Hi there, 
 

It's your very last chance to apply for the upcoming Retail Tech 100 awards. Fill out the initial application before midnight tonight (EST).

Now on with the show.  

Let’s start with a little lesson on entrepreneuring. 

Say you want to bootstrap a $1M/year revenue business? 

The reality is that it’s just not that hard. 

But for whatever reason, folks overcomplicate it.

It just takes 2 steps.

Let me break it down.

Step 1: Find 10,000 customers

Step 2: Get them to pay you $100/year

Done. Voila. 

$1M in revenue.

See how easy that was?

Don't overthink it folks.

Now, get after it.

I will share more business thought leadership in the new year so stay tuned. 

Medical matrimony

Oracle announced it will acquire Cerner, an electronic medical records company, for $28.3B — its largest acquisition to date. 

Oracle isn’t the only tech company targeting the health cloud. 

Amid the proliferation of healthcare data, giants like Microsoft and Amazon are also making moves in the space. See their new healthcare product launches, partnerships, M&A deals, and more in this report.

Fancy tech

Investors bullish on the potential of emerging technologies have been pouring money into the space — as of Q3’21, AI startups alone have raised $50B in 2021. 

Download our 5 free reports to get a holistic overview of how emerging tech is being put to work to shore up cyber defenses, personalize healthcare, decrease supply chain disruptions, and more.

Success kids

Moore’s Law. Amazon’s Two-Pizza Rule. The Law of Sh1tty Clickthroughs.

These 8 “tech” laws contain some of the most influential ideas that the biggest tech companies use to run their operations, design business models, and build products.

We dig into where they come from and how they’re driving success in tech here.

Hodl or nah

Despite the “hodl to the moon” narrative, the data shows that people are using crypto for payments. 

In 2021, there’s been an average 100% increase in crypto payments activity across various merchant solutions.

Why now, and what are people buying? Find out in Blockdata’s research here.

Swoosh

Nike has grown its direct-to-consumer sales to 39% of its brand revenues — up from 16% a decade ago. 

To support its shift to D2C, Nike has been investing in technology and distribution and acquiring startups with expertise in everything from content creation to data analysis.

We look at the companies disrupting Nike and D2C retail at large here.

Wall Street Journal. Christopher Mims (@mims) uses CB Insights data to dig into the Web3 movement.

Morning Brew. Jeena Sharma (@itsmejeena) covers the quick commerce space and cites CB Insights research. 

Fortune. Jessica Mathews (@jessicakmathews) discusses the CFPB’s probe into buy now, pay later startups and mentions CB Insights research.

P.S. We’re hiring for a senior product manager. Apply here.