Kevin's Profile

Great points – I agree that Celgene has essentially derisked R&D by partnering with so many pharma/biotech and university organizations. They’re essentially known as the Kingmakers now in the investor community and you see excitement increase every time Celgene announces a partnership or investment. Their deal structure also allows for them to potentially be acquirers if the technology truly is game-changing. Awesome analysis at why Celgene’s been so successful to date!

Really interesting stuff and great company selection. Do you think there’s a network effect at hand here as well? My sense is that entrepreneurs want to be surrounded by other successful entrepreneurs, so in facing growing competition, WeWork will succeed if startups feel that the community/ecosystem WeWork has built is a differentiating factor – the open spaces and some of the other aspects you mentioned definitely help build that ecosystem. It remains to be seen if this will become commoditized.

Really insightful writeup! Given how different the ingredients and processes Clover has from traditional fast food restaurants, how do you think Clover can maintain some of the same safety and handling standards and apply it to fresh foods? The 2013 Salmonella incident elicited some concerns about how the company was dealing with temperatures in their trucks and restaurants, but the transparency you highlighted let to a really passionate blog post from the CEO, which I think played a big role in winning back the trust of customers. On the innovation side, loved learning about the process of how new dishes are created – I wonder how much of that innovation is driven by top-down vs. bottom-up?