Nathan Rech

I write about business. What's happening now, and what already happened. Two issues a week at The Business Desk.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

PepsiCo is cutting about a thousand North America jobs.

Its North America chief told staff the company will simplify how it operates.

That memo was seen by Fast Company, not published by PepsiCo.

The clearest sentence in it is about how the company is organised.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

I cover this kind of thing at The Business Desk.

Business stories, told as stories.

https://t.co/9SyGZ0xWsc

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

Who decides a studio needs new bosses?

At DC Studios that is still not public.

What: Skydance replaced both co-chairs.

How: one statement, from the man taking over.

Why I keep turning it over: nobody who made that call is named anywhere.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

@pirwot Volume. The margin moves either way, so it won't tell me whether the thousand were the right thousand.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

What gets cut when the quarter went up?

PepsiCo reported net revenue up 5.6 percent and operating profit up 19 percent last quarter.

About a thousand jobs are going, all in North America, where the sales are weak.

The cuts land this week.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

Old prediction market question: is this legal.

New question: who gets crushed.

Novig became a federally regulated market in August.

Three months later its CEO says it is set up to crush the incumbents.

The growth figures behind that are the company's own.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

November 1st, 2022.

That's when James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios.

Skydance removed them both on November 9th.

Jeremy Latcham starts December 1st.

And nobody at the studio has said who made the call.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

Four things Nvidia's statement says about its interim chief.

She joined in September 2013.

Before that, nearly twenty-five years in finance at companies including Cisco and Microsoft.

She keeps the CFO title while running Nvidia.

And the board is still looking outside.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

More on how decisions like this one get made, every week at The Business Desk.

https://t.co/9SyGZ0xoCE

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

Two things in Nvidia's announcement nobody is quoting.

One, the board's chair, Harvey Jones, is described as its first-ever.

Two, the paragraph thanking Jensen Huang for thirty-three years has no name attached to it.

Everything else in that statement is signed.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

Hiring a CEO from outside is riskier.

That is Hilton's Chris Nassetta, who told Fortune you take way too much risk trying to bring somebody in from the outside.

Nvidia's board took the other position the same week.

It will consider internal and external candidates.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

PepsiCo is cutting roughly a thousand jobs.

The memo to staff, from North America chief Ram Krishnan, says the company needs to be "faster, more connected, and more capable."

Nobody writes that sentence about a business that is winning.

The cuts run this week.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

@randfish @everywhereist That lockdown conversation and the Steam page sit four years apart. Did raising money for a game feel different from SparkToro?

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

@iamAlexTurnbull Sixty-five of the hundred and twenty-five scheduled demos showed up. Would you do SaaStr again now that it's built?

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

@nathanbarry @trinetti Matt wants twenty thousand members for something that meets every weekday. Does a daily habit survive that many people?

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

@jayclouse Fifty guest podcasts and she never cracked 1,700 followers. Do people renew into the membership or the cohort?

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

@szuchans Mixue loses a customer every time a franchisee closes a store. Which of them do you think lasts in the US?

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

I write about stories like this one every week at The Business Desk.

https://t.co/9SyGZ0xoCE

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

Nvidia's interim CEO kept her other job.

Colette Kress is running the company and still serving as its chief financial officer.

The next earnings call is Tuesday.

She presents it from both chairs.

I have not seen another company this size ask one person to do that.

[Nathan Rech @NMRech]

On Thursday Jensen Huang stopped being Nvidia's chief executive.

Also its president. Also a director on its own board.

Effective immediately.

I read the whole announcement looking for a reason.

There isn't one in it.