Timeless case studies
Every business has
its strategy.
It’s the difference between winning and losing.Most content skims the surface; Modern MBA goes deep with long-form, evergreen videos of industries, down to financials, market dynamics, and economics.We analyze Fortune 500 giants and the overlooked businesses that keep the world moving, based on our own experiences leading $MM products for years in corporate America.
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Originals
Field-shot documentariesDocumentaries with exclusive access, proprietary financials, real-world insight, and never-before-seen strategies from everyday businesses — NYC pizzerias, Ohio haunted houses, Texas barbecue, LA dispensaries. All filmed and edited by Emmy-winning former VICE, HBO, and Netflix staff.
Boots on the ground
Shot on site with the owners themselves — New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas.
Proprietary financials
Verified profit & loss numbers from private operators in industries that file nothing and disclose less.
Real-world insight
All primary and secondary research, with nothing recycled from a search engine or an LLM.
Everyday industries
Learn economics from the people with everything to lose, where the stakes are highest, and the competition fiercest.
Read
Written case studiesEvery episode, in writing. The charts, the numbers, the key points — for when you don’t have time to watch.
Why college is so expensive in AmericaHarvard holds $57B and charges $82,866 a year. Tuition isn't the business — the undergraduate is the seed, not the customer.13 min read
Why Insta360 beat GoPro at its own gameGoPro invented the category. A startup took 82% of the market and now owns a future that nobody thought was possible.8 min read
Why Ukraine's minerals are Iraq's oil all over againAmerica has signed this deal twice before, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and lost both times to the same rival.11 min read
Why Asian airlines are so much betterAsian carriers deliver a service Americans barely recognize. American airlines earn more doing far less.8 min read
Why the AI boom is the dot-com bubble againDifferent technology, same house of cards — and this time the pump happened in private, where nothing is marked to market.8 min read
Why your favorite brands got so much worseRecipes got cheaper and portions smaller across American brands at the same moment. Not a coincidence.8 min read
Why movie theaters survive off popcornTheaters keep less than half your ticket and lose money on the film. The popcorn is not a joke, it is the plan.8 min read
How much a haunted house actually makesA haunted house has six weekends a year to make its money back. The good ones out-earn Disney Parks on margin.10 min read
Why UNIQLO makes more money than GucciSame playbook, three outcomes. The only variable was whether the boss knew what stage he was in.12 min read
Why the dairy industry is failingOatly lost $344M in a year and Dean Foods went bankrupt. Milk is priced by politics, and the subsidies stop at the farm gate.13 min read
Why Ozempic is so expensiveThe same two companies that quintupled the price of insulin now want obesity classified as a disease.12 min read
Why almost nobody makes money in an MLMTupperware went bankrupt and Avon was dissolved. The model works spectacularly, and then it always fails.7 min read
Why almost no luxury carmaker makes moneyToyota sells 10.3 million cars a year. McLaren sells 2,137. Only two exotic makers have made that arithmetic work.12 min read
Why car rental is such a bad businessMargins as thin as an airline, and the companies make more money selling the cars than renting them out.8 min read
Why American public transit sucksNew York's subway loses $8.5 billion a year. Tokyo turns a 15% profit on an older system carrying more people.11 min read
How a $1,000 jacket became a luxury brandCanada Goose built a real luxury brand in ten years. The margins prove it. The share price says it may not matter.11 min read
How much nightcrawlers actually get paidLocal news cut the night shift and kept the footage. The freelancers who replaced it carry every cost and get a watermark.8 min read
Why Chinese EVs are so far aheadCheaper, faster and better equipped than anything the West sells, and cheap labor has nothing to do with it.8 min read
Why omakase is suddenly everywhereNo servers, no walk-ins, no storefront, revenue booked before the door opens. Omakase deleted every cost that kills a restaurant.8 min read
How Papa John’s buried Papa JohnSix regimes in thirty years, four of them engineered by the founder. The filings contradict his version.10 min read
Why gun prices make no senseThe most lucrative consumer market in America is also the only one with no prices, no ads and no data.12 min read
Why there’s no money in making moviesThe Big Five survive flops because movies are one line item in a conglomerate. Lionsgate had nothing to fall back on.11 min read
Why arcades never actually diedConsoles killed the arcade market. They did not kill the arcade business — it just stopped being about games.11 min read
How credit card companies actually make moneyThe swipe fee is not the business. The interest is — and the networks taking the blame were founded by the banks collecting it.11 min read
Why Pokemon cards are worth so much moneyA piece of cardboard printed in 1999 sold for $420,000. What sets the price is not rarity or nostalgia.8 min read
Why the scooter startups all went bankruptA Bird scooter grossed $2,000 a year, cost $1,300 to buy and $1,000 to maintain. It lost money on every vehicle, always.11 min read
Why Chipotle got so much worseA weekly staple became a byword for small portions and high prices in under ten years. Here is what broke.8 min read
Why free content never became a businessBuzzFeed's advertising revenue has never once covered what it costs to make the content. That is the whole story.10 min read
Why pizza is the best restaurant businessThe one restaurant category where independents beat the chains on margin and almost nobody goes bankrupt.8 min read
Why esports collapsed and who got paid for itThe audience never left. The money still vanished. That makes this a story about who was selling, not about fans.12 min read
Why fast food can't make a good burgerMcDonald's makes more from rent than from food. That is why it can't fix the burger — and why four LA independents can.10 min read
Why Xbox lost the console warsFrom defining a console generation to a distant third twice running, and the cause was never the hardware.8 min read
How much a Texas BBQ joint actually makesOne in three fail, brisket yields 40%, and the biggest variable in whether you survive is one magazine editor's palate.13 min read
Why self-checkout didn't replace cashiersAmazon's cashierless store was a thousand people in India watching cameras. Every retailer copied it anyway.12 min read
Why Taco Bell had to get expensiveThe most profitable chain in fast food is being squeezed hardest, and the reason is KFC and Pizza Hut.8 min read
Why Temu and Wish can't make moneyWish spent 90 cents of every revenue dollar on ads to buy customers worth $10. AliExpress never profited either. Temu is next.12 min read
Why private equity can't kill your barberRegis spent forty years consolidating barbering. The stock went $725 to $9, and independents still hold 80%.12 min read
Why nobody wants to own ice cream anymoreUnilever, Nestlé and Kroger all owned the biggest brands in ice cream. All three decided it wasn't worth keeping.13 min read
How casinos actually make moneyCasinos run 40%+ margins on gambling. DraftKings has never had a profitable year. The difference is not technology.10 min read
Why donut shops out-earn Krispy KremeThe average Krispy Kreme grosses $119K a year. A 650 sq ft Portland shop grosses $600K at a 40% margin.9 min read
Why AI is just big data againBig data was sold for a decade and produced nothing. The same players are running the identical playbook with AI.12 min read
Why the sneaker market collapsedStimulus money made everyone a reseller. What survived is the people who can price a used shoe from memory.8 min read
Why Under Armour failedIts products were ugly. Rather than fix that, Kevin Plank spent $700M on fitness apps and called Under Armour a tech company.11 min read
How much a taco truck actually makesTwo sisters run fifteen unbranded taco stands in LA grossing $7.58M a year. Almost nobody knows the business exists.9 min read
Why marijuana legalization never paid offEvery public cannabis company loses money. Three self-funded LA shops do not. Being unable to lose money is the advantage.11 min read
Why bubble tea is so profitableA Sawtelle boba shop grosses $1.08M at a 30% store margin on $9 orders. The moat is the supply chain, not the brand.8 min read
Why budget airlines stopped winningThe low-cost carriers say the industry is rigged. It isn't. The legacy carriers just copied the only thing they had.13 min read
Why Crumbl won't lastMrs. Fields had its decade too. Crumbl store margins fell from 30% to 10% while corporate went from $4M to $152M.12 min readAudience
Founders, executives, operators, working professionals and the students coming up behind them.
600K+Average views per video
~20 minAverage view duration
2M+Average monthly viewers
85%Viewers are men
64%Aged 18–34
42%Aged 25–34
70%In North America
60%In the United States
15%In Europe
Modern MBA is watched most in the leading economic / finance hubs of the world.
Los Angeles500K+
New York336K+
Chicago334K+
Singapore332K+
Toronto320K+
London311K+
Sydney200K+
Top 7 cities by viewership · 2024–2025
Education
Taught in universities & classroomsModern MBA videos are trusted, shared, and repurposed for teaching at accredited schools.
University
Assigned at UC Davis, a top-five public university, for watch-and-discuss in business classes.
High school
Carried on the online learning platforms used by the largest school districts in the country.
Course material
Reflection questions, graph studies and handouts built from Modern MBA videos for classroom use.
