Simon Edmonds

  • Alumni

Submitted

Volkswagen: how to destroy 30 billion dollars in a week
Simon Edmonds
Last modified on December 6, 2015 at 9:06 am
This post explores how misalignment between Volkswagen’s business model and operating model may have influenced the emissions scandal that is currently gripping the company.

Activity Feed

On December 6, 2015, Simon Edmonds commented on Vail Resorts: A Mountain Monopoly :

I enjoyed watching that video very much – thanks for sharing.

The idea of diversifying the resort base in this business for weather reasons makes a lot of sense – as you mentioned. It will be interesting to see if Vail looks to purchase more southern hemisphere resorts to remove some of the seasonality from its cash flows by utilizing the offsetting timing of winter.
Of course, the challenge with buying Australian resorts (as they did with Perisher) is that the seasons can be so hopeless. This was Perisher on the first day of winter in 2013: http://users.tpg.com.au/mpaine/perisher_8jun13.jpg

On December 6, 2015, Simon Edmonds commented on Harry’s: Shaving Men in an Age of Razor Robbery :

Thanks for the post Jon – enjoyed the read and agree with your analysis of the alignment between Harry’s operating and business model.

To my mind razors are in many ways unique in how well suited they are to the online-only direct to consumer model given their relatively high value, small size and limited life. I would love to see Harry’s continue to go long manufacturing and focus on owning the global blade industry before they branch into too many product adjacencies which might be less suited to their model.

On December 6, 2015, Simon Edmonds commented on Softbank Robotics – World’s First Consumer Humanoid Robot “Pepper” :

Satoshi thanks for sharing these insights – really interesting business model and an amazing field.

Will be interesting to see if the deferred revenue model will be able to withstand any significant issues in the future? I would be slightly concerned that given the infancy of this technology should it start to go wrong Softbank’s “insurance” model require significant expense without having received the upfront payments to support it. Amazing demand seems to indicate the market could take a higher price too!

I think the application of this kind of AI through humanoid type robotics will be really influential on business over the next couple of decades and have often tried to think through which existing industries will benefit most from the growth in this kind technology. I seem to be able to come up with lots of traditional industries that I think will be crushed by robotics but would love to identify some invest-able adjacencies that might be able to benefit.

面白い ！