Alvin's Newsletter: No. 4
Weekly newsletter on what I saw interesting in tech, venture capital and business.
📰 News
Jio raises $16B from the giants of the world: Outside of India, most people likely have not heard of Jio or it’s founder, Asia’s richest man, an Indian by the name of Mukesh Ambani. Jio and Ambani started lighting up the tech world in April as he started a capital raise that would eventually raise $15B in 9 weeks. There are some notable names on the cap. table - Facebook, KKR, TPG, Abu Dabhi and the Saudi’s. Jio’s primary business is a mobile and broadband provider - one that is growing at a clipping rate. 390 million subscribers in less than four years. Underlying its main business are a multitude of digital services (and potential pots of gold) - a music streaming service, JioSaavn, an on-demand live tv service callede JioTV and a payments app, JioMoney. All available and bundled to Jio subscribers for free. The great re-bundling so to speak. Given the size and growth rate, you can see why global tech companies are clamouring to get access to India’s largest company. Link
Wirecard lost $2B somewhere it says, in the Phillipines. Stock free-falls 75%: The Wirecard saga has been unravelling since the start of 2019 when reports of accounting fraud started to surface. We are now getting to what may be the climax, with Wirecard notifying the markets on Thursday that they couldn’t find $2B and its CEO, Markus Braun stepping down. Wirecard was once one of Germany’s biggest financial companies, backed by Germany’s largest bank, Deutche bank. Embarrassing for Germany, especially after having to deal with the Volkswagen emissions scandal for the last 5 years - VW being Germany’s largest company. The contortions a Government must do in attempting to lay down the law whilst not obliterating its largest companies, regulators and employers. Interesting to watch. Link
📚 Reading
Viya, China’s live ‘shopping whisperer’, gets audiences bigger than the ‘Game of Thrones’ finale and generates $3B+ of transactions per year. Link
Monzo had a huge down round - 40% down to be exact. Link
Shopify going after Amazon, inking deals with Walmart and Facebook. Link
Lots of talk on Warren Buffett ‘losing his touch’. A good break-down here. Link
A no BS guide to AI, machine learning and deep learning. Link
🦖 Entertaining & Interesting things
The FCC has doubts Elon’s Starlink can get under 100ms latency. Link
A diamond glut is growing. Link
Retail investors swarming to insolvency stocks. Link
The rise of the ‘retail bro’ and monetary intervention interplay. Link
How the Apple Watch ejects water. Link
🎧 Podcasts
The best podcast episodes last week according to Bosco Tan:
Hertz and the Retail Bro (The Journal) - 15 mins: There’s a new phenomenon on the sharemarkets led by a new wave of retail investor. As a collective, they have been able to move the market. A notable effect has been Hertz’s share price growth since it’s bankruptcy filing. This episode profiles one of these guys. The warning label says it could be bitcoin in 2017 all over again. Link
Better Email (Recode Decode) - 60 mins: Last time people got excited by email was the launch of Gmail in 2004. Many have tried to “fix” email since as the prize here is huge. In this episode, Kara sits down with Jason Fried of Basecamp to talk about their email project, Hey.com. There are lots of strong views on the future of email and productivity, as well as what work looks like in a post-COVID world. Link
LinkedIn is the New Arbitrage (Growth Marketing Toolbox) - 35 mins: Like champion athletes, the best growth marketers are always looking for an edge. Tyler Kemp of RollSocial and LeadRoll runs down why LinkedIn is the frontier for this new phase of attention arbitrage and how best to take advantage. Link
What Instagram is doing to Architecture (99% Invisible) - 37 mins: This is the curious tale of a wall in London - its transformation from a humble feature wall of a warehouse office in the middle of nowhere to an Instagrammer destination. The question is whether this level of Instagrammification changes the purpose of our built environment, its inhabitants and tourism. Thought provoking stuff as Roman Mars does his best Kevin McCloud impression. Link