Above Average Intelligence: Dave Wakeman's Newsletter

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Rocks or Relationships: The Strategic Choice Every Jeweler Faces
Lab-grown diamonds turned the product into a commodity. The only thing left is the relationship. That's not just a jewelry lesson.
 • Dave Wakeman
The DTC Graveyard: Why Businesses Threw Away Billions on a Bad Bet
The promise was relationships. The reality was extraction. The DTC collapse wasn't bad unit economics—it was the death of marketing as a strategic…
 • Dave Wakeman
What I Believe: A Business Statement
The mass delusion says the market is god. I don't believe it. Here's what I believe instead—and the method I use to build something different.
 • Dave Wakeman
Never a Chance: The USMNT Will Never Challenge for a World Cup While the Development System is Built on Extraction
Alexi Lalas is pulling up the ladder. Landon Donovan is trying to keep it down. The extraction economy has captured youth soccer...and it's costing more…
 • Dave Wakeman
The Three Stages of Extraction: How We Built a “Buyer Beware” Economy
Polymarket faked the bets. FIFA engineered the casino. Maryland bought back the Preakness. A diagnostic tour of the extraction economy, and the fork…
 • Dave Wakeman
Who's Guarding the Game?
The CFP is racing toward 24 teams. Every commissioner is acting rationally. Nobody's job is to protect the sport. That's the drift.
 • Dave Wakeman
Vanity Fair Used to Be a Party…
Traffic collapsed 55%. The editor-in-chief is gone. The Oscars party is thinning out. This isn't AI. It's the Identity Mirage.
 • Dave Wakeman
Above Average Intelligence: Dave Wakeman's Newsletter
Strategy, Marketing, and Thinking For Changing Times!
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