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1 week ago | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
In a world where anyone can sell anything to anyone, Shopify might be the most important company you’ve never thought much about. It’s not just the website builder for millions of merchants; it’s the scaffolding behind the global shift in how products are sold, brands are born, and ideas are commercialized.
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3 weeks ago | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
The world has changed a lot in 30 years. Landlines to iPhones, Sega consoles to the metaverse, cable to streaming; you get the idea. Technologically, the world around us is vastly different from the 1990s. We still donāt have flying cars, a cure for cancer, or colonies on Mars, but weāve come a long way.
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1 month ago | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
Uber needs no introduction. Weāve all used it, we all probably have our gripes with it, and yet, it has fundamentally changed the modern world. A few weeks ago, in our newsletter on Airbnb, I joked that Uber convinced the world to ride in strangersā cars, and Airbnb convinced them to sleep in strangersā homes.
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Mar 9, 2025 | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
Iâve got a fun one for ya today, folks: Silicon Valley meets hospitality, the hotel industryâs worst nightmare â Airbnb đĄ If you contributed to any of the nearly 500 million nights booked on Airbnb in 2024, youâll know the platform well. Airbnb is a pillar of the âsharing economyâ and has changed the world enough to have its name become an all-encapsulating word like Google or Kleenex.
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Mar 3, 2025 | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
This week, Iâm diving into one of the few SPACs from the 2020-era Lollapalooza in financial markets that has actually worked out: a fast-growing alternative asset manager humbly named Blue Owl that, perhaps, has its eyes set on being the next Blackstone? At scale, the asset management business can have very, very attractive economics.
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Feb 23, 2025 | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
Imagine owning a toll road on one of the three major bridges connecting Canada with the U.S. via Michigan. Such a road would be a critical piece of infrastructure, linking the worldâs biggest economy with its resource-rich neighbor to the north. From a business perspective, once the bridge is built, the operations would be extremely profitable.
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Feb 16, 2025 | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
There are a lot of things companies can do with their money. Give employees a raise? Sure. Invest in a new warehouse? Definitely. Issue dividends to shareholders? Encouraged. But one of the more befuddling uses of corporate cash to outside observers is when companies go out into the open market, buy shares of their own stock, and then āretireā them. The effect of this bizarre transaction?
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Feb 10, 2025 | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
Conscious Capitalism goes back decades, most notably to Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey. Mackey has long championed the idea that business is about much more than just creating āvalueā for shareholders. To zealots of Conscious Capitalism, profits are a natural byproduct of a company succeeding at its mission, but thereās nothing noble in pursuing profit without a greater purpose.
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Jan 27, 2025 | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
Whatās more American than Leviās blue jeans and apple pie? Well, honestly, probably nothing, but John Deere is in contention. Few brands have left a bigger cultural mark on rural America than Deere. Throughout Americaās heartland and from coast to coast, people proudly don hats with Deereās signature logo and green & yellow branding, while inheriting Deere equipment is something of a rite of passage for the next generation of family farmers nationwide.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
intrinsicvalue.beehiiv.com | Shawn O'Malley
Youāve heard it all before. āThe Amazon of China.ā āThe Amazon of Latin America.ā āThe Amazon of Africa.āThere is only one Amazon, and if you were fortunate enough to invest in it at any point in the past 25 years and continue to hold it, youāve done quite well. Coupang is not exactly Amazon, but itās impressive in its own ways. Itās a company whose delivery times actually put Amazon to shame, with an ecosystem of valuable services for its members that much resembles Prime.
