What is a recommender engine?
Imagine I told you that I could predict with 100% accuracy what one of your next three items you bought on Amazon would be, and the next seven out of 10 series you’d watch on Netflix. You’d get a little concerned, but these are already the base stats that Amazon and Netflix know about you….
Repetition maketh a man
Replicate your Yesterday and Day-Before-That out over a few hundred days. That’s a year or two. Is what you’re doing today going to get you from Where-You-Are to Where-You-Want-To-Be? Have you invested sufficiently into the relationships you have with the people you care for? Did the people you engaged with form part of your future…
Influencing People on Their Mobile Devices
This is a summary of an article I compiled, together with an infographic, on the growth in ability to influence people at a point of purchase decision, while on their mobile device. In an effort to convert audiences to customers, brands are beginning to hold mobile-native approaches as a standard requirement in their marketing efforts….
Stock Picks – 2017
During the festive season, I review my year and how I chose to allocate my time, effort and capital, and then decide what to change in the coming year. For the first time in a long time, a forward looking view of what I think might happen in the markets over the coming year, is…
Work hard, dream big
I was recently interviewed for an article in an airline inflight magazine. Here’s the copy of the article which focusses on the trip that I went on to Silicon Valley. Murray is an entrepreneurial and commercial thinker with a track record of growing innovative technology businesses. Murray holds a Ph.D in biomedical engineering and has…
You don’t know what you don’t know
Every day I’m reminded of the stark reality of how much I don’t know. I make it my mission in life to try and understand how things work, why they do what they do, but keep coming up short. It’s fortunate that I enjoy learning, so my lack of knowledge is satiated when I learn….
Stock picks for 2016
For the last few years I’ve been sharing my take on the stock market and my investment thesis in the listed space. Last year, I made some predictions that were sound, and others that were off the mark. The slide in the Rand made me look like a superstar, though, with my portfolio up 46% in…
Hard Work has its Rewards
The last few weeks has provided an opportunity for me to spend time with young and aspirational people, more than I usually do. For the last few years, near the end of the year we’ve upped the number of interviews we do as some of the best of the South African youth come into the…
Crowdsourcing innovation
When I worked as an investment banker, one of the insights that became clear to me very early on was that banks have transformed very quickly into technology businesses. What used to be an industry with relational managers and bank balance sheets offering very vanilla products has now become a very technology-centric industry with multiple…