Tippets by Taps - Issue #123
This week we explore the $22bn Kronos - Ulimate merger and what it means for the industry and their customers, Intuit’s buying Credit Karma for more than a few rewards points, the tragic consequences of one man’s mission to stop marathoners from cheating, software eating the watch industry, and more. Enjoy!
UltiKro: A match made in heaven or excel?
HR software is big business. Big business means big mergers. This week Kronos, 43-year old maker of on-premise workforce management (WFM) software navigating a transition to the cloud, and Ultimate Software, cloud-based human capital management software (HCM) provider for mostly mid-market customers, agreed to merge in a blockbuster deal. It’s worth noting that private equity firm Hellman & Friedman owned both companies, having bought Kronos in 2007 and Ultimate in 2019. That this transaction would take place was a mostly a foregone conclusion. Now that it’s been announced, there are some significant implications for customers, and the HCM/WFM space more broadly. Does the combined entity have more to lose than to gain?
Intuit Near Deal to Buy Credit Karma for $7 Billion
M&A is all the rage these days, especially in financial services. This year has already seen over $26bn in transactions with Visa’s purchase of Plaid for $5.3bn, Worldline buying Ingenico for $8.6bn, and Morgan Stanley buying E*Trade for $13bn. Now, according to reports by the WSJ, Intuit (makers of QuickBooks and TurboTax) is near a deal to buy personal-finance portal Credit Karma for about $7bn in cash and stock.
Credit Karma offers its customers free access to their credit scores and borrowing history, alerts to possible data breaches, credit monitoring and tax preparation and filing. Customers in turn receive offers from other companies for credit cards and loans tailored to their credit history, and Credit Karma makes money when customers use those products.
Adding the buzzy startup to its stable would give Intuit a stronger foothold in the burgeoning realm of online personal finance. In addition to TurboTax, the online software that millions of people use to file their taxes, Intuit’s offerings include QuickBooks bookkeeping software used by businesses and Mint, an online-budgeting platform that also pitches individuals financial products. Intuit has a market value of roughly $77 billion
As lines blur between consumer and enterprise buyers, for Intuit to build a product bench that touches a customer more than once a year around tax time is a smart move. While not a done deal yet (there is supposedly some more fine print to work out), this deal rationale makes sense, particularly considering obvious cross sell opportunities.
Going the Distance (and Beyond) to Catch Marathon Cheaters
A long read by GordyMegroz on amateur distance runners cheating in races, one man’s mission to bust them, and 70-year-old doctor named Frank Meza’s tragic story. Worth reading in full, as it goes well beyond simply ‘running’.
In 2015 he watched the message boards come alive with debate over a runner who qualified for the Boston Marathon with a significantly faster time than the guy had ever had in previous marathons. The chatter intrigued Murphy. What struck him was not so much the did-he-or-didn’t-he question, but just how easy cheating could be. “I was like, why are we so fixated on this one guy? Is there anybody else who’s doing this?”
Murphy mostly blames social media for the compulsion to cheat. “Amateur athletes cheat for the likes,” he says. But social media likes can just as quickly turn to hate. In 2018, Murphy accused Maude Gorman, a runner who’d finished second at an ultramarathon in Maine, of cutting the course. She was later disqualified from the race and confessed that she had, in fact, skipped parts of the course. “Shame is powerful,” she wrote last summer in an Instagram post. “And after cheating in a few ultra-marathons … I wasn’t sure how to deal with the overwhelming sense of shame placed on me … I was standing on a bridge, ready to commit suicide.”
Smartwatches call time on the Swiss industry
Software is eating the world. The next business to fall: watches.
According to research firm Strategy Analytics, the Apple Watch, launched less than five years ago, now outsells the entire Swiss industry, which has been manufacturing wristwatches for 152 years. Last year, Apple increased sales by 36 per cent to almost 31m watches while the Swiss industry shipped about 21m in total, a 13 per cent decline. The one solace for Swiss watchmakers is that they still generate more revenue: $21bn to Apple’s $11bn. But on current trends Apple will overtake the Swiss on that measure, too, by 2023.
Quite an amazing achievement when you consider Apple launched the Apple Watch to considerable criticism, largely panned by an over-confident industry certain it could not be disrupted by technology.
What is office politics, anyway?
A fun, and very real, look into ‘office politics’.
Only gods and beasts live alone. The rest of us need each other and in needing each other we need the Polis, the community of organised coexistence.
So, my dear friend. What is politics anyway?
It is us living together. Us coordinating what coexistence needs to achieve. What it needs to exclude. What the rules are. What our values are. What our boundaries are. What our collective identity, purpose and tenor is. That is what is politics. And that is what we are safeguarding when we lament office politics. The people who break the rules, who breach the covenant.
What is politics? Our way of living together and achieving together. Yes. Also in the office.
Quote I’m thinking about: “You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.” - Richard Feynman