Alvin's Newsletter: No. 1
Weekly newsletter on what I saw interesting in tech, venture capital and business.
📰 News
Facebook and crypto: Facebook announced it is rebranding Calibra as Novi. Likely to get away from all the negativity that was associated with the announcement a year ago and the happenings since. Crypto is still trying to find its feet and we haven’t seen any use-cases take yet. The flight away from Bitcoin during Covid-19 has disproved the theory that it could be used as a safe haven. More time is required for a compelling use-case to emerge from the ‘primordial soup’ that it is. Link
Passion economy growth: Given the times we are in, these services are enjoying their time in the limelight. Services such as Patreon, Cameo and Substack are allowing creators to reach, build and monetise audiences via a direct channel. And around it, there is a whole cottage industry forming to service it - from managing advertising to live-video mashup tools. Link
Buy now pay later: Afterpay hit a new high of $50AUD last week. A momentous rise from its lows of $8 just a few weeks ago. It is now in the ASX 50 and headed for the MSCI Australia index. An incredible few weeks. Any company in digital payments is doing well at the moment - Pushpay, EML, Flexi and Zip all experiencing large recoveries. Partly driven by the accelerating tilt towards online and the other with the decrease in cash usage due to no-cash bans during Covid-19. Link
Rogan and the podcast wars: Late last year Andrew Wilkinson wrote an article about how Howard Stern got ripped-off when he signed the $500M Siruis deal in 2005. It went on to talk about the biggest podcaster of our time, Joe Rogan, and conjecturing he was worth north of $1B. Just last week, Rogan’s Spotify deal was announced @ $100M - here is the follow up to that article. The Podcast wars are here, you can look at the video content space to see how it plays out. Link
📚 Reading
Go-to guide for building sales teams. Link
How super-apps came to be and how to think about them. Link
Ex-Head of Growth @ Canva and Pocketbook, Andre listed his top 10 greatest mistakes. Link
Xinja raised $10m to shore up its capital requirements. Link
🦖 Entertaining & Interesting things
Stories about the underworld from ex-nomads bikie boss turned podcaster. Link
One of the greatest financial trades ever. A Bill Ackman special. Link
David Koch’s story on how he got into finance and investing. Link
Real-time spending data (AU) from Illion. Link
🎧 Podcasts
The best podcast episodes last week according to Bosco Tan:
How ETFs work (Chat with Traders): Exchange traded funds (ETFs) have become popular over recent years with novice investors and professional traders alike. Ilan Israelstam from BetaShares explains how BetaShares started and the mechanics of how ETFs work. Link
Uber during the pandemic (Recode Decode): Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, sits down with Kara Swisher and walks through their COVID strategy, including the recent GrubHub deal. Dara also gives his take on the travel sector from his vantage point as the previous CEO of Expedia. Link
Lo-fi hiphop beats (Reset): One of the most listened-to genres of music on Spotify and YouTube today, has almost no well-known artists. This episodes goes into where lo-fi came from, and most interestingly, what its lack of star-power means for who ultimately makes money. Link
The opportunity in next-wave ecommerce (The GaryVee Audio Experience): Inspiring chat with marketing guru, Gary Vaynerchuk, as he breaks down the opportunity that exists in the next wave of direct-to-customer (D2C) ecommerce. Link