Substance over sizzle. I make no promises about the cadence of this email. I do promise it will be worth your time and mine. -Dave
Here Come the Catch-all Drawers
Cor pricked your thumb, Oura’s on your finger, Biostrap is on our wrist, Walkbeat is on your ankle, there’s a Garmin across your chest, Levels around your bicep, and you’re blowing into a Lumen at breakfast in a sweaty t-shirt manufactured using Organic Robotics Light Lace after your Peloton ride. Now what? You have a $hitload of siloed data. Say hello to the catch-all drawers, the natural evolution to manage the proliferation of human performance data capture tools. Span and TryTerra are your early clubhouse leaders, although the companies differ and, not surprisingly, collaborate given the respective differences in their business models. What’s next? Piping your wearable data securely through Stel so it’s elegantly affixed to your Cerner-controlled health record. *insert applause here*
‘Cause if I was him, I would have married Kate and Ashley…
Earlier this month, the Air Force pulled two F-16s from the boneyard, beginning its multi-year journey to build a digital twin of the Viper. A digital twin is a virtual representation that serves as a real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process. The keyword here is real-time. That means there is a connection between the physical world (the thing) and the virtual world (the digital twin). Prediction: the company that builds the digital twin of your body wins the 21st Century. (The Merge)
When your IPO is the only thing that isn’t broken…
iFIT Health & Fitness, a Logan, Ut.-based exercise equipment manufacturer best known for their clunky machines engulfing recreation rooms inside your neighborhood Sunrise Senior Living retirement community, plans to raise up to $646 million in an offering of 31 million shares priced between $18 and $21 per share. The company posted $851.7 million in revenue in 2020 and a net loss of $98.5 million. Apparently, selling machines in constant need of repair isn’t a profitable business plan.
Pop-quiz for U.S. taxpayers…
What do you get when you disqualify every U.S.-based software company founded after 2014 (for lack of a 5-year track record as ‘19), including every Y-Combinator alum, from supporting the U.S. Army on a 9-figure software initiative? The answer is Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), a paragon of incompetence, was awarded a $152,000,000 contract to build the U.S. Army’s Accessions Information Environment (link), a software platform whose ROI might be the mitigation of the Army’s attrition at Basic Combat Training (BCT) which is currently running at $1.76B annually (yep, ~22,000 Army recruits can’t finish 2 weeks of classwork and 8 weeks of physical activity).
The Moneyball-ization of the battlefield is the biggest economic opportunity of the next decade, yet the Army’s procurement process is over-indexed to abacus-wielding dinosaurs. Further, 2+ years after awarding the contract to BAH, the Army has no product, nor is there a requirement to harness the brilliance of Fred Brooks’ seminal text about software development originally published in 1975. Can we get a refund?
Make Me Feel Smarter, Dave…
If you haven’t read Battlegrounds by H.R. McMaster, do it now.
Jocko’s Boss…
Former Acting Director of National Intelligence and Commander of Naval Special Warfare Vice Admiral Joe Maguire Joins Orchestra Macrosystems Advisory Board. (link).
H/T’s to these folks…
Not since the signing of the Declaration of Independence has there been a more competent, courageous, and civic-minded group of people than those who competed in The D10. This week’s evidence includes…
CJ Costabile helped the Chaos lacrosse club capture the Premier Lacrosse League’s 2021 Championship (link). Costabile also led Duke University to an NCAA lacrosse title in 2010 and debuted at The D10 in 2019.
Congratulations to Will Jenkins, co-founder of MoLo Solutions and also an alumnus of The D10 Chicago, for selling his company to ArcBest for a cool $235M+ (link).
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