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October 19, 2006
Mary Meeker Watch
I, perhaps alone, remain fascinated with Mary Meeker's endless questions on these conference calls. Tonight on the Google call we had a mid-level Mary Meander(tm), a mere 176-worder to the Google gang. While less than half of her current record -- a 319-word opus three years ago -- it's still impressively endless:We had a question, just to drill down a little bit on some of the video deals. The traditional content providers to date have been somewhat hesitant to really figure out how to monetize their video content on the Internet. It feels like the deal and the deals that you struck around with YouTube and around the YouTube day were things that have finally been -- will prove with a little bit of hindsight to be things that have really moved the monetization ball forward. And so the question there is how critical were some of the deals that you talked about, number one, that you just alluded to in the last question? Two, do you feel that we are going to start do see real progress in monetization of video over the next six months, in large part because of what you have done? And third question relates to do you think we will see any changes in traffic acquisition costs as a percent of revenue related to your video efforts? Thanks.It is nice of Mary, however, to give Sergey, Larry, and Eric time for bio breaks.
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I also marvel and her ability to ask author tomes in question form. I also wonder if she really believes anyone is interested in listening to her diatribes-formed-as-questions. Shouldn't she be in jail?
I can never figure out what she has asked at the end of these sermons. I think that any management team that can answer the 'question' rather than ask for clarification probably passes the smell test on capabilities.
She's hardly alone though. Why don't these analysts try and get a little more prepared and write down the answer they wish to ask. Reading the transcripts is an exercise in futility. Don't they realize the buy-side is listening and wondering, 'how sharp can this analyst be if they cannot even form succinct questions?' It's ridiculous.
In the MBA program we had a couple of these longtalkers. The secret is to grab your watch and start counting while placing bets over msn (including wrap up calls- if you make a wrap up call it means the question will end in less than 10 seconds). This way it actually gets more exciting the longer it goes.
Between Andy Kessler's "Wall Street Meat" and Jonathan Knee's "Accidental Investment Banker," an interesting profile of Mary Meeker emerges... to call it 'unflattering' would be an understatement.