Personal takes and retweets as well as blatant self-promotion
Mateo
Joined July 2008
- Tweets29.7K
- Following11K
- Followers22.9K
- Likes5.7K
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
Let’s hear what the best VP of rev ops on the valley are thinking about GTM.
Let’s go!
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
NEW LONG FORM VIDEO: Why nobody wants Grey Goose Vodka anymore
Back in the early 2000s, Grey Goose was the leading luxury vodka brand in America. Known for its premium image and high-end positioning, it became a symbol of status and helped define the luxury vodka category.
But today, the market looks very different. A vodka brand selling bottles for around $20 now reportedly outsells Grey Goose by a staggering five to one, challenging the dominance it once enjoyed.
So how did a brand that once ruled the luxury vodka market lose so much ground to cheaper competitors?
This is the rise and fall of Grey Goose Vodka.
Larry Bird taught some cocky college kids a lesson with his trash talk #... youtu.be/RPBQ_XrYtTY?is=12IY… via @YouTube
287
Now this is America. Love these stories
A laid-off marketer in San Diego has thousands of people fighting over his pizza, and the only reason they can't get one is his apartment oven cooks a single pie every 30 minutes.
A Nobel-winning economist figured out back in 1991 why guys like him should never raise their price.
AJ Miller takes orders on Saturday, preps all week, and bakes on Friday with pickups from 2 to 10pm. Eight hours at one pie every half hour is 16 pizzas. So those 15 slots everybody's losing their minds over are pretty much one Friday of oven time.
Home ovens are just bad at this. He bakes on a steel at 550°F and flips on the broiler at the end to crisp the edges. Every pie sucks heat out of that steel, and a regular kitchen oven takes a while to get it back. A real pizzeria oven holds a bunch of pies at once and bounces right back between them. AJ bakes one and then stands there waiting for the steel to heat back up.
At $25 to $30 a pie, that's maybe $400 a week. Meanwhile his waitlist went from 75 to 1,500 people in a single week back in September, and it's in the thousands now.
Any econ major would tell him to put the 15 pizzas up for auction and let 1,500 people bid.
Gary Becker wrote a paper in 1991 about why that backfires. He was looking at two nearly identical seafood places in Palo Alto. One had a line out the door every night, the other had empty tables, and the busy one never raised its prices. By the textbook, it should have. Becker figured out that a big chunk of what people pay for at a hot spot is everybody else wanting in. Raise the price and the line gets shorter, and a shorter line tells the next person maybe this place isn't that special. He also showed a place can go from "in" to "out" way faster than it can climb back. He won the Nobel the next year.
Think about what AJ actually has right now. Every pizza he sells comes with at least 100 people who tried to buy it and got told no.
Every one of those people goes online and complains about missing out. That's free advertising, and a guy who just lost a marketing job knows what it's worth better than anybody.
California even has a legal version of this. The MEHKO law lets you run a tiny restaurant out of your apartment with a county health permit, and San Diego County signed on in 2022. You're capped at 90 meals a week and roughly $100,000 a year in sales. At his prices, 90 pizzas a week would blow past the money limit, so a home pizza business legally tops out somewhere around 70 pies a week.
So the apartment maxes out around a hundred grand, and the waitlist is worth way more than the pizza ever will be. Somewhere in San Diego there's a landlord with an empty storefront who's about to get the easiest pitch of his life, and AJ gets to walk in with a list of thousands of people who already tried to give him money.
271
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
DoorDash is buying Instacart for about $17B. At my last firm, my boss asked me whether we should invest at a $10M post-money. I recommended we pass because the valuation seemed high and the business seemed capital intensive. Obviously that was the wrong call. Read on >>
Your “new category” is an old one with a new use case open.substack.com/pub/scaled…
1
212
oh
XS Nightclub at Encore reopens tomorrow (Nov. 5) following a three-month renovation. You and your bruzz can still grab a sweet VIP table for opening weekend. wynnsocial.com/vip-tables/
1
2
240
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
JUST IN: Atlanta strip club Magic City announces election night watch party — "From the Polls to the Poles”
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
Nerds going from ~$40M to nearly $900M since launching Gummy Clusters might be one of the most underreported CPG stories of the decade.
And it almost didn’t work.
The idea actually started in 2001 with Nerds Rope. But no breakout.
Then Gummy Clusters launched in 2020 with just ~$700K of marketing. Early tests flopped.
In 2021, Kylie Jenner posted them organically to ~200M followers: “Next level.”
TikTok took it from there. The crunch became ASMR content.
Sales:
2020: ~$8M
2024: $500M+
Today: approaching $900M
Repeat is insane too:
More than 1 in 5 buyers purchase 6+ times a year.
Nerds has now passed Skittles as America’s #1 sugar candy.
And Mars is responding with gummy versions of Skittles + Starburst.
Big M&A win. Ferrero bought Nestlé’s entire US candy portfolio in 2018 for $2.8B: Butterfinger. Crunch. SweeTARTS. Laffy Taffy. Nerds.
Nerds was basically an afterthought.
Today, the value created by Nerds alone may have effectively paid for the whole acquisition.
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
The Golden State Valkyries' story is crazy.
In 2023, the Warriors ownership group (Joe Lacob, Peter Guber) paid $50 million for a WNBA expansion team.
Lacob promised that they would win a championship within five years and also lead the league in revenue.
Now, in just their second season, the Valkyries have accomplished both.
• 12,000+ season ticket holders (90% renewal rate)
• 40+ sponsorship partners (JPMorgan Chase, etc.)
• $100 million in annual revenue (WNBA record)
• 44 straight sellouts (league-leading attendance)
• 2026 WNBA Champions (beat the Atlanta Dream)
And here's the craziest part...
Not only did Lacob and Guber negotiate a clause that let them pay the $50 million expansion fee over 10 years, but the last three expansion teams sold for $250 million each, and the Valkyries are now valued at $1 billion.
That is 20x more than the $50 million expansion fee, and it makes the Valkyries the most valuable franchise in women's sports history.
Today's newsletter breaks down all the details.
READ: huddleup.substack.com/p/how-…
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
Pat Murphy says he still wasn’t a good coach even after winning at Notre Dame and going to the College World Series at Arizona State because he was still making it about him instead of the players
“You know, when you get to a spot in life when you’re a little bit older, you start to make it not about you. When I dropped my ego, which took a while, I wasn’t a good coach at Notre Dame. Even though we were winning games, I still wasn’t good. I didn’t know baseball, for one, and it was about me a little bit at the end.”
“I started the right way. I loved Notre Dame, and I didn’t want to embarrass the university. I was working for $7,000 a year. I just wanted to be good and not embarrass them. We had a lot of success, but then it became about me.”
“And then I got to ASU, and it became about me again. We won a lot and went to the World Series a lot, but I just wasn’t good. It took getting knocked on my ass a little bit. I had that NCAA thing, which was total bull, but it woke me up. My kids made a difference in my life, and you start to realize it ain’t about you. Honestly, it’s not about me.”
“And whenever I started focusing on that, we came into last year and everything wrong happens. We trade Corbin. Woody’s out for the year. Devin’s out. We cut the budget $30 million. We’re going to suck. And again, I just kept saying, ‘It’s not about me. Make it about that young energy.’ And we had these young guys go out and make me look good. Hungry players, you remember when you guys were hungry in your career? Hungry players make the manager look good.”
“And that’s exactly what happened. Now I got the credit for it. I’m still under construction. I’m not great. There are so many areas I suck in. But then you’re trying to find staff members to help you, trying to realize what you suck at.”
“But the most important thing is love the player. When you really find the good in that dude, that’s it. The guy that’s hardest to love needs love the most. I’m at a point in life where it’s about them. And if you keep it about them…”
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
Son: Hey Dad, what was your favorite song when you were in high school?
Dad: Son, let me take you back to 1995 for a minute. This will give you goosebumps.
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
Eleven years before Michael Jordan, Nike gave NBA star Spencer Haywood 10% of the company.
While Haywood was on a road trip, his agent sold the whole 10% stake for $100,000 in cash—just to collect his $10,000 fee.
In the video below, Haywood is asked if he is still friends with the man who sold it. His answer: "Yes."
In 1973, Haywood was 24 and averaging 29 points a game in Seattle. Phil Knight came to him and asked him to wear his new shoe.
Knight didn't have the cash to match Converse. So he offered Haywood stock instead.
"First of all, I was young, too, and I'm thinking: livestock? What are you talking about? Stocks," Haywood says.
Haywood took the stock.
His agent had a problem. An agent gets 10%. Ten percent of stock in a tiny shoe company couldn't pay his bills. Ten percent of $100,000 in cash was $10,000 in his pocket right away.
So the agent kept telling Haywood the shoe would never work. At the time, Nike only made running shoes for Steve Prefontaine. When Haywood ran down the court, defenders stepped on his heel and popped the shoe right off his foot.
Before leaving for a road trip, Haywood gave in.
"I said, 'Okay, man, I give you the power of attorney. Let me just go play. I got to really focus on this game now because this is my chance.'"
When Haywood came back, the stock was gone.
"He had sold that sh*t," Haywood says. "He said, 'Man, I got the cash right here — 100,000.'"
Matt Barnes asks him what that 10% of Nike would be worth.
"It was up around 2.7 billion," Haywood says. "Years ago." At Nike's peak, 10% was worth over $8.6 billion.
The case for the agent: in 1973, Nike was a tiny Oregon running-shoe company, and the shoes literally fell off Haywood's feet during games.
Could you stay friends with a man who cost you $2.7 billion?
Craig Rosenberg retweeted
Before Hollywood, I was living in a van in Hawaii and waiting tables at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. One day, the incredible Rae Dawn Chong walked into the restaurant, and naturally, I went up to her table and said, “Hey, you’re a movie star! What are you doing here?”
She asked if I could act, and I said, “Fuck yeah, put me in your movie!”
She asked for my phone number. The only problem was I didn’t have one. So I gave her my buddy Mike’s number instead. A couple days later, Mike casually mentions, “Oh, by the way, someone called you.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME, MIKE?!
I called her back, and sure enough, she was serious. I drove over to pick up the script, went back to Mike’s house, and read all 120 pages three times in a row. First script I’d ever read. My character's name was Devon, and I remember thinking, “Sweet! I could totally play a Devon!”
I showed up to the audition with every line and inflection mapped out in pencil. Rae told me I could act and offered me the part. I asked if we were shooting in Hawaii. Nope. Los Angeles.
I had about $60 to my name, a bag of clothes, and some rollerblades.
Then Rae told me they'd fly me out. And I remember thinking right then and there, my life just changed forever. I'm going to be an actor.
That little movie was Cursed Part 3, a low-budget horror comedy that opened the door to Hollywood for me.
I'll forever be grateful to Rae for taking a chance on a kid working at a shrimp restaurant. Everybody starts somewhere, and this is where it all began for me.
