H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (24 October 2018) – As BTS Conquers the World, K-Pop Firms Flop on the Stock Market + The Mental Habits of Effective Leaders: Farnam Street’s Interview with Jennifer Garvey Berger

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (24 October 2018) – As BTS Conquers the World, K-Pop Firms Flop on the Stock Market + The Mental Habits of Effective Leaders: Farnam Street’s Interview with Jennifer Garvey Berger

Companies

• Trend Micro rebrands endpoint security offering (CL)
• Nintendo Switch is headed to school (CNN)
• Chinese orders dry up for Japan’s machine tools; September bookings drop 22% as factories brace for trade war impact (Nikkei)
• Loss-making BabyTree marches on for listing hearing with the Hong Kong bourse (KRA)
• As BTS Conquers the World, K-Pop Firms Flop on the Stock Market (Bloomberg)
• Redbubble buys US competitor TeePublic for $57 million (AFR)

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

• Baidu to debut simultaneous machine translation in latest challenge to Google; Baidu system claims to be first with ‘anticipation capabilities and controllable latency’ The AI model is trained with data including similar sentence structures (SCMP)
• China’s Gaming Green Channel Was Just a Loophole; Most of the damage from halting approvals had been done. The latest development is merely an annoyance. (Bloomberg); China Halts Special Approval Process for New Games (Bloomberg)

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

• Amazon Branded Women’s Apparel Sales Languish, Report Finds (Bloomberg)
• Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants (Bloomberg)
• Apple plans to launch TV subscription service globally: The Information (Reuters)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

• Chinese Employee Training Platform Yunxuetang Raises $50M Series C Round From YunFeng Capital (CMN)
• ByteDance ambitions in e-commerce continues with new social commerce app XinCao for younger consumers; Shortly after the release of e-commerce platform Zhi Dian, ByteDance now offers a new social commerce app called Xin Cao (KRA)
• Tech Guru Bets Drones Will be `Gold Rush in the Air’ For Japan (Bloomberg)
• Grab CEO courier stunt is disheartening; When Anthony Tan became a delivery man, he found lots of little problems, but ignored Grab’s fundamental issue (e27)
• Southeast Asian tech hubs race to become the next Silicon Valley (Nikkei)
• Billions of dollars have not helped Indian e-tailers figure out AI and big data (qz)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

• Uber’s Secret Restaurant Empire; The incredible growth of the food delivery business has led to some unconventional arrangements. (Bloomberg)
• MoviePass Is Getting Ditched by Its Parent Company (Barron’s)
• ‘Alexa, Buy That Stock.’ TD Ameritrade Is Offering Voice-Activated Trading. (Barron’s)
• GM’s driverless car bet faces long road ahead (Reuters)
• Artificial Intelligence Faces Age-Old IT Challenge: Data Standardization; ‘AI starts with data, and if the data is lousy … ‘ (WSJ)
• Mobileye Opens Up Driverless Tech as Tie-Up With Intel Deepens (Bloomberg)
• Payments are just the starting point for Instamojo, but does it have what it takes to evolve into a full stack online commerce enabler? (Forbes)
• The Story of Markets Told Through Semiconductors; What appeared to be a selloff in cyclical stocks prompted by fears over the economy may actually be more benign. (Bloomberg)
• Here’s How Saudi Cash Could Bring on the Global VC Crash; If startups and investors balk at the kingdom’s money, funding could grind to a halt. Just the possibility is powerful enough to end the party. (Bloomberg)
• Web performance software company Cloudflare readies IPO -sources (Reuters)
• Wealthfront to offer automated financial planning tool for free (Reuters)
• This driverless tech start-up aims to replace 15 million truckers in US and China (SCMP)

Life

• The Mental Habits of Effective Leaders: My Interview with Jennifer Garvey Berger [The Knowledge Project Ep. #43] (Farnam Street)