I have written about the laws of unintended consequences, perception and bias, and the narrative previously. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, “narrative”:

• a story or a description of a series of events.
• a particular way of explaining or understanding events.

A story has three sides – your version, my version, and the narrated version. As I sift through 300 stories a week to produce this newsletter, it is clear that stories are managed or not. We live in an era where stories can travel continents in minutes via social media; some journalists do proper work, and some don’t. When a multi-national or brand tell me the media has a story wrong or is drawing incorrect conclusions from it, my mind starts processing the news. I want to have a look at the Zoox acquisition, which Amazon announced and look at what is happening at Lazada.

In the past newspapers and TV was the primary sources of information. Today there are many news platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, WeChat, Facebook, and Instagram. Podcasts also communicate value to listeners. Some companies control the narrative while others don’t.

2020 has shaken society as a pandemic, and civil unrest over racist behavior has led to company spotlighting. Consumers have the most time to spend browsing or interacting with content. Ensuring that your business and team are focusing on and paying the correct amount of attention to valuable tasks are critical.

The past week has shown when leaders and companies focus incorrectly; it leads to undesirable outcomes. I doubt anyone in the commerce industry had any ideas about what happened at eBay and Zalando. 

Over the last 18 months, this is one of the questions I keep hearing. “Who are the best marketplace investors?” I have been trying to answer for the previous three years. Various conversations both on and off the record – tells me that many are trying to get a clearer answer. Investment in anything – business, team, or even yourself is not easy, and the potential for it to go wrong is a reality.

Investors from all across the globe are different

Historical data only tells the story of the successes. Investors, in most cases, don’t talk about failure on their websites and only list exits and do not mention what failed.