Tippets by Taps - Issue #116
New year, new week, new issue! This week we look at the next wave of payments innovation, ambitious things accomplished quickly, the challenges of being a working mother and more. Enjoy!
Happy New Year! I wanted to thank you for your readership and ongoing support. I wish you and yours a prosperous and joy-filled 2020.
Preparing For The Next Wave Of Payments Innovation
A solid piece on the history and future of payments innovation by Richie Serna, CEO of Finix. His main thesis: payments innovation takes place in 10 year chunks. From 1999-2009 online payments took hold with PayPal leading the charge. From 2009 - 2019 digital payments professionalized with companies like Square and Stripe leading the charge. His prediction for the next decade? Every company becomes a payments company.
Fast
Vince Lombardi once said, “We would accomplish many more things if we didn’t think of them as impossible.” Sometimes the impossible happens, and happens quite fast. Patrick Collison has put together this list of “people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together.” Some examples:
The first jet fighter used by the US Air Force was designed and delivered in 143 days
Disneyland was brought to life in 366 days
Amazon Prime was implemented in 6 weeks
Pretty amazing stuff! Worth remembering the next time you think a project or task feels too daunting (or reminding your teams when they ask for more time to get something done).
The Challenges That Working Mothers Still Face
Sue Shellenbarger has been with the WSJ for 30 years, her Work & Family column focused on the problems and potential solutions working mothers face. This week in her final article after three decades on the beat, she looks at what’s changed and what hasn’t for women trying to manage office and home lives.
Mothers in the millennial generation are more likely to be open about their needs and to receive a respectful response, especially in fields employing lots of women. And they no longer feel compelled to dress like men. (Thank God.) Colorful dresses and stylish separates replaced those boxy suits.
The soaring cost of quality child care rivals many families’ outlays for housing. Average child-care center prices have risen 26% for 4-year-olds and 29% for infants since 2009, according to Child Care Aware, a research, referral and advocacy organization.
The culture of long hours in some male-dominated industries is another powerful counterforce. Campus recruiters for tech companies tout such perks as free meals, haircuts and on-site chiropractors, enabling employees to avoid leaving the office, according to a 2018 Stanford University study of 84 companies’ presentations. Recruiters boast about employees having all-night hackathons and forgetting to sleep because they were having too much fun—a climate that working parents might find more chilling than charming, the Stanford researchers say.
I hired a wife. And my career took off.
Further on the topic of childcare and working moms, in this piece by Chris Morgan, a lawyer and single mom of two, talks about how she ‘hired a wife’ to further her career, despite societal expectations.
What Luisa allowed me to achieve in just a few short months got me thinking about whether certain male lawyers had the edge over someone like me simply because they had wives holding down the domestic front. Perhaps the extra time and brain space that I just discovered was something they had all along.
Having that freedom no doubt enabled them to become laser-focused at work. They could avoid getting sidetracked with kid driving, feeding, clothing, and other time-sapping chores. They could work longer hours. And as a result, maybe, just maybe, they could advance more quickly than their female counterparts with families. Sure, this doesn’t apply to all men. But I suspect it may be true for many of them.
As I’ve said before, women are superheroes. More needs to be done to support them both at home and in the workplace, particularly mothers with infants and toddlers given the astronomical cost of child care in the United States. While progress has been made, there is still quite a bit left to do.
My Year in Books: 2019
My 2019 in reading saw me finish 20 books with quite a few more left unfinished. I made it a point to read more fiction than usual, which I found quite refreshing. While I didn’t finish my reading challenge of 26 books (I am choosing not to count baby books including such classics as The Pout-Pout Fish, I am a Bunny, Giraffes Can’t Dance, Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you See) it was a good year of reading! Below is the list with quick thoughts, as well as a link to the Taps’ Notes review if available.
Quote I’m thinking about: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao Tzu