Episode #29. Hi there! I'm Gilles, the founder of Clind and author of The Timestamp. Our 2500 readers just love saving time so I will go directly to the essentials. Congrats to our selected curators of the week!

Discover this week :

When can I reach you? (Productivity) written and curated by Fabien Raynaud,
Stop reading your speeches (Work-life) curated by Denis Lenzeele,
Get ready for inflation (Economics) curated by Julien Triverio,
Netflix getting serious about gaming (Business) curated by Patrick Kervern,
Tips for better meetings (Work-life) curated by Deborah Lepunski.

#1 Where can I reach you?

`Quel est le bon moyen de vous joindre en cas d’urgence 🇫🇷 (Where can we reach you in case on emergency?) published on January 8th 2021 in his blog La Minute Productive` `(source article click here), curated by Fabien Raynaud.`

☁️ Your time is precious. Learn how to protect it. Learn how to become unreachable.

⛅️ Disconnect everything while you are working. Only keep one communication channel where you can be reached in case of emergency; this will help you stay in control and worry less. You can keep working at peace.

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Fabien Raynaud is a productivity fan, startup lover & business angel. Abonnez vous à la newsletter de Fabien: La minute productive, c’est une newsletter au format court et efficace pour vous partager à chaque fois une astuce à appliquer, pour mieux gérer votre temps.

#2 Become a rockstar speaker

`Stop scripting your speeches` `published in the Harvard Business Review on January 21th 2021 and curated by Denis Lenzeele.`

☁️ Many people think a “good speech” is something you write out word-for-word and read aloud. This mindset has nothing to do with getting your point across or doing your job.

⛅️ Speaking spontaneously, with authentic conviction and awareness, signals that you have something to say.

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Denis Lenzeeleis VP Engineering @Clind, formerly StickyADS.tv (👉Freewheel/Comcast) and passionate about history, react native, and scrum.

#3 Ready for inflation?

`Do physical assets offer investors refuge from inflation?` `published in the Economist on September 11th 2021 and curated by Julien Triverio.`

☁️ As inflation is rising at an uncomfortable pace, investors are looking to protect their portfolios against it with "real" assets (property, infrastructure, and farmland). Advantages of real assets:

produce cash flows tracking inflation.
rising maintenance/energy costs are passed through tenants (property) or fixed for long periods (infra).
as inflation picks up, debt is cheaper to repay/serve.
Real assets have performed very well during previous inflationary periods.

... but all this comes with warnings:

remote work and e-commerce are headwinds for property value.
airports suffered from Covid and are exposed to decarbonization.
farmland is vulnerable to climate change.
hard to access, only for sophisticated investors.
preserve their own value when inflation is high, but investors are looking for assets that can gain value more quickly.
massive inflows into real assets during the last decade, now there are fewer opportunities. Valuation appears stretched.

⛅️ Other assets can be used to hedge against inflation: Gold, commodities, inflation-linked bonds, derivatives. Each has pros and cons. Some argue to include Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into the "real" asset class.

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Julien Triviero, Multi-Asset Investment Manager at State Street Global Advisors. Julien helps clients to achieve their investment objectives and meet their risk targets.

#4 Netflix into gaming

`Netflix and video games` `published in the blog of Matthew Ball on August 24th 2021 and curated by Patrick Kervern.`

☁️ Netflix CEO Reed Hastings mentioned Fortnite for the first time, writing in his Q4 2018 investor letter, “We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO”.

☁️ During the company’s Q2 2021 earnings call, Hastings confirmed Netflix had hired its first-ever VP of gaming, and also began to unveil how the video streamer would enter video gaming. Q2 2021 was notable for a few other reasons. For example, it was also Netflix’s worst-ever quarter in terms of subscriber growth.

☁️ Hollywood’s newfound focus on “attention competition” reflects a fundamental and relatively recent change in consumer behaviors and options.

☁️ For years, Netflix dominated the “Where to watch” question. The most threatening problem for Netflix is the generational changes that are making “where to watch” the second question, not the foundational one. For hundreds of millions, the question is now “what to do.”

☁️ Every generation plays games more than the one that preceded it. Generation Y plays games more than X, Z more than Y, and Alpha more than Z. Everyone born today is a gamer, which means there are 140MM new gamers every year.

☁️ The most important might be the very definition of “gaming”, which seems to be devouring all other forms of media. Is a Fortnite concert a concert? A video? Is it streaming music? What if you watch a short-film inside Fortnite? Or a live event? Or walk a museum inside of it? What is Twitch? Or VR Chat?

☁️ Gaming’s growing strength in social experiences also makes it harder for video to be better. Metcalfe’s Law more strongly affects a multiplayer game than even the most social TV series, such as The Bachelor.

☁️ There is also money & efficiency. Netflix has 12,000 employees and relies on scores of contract workers and partner employees for its productions, and spends over $20B per year on its content (most of its competitors are $10-20B). Among Us was made by four developers and hit 500MM MAUs in November 2020.

⛅️ Fortnite launched with fewer than two dozen developers, and while it has over a thousand today, total annual operating expenses are less than $1.5B even though it generates $4B+ per year and delivers three billion hours of entertainment per month across its 70MM MAUs.

⛅️ Licences shortage: Netflix is adapting more gaming IP to film and TV than the rest of its competitors combined. This focus makes sense. The majority of film/TV/book IP is owned by Netflix’s video competitors (e.g. Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount).

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Patrick Kervern, Founder at UMANZ. Sense-Maker & Curiosity expert.

#5 Tips for better meetings

`How to effectively communicate problems in a meeting` `published in the blog called ‘Start it up’ on Medium on October 9th 2019 and curated by Deborah Lepunski.`

☁️ Nobody likes someone who only raises questions or problems: an unanswered issue is stressful (because of the fear of the unknown) and often considered a lack of maturity and/or a way to simply complain. => People are told not to raise questions without bringing a solution. => We're encouraged - unconsciously - to quickly solve problems.

☁️ But how much did we actually understand the problem? Instead of seeking everyone’s viewpoints on a problem and/or solution, we're encouraged to exclude some people from giving their point of view: - when a problem is very technical; - when time constraint is high; - when we want to make the problem seem less important than it is; - or when we're deliberately seeking to just get buy-in (i.e avoid others to understand the problem in order to make them jump into the first acceptable solution).

⛅️ The Abstraction Ladder technique (also known as Why-how laddering) prevents these pitfalls and helps to get people on the same page. Principle: move a conversation towards a more abstract goal (by asking Why) or a more concrete goal of what needs to be done (by asking How) in order to find the right level of talking/technicity when presenting the problem.

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Déborah Lepunski, Head of Growth in a startup. UX Expert in consumer companies (BtoC).

With The Timestamp, and with the Clind app, we are helping curators to build their audience with the short summaries they write about articles, podcasts, newsletters you may have missed over the past few days. As a reader of this newsletter, you may want to connect and follow our curators and writers on the Clind app, pls download it on the App Store or Play Store.

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See you next Sunday!

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