Alvin's Newsletter: No. 2
Weekly newsletter on what I saw interesting in tech, venture capital and business.
📰 News
Black Lives Matter: The last week was dominated by the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests around the world. There have been many of these types of events (school shootings, black deaths in the hands of authority) in recent US history with little change taking place. This time feels different. Waleed Aly and his guest, W. Alton Jones, Professor of Philosophy, talk through why that may be and the feelings that are running behind the movement. Link
Slack partnered with Amazon: Slack’s share price hasn’t done particularly well since its IPO last year as questions continue on its growth prospects. Meanwhile, Microsoft has lifted its game with their workplace product, having almost double the number of users than Slack. This deal between Amazon and Slack is interesting because 1) Amazon is now Slack’s largest customer by a factor of 2 and 2) the quid-pro-quo going on here - Amazon secures another large and growing partner for AWS, Slack gets its biggest customer yet. Link
📚 Reading
TikTok is huge - bigger than what people think and getting bigger. Link
GrubHub still losing money in the pandemic when it should be thriving. Link
How Hertz when bust - accounting fraud, Icahn and a dose of O.J.. Link
Icahn loses $1.6B on the Hertz bankruptcy. Link
Interesting take on why the NYPD is so powerful and the balance of power. Link
🦖 Entertaining & Interesting things
Don’t steal an iPhone - especially from a store. Link
Comparison of the CX experience with opening an account with UK banks. Link
The ins and outs of stealing $1.6B through ATM skimming. Link
Harvard shrinks a robot to the size of a penny. Link
🎧 Podcasts
The best podcast episodes last week according to Bosco Tan:
The data behind resolving US police brutality (Bill Simmons Podcast): Discourse on the US protests has been unavoidable in podcast-land this week. This episode is the best I’ve listened to on the core police brutality issues. Here, Bill Simmons talks to DeRay Mckesson of Campaign Zero to get a data-driven view on how best to fix the issues. Link
Turnbull on entrepreneurialism (The Startup Playbook Podcast): Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been on a bunch of podcasts lately on the back of his new book. In this, he spends a lot more time to dive into how he thinks about entrepreneurialism, particularly on the topics of timing and conviction. Throughout is his reflections on his personal business building history. Link
Shake Shack founder on restaurant recovery (Master of Scale): As we get out of the lockdowns globally there are lots of perspectives being shared on how to restart the hospitality industry. This perspective comes from Danny Meyer - one of the most renowned restaurateurs in New York - having founded restaurants of all shapes and sizes. Here he talks about the implications for different service models. Link
Grocery delivery in China (The Next Billion): The GGV Capital podcast has always been a favourite of mine to get a view of the future (aka China). Here they sit down with Cecilia Sun of Miss Fresh, one of the many online grocery services in China to talk about how consumer tastes are evolving and how the competition in the Chinese market has forced their business model evolution. Every GGV episode reminds me China is on a different timescale. Link