H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (28 August 2018) – Tencent Music reportedly pins its US IPO date on October 18; Tencent Music controlled 78% of China’s music streaming market in 2017 + 100 Things I Learned Reading The Same Book 100 Times Over 10 Years

August 28, 2018 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (28 August 2018) – Tencent Music reportedly pins its US IPO date on October 18; Tencent Music controlled 78% of China’s music streaming market in 2017 + 100 Things I Learned Reading The Same Book 100 Times Over 10 Years

Companies

  • Tencent Music reportedly pins its US IPO date on October 18. Tencent Music is the operator QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo. The three music streaming businesses claimed 254 million, 227 million and 111 million mobile users respectively in the first quarter of 2018, data from iResearch shows. Tencent Music controlled 78% of China’s music streaming market in 2017 (Technode)
  • Online entertainment platform Bilibili reports revenue surge but warns China content crackdown will hit costs (SCMP)
  • How big data helped ‘China’s Netflix’ iQiyi decide to back The Story of Yanxi Palace, a summer blockbuster about back-stabbing concubines (SCMP)
  • Powerchip to build $9bn chip manufacturing plants in Taiwan: Founder and CEO says island’s chip sector continues to outperform China (Nikkei)
  • Demand for data to power artificial intelligence technologies has driven the ongoing fast growth rate of ASX-listed language data and search services provider Appen. Appen shares up as revenue lifts 106 per cent (AFR)

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

  • Alibaba emerges as the platform of choice for foreign sellers; Japanese cosmetics makers gear China strategy toward online sites (Nikkei)
  • Alibaba drives grocery openings, fusing bricks and clicks; Cashless supermarkets doubles as delivery fulfillment center (Nikkei)
  • Can SoftBank Really Meet Investors’ Expectations? Two researchers are skeptical that the $100 billion Vision Fund can deliver, and made their case in a new analysis. (II)

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

  • Amazon India’s fintech play; The ecommerce behemoth is making strategic investments to build an ecosystem of financial products and services to take on Flipkart and Paytm (Forbes)
  • Amazon’s Whole Foods Is Starting to Steal Trader Joe’s Shoppers (Bloomberg)
  • Facebook and Google Chase a New $1 Trillion Payments Market (Bloomberg)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Dark Clouds Gather as Tech Stockpiles Hit Pre-Crisis Levels; Weaker turnover, rising inventories. Something’s gotta give. (Bloomberg)

  • Didi Backlash Sounds a Warning for China’s Unicorns; Pursuing growth while losing public trust is a recipe for trouble. (Bloomberg)
  • China added as much battery-storage capacity in 2018 as all previous years combined (qz)
  • Toyota to invest US$500m in Uber for self-driving cars; The companies’ aim is to solve the enormously challenging problem of how to mass produce self-driving cars for shared fleets, including ride-hailing services. (SCMP)
  • NSW invests $123m for smart technology system by Cubic to ease traffic (AFR)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • GlobalFoundries drops out of race to develop next-gen semiconductor technology (Reuters)
  • VMware to acquire startup CloudHealth in push to grow cloud offerings (Reuters)
  • If Spotify wants to dominate podcasting, it’s time to step up its ambitions; The streaming music giant wants to expand into more audio entertainment but as its initiatives in podcasting reveal, it’s moving too slowly and too tentatively. (FastCo)

Life

  • 100 Things I Learned Reading The Same Book 100 Times Over 10 Years (Medium)
  • Tim Ferris podcast on Drew Houston – The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox (#334) (Tim Ferris)
  • The Disproportional Power of Anecdotes (Farnam Street)
  • Organizational Grit (HBR)
  • Reid Hoffman’s 4 lessons to prevent your startup from becoming the next Theranos: What risks are ethical when pursuing rapid growth? (FastCo)

Filed under Innovation

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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