Memos by Heller House
Memos on investing, technology, science and society. By Heller House.

Latest

Jun
06
Apple Vision Pro: Is This Meta’s iPhone Moment?

Apple Vision Pro: Is This Meta’s iPhone Moment?

There is a scene in the recently released movie Blackberry in which the employees at Research in Motion, maker of
7 min read
Sep
02
Okta’s Execution Mess

Okta’s Execution Mess

Okta, the cloud identity provider, reported earnings this week and while the results were very strong on the surface, the
8 min read
Aug
29
Salesforce’s Best Acquisition Yet: Itself

Salesforce’s Best Acquisition Yet: Itself

Salesforce is the granddaddy of cloud stocks. It was the first sizeable SaaS company to go public, in 2004, and
8 min read
Aug
24
Stripe vs. Adyen: Collision Course

Stripe vs. Adyen: Collision Course

Adyen reported earnings last week and the company showed its usual strong growth with processed volumes up 60 percent year-over-year
9 min read
Aug
12
Twilio’s Margin Target: How Achievable is It?

Twilio’s Margin Target: How Achievable is It?

Twilio reported Q2 earnings on August 5th and despite delivering on its promise of organic growth of at least 30
7 min read
Aug
10
Square’s Margins, Square vs. Shopify

Square’s Margins, Square vs. Shopify

Square, now called Block, reported Q2 earnings last week. The company delivered solid growth, with net revenues excluding bitcoin and
8 min read
Aug
09
Ping and SailPoint: A Look at Thoma Bravo’s Identity Rollup

Ping and SailPoint: A Look at Thoma Bravo’s Identity Rollup

Thoma Bravo is a private equity company with ~$100 billion in AUM and a strong track record investing in software
13 min read
Aug
03
Tesla and Shopify: Integration, Modularity, and Value Capture

Tesla and Shopify: Integration, Modularity, and Value Capture

This is a follow-up on my recent posts on Shopify and Tesla. It occurred to me that there’s an
6 min read
Aug
02
Shopify: A Rake Not Far Enough

Shopify: A Rake Not Far Enough

Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist, once wrote a post called A Rake Too Far: Optimal Platform Pricing Strategy. “Rake” is
13 min read
Jul
27
Chasing Tesla: There is No Catalog

Chasing Tesla: There is No Catalog

In chapter five of their book The Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor wrote that managers must ask,
13 min read