THE FOUR - THE HIDDEN DNA OF AMAZON, APPLE, FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE

Amazon

• Jeff Bezos (CEO) – 3rd richest person globally after Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.
• Amazon’s market capitalization is $432.9 billion, exceeding the combined value of Walmart, Coach, Nordstrom, Gap, Tesco, Ikea, and others.

Apple

• Most profitable company in the world.
• Apple fulfills two instinctual needs:
• Appeals to emotions and offers a sense of closeness to something greater.
• Enhances attractiveness to the opposite sex.
• Apple’s cash reserves are nearly equal to the GDP of Denmark.

Facebook

• With a global population of 7.5 billion, Facebook has 1.2 billion active users.
• Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram are among the most popular applications in the US.
• Internet Usage:
• 1 in every 6 minutes online is spent on Facebook.
• 1 in every 5 minutes on mobile is spent using Facebook.

Google

• Often referred to as the modern-day "god" due to its unparalleled trust and credibility.

Largest Market Capitalizations: 2016 vs. 2017

2016	Market Cap	2017	Market Cap
ExxonMobil	$540b	Apple	$794b
General Electric	$463b	Alphabet (Google)	$593b
Microsoft	$355b	Microsoft	$506b
GTE Group	$331b	Amazon	$429b
Bank of America	$290b	Facebook	$414b

Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook are engaged in an epic race to be the operating system of our lives. The body framework – brain, heart, and sex appeal – directly contributes to the extraordinary success of these brands.

• 42% of US households have a gun.
• 52% of US households have Amazon Prime.
• 70% of high-income earners in the US have Amazon Prime.

Google speaks to the brain and supplements it, scaling up long-term memory to an almost infinite degree. Amazon is a link between the brain and our acquisition fingers – to acquire more stuff. Facebook appeals to our heart. Apple stands alone – a luxury brand that appeals to our need for sex appeal. People used to focus on what you wear or eat, but now it’s about what you text on – iPhone.

• Facebook and Google combined control 51% of global mobile ad spending, and their market share grows daily.
• 44% of the USA and much of the world turn to Facebook for news – Facebook is now a news company.

Luxury purchases like Apple products are irrational, which makes them the best business in the world. In 2016, Estee Lauder was worth more than the world's largest communication company, WPP. Richemont, owner of Cartier & Van Cleef & Arpels, was worth more than T-Mobile. Louis Vuitton MH commands more value than Goldman Sachs. It goes to show that luxury purchases are related to brain, heart, and sex appeal.

The digital age is Heraclitus on steroids. Change is a daily constant. Curiosity is crucial for success. Agility is the new term for "fast" in the digital economy. What worked yesterday is outdated today, forgotten tomorrow, and replaced by a new tool or tech we’ve never heard of.

In the tech era, the pace is faster:

·         The telephone took 75 years to reach 50 million users.

·         Television took 13 years to reach 50 million households.

·         The internet reached 50 million people in 4 years.

·         Microsoft took 22 years to reach a billion users.

·         Gmail took 12 years to reach 1 billion users.

·         Facebook took 9 years to reach 1 billion users.

Therefore, trying to resist the tide of change will drown you.

Successful people in the digital age are those who go to work every day, not dreading the next change but asking, “What if we did it this way?” Adherence to process or "how we’ve always done it" is the Achilles' heel of big firms and a recipe for career failure. Be the person who comes up with practical ideas worth discussing and trying. Play offense. For every four things you’re asked to do, offer one idea you weren’t asked to do.

Take advantage of every project – know everything and be obsessed.

Go to college – meet like minds, interact. College is a brand name. In the digital age, smart is sexy.

 Education in the digital age is now too costly and ripe for disruption. Do something about it.

Certification is also important in the digital age.

Get to a city – GDP is determined in cities. Pimp your career.

Concluding

In a democratic society, the existence of larger centres of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free enterprises.

The four horsemen (Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook) manifest god, love, sex, appeal, consumption and add value to billions of people’s lives each day.  However, these firms are no concerned with the conditions of our souls, and will not take care of us in the old age, nor hold our hand.  They have aggregated enormous power. 

Power corrupts, especially in a Society infected with what the Pope calls the “idolatry of money” There firms avoid taxes, invade privacy and destroy jobs to increase profit because they can.

It took Facebook less than 10 years to reach 1 billion people, now it’s a global communication utility, with move to becoming the world biggest advert company.  It is a company with 17,000 employees valued at about $500 billion.  Disney, a hugely successful media traditional company commands about $181 billion market capitalization and employs 185,000 people.

Giants of industrial age, GM Motors, GE, IBM – employ thousands of workers.  Their investors/executives get rich though not billionaires but their workers, many of them unionized, could buy houses and motor boats and send their kids to colleges.

The four horsemen employ 418,000 people (about the population of Minneapolis in US) with a total capitalization of about $2.3 trillion.

That is the USA millions of angry workers want back!  They tend to blame global trade and immigrants, but the Tech economy and its fetishization, is as much to blame.  It has dumped enormous wealth into the laps of small cohort of investors and incredibly talented workers – leaving much of the workforce behind. 

It is dangerous for the Society, it hollows out the middle class, which leads to bankrupt towns, feed the angry politics of those workers who feel cheated, and underpins the rise of demagogues.

Each of these horsemen dwarfs both the Manhattan and Apollo projects in intelligence and Tech capacity.  Their computing power is near limitless and ridiculously cheap.  They inherited three (3) generations of research on statistical analysis, optimization and artificial intelligence.  Each horseman swims in data we haemorrhage 24/7, analysed by some of the most intelligent, creative and determined people who have ever lived.   This is the greatest concentration of human and financial capacity ever assembled.  The horsemen should use this to cure cancer, eliminate poverty, explore the universe, and not sell another fucking phone.

Heroes and innovators of yesteryears.  Created and still create jobs for thousands of people.  Unilever has $156b market caps and spread over 171,000 households, so is intel with market caps of $165b spread over 107,000 households in USA.