Modern MBA

When you shop at any retail chain or supermarket these days, you find yourself funneled to self-checkout where you’re stuck watching people fumble finding bar codes, bagging their own groceries, navigating the interface, panicking when the machine shouts at them or the screen freezes. Even if you wanted to go back to checkout where a cashier scans and bags for you, you can’t because those aisles are either closed. All this tech just suddenly appeared nationwide in the mid-2010s. Since the debut of these machines, retailers from Kroger and Walmart to Target all gaslighted that self-checkout was faster and that these machines were there not to replace workers, but to instead to free them to be more productive. They stuck to this script year-after-year despite continuous backlash.

In the late 2010s, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat captivated consumers with meatless products that looked and tasted like animal proteins. Oatly led the way as a popular, comparable non-dairy alternative to cow milk. They represented a paradigm shift in the world of consumer packaged goods during the late 2010s. With minimal differences in taste and texture, customers could substitute their beloved meat and dairy for modern, plant-based substitutes. Whether it was out of curiosity or novelty, these startups exploded. Restaurants and beverage chains joined the hype. Retailers couldn’t stock their shelves fast enough. CPG giants like Unilever and PepsiCo fast-followed with plant-based snacks and dairy-free drinks of their own, eager not to miss out on the next F&B gold rush. It didn’t seem crazy to imagine a world where vegan startups would one day become as big as the billion-dollar meat and dairy giants like Tyson and Nestle. Disruption seemed certain.

Fast fashion, for better or worse, has withstood the test of time. The biggest brands today are not British, American, or Italian, but instead Spanish, Japanese, and Swedish - with annual sales exceeding even the luxury powerhouses like Chanel, Gucci, and Hermes. UNIQLO, H&M, and ZARA emerged in the 1990s and have dominated the mass market for the past three decades. These upstarts rapidly expanded across the West in the 2010s - taking market share from giants like GAP and Ralph Lauren on their home turf, driving J Crew to bankruptcy, and turning Abercrombie and American Eagle into afterthoughts. When the industry realized they couldn’t beat fast fashion, they joined them. Why gamble on innovation when you can profit from proven demand? Even the fashion houses and legacy labels who built their empires on selling timeless, buy-for-life clothing have transformed themselves over the years to be more like UNIQLO, H&M, and ZARA.

War is a battle over information as much as it is about logistics, territory, and bodies. Much has been said of the potential mineral deal between the United States and Ukraine. The Trump administration has made it clear that Ukraine must sign this deal in order to secure continued support from the United States. They’ve asserted that this deal is how Ukraine will pay back for all the hundreds of billions in aid that’s been sent their way. With the speed of the news cycle, it’s impossible to separate propaganda from the substance. All the reporting is big on headlines and light on nuance. Numbers are thrown around like candy and technical names are tossed like buzzwords. The Ukrainians proclaim that they have $13-15 trillion worth of minerals - so paying back billions to the U.S. will be easy - it’s just that they need security guarantees.

Buzzfeed and VICE were the digital unicorns of the 2010s. In this fast-emerging era of smartphones and video, these two companies had seemingly figured the secret sauce to go viral in this new online world. Backed by flourishing viewership, Buzzfeed and VICE fundraised their way to multi-billion dollar valuations, using the investment to elevate production value, expand genres, and build newsrooms of their own. As these startups expanded into journalism, the once-clear line that divided old media and digital media vanished. They collected Emmys and Pulitzers for their work. The viewership, quality, and virality was visible to all - and it wasn’t hard for the public and venture capitalists to be convinced that Buzzfeed and VICE had become for millennials what the NYT, CNN, and Fox were for boomers. There were also smaller startups like Vox, Thrillist, Mashable, and Insider who surged off the same tailwinds.

Thin, crispy, and seared to order, smashburgers are more than just a food trend. Even though consumers are eating out less and the fast food giants are stumbling - it’s these tiny smashburger concepts that are thriving. For only a few extra dollars, more Americans are ditching Big Macs and Whoppers in favor of these fresher, smashed, local alternatives. Customer retention at McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s have plummeted and their executives are panicking. But smashburgers are not a new invention. Shake Shack, Five Guys, and Culver’s have built their empires on it since the 2000s. Los Angeles has been the birthplace for food trends of the last decade like frozen yogurt, bubble tea, and hot chicken. It was here in 2018 when the smashburgers gained popularity as a fresher, tastier variation sold exclusively by a few individuals out of their driveways.

Food content dominates every online platform. It’s algorithm-friendly, advertiser-safe, and universally relatable, making it one of the easiest ways to build an audience—but also one of the hardest to stand out in. These days, it’s no longer the celebrity chefs, cooking competitions, and exotic food travel shows that get the most views, but mukbangs; which roughly translates to ‘eating broadcasts’ in Korean. What started as a small niche years ago where people posted videos of themselves binging extreme portions, now serves as an umbrella term for any form of eating content. The appeal of mukbangs lies in the consumption, not the cooking or critique. Mukbangers speak directly to the camera—or not at all—reacting in real time, chowing down in their cars or homes. Like influencers, they invite viewers into a casual, parasocial relationship. Some take just a few bites, others eat everything, but most feature abnormally large portions.

There are few business sectors that have collapsed as dramatically as cannabis. Once projected to generate billions in new business, radical social reform, job creation, and rapid growth, the industry has devolved into a commoditized race to the bottom. But these days, with competition everywhere, profits have collapsed and no one has been able to figure out how to compete at scale on anything besides price. From one angle, this was just a case of too much supply for too little demand. From another angle, commoditization was always inevitable. But market correction shouldn’t mean collapse. What’s left today is just business - regulated, fragmented, ruthless, and perfectly competitive where only the smartest survive. Every industry has its gold rush. For cannabis, the “Green Rush” started in 2012 when Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to legalize recreational marijuana.

In 2 decades, Texas barbecue has become an international icon of American tradition and craftsmanship. What used to be an affordable, practical meal for blue collar families has evolved into a gourmet, Michelin-starred delicacy - drawing in tourists and locals who line up as early as 5AM to dine at the state’s most famous spots. The South boasts the highest concentration of BBQ restaurants in the country. BBQ there is not just a meal, but a way of life, and each state has its own style. Yet it’s the purist, no-sauce, brisket-first style of Texas that has earned national and global recognition. But when we look past the romanticism and glorification, BBQ in Texas is a grueling business. Owners work from dusk till dawn and only a lucky few ever make the spotlight.

Consumer electronics is one of the most competitive markets in the world with its unforgiving business model, heavy funding requirements, and endless disruption. It’s a fast-moving landscape where winners don’t stay on top long, new markets emerge as fast as they disappear, and disruption comes from all sides. But when you nail timing, hardware, and software - the impact is revolutionary. You can create a new market like Apple did with smartphones, Bose with noise cancellation headphones, HP with home printers, and Dell with direct-to-consumer PCs. These products were game-changers and transformed their companies into global category-defining powerhouses. Yet evolution is critical in consumer electronics. No company is immune to disruption. IBM invented the smartphone in the 90s, but it was Nokia and Blackberry who dominated in the 2000s before being toppled by Apple and Samsung. In this sector, if you stop innovating, you’ll be disrupted.

Public transit is divisive, but nowhere does it draw more controversy and deliver worse results than in the United States. This is the richest nation on Earth, yet driving is far more common than public transport and ridership here is low relative to any other developed country. In the decades after WW2, the U.S. deliberately reshaped itself into a car-centric nation. The “American Dream” sold families on a big house, a yard, the latest appliances, and your own car in the driveway. Yet cities like New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Boston all boast the highest public transit ridership in the country despite this generational prioritization of cars. While public transit has been underinvested through history, it’s not accurate to say that there’s been no investment. U.S. public transit agencies serve fewer riders than their international counterparts, yet cost more money than anywhere else, with annual operating budgets that exceed billions of dollars.

The Second Amendment has made the United States the world’s largest firearms market. While gun ownership in every other country is a licensed privilege, in America, it’s a constitutional right. In the simplest terms, the American civilian market is the most coveted and lucrative prize for gun manufacturers and dealers anywhere. Any gunmaker that captures a fraction of this market earns more than they would from any government, military, or law enforcement contract. But the gun business is unlike any other. With tens of thousands of different models offered in various configurations, trims, and calibers, pricing is opaque and knowledge is fragmented. Every firearm is like a stock, which goes up or down based on supply and demand for that specific model. In this low-information industry, successful dealers and stores must wield intuition, knowledge, and relationships to predict and stock what customers will want to buy.