Young Hee Yoo's Profile

Super interesting, Dan! I haven’t heard of Success before, but I am really intrigued about their business model and their mission. I think there are a lot of great things that Success Academy offers and I think the organization has a lot of potential to really make a difference in educational reform. My only concern with their model is this notion of having a centrally designed curriculum – while I can see advantages to this model, when I think about the formative impact that teachers can have on students’ lives, I wonder if a centrally designed curriculum would stifle some of the impact that individual teachers can have on their students? I think teachers have an impact when they are able to design their own curriculums and explore their own methods of teaching – with everything systematized the way Success Academy has structured its program, I fear that the 1:1 influence that a teacher can have may be mitigated.

Great post, Sofia! I have been a loyal TJ customer for years and I always thought the company was California-based, so I was surprised to learn that they are actually owned by a German company! To Sam’s point above, I do think the culture has a lot to with their success – the laid-back, California vibe in all of their stores definitely attracts a lot of customers who want to participate in the “lifestyle” that TJ’s offers. I also find their operating model, of providing mostly private-label goods, extremely interesting. I would be interested to see how much of their costs are associated with R&D as it seems like they are not only constantly churning out new product, but they are also testing new products all the time. I would guess that these new products actually probably contribute significantly to their revenues as they are able to create loyal fans out of their customers as customers are physically unable to purchase these products anywhere else. Because of this, I think it is important for Trader Joe’s to constantly innovate their product mix so that customers keep coming back for more.

This is super interesting! There was a One Medical office right across the street from my apartment in Manhattan and I used to receive flyers in my building for membership. I unfortunately never joined, but I have always been curious about their business and their model. It seems to me that One Medical’s business model is one that centers around convenience and service – this value proposition is well suited to big cities (with a big population of urban professionals) like New York where you can wait for months for a doctor’s appointment (especially with a well rated/reviewed doctor). My only query would be regarding their growth strategy – I would love to understand to what extent they plan to scale their business, in the future. Is this a model that will only work in big cities or can they tweak it a little bit to be able to adapt to less urban areas?

This is great, Hui! I really feel like your comment about customer service hits it on the head – it might seem counter-intuitive to invest heavily on human capital as a “cost-cutting” measure, but I think customer retention and loyalty, in the long run, will do a lot to bring down an airline’s costs and keep them in business. I’ve always felt like international airlines did a much better job with customer service than American airlines, and to Sophia’s point above, I do wonder if it has anything to do with the physical distance traveled? But then I think of airlines like JetBlue and Virgin America who have great customer service and go to mostly domestic destination so I don’t know if distance is the only factor at play, here. I’ve never flown Singapore Airlines, but I’ve heard wonderful things about it from friends and after reading this post, it is definitely one I will try in the future!