Director of @msstateecenter, Cofounder at @coflyt, Engineering alumnus of @msstate, private pilot & sailing enthusiast.
Starkville, MS
Joined November 2008
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Eric Alan Hill retweeted
Humo, a cutting-edge golf technology startup out of MSU, is set to make its debut at the prestigious 2024 PGA of America Show in Orlando. Get ready to witness a revolution in the world of golf! Check it out!
ecenter.msstate.edu/humo-set…
One day, it’d be really nice to live in a world where I didn’t have to exercise brain power to coming up with Active Shooter contingencies as part of facility expansions.
Except Buffalo has zero scheduled international airline service… so the only thing this affects is private international travel, out of an abundance of caution. I can’t imagine that’s a huge volume. This is the sort of incomplete, misleading reporting people are tired of.
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
Here is a complete satellite loop of today's eclipse from our GOES-16 satellite! #gawx
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
Keith Rabois expressed a similar affinity for vertically integrated companies in his recent panel at the BUILD Summit in New York teapawt.org/mikemcg0/status/170812…
Q: Is there a formula for startup success?
In the clip below, Founders Fund GP Keith Rabois explains the viral tweet that’s pinned to his profile, which reads:
“Formula for startup success: Find large highly fragmented industry w low NPS; vertically integrate a solution to simplify value product.”
He argues that fragmented and low-NPS industries have created massive opportunities for many of the world’s most successful companies:
“If you have a fragmented industry there’s usually structural reasons why, and a bad NPS means customers are not delighted.”
He uses ride sharing companies, such as Uber and Lyft, as an example. The taxi industry was both highly fragmented and had a low NPS, which created an opportunity for Uber and Lyft to simplify the value proposition and stitch together a smooth experience in a vertically integrated way. Square is another example he cites.
He continues:
“I love vertically integrated businesses. They are difficult to build but they’re more successful if they work. Think Apple… What I learned growing up was that in any industry if you want to be successful, you emulate people who are successful. To me, it’s always been shocking that most founders are not emulating Apple… Nobody can compete with Apple because they're vertically integrated.”
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
Q: What startup category is continually underestimated?
In the clip below, Peter Thiel explains why he believes “complex coordination” is a company category that’s continually underestimated.
“The question we always focus on is ‘can this company become a monopoly?’”
He then lists several things that can make a company a monopoly:
Super fast distribution on a very thin product (e.g. Twitter)
A technological advantage that is continually built upon: you come up with something new and steadily improve (e.g. enterprise SaaS software)
A truly brilliant breakthrough (e.g. Bitcoin)
However he argues that complex coordination—where you take a lot of little pieces and coordinate them into something new—is continually overlooked as a way to create a monopoly:
“This is the thing that’s maybe 180 degrees antithetical to the Lean Startup ethos. It’s complicated. You have to put all the pieces together in just the right way. I think this is on some level what really drove Apple as an innovative company in the last decade… What was new about the iPhone? There was no single component that was new. It was just that you put all of these things together in just the right way… and once you built it, it was actually super hard for people to replicate. You had an advantage for many years. You could get network lock in—in terms of the app community or the brand.”
He also points to Tesla and SpaceX as examples:
“There’s no component to the Tesla that’s actually that new. It’s just that you put all of the pieces together. You re-engineered the whole distributor network. It was this complex coordination that made it work. There’s like this lost art of accounting where you figure out how much things cost and add them all together. And Elon has discovered this lost art of accounting which no other people practice.”
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
HUGE congratulations to the entire @glocubes team, under the leadership of bulldog founders Hagan Walker and Anna Barker, for earning a prestigious spot on the 2023 @Inc 5000 list of America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies. Read more: ecenter.msstate.edu/glo-2023…
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
In the spirit of trying to be ahead of trends now. We are rebranding #Blockbuster to #BlockX or #XBuster. Please let us know us know in the comments your favorite.
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
Now this is curbside service done right! Come see Starkville’s newest business on Douglas McArthur near Spruce Ln. I still got 5 more hours on shift………I’m going to run out of dollars before the days over with.
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
We've kicked off the first day of the Mississippi Aerospace and Defense Symposium!
#MSAandD
What a superb compilation of folks speaking at MSET’s #msaandd conference. @CamgianCEO @hyperiontechgrp @Adranosinc @relativityspace
Strong winds with the storm pushing through Starkville right now — gusting 42mph. #mswx
Eric Alan Hill retweeted
If you know of someone needing shelter from the soon-to-be brutal temps or need it yourself, here’s the list. Please keep an eye on your neighbors! #mswx
❗️WARMING SHELTER INFORMATION
Cities and counties are opening warming shelters in anticipation of dangerously cold weather.
This information is reported to MEMA by the counties/cities.
msema.org/shelters-and-safe-…
Some pretty significant wind gusts as the system moves through here in Starkville, MS. Temperatures behind the line are already 10 to 15° cooler. #mswx
