John Mecke Writing Samples

Here are eleven samples of my writing. They all rank on Page One of Google for their relevant search terms. Click the links to go to the published articles

DevelopmentCorporate

Are AI Writing Tools Going to Conquer the World?

I recently saw that Grammarly, the AI-enabled writing tool, raised $200 million at a valuation of $13 billion. That is pretty impressive for a firm that posted about $72 million in revenue last year. I use Grammarly and a few other AI-enabled tools to improve my writing. Last year, OpenAI released GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3). GPT-3 is an AI tool that can generate short pieces of text to answer questions or from prompts. Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times said that GPT-3’s ability to generate computer code, poetry, and prose is not just “amazing”, “spooky”, and “humbling”, but also “more than a little terrifying”. Are AI Writing Tools Going to Conquer the World?

Zillow AI Goes Crazy. Causes $8 Billion Drop in Market Cap, a $304 Million Operating Loss, and 2,000+ Jobs

On November 2, 2021, Zillow announced its third-quarter results. While total revenues were up 88% in comparison to 2020, Zillow missed its guidance and announced that they were shutting down its largest revenue stream, Zillow Offers. Zillow Offers buys homes directly from consumers and then resells them on the open market. Zillow Offers represented 56% of total revenues or $2.6 billion out of $4.2 billion in total revenues. Zillow wrote down $304 million in the value of the inventory of purchased houses. They anticipate an additional $265 million in losses in Q4. The news wiped off 45% of Zillow’s market cap in less than a week. Zillow also announced layoffs of up to 25% of their staff. Simply put, it was not a great day for Stan Humphries  Chief Analytics Officer at Zillow Group. Zillow’s Offers AI had caused a huge problem.

Bright Data

Puppeteer vs Selenium: Main Differences

This ultimate guide will cover the origins of both libraries, key features/functions, and most importantly: How to choose the option that is best for your business

How an effective ‘Data Flywheel’ can enhance your revenue, marketing, and Product-Led Growth  

Learn to strategically leverage a data flywheel in order to increase momentum on your product/service driving Return on Investment (ROI), as well as acquisition/retention

Win-Loss Agency

Product Management Market Research

Market research is a core skill for product managers.  Artifacts like product requirements, competitive landscapes, and positioning all require some type of research.  Regrettably, most product managers only leverage their intuition and secondary research sources like websites.  Product managers should conduct more primary research to support their work with actual market facts instead of assumptions based solely on their personal experiences.

The Myth of 67% of the Buyer’s Journey is Complete Before Contacting Sales

The best solution is to talk to your prospects and customers yourself.

Loren Data Corporation

Can The EDI Industry Be Disrupted in 2023?

In the past few months, I have had an unusual number of inquiries from private equity firms about the state of the electronic data interchange (EDI) market. I evaluated over 200 EDI companies as acquisition candidates and led the operational side of a large EDI acquisition. Since then I have conducted over 50 briefings about the state of the EDI market and its key players for various private equity firms and VCs in the past 10 years. While the pace of these briefings has decreased over the years, recently there has been a flurry of inquiries. The decline of SaaS valuations from the lofty heights of 2021 has sparked an interest in value-driven investors. This got me thinking. Is there an opportunity to disrupt the EDI industry in 2023 through some creative strategic acquisitions?

DevelopmentCorporate

Are AI Writing Tools Going to Conquer the World?

I recently saw that Grammarly, the AI-enabled writing tool, raised $200 million at a valuation of $13 billion. That is pretty impressive for a firm that posted about $72 million in revenue last year. I use Grammarly and a few other AI-enabled tools to improve my writing. Last year, OpenAI released GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3). GPT-3 is an AI tool that can generate short pieces of text to answer questions or from prompts. Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times said that GPT-3’s ability to generate computer code, poetry, and prose is not just “amazing”, “spooky”, and “humbling”, but also “more than a little terrifying”. Are AI Writing Tools Going to Conquer the World?

Zillow AI Goes Crazy. Causes $8 Billion Drop in Market Cap, a $304 Million Operating Loss, and 2,000+ Jobs

On November 2, 2021, Zillow announced its third-quarter results. While total revenues were up 88% in comparison to 2020, Zillow missed its guidance and announced that they were shutting down its largest revenue stream, Zillow Offers. Zillow Offers buys homes directly from consumers and then resells them on the open market. Zillow Offers represented 56% of total revenues or $2.6 billion out of $4.2 billion in total revenues. Zillow wrote down $304 million in the value of the inventory of purchased houses. They anticipate an additional $265 million in losses in Q4. The news wiped off 45% of Zillow’s market cap in less than a week. Zillow also announced layoffs of up to 25% of their staff. Simply put, it was not a great day for Stan Humphries  Chief Analytics Officer at Zillow Group. Zillow’s Offers AI had caused a huge problem.

How to Calculate the Enterprise Value of a Private Company

Calculating the Enterprise Value of a private company requires you to leverage indirect measures such as revenue estimates and average EV/Revenue multiples

The Myth of the Product Management P&L

There is a long-simmering debate in the product management community revolving around product managers and P&L statements.  Do product managers really need access to the product P&L statement?  Does each product line need its own P&L statement?  Should product managers “own” the P&L and be the CEO of their product? 

The Ugly Truth of B2B SaaS Customer Acquisition Costs

Acquiring customers is the biggest challenge any B2B software company has.  Unless you are lucky enough to have an award-winning solution that sells itself like the mythical product-led growth companies (Slack, Dropbox, and Expensify), you have to grind it out like everyone else.  Display advertising, landing pages, webinars, sales development reps, content marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM systems are the basic table stakes in today’s B2B software sales game. The ugly truth of B2B SaaS customer acquisition cost is that you need to fill the top of your sales funnels with hundreds of thousands of suspects to get a reasonable number of closed sales.