Emily Flippen

And I understand Duolingo is trying to expand their platform, but we've seen so many educational platforms try to gamify the experience, keep people around, keep them paying.

But when push comes to shove,

Learning, especially languages, but in general, it's not particularly fun for most people.

You get motivated in the interim, you buy a subscription, and you lose motivation.

It's like the same thing as dieting or working out.

And as a result, I don't think the long-term value proposition for these types of businesses are particularly interesting.

That being said, the economics, as they exist right now, don't support my argument.

A company called Stantec, STN is the ticker, that is on my radar this week.

This is actually a Canadian consulting business.

Before you start rolling your eyes and explaining, I just made the argument against Gartner and why you shouldn't like consulting businesses, Stantec is doing something special.

They are niche.

They serve industrial build-outs, buildings, water, energy, these sorts of projects that actually need specialized knowledge.

And they do that through like a fee-for-service consulting for a lot of these engineering and architectural projects.

Their strategy, and this is a company that's been around since the 1950s, has been to always acquire and roll up these smaller engineering firms across the world.

And they track ROI really diligently as part of that process.

And it's led to great results for shareholders so far.

No, no, Dan, come on, get it together.

They will subcontract, okay?

The subcontractors call them the picks and shovels.

We're digging up bank earnings and trying to figure out between Robin Hood, beer, and cannabis if the kids are truly doing all right.