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How I used AI Tools & Google Trends to Determine that Amazon HQ2 Is Coming to Miami

Amazon has yet to announce where they are going to put their newest headquarters called HQ2 into Overtown, Miami. With some proprietary AI software I've been testing and using Google Trends I can say with a high degree of probability that Overtown Miami will be the announced city for the second headquarters. If you look at search volume and spikes you get these clues.

Here are a few examples that you can see:


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Notice the huge jump in late January for the neighborhood of Overtown that is just west of Downtown Miami and only miles from Jeff Bezos high school.

If you look at some of the other competitors and candidates bidding for HQ2 and their such volume jumps and AI metrics I've been monitoring have not yielded the same results:

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Montgomery County, Maryland was definitely in contention but most likely due to over regulation and Maryland being known as an anti-business friendly state has hurt it's chances of providing thousands of new jobs to Marylanders.

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Theres more data and articles that I've read through trying to work against my logic and the data but I can't find data to support another city. There are reasons I can think of that would make the area not so desirable such as Hurricanes and rising sea levels but every location has it's positives and negatives and Miami definitely has a lot of positives. Time will tell as I write this late at night on the 13th of February.

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2017 a Financial Overview from Bloomberg

Bloomberg just did a great interactive piece covering 2017. There are some key points that stuck out to me:

More money went into startups in 2017 than any other year in history. SoftBank certainly led the way with huge investments in already established startups and Theranos receiving a huge end of year investment. 2017's total was $141.3 Billion invested in startups. 2016 investments paired with 2015 investments. In January of 2016 when I sat in on meetings at Battery Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Greylock Partners they all said that they were getting back to basics on VC investments. Take it FWIW.

Hong Kong has the highest real estate prices in the world and they continued to climb while their unemplyment continued to dip to only 3.0% where Japan has 2.8% unemployment followed by the US and Isreal at 4.1%, United Kingdom at 4.3% and Germany at it's lowest level since reunification. Apollo Golbal raised 24.6 billion dollars for the largest fund ever.

Student Loans have now exceeded the total size of U.S. High yield corporate market. This is a catch 20/20. Education costs continue to rise so there should be a rise in student loans which has continiously risen since 2005. This also equates to more students in school which is a positive thing IMO. More education typically = better society right?

Art market continues to reach new highs. Salvator Mundi sells for a record $450.3 million dollars at auction. Price was actually 400 Million combined with a 50 million dollar auction house fee. Off the top of my head this was sold to the Louve in Abu Dhabi. The total cost to build this museum was less than the cost of the one painting. The naming rights however are even more than the cost to build the museum. So what is art? Is it a name and recognition? The most expensive piece of art in the world is the Mona Lisa. The auction house did a fantastic job marketing this as the second Mona Lisa and when you have a piece on display for the next 100 years and people flock at $60.000 a ticket to go and see the second Mona Lisa the return on investment and name that the 2nd Louve has made for itself tends to make sense.


Puma & Adidas Were Once One

Reading through this article on the downfall of Nike from Quartz:

Niked Shoe Empire

and it has this graph below that showcased to me something that I never knew and assume most people don't know. That the Dassler brothers from Germany had a shoe company and it consisted of Puma and Adidas. This former oligopoly started to diminish when Nike came out decades later and within only 5 years Reebok had become the biggest shoe company in the world. As with all cycles things change and Nike came back and still leads today despite a recent announcement to cut 2% of their workforce and the failure to come out with a blockbuster product in the last couple of years. Puma at one point in time had 30% of the market and today is closer to 5% while no company has ever had more than 50% of the entire market which Adidas once owned in the early 1970's.


You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you

Jeff Bezos says it best with inspirational quotes and advice on failing and growing your failures. If you're not failing you're not trying hard enough. Come up with difficult tasks and make good and bad headlines to succeed and innovate in the world.

One reason why people don’t like failure is because it’s embarrassing, Bezos added. He described a toddler trying to put a square peg in a round hole for hours, without success. But it doesn’t keep them from trying and trying. That’s how they learn.

“We all have that when we are little, but as we get older, somehow it’s not as cool to fail,”

For the full Geekwire overview and article go here:

Great Interview Questions

Job interviews are no fun. People probably put job interviews on par with going on blind dates but ahead of public speaking. It's nerve racking, scary, and you really don't know exactly what to expect even though you have a general idea. Now that I think of it. It's kind of like a blind date just to get hired instead of to meet somebody new.

Any who. Here are two great job interview questions that I like to ask:

Tell me something that you have won at?

The reason for this question is that you want to hire winners at your office. Having people that are competitive and want to be the best for your company are great attributes to have. If they are winning for you then you should be achieving your company goals.

If you Could have any super power what would it be?

Most people have no idea how to answer this and it really causes you to think. Your head starts to spin thinking of super heroes and what powers they have. I have one answer that flys off my tongue as I explain in this blog post here. If it weren't time for me then I don't have a rapid fire second answer.

How to get a celebrity to feature your product

Received this inquiry on how to get featured for a product and company that I invested in. The details of Angela's inquiry are below. What are your thoughts on her pitch and the templated email that was sent with just one word inserted:


My name is Angela Owens, I am the Brand Manager at Celebrity
Connected. We specialize in connecting companies, like yours, to
celebrities at gifting suites to celebrate various award shows. I
and absolutely LOVE your products!

I would like to feature "INSERT NAME OF COMPANY I AM SPAMMING HERE" at our next gifting
suite. You can expect to meet over 100 celebrities and chat, take
photo/video, and promote
your brand to each celebrity individually. Basic participation package
to media taken. The event information is as follows:

Honoring the MTV Movie Awards®  on April 9th 2016 in Los Angeles:
Participation fee: $5,000

The day of the event will begin around 7AM when sponsors will have a
chance to set up their space. The show starts around 10:30 when the
celebrities start checking in with our talent department and walk the
red carpet into the gift suite. You will be personally gifting each
business on various social media outlets where you will reach
events this year as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns or if you
would just like a more in depth explanation of how all of this works.
I can be reached at 657-900-2059. Thanks for your time…I look forward
to hearing back from you and hopefully working together very soon! A
response would very much be appreciated :)

Best Wishes,
Angela Owens.

Angela Owens
Brand Manager
Corporate Office:
701 S. Parker St STE 2400
Orange, CA 92868
Office: 657.900.2059
Fax: 888.958.0552

The MTV Movie Awards® is a registered trademark of the MTV Network®.
Celebrity Connected is not authorized by and is not associated with the MTV
Network ®, The MTV Movie Awards ®, or any of its official partners or

Barnes & Noble Going All Hardcover

Shopping at Barnes & Nobles for some new books this evening I noticed something peculiar.

There are little to no softcover books. The majority of the store is filled with hardcover books. When I travel my preference is to have a great softcover book to fit into my bag. Tonight I purchased two softcovers and one hardcover but it was not easy to find. Naseem Talib's Fooled By Randomness was a gigantic hardcover that looked nothing like my personal soft copy. It was so abnormal that I almost purchased it thinking it was a book I didn't own already but I doubt thats why there are so many hard copies in the store.

Where Have all the softcover books Gone?

All the softies are being forced out. Is this a non-capacity issue? Making the store look more crowded with books without actually having to fill it with as many books? I am not quite sure but the nice lady at the checkout pushing the BNC club on me said it was a corporate decision and she did not know why.

If you have thoughts or reasons on why you can almost only buy hardcover book at Barbes & Noble then please do let me know.