H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (22 October 2018) – 21 Lessons From Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letters To Shareholders

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (22 October 2018) – 21 Lessons From Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letters To Shareholders

Companies

• China’s Tesla Wannabe Has a Big Brother Problem; Data security concerns may cloud the outlook for aspiring electric-car maker NIO. (Bloomberg)
• Hong Kong’s Tech Dreams Are Becoming a Nightmare; A rule change was supposed to lure the hottest upstarts. But if IPOs continue to flop, investors and founders will meet elsewhere. (Bloomberg)
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FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

• Amazon Wants Alexa to Do More Than Just Play Your Music; Amazon taps developer community to create games, AI enhancements to get users to tap into Alexa’s more than 50,000 skills (WSJ)
• The challenge of making YouTube a better place (Wired)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

• Mafengwo accused of faking 85% of all user-generated content (Technode)
• Plunging China’s stock prices and the effect on China’s tech economy (KRA)

• Tencent Music’s public offering dilemma; China’s Spotify uncertain public offering amidst market volatility. (KRA)
• 2% rebate eyed on all items paid for by cashless means at small shops after planned 2019 sales tax hike (Japan Times)
• Japanese unicorn promises ‘robots for everyone’ in 5 years; Preferred Networks looks to challenge tech leaders like Google and Apple (Nikkei)
• How Taiwan’s Powerful PC Makers Will Overcome The Intel Chip Shortage (Forbes)
• The problem with e-wallets? There are just too many of them, say fintech experts (TIA)
• Former Grab, Go-Jek employees team up to prove demand for a chatty mobile wallet in Indonesia (KRA)
• Key challenges and opportunities in Malaysia’s e-commerce scene; Only 20 per cent of people in East Malaysia said e-commerce is more convenient and makes their lives easier (e27)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

• Utah Cloud Unicorn Qualtrics Files To Raise Up To $200M In IPO (Forbes)
• Trupanion Stock Sinks After Report of State Probe (Barron’s)
• MTV Owner’s Streaming Strategy: If You Can’t Beat Them, Feed Them; Viacom is making ‘The Real World’ for Facebook and planning a sequel of ‘To All the Boys’ for Netflix in push to turn its channels into studios (WSJ)
• Uber IPO: A Lot Will Ride on CFO’s Choice of Metrics, Timing; Finance chief Nelson Chai will have to decide whether Uber will go ahead or trail rival Lyft and what performance indicators to share with investors (WSJ)
• Will Tech Leave Detroit in the Dust? As IPO proposals value Uber at an eye-popping $120 billion, auto makers are racing to gain ground in everything from car sharing to driverless technology. At stake: who will control the future of transportation (WSJ)
• PayPal Has Moved on From Its eBay Breakup. But eBay Hasn’t (Barron’s)
• Early-Stage SaaS VC Slip Snaps Recovery As Public Software Stocks Soar (Crunchbase); Bessemer Updates Its Cloud Index (Crunchbase)
• Who Is Losing The Most Money? (Crunchbase)
• Tesla Short Seller Warns of ‘Massive’ Supply-Chain Disruption (Bloomberg)

Life

• 21 Lessons From Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letters To Shareholders (CBI)