GM. Welcome to Highline - Spotting Opportunities in High-Growth Markets.

Podcast Link:https://open.spotify.com/show/2gwZ88PmWkzDW9dC9bosy1

Top Ideas From The Podcast:

• What is the Best Customer of All Time?

• Pet Insurance The Next Frontier

• The Ultimate Framework for the Pet Industry

• MiniBit: A New Venture Strategy

The Ultimate Customer: Pets

Imagine a customer:

• Engaging in a decade-long relationship, promising steady revenue throughout.

• Consistently making regular purchases, ensuring reliable transaction patterns.

• Whose buying choices are made by another party, wayed more by strategic marketing.

• Unable to directly complain about your product.

Clearly, Pets are unparalleled customers.

Pet Insurance: The Next Frontier In the Pet Industry

Pet ownership is increasing worldwide, especially among tech-savvy millennials, only 1-2% of US pet owners have pet insurance, even with anticipated growth from $5.4 billion in 2018 to $15.7 billion by 2028. Major pet markets like China and the UK present untapped potential, mirroring opportunities like Kate Wang's vaping success in China. As global vet bills soar (e.g., a 70% rise in France over a decade), coupled with millennials being willing to prioritise pet expenses and the increasing use of pet wearables, there's an opportunity for data-driven pet insurance underwriting.

🎯The Human Pet Connect: A Symbiotic Market Model

A Model to explain the uniqueness of the pet market.

1. Deep Emotional/Spiritual Connection:

   • Rooted in the belief that pets, like humans, possess souls and deep emotional capacities.

   • Pet owners often feel a profound bond that goes beyond mere companionship, delving into spiritual realms.

2. Inherent Need to Connect:

   • Pets, especially dogs, fulfill the innate human desire for companionship, reducing feelings of loneliness or isolation.

   • The bond between humans and pets has evolved over time, with pets often treated as family members.

3. Communication Beyond Words:

   • Human-pet relationships heavily rely on non-verbal cues, such as tail wagging, purring, or body posture.

   • This silent understanding strengthens the bond and ensures that the relationship is intuitive and genuine.

4. Mutual Benefit and Symbiosis:

   • Historical evidence suggests a mutual relationship where humans provided shelter and food for pets while pets offered protection, assistance, or companionship in return.

   • This mutual reliance ensures a long-term bond based on shared advantages.

5. Economic Reliability:

   • The long lifespan of pets, especially dogs, ensures continuous care needs ranging from food to healthcare, leading to consistent revenue for businesses.

   • Frequent and diverse requirements of pets, coupled with indirect purchasing power (humans making decisions for their pets), ensure a stable market with high transaction frequency.

The SMM for pets underscores markets where the bond between humans and pets is not just about ownership but is deeply emotional, mutual, and has clear economic implications for businesses catering to pet needs.

Podcast Link:https://open.spotify.com/show/2gwZ88PmWkzDW9dC9bosy1

MiniBit:

This passage changed the way I think about business

"To compound value in venture capital, two critical factors to remember are patience and capital efficiency. These factors are often overlooked by VCs who seem to care more about other issues. They ask, how big is the opportunity? It must have home run potential. Or how quickly can they get there?"

 "The company should have $100 million in revenue potential within five years. And how much money can be put to work? Bigger funds must deploy more capital per deal or end up with too many deals. Why is patience relevant to the discussion on compounding? Because time is required for the compounding to take effect. In Silicon Valley, VCs as well as entrepreneurs want very fast growth rates, 100% per year or more. In contrast, we'd rather focus on building a growth engine which can last a very long time."

"At Altos, we place less emphasis on 100% growth or conventional VC metrics, like $100 million revenue in five years. We've seen thousands of business plans with such projections. It's like they were cut and pasted from the same VC 101 business plan."

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