I read this article today titled, “The Last Bus Problem,” (https://boz.com/articles/bus-problem) basically comparing a large group of people trying to board the last bus of the day to a group of developers trying to cram lots of final updates into a major milestone or product release. There are always pain points in these major releases and any issue is amplified if the release goes poorly because the fix, or next bus, won’t be arriving for some time.
Conversely, buses that run throughout the day, or product releases that roll out often and incrementally, flow much smoother and any problem can be quickly mended by the arrival of the next bus or another quick product release/update. (Although this is not exactly what the author of the blog post was talking about, I think it still applies.)
This leads me to my main point, and a metric that is often discussed but not formally captured on this board - the pace of a company’s product release and rapid go to market strategy often correlates to long term success.
Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, Datadog, Sea Limited, Square, (pick your favorite company), continue to power forward each quarter due to their slew of product releases, partnerships, and acquisitions. These companies don’t sit idly by, but instead charge over their competition through constant forward progress.
My current favorite company, Cloudflare, exemplifies this rapid pace through multiple product release weeks throughout the year, most recently with their “Developer Week.” Cloudflare has released multiple products a day for well over a week, and I feel like I can just see their roots spreading far and wide into the major trends of the next decade - observability, privacy, security, speed, and reliability.
With earnings season again underway, I hope members here focus on some questions I’ve been asking myself when looking for confirmation on whether to buy, hold, or sell a position:
What products has this company released recently?
What partnerships have they announced?
Which companies have they acquired?
Are these actions important?
Thank you all for your engagement and contributions to this board, I’m excited to read your end of month summaries and breakdowns of new companies.
-R
