What’s More Expensive: Manhattan Traffic or Bluefin Tuna?
The Weekly from The Liquid Lunch Project, Issue No 149 | January 10, 2025
Freezing for Success: In Harbin, China, a group of winter warriors jumps into icy waters daily, claiming it keeps them healthy and focused—because who has time for sick days when there’s work to do? Small business owners could learn a thing or two: sometimes, diving into discomfort is the best way to stay ahead. If they can brave -13°C, what’s your excuse?
ON TAP THIS WEEK
💪🏼 How to Automate, Elevate, and Dominate in 2025.
⛓️💥 Breaking the Chain: Why American bikes are stuck in first gear.
🧮 Starlink Math: Can $5 launch SpaceX to the next frontier?
🐟 How does a tuna become the most expensive thing on the menu—again?
💪🏽 Meta Adds Muscle to Its Board with UFC’s Dana White.
😳 From Gridlock to Wallet Shock: NYC’s bold traffic toll begins.
💸 New Year, New Money Habits: The finance rules every owner needs.
🌐 And from Around the Web: Robots Run Vegas, Waymo Goes Rogue, and Java Saves the Day.
THE CLASSROOM
New Year, Same Hustle? Not This Time. Let’s Level Up Your Biz.
by Luigi Rosabianca
Welcome to 2025—where your resolutions are still fresh, your optimism is sky-high, and your coffee budget is already blown. Ready to dominate the year? This guide is your cheat sheet to crushing business goals, avoiding burnout, and maybe even impressing your accountant. From saying "no" to time-wasters to automating like a tech wizard, we've packed 10 killer strategies to help you own this year like the boss you are.
👉 Ready to make 2025 the year your business thrives? Click to read the full article and start the year off right (or at least better than last year).
HEARD ON THE STREET
🚲 Taking American Businesses for a Ride
Few industries display the intricate dynamics of supply chain frustrations than the U.S. bicycle market. Almost all the bicycles sold in the U.S. are imported, and the vast majority are made in China or assembled from Chinese parts. A typical bicycle is made of 30 to 40 parts, mostly from different Chinese manufacturers. Many bikes sold at retailers such as Walmart or Target aren’t fully assembled when they are shipped to retailers from overseas, so manufacturers don’t have oversight on the final assembly.
Proposed tariffs will make American-made bikes and parts more competitive against Chinese-made ones. But it is still a tall order. Chinese manufacturers have dominated the bicycle supply chain for decades. Moving production to the U.S. isn’t a viable option for all bike companies. Larger manufacturers have also shifted production in response to U.S. tariffs on China. Taiwanese bike company Giant Group, which makes about 4M bikes a year, recently opened a factory in Vietnam because the U.S. imposes lower tariffs on imports from that country, a Giant spokesperson said. The Vietnam factory currently has a production capacity of 100K bikes a year. Giant also has facilities in China and Europe.
Moving manufacturing from overseas to the U.S. is not as simple as one may think. Disrupting the status quo always poses challenges, especially with products requiring multiple (and complex) parts. Want to know what it really takes to bring a product to life with overseas manufacturing? Tune in to our podcast episode with Nick Barrett, founder of CordBrick LLC, as he shares his journey from idea to reality. 🎧 Listen here.
🛰️ Wright’s Law is All Right
SpaceX disclosed striking data about Starlink V3 in its 2024 Progress Report. Each V3 satellite delivers 1 Terabit per second (Tbps) of downlink speed, 10X that of V2 Minis. In other words, given the improved satellites and the larger launch vehicle, a Starship V3 launch should add 60 Tbps to the network, over 20X a V2 Mini launch. SpaceX continues to ride down Wright’s Law’s cost curve for satellite bandwidth capacity. Clearly, competitors are finding it difficult to match SpaceX’s cost declines. Based on Wright’s Law, satellite bandwidth costs should decline ~45% for every cumulative doubling in Gigabits per second in orbit. Since 2004, the cost of satellite bandwidth has dropped 7,500-fold, from $300M to $40K/Gigabits per second (Gbps). Thanks to Starship, costs could fall another 40-fold to ~$1K/Gbps by 2028. Because 1Gbps can serve 200 customers at a capital cost of ~$1K/Gbps,
SpaceX’s Starlink currently serves over 4.6M ‘active customers’ worldwide. The company has also established a manufacturing facility in Bastrop, Texas, that can produce an estimated 5.5M Starlink dishes per year. Given these baseline figures, SpaceX could recoup its Starship investment with a one-time charge of $5 per customer.
🍣 Took The Bait
This week, a 608-pound bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Oma, Japan, just sold for $1.3M at Tokyo’s Toyosu Market auction. The fish - roughly the same weight as your average male grizzly bear - was acquired by a Michelin-starred Japanese sushi restaurant chain, the Onodera Group, which will serve the fish at 13 of its restaurants. It’s the fifth year in a row that the sushi group has won the auction.
This is not your canned tuna, folks! Sushi-grade tuna at this level is on par with elitist wild white truffles, perfectly aged Burgundy, single malt scotches smoked with thousands-year-old peat, and well-worded business newsletters that take approximately one week to ripen.
👔 Don’t Be Bored by Your Board
Meta Platforms Inc., the tech giant that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, added UFC CEO Dana White and two other new members to its board of directors. White joins John Elkann, the CEO of European investment firm Exor, the executive chairman of Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a veteran technology investor, on the board. White is also very close to incoming President Trump, with whom Zuckerberg and other tech moguls have tried to forge a relationship ahead of his second term.
Boards serve a critical role in the management of a business. They offer advice and consultation when an operator/owner may be too deep in the weeds to have clarity. Look around your inner circle and have the courage to surround yourself with diverse, independent thinkers. Like a stew, the diversity of ingredients improves the stock.
🚦 Congestion Pricing
New York City just implemented its controversial Manhattan congestion pricing plan. This is the first such program in the US. The Big Apple’s Central Business District is now also the Congestion Relief Zone, which covers the entire Manhattan Street grid at and below 60th Street. This includes Times Square, the Theater District, the Financial District, and other popular destinations for work and leisure.
Janno Lieber, the CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which is implementing the plan, called it “a toll system that has never been tried before in terms of complexity” (or greed!), but here are the basics: Passenger and small commercial vehicles pay up to $9/day at peak times to drive in Manhattan at or below 60th Street. The rates are higher for commercial trucks and buses - up to $21.60. Authorized emergency vehicles and vehicles carrying people with disabilities are not assessed. Low-income drivers can apply for a 50% discount that kicks in after their first 10 rides/month.
Proponents of the plan hope it will reduce the out-of-control traffic that has made it faster to walk than drive to many places in Manhattan while raising billions of dollars in the long term to revive the MTA’s beleaguered public transit system. The plan is based on London’s, which decreased traffic in its specified zone by 30% in the first year and ultimately improved mass transportation. However, London reduced car lanes as traffic subsided, repurposing them into pedestrian zones or bus lanes. Over time, the remaining lanes for cars got more congested. New York’s workers, including those driving into Manhattan to work emergency medical personnel jobs, are not exempt from the new fees when commuting to work.
Time will tell how the higher prices affect Manhattan business and tourism. We are reminded of that old frog in boiling water adage. Increasing the temperature – ahem, taxes, gradually tends to negate the feeling of burning in the wallets.
THE MONEY MINUTE WITH MRM
The New Rules Of Personal Finance For Business Owners
with Matthew R. Meehan
If your personal finances are a mess, your business decisions might be suffering too. Living paycheck to paycheck can cloud judgment, create desperate sales strategies, and sabotage long-term growth. The good news? You can fix it. With the new year ahead, it’s time to separate personal and business finances, prioritize emergency funds, and start 2025 with a financial plan that actually works. Your business—and your sanity—will thank you.
AROUND THE WEB
Auto-pilot or Auto-Prank? A Los Angeles man found himself in a real-life "Groundhog Day" moment when his Waymo self-driving car started doing donuts in Scottsdale instead of heading to the airport. After five dizzying minutes, Waymo support stepped in, but Johns swore off robo-rides, vowing to stick with trusty old Lyft or Uber.
What Happens at CES Doesn’t Stay There: CES 2025 dazzled with flying cars, AI gadgets, and tech so futuristic it feels like the Jetsons are taking notes. From drones to yard robots, it’s clear that what happens in Vegas this year will soon be running your home—or crashing into it.
Sip Early, Live Longer: Good news, morning coffee lovers! Drinking your java early might just help you live longer. But if you’re sipping lattes all day, the benefits may fizzle faster than yesterday’s brew. So, get your caffeine fix early and leave the all-day sipping to amateurs.