Last week I bought a few shirts from an e-commerce company called Twillory. I’m writing about this for a couple reasons.

First, I wouldn’t have known that this brand existed if it weren’t for Instagram. I initially saw an ad in my feed about 8 or 9 months ago. Then a few months after that, Instagram launched their e-commerce “shop now” feature where you can click through and make a purchase without leaving Instagram. So perhaps 3 or 4 months ago, I clicked through and browsed the site, but didn’t buy anything. Then last week, because I was traveling and didn’t have time to do dry cleaning, I figure it was a good time to buy a few new dress shirts. I immediately thought of Twillory, visited the mobile site, and made the purchase. Assuming that they know what they’re doing from a tracking and measurement standpoint, my path to purchase (IG ad impression > IG mobile site > IG ad retargeting > visit to mobile site > purchase) should be pretty clear to them.

E-commerce feels to me like the next big monetization opportunity for Instagram and I think they’re just getting started. I imagine that, in addition to collecting the ad revenue, they’re probably taking a portion of the sale if you purchase from within the app. So the idea that Facebook will struggle to find new and massive revenue opportunities feels asinine to me (which is why I’ve been buying more shares).

Secondly, the end-to-end experience I described above all happened on my iPhone. Which may seem like an obvious thing to say, but I’m not sure investors really appreciate the mobile commerce opportunity (at least in the US, this is pretty obvious in a market like China).

I have a few dedicated commerce apps on my phone. In order of purchase volume starting at the highest dollar amount, those are Amazon, Chewy, and Seamless (not including transportation, music streaming, or investing).

I expect that the dollars flowing through these apps will increase at a steady clip and that, as a result, mobile advertising will increase proportionally. And Google, Facebook, and Amazon will be beneficiaries. I’m long all 3.

I read something once that contrasted an industrial view of education to an agrarian one. Bare with me.

In the industrial model, students all traverse the assembly line that is the modern education system. They all take the same path through the factory and are stamped and molded into consistent, reliable, predictable human beings.

In the agrarian view, you might think of future educators as gardeners that don’t so much try to control the students, but instead focus on cultivating the conditions under which students have the best chance to flourish.

Of course, it’s an abstraction without any concrete prescription on what might be wrong or how to go about making changes, but I find it to be an interesting way to think about things.

Remember Newton’s first law? An object at rest wants to remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion, unless acted on by an outside force.

While the law pertains to objects in the physical world, you might also apply it in a more psychological sense.

Take an example. It seems to me that cultivating an ability to maintain focus and attention for prolonged periods of time might the be the most important skill there is. And it seems that the unfocused and inattentive person reveals that tendency in a multitude of ways. Whereas, if you cultivate focus and attention in one area, it becomes far easier to apply those abilities in other domains.

So I try to think about Sir Isaac when making decisions about how to invest my time and attention.

Travel is exhausting. I’m ready to go home!