Peer to Peer Car Sharing

  • Turo, part owned by IAC, is the leading peer to peer car sharing company (think Airbnb for cars).
  • Turo has been gaining share – it has tripled from 2% in June 2019 to 6% in June 2021.
  • Still miles away from the top three rental firms (Enterprise 37%, Avis 31%, Hertz 26%).
  • Competition in the space is heating up with Uber unveiling their own rent-a-car service and Lyft partnering with SIXT for care rental.
  • Source.

Post and Pre IPO Value Creation

  • Who reaps the majority of the rewards from venture backed companies – VC or public markets?
  • Over the last decade when measured in terms of total dollars of value creation accruing to pre- and post-IPO investors: post-IPO investor gains have often been substantial.
  • Of the 165 IPOs analysed – the vast majority had a large share of value accrue to public markets (blue region).
  • There are some exceptions (red region), and some shared (yellow region).
  • Source.

Stripe

  • A lot has been written about this remarkable company and its even more remarkable founders.
  • This was a really great, long piece covering everything from history to strategy.
  • In 2006, using an SAT score from a test he’d taken at the age of 13 (an infuriating anecdote), Patrick matriculated to Lisp’s birthplace: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’d sped through the final two years of his high school curriculum in just twenty days.

Africa

  • Starting with cliches is a good way to start this fantastic piece on Africa.
  • It covers everything from demographics to key venture players to opportunities.
  • Well worth a read for those interested in this continent.
  • Let this map just sink in.
  • There are 1.2bn people in Africa, a number that will double in 30 years to 2.4bn.
  • Roughly 50% will be under 25 years old. The staggering stats go on.

Video Call Competitors

  • Interesting contrast among the various video calling apps over the pandemic period.
  • Zoom usage grew strongly but fell back after its initial peak into a pattern of steady growth.
  • Microsoft Teams grew steadily throughout.
  • Houseparty looks like a flash in the pan – 4.6m peak to only 432k users today.
  • Source (based on UK data).

Web3

  • Interesting essay on the future of the web – Web3.
  • Web3 allows a new generation of disrupters to create products that actually pay people to use them, and aligns the incentives of creators, consumers, suppliers, and investors.
  • Imagine going to Disney World, and getting shares in Disney, the company, every time you took a ride, bought Mickey Merch, or sent your friend a picture. Or that owning shares in Disney let you skip all of the lines as long as you held the shares. That’s what tokens do.
  • In the essay he presents Web3 competitors to all the major web platforms.
  • One neat way to describe the landscape is to think of “crypto as listed versions of traditional VC, with a real-time, 24/7 quoted price.” (Source).

Big Tech Regulation

  • Good analysis of the bill proposed in Congress on regulating Big Tech.
  • The bill tries to restrict a lot of activity that is seen as anti-competitive behaviour on platforms.
  • It is also aimed at breaking up the businesses, making data easily portable, and acquisitions harder.
  • Taken together, these laws would be a revolution in antitrust law, adapted for an era where Big Tech marketplaces, not railroads, are the dominant businesses of the day. They could also have many serious unintended side effects, so the final form of these laws matters a lot.” 

Cloud is not all Great

  • Interesting to see cracks form in cloud computing paradigm.
  • In the article a16z make a stark case for repatriating workloads – “We show (using relatively conservative assumptions!) that across 50 of the top public software companies currently utilizing cloud infrastructure, an estimated $100B of market value is being lost among them due to cloud impact on margins — relative to running the infrastructure themselves.
  • If you’re operating at scale, the cost of cloud can at least double your infrastructure bill.” … “You’re crazy if you don’t start in the cloud; you’re crazy if you stay on it.
  • Good discussion of this article here.
  • Computing paradigms do move in cycles but the analysis is missing things like flexibility (cloud is better at flexing workloads up and down) and capital intensity of businesses being a driver of valuation.

eRetail 2.0

  • The mind boggles at the level of innovation going in ecommerce.
  • One major part is entertainment and retail = retailtainment – “shopping as a mass leisure activity”.
  • This is a great article on the phenomenon, covering the plethora of ways it is developing.
  • As usual one needs to look east where a lot of development is taking place.
  • One of the enablers is software that is designed to be addictive – for example infinite scrolling can mimic the bottomless bowl effect leading to 73% more consumption.

Apple Wearables

  • Pretty stunning how far Apple is ahead in wearable technology.
  • This was a good article discussing their lead.
  • Start by watching the AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch video – truly science fiction come to life.
  • The article attributes Apple’s success to (1) being early (2) voice controlled devices distracting competitors (3) wearables requiring hardware design expertise (4) ecosystem synergies (5) and no price umbrella.
https://youtu.be/xlrnxP7XIho

iOS 14.5 App Tracking Opt-in Rate

  • This site tracks daily the number of users* opting in for App Tracking with the new iOS 14.5 update.
  • Useful for those invested in Facebook and other players in the mobile advertising industry.
  • Here is the chart from May 14th for the World, the figure is 5% for the US.
  • *they count app users not individuals users. So it is for every app.
  • Good article on what participants are doing in the early days.
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