Alvin's Newsletter: No. 11
Weekly newsletter on what I saw interesting in tech, venture capital and business.
📰 News
How to deal with Tech’s dominant positions and anti-trust: The anti-trust hearings from a couple of weeks ago didn’t give up much. The wider concerns however still exist. Some examples of where there is concern: Apple and it’s strangle hold on the App Store, Amazon on it’s retail data usage, Facebook’s ability to distribute (mis)information, Google’s digital ad-tech and distribution. And for all of these titans - the acquisition or creation of companies and competitors in their respective fields - of which are quite different as you can see above. Ben Thomson had an excellent podcast this week on why the anti-trust framework is not the right way to resolve some of these concerns. He argues that most of these are not anti-trust issues at all. A cited example of the Google Shopping case in Europe.
The EU was arguing on behalf of price-comparison sites that if someone searches sneakers in Google, Google should present you links to price-comparison sites as opposed to links to sneakers. Google proposed that they would put the price-comparison sites in the carousel at the top of search alongside sneakers. EU agreed and the result - consumers continued to click on sneakers as opposed to the price-comparison sites - because lo-and-behold - consumers wanted to see sneakers, not price-comparison sites. And the EU came back wanting the above to be reworked.
The argument here is that ultimately you are giving the consumer what they asked for - i.e. their individual choice. Trying to shoe-horn something that they didn’t want in an attempt to support a subset of the industry is the wrong way to go about it and ultimately does not lead to good outcomes for the economy or society in general. Instead Ben proposes to tackle the specific ‘problems’ with new laws without conflating these as anti-trust problems. [Podcast] Link
Apple warring with the gaming industry as gaming moves to cloud: Apple doing what Apple does - protecting their turf - namely Apple Arcade and Apple Pay. All the whilst creating just plausible enough excuses as to why they allow or don’t allow apps and services on its platform. Link
Instagram launched Reels: Instagram and FB continue the ‘clone wars’. Not sure it will work this time for Instagram. The algorithm is what sets TikTok apart and that is difficult to copy - especially if you are not a believer. Instagram seems to take the view that I should see the top influencers - the ones with the most followers, most likes etc. and almost chooses it for you. TikTok on the other hand takes the view that I don’t know what you should see - I’ll throw some things at you and let the machine decide from there. That mindset is difficult if not impossible to clone if you are in a different camp. Link
📚 Reading
Reliance and Jio have been a feature of the western tech/business news for the last few months, but most likely don’t have an idea of how they came to be. Here are a couple of good articles to get the background. Part 1 - Origins, Part 2 - Oil to Jio, Understanding Reliance and Jio.
Continuing on this theme. Here is a look into Pinduoduo, China’s second largest e-commerce company and how Colin Huang, the son of factory workers, grew it into $100B+ company. Link
Is Tesla a tech or fashion stock? A couple of theories on its sky high valuation. Link
An in-depth take on TikTok’s algorithm and the social graph it has created through machine learning. Eugene Wei talks through these in detail and how it differs to everything we have seen before it. Link
YC launched the ‘Startup Library’. If you are thinking about starting something - this is where you start. Link
🦖 Entertaining & Interesting things
An inside look at negotiations between hackers and a US company after they hacked and hit by ransomware for their data. Surprisingly cordial. Link
President Trump’s interview with Jonathan Swan from Axios. Entertaining and interesting because Trump is fully engaged and Jonathan doesn’t give Trump a free ride. Probably one of the few guys in the world that could have this type of interview with the President in that he seems to have his trust. Link
Fauci thinks we could have a vaccine before the year is out. Haven’t seen much material yet on what a vaccine rollout might look like and how countries, industries and people might respond. Hopefully we start seeing this soon! Link
WSJ on Tim Cook and how he took over Apple after Jobs. [Paywall] Link
On 10x career decisions - the ones where you work on growing something like users, engagement, revenue etc. over 10x in your role. The tech wave has given people lot’s of these opportunities over the last few decades - where are the next ones? Link
🎧 Podcasts
The best podcast episodes last week according to Bosco Tan:
Saving TikTok in the US (The Journal) - 19 mins: While the Trump Administration clamps down on the TikTok ban, Microsoft has been in discussion to acquire the app. However, peculiarities in the process and the flip-flopping demands of the Administration is making the process difficult for everyone. Here's the lowdown. Link
How Netflix Will Win the World (Land of Giants) - 27 mins: In this final episode of the profile on Netflix, discussion is about the global domination plans of the company. Key building blocks might be multilingual dubbing, cooperation with oppressive governments and why "good-enough" content rather than "best" is sufficient. Link
Lessons From a MMORPG Pandemic (Wild Wild Tech) - 27 mins: The "Corrupted Blood" pandemic of 2005 in the World of Warcraft universe teaches lessons for COVID-19. Gamers recount the incident while academics weigh in on the lessons for the real world battle today. Link
Nihilism and Hiring (Revisionist History) - 44 mins: In this episode of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell examines his own memory. He discovers how he has found success in hiring his assistants despite his lax due diligence and questions whether the robust processes we use for hiring is even worthwhile. Link
📹 TikToks
Shits about to get real. Link
The Weekend doing TikTok experiences. Link
Parramatta Eels doing the dance. Link
Downhill slalom on a skateboard. Link