H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (6 August 2018) – How Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang went from factory worker’s son to China’s youngest self-made billionaire + YCombinator’s Jessica Livingstone: Grow the Puzzle Around You

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (6 August 2018) – How Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang went from factory worker’s son to China’s youngest self-made billionaire + YCombinator’s Jessica Livingstone: Grow the Puzzle Around You

Companies

• How Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang went from factory worker’s son to China’s youngest self-made billionaire. Pinduoduo has long been plagued with complaints that it trades quality for price, allowing merchants to offer inferior products at rock-bottom prices to capitalise on the platforms’ popularity (SCMP)
• Eye on tech companies in Malaysia exposed to the Apple supply chain; Globetronics is involved in producing components operating within the Apple iPhone supply chain ecosystem. “We have also raised our gesture sensor volumes, incorporating capacity expansion undertaken by Globetronics as required by its key sensor client, ams AG”. Inari derived close to 50% of its revenue from the radio frequency (RF) division, which mainly serves the smartphone market. Meanwhile, MPI is estimated to derive 30% of its revenue from RF and Unisem 30%. These figures, however, do not only cater to Apple but also other South Korean and China-based smartphone manufacturers (Star)

BATTSS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Softbank, Samsung

• FANG Stocks Are Big, But Asia’s Tech Giants Carry Even More Sway; Tencent, Samsung dominate their markets, which recently has led to stock-index declines. (WSJ)
• Google Is in Talks With Tencent and Inspur for China Cloud, Sources Say (Bloomberg)
• From Amazon to Alibaba, Grocers’ Agony Is Endless; Tech advances from China’s internet giants should trouble food retailers across America and Europe. (Bloomberg)
• Masayoshi Son in His Own Words. All 303,513 of Them (Bloomberg); SoftBank Is Starting to Look a Lot Like a Private Equity Firm (Bloomberg); SoftBank monetises investments as telco IPO looms (Reuters)

FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

• How to fix Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg can do more to improve a social network that was meant to build communities but has helped to split societies (FT)
• Time limits for Facebook and Instagram users: will they work? It’s doubtful social media giants really want us to use them less (SCMP)
• Here’s Apple’s Plan to Keep From Losing the World’s Fastest-Growing Smartphone Market (Bloomberg)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

• Shares of Chinese solar panel maker GCL expected to face selling pressure after asset-sale talks collapse (SCMP)
• VipKid to expand to 100 countries as investment in China’s online education sector heats up; The country’s largest online education start-up currently has more than 500,000 students and a community of 60,000 teachers, located mostly in N America (SCMP)
• China’s Didi to invest $1 billion in its auto services platform (Reuters)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

• Schaeffler buys drive-by-wire technology for autonomous vehicles (Reuters)
• ‘The Beginning of a Wave’: A.I. Tiptoes Into the Workplace in an unglamorous place: the back office (NYT)
• Academics created a periodic table of mind-blowing tech, and it’s a handy guide to how the world will change forever (BI)

Life

• Q&A with Brian Portnoy, author of The Geometry of Wealth: How to Shape a Life of Money and Meaning (AR)
• Grow the Puzzle Around You (Jessica Livingstone)