Happy July 4th!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday!

I hope everyone had a great Easter!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a safe and healthy holiday!

This weekend I had the opportunity to listen to friends discuss the topic of public disagreements. To be clear, a disagreement is a calm expression of a difference of opinion or differing viewpoint. “Public” means at least one person other than the two disagreeing is observing. An example is two people disagreeing in a meeting at work attended by five people.

It was interesting to hear the various views on this. People have different comfort levels when it comes to conflict, and that’s reflected in their views on disagreements, especially in a setting with others watching. Those who are less comfortable with conflict are less likely to disagree publicly. They prefer to chat with the other person one on one. Those more comfortable with conflict are more likely to disagree publicly.

I’m a fan of constructive conflict. I’ve been part of and seen the result of getting smart people with different viewpoints together. The process of listening with the intent to understand someone else’s perspective can lead to amazing outcomes. The insights or solutions that result can be great and wouldn’t have been reached absent the conflict and listening to understand.

To be clear, conflict for the sake of conflict isn’t a good thing. It can create a toxic culture. Nor is conflict that doesn’t adhere to the golden rule. But constructive conflict in a public setting where people are (1) trying to understand other perspectives and (2) focused on getting to a solution (not being right) can lead to powerful outcomes.

I’ve been using a particular software tool for several years. I pay an annual rate based on the number of seats (i.e., licenses) I need and pay the full amount once a year. At renewal time, the price has always been the same as on the original contract I signed, and I’ve happily renewed for another year of the service.

I recently received a renewal notice, and it included a cost increase. It points to a clause in our agreement that gives the company the option to automatically increase pricing annually. I’m fine with the increase, but I became curious. Why enforce this clause this year after not enforcing it in past years?

A SaaS entrepreneur I talked to had a hypothesis. During the last few years, the company grew quickly. Its product is quite good and has been popular. (I personally referred a few companies to it.) It probably added new customers easily. The entrepreneur believes the company’s revenue growth from new customers was so impressive that it didn’t need to enforce the contractual price increase (or didn’t think to).

 Now, in 2023, it’s a different story. The product is still good, but many of the technology companies it sells to have cut employee headcount and budgets. He suspects this led to a material reduction in the number of seats companies renewed for and that, in some cases, companies declined to renew their contract at all. The company likely wants to show revenue growth (or mitigate revenue decline as much as possible), so that’s why it’s exercising the contractual price increase option.

It’s an interesting hypothesis. I have a call scheduled with the company to discuss my contract. I’ll end up renewing, but I’m going to ask if that hypothesis is true.

Happy Labor Day!

I hope everyone had a safe and healthy holiday!

I read a quote recently that stuck with me:

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

                                               ~ Dale Carnegie

Simple, but thought provoking.

Are you successful, happy, both, or neither?

All last week, I thought about how to solve a problem. I felt like I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what I was missing or how to solve the problem.

I called a good friend from college to vent and get his opinion. He’s in a totally different field than I am and sees things from a different perspective, which I value. Over the next hour he gave me feedback on my thinking, and we talked through various ideas. Eventually, we landed on an insight that felt significant. We searched for data to support or contradict it. The data supported our thinking, and we realized that we’d uncovered what could be an important insight. Now I’m excited to dig into this key insight this upcoming week.

Knowing credible people with diverse perspectives whom I can call is helpful. These sounding boards can accelerate good thinking, highlight flawed thinking, or help me formulate unique insights.

I’ve been hearing rumblings about commercial office vacancy rates increasing in Atlanta and a few other metropolitan cities, and I’ve been curious about the impact of the vacancies. This morning the title of a Bloomberg article—“Starwood Defaults on $212.5 Million Atlanta Office Mortgage”—caught my attention, and I read it.

Starwood Capital Group is in default of its $212.5 million mortgage backed by a 29-story office building in the Buckhead neighborhood. I’m very familiar with the property: I have friends who work in this building, and I’ve been to the WeWork offices there.

Here are more details from the article:

• The mortgage originated in 2018 and matured earlier this month.
• Starwood didn’t refinance or pay off the debt.
• The property was 87% occupied in 2018. Occupancy was 62% at the end of 2022.
• Starwood and its lenders are negotiating an agreement.

Sounds like this situation is far from over. I’m curious to see how it’s resolved and if any other office buildings in Atlanta will be involved in a default.

A family member recently sent out a group text about suddenly not being able to access their Netflix account. After a bit of back and forth, we realized they’d been “borrowing” the account of another family member . . . for years. Netflix has been cracking down on account sharing by people in different households, which resulted in this family member’s access being revoked. I don’t watch much TV and hadn’t been following this, but this time I got a front-row view.

The whole situation was funny to me given how many years this had been going on, but then I realized something. Netflix had been providing immense value to two households in my family. They were receiving only 50% of the revenue they should have been receiving. Said differently, they were capturing a fraction of the value they were providing.

Netflix is a huge technology company. I assume they’ve known about this sharing issue for many years and have had a fix in mind. I wonder if they waited to deploy it until their growth began to slow, or if another catalyst is driving this crackdown. In the case of my family member, they got them hooked on the value of the service and original content. Now they’re forcing them to pay for that value. Essentially, they’re forcing my family member and everyone else who’s been on a multiyear free trial to put up or shut up. Become a paying customer or stop using the service.

As of the last group chat messages, my family member was in get-my-Netflix-working-again-ASAP mode. Translation: they’ll end up creating their own account and happily begin paying for the service.

I don’t follow Netflix, but I imagine this will have a material impact on their top-line revenue at some point (assuming it doesn’t drastically increase churn). It’ll likely ruffle some feathers in the short term, but I like this move. They’re making sure they’re being compensated for the value they provide.