No Limits
Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut and aiming high.
Welcome to the MoneyNeverSleeps newsletter! Thanks to the 56 fans who signed up for the newsletter. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, now’s the time to join!
Imagine a competitive sport where a record stood for many years before, finally, it was obliterated by an outsider.
The record had long been regarded as much a psychological barrier as a physical one
And finally, when it was broken, even this man’s most ardent rivals breathed a sigh of relief. At last, somebody did it! And once they saw it could be done, they did it too.
If you are thinking of Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile……you would be wrong!
Enter Takeru Kobayashi.
The Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, held every Fourth of July at Coney Island in Brooklyn since 1967, is like the World Cup of competitive eating.
In 2001, a 23-year-old from Japan named Takeru Kobayashi entered the competition and ate 50 hot dogs and buns. Before Kobayashi, the record was just 25 and 1/8 eaten in 12 minutes.
Kobayashi would win six years in a row before the excellently named Joey Chestnut dethroned him as the dominant force on the Coney Island circuit in 2007. Chestnut has won 13 of the last 14 contests, including this year’s competition with a new record of 75 in 10 minutes.
Why should you care?
Kobayashi has spoken in the past about how the key for him was that he “had to change the mentality that it was a sport — it wasn't having a meal,"and he saw an opportunity to dissect the physical act of eating and optimize it for speed and efficiency.
Other competitive eaters were asking themselves: How could I fit more hot dogs in my stomach?". Kobayashi was asking “How can I make one hot dog easier to eat?"
His solution: the game-changing bun dip, where he dipped the hot dog bun in a cup of water to break down its starch, squeeze out the excess water, and toss it into his mouth as a ball. It wasn't appetizing (or visually appealing), but it worked.
What is the lesson?
Nobody wants to fund a company with a small target market and small dreams.
On the flip side, saying your addressable market is enormous and that you will capture 1% is not realistic.
Look at your target market. Get a good handle on the size and areas of opportunity.
Look at what your competitors are doing. Identify how they are targeting the market and where the opportunity is for you to be different.
Know your buyer. Know their needs and how your product is the answer.
Break it all down into bite-size pieces and be clear about your strategy.
Be clear about who your are targeting and how you are going to do it.
Be like Kobayashi.
Tell me why I’m wrong…
- Eoin
Left Field
How do I describe ‘Left Field’? It’s a place to put the content (newsletters/articles, etc) that we have amassed over recent weeks or previous years that really make us think or change our thinking on a particular topic. All the content will offer an alternative view of some topic in financial services, technology or sport (or a combination of all three!)
Another fascinating sports piece from Michael Lewis about basketball star, Shane Battier, who played in the NBA for 13 years.
The article tells a story of the career of Battier, a player who was described by one of his coaches as “at best, a marginal NBA athlete,” and yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.
Basketball had taken the lead from baseball and was undergoing a statistical reformation.
However, Battier’s game seemed to be an anomaly - a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths.
His conventional statistics are unremarkable: he doesn’t score many points, snag many rebounds, block many shots, steal many balls or dish out many assists.
Yet, when he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. Battier had an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding, takes only the most efficient shots and on defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly reduces their shooting percentages
The article shows how statistics highlights the tension, peculiar to basketball, between the interests of the team and the interests of the individual. The game continually tempts the people who play it to do things that are not in the interest of the group.
Except for Shane Battier, the player who seems one step ahead of the analysts, helping the team in all sorts of subtle, hard-to-measure ways that appear to violate his own personal interests
Anyway, enjoy the article and feel free to get in touch to discuss more!
- Eoin
Can’t Sleep?
MoneyNeverSleeps podcast episode from this week:
Ep 93: Be Direct — Zac Liew, Curlec & Fintech in Southeast Asia. Zac Liew, co-founder and CEO of Curlec, joins the show to talk about the societal influences of what works well in fintech, how Curlec is enabling the subscription economy in Southeast Asia and getting comfortable being uncomfortable.
Article Recommendation: How to Tell Your Story to an Investor. Through tweets from Jasmin Johnson who invests through Score 3 Ventures, Keith Teare from Accelerated Digital Ventures addresses the fact that sometimes entrepreneurs and investors speak two different languages. He provides an awesome framework for founders to tell their whole story concisely, which is an alternative to the “convince me you won’t just burn my cash before Series A” approach that a lot of VCs take.
Podcast Recommendation: Check out ‘Pivot’. Every Tuesday and Friday, Recode’s Kara Swisher and NYU Professor Scott Galloway offer sharp, unfiltered insights into the biggest stories in tech, business, and politics. They make bold predictions, pick winners and losers, and bicker and banter like no other. After all, with great power comes great scrutiny.
Book Recommendation: The Spider Network - a well-written and very detailed description of the manipulation of LIBOR rates which was uncovered in 2012.
Article/Newsletter Recommendation: if you haven’t heard of it already, check out the daily content from Chris Skinner, one of the most well respected voices in banking and Fintech.
This newsletter has been written by Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend
Want more MoneyNeverSleeps?
Check out the MoneyNeverSleeps Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all major podcast platforms, and on our MoneyNeverSleeps page on Transistor.