriasis patients soon started bathing in it. A power plant's runoff floating at €600 million is the best case I know for studying what a business throws away.
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From 1953 to 1956 GM drove 12 Futurliners through nearly 300 cities on its Parade of Progress, and about 13 million people came out to see the future up close. A tour like that builds demand, and the Cybercab still has to earn it one paid ride at a time.
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Compute took $9.86 billion of Anthropic's $16.96 billion in Q3, about 58 cents of every dollar, and personnel took another 10. That leaves roughly 32 cents for everything else, and it's the one ratio I'd watch as this heads toward an IPO.
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WhatsApp charged a dollar a year after the first free year, and when Facebook paid $19 billion for it in February 2014 it had 450 million monthly users and about 55 employees. Carriers abroad that billed every text did WhatsApp's marketing for it.
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Norway's 131% is 1,548 Teslas in October, 9.8% of the market and just 55 cars ahead of Toyota. Year to date Tesla is still behind last year there, 21,523 against 22,391. One big month against a weak October 2025 doesn't undo a soft year.
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Target's 2013 breach began with credentials stolen from Fazio Mechanical, a refrigeration contractor with access only for billing. Attackers moved from there to the registers and took about 40 million card numbers. A grocer's weakest door is often whoever services the freezers.
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Netflix's CFO has said the difference is that Netflix shares the creative and economic risk with its creators. That's exactly the problem. Netflix pays about $18 billion a year for content up front. YouTube pays creators 55% after the ads sell, and its line keeps climbing.
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6/ A small team with a strong product and a network of fans can now launch like a studio. Companies are becoming tech stacks. I write about how operators build and launch every week at operatingbyjohnbrewton.com
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5/ The playbook: short fixed window, one asset built to be copied, supply kept below demand, earned media doing the work paid media used to do.
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4/ Step three was scarcity. 855 screens, more than 2,000 sold-out shows, then expansion to 2,500+ screens. Every sellout gave the press a new story. A24 bought no sports spots.
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3/ Step two was one reusable asset. The teaser dropped the same night, built around one line: "Why would I deceive you?" One X post of it passed 32 million views in three days. The audience turned it into a meme and did the distribution.
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