H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (14 March 2019) – If You Can Explain China’s Pinduoduo, Lunch Is on Me + Hallucination vs. Vision, Selling Your Art in the Real World: Brian Koppelman Interviews Marc Andreessen

March 14, 2019 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (14 March 2019) – If You Can Explain China’s Pinduoduo, Lunch Is on Me + Hallucination vs. Vision, Selling Your Art in the Real World: Brian Koppelman Interviews Marc Andreessen

Companies

  • If You Can Explain China’s Pinduoduo, Lunch Is on Me; Marketing costs have blown out to exceed revenue, yet investors drove up the stock 60 percent since the company’s IPO. (Bloomberg); New China billionaire drops US$2.8 billion as Pindoudou shares tumble (YF)
  • China’s leading online music platform seeks greater global exposure of Chinese ethnic music (Xinhua)
  • Hancom, iFLYTEK set up AI joint venture (KT)
  • Momo predicts big growth in Eastern markets for its dating app Tantan (KRA)
  • China’s BOE challenges Samsung in OLED sector (Investor)
  • Line drops $20m to produce first Thai unicorn (KRA)
  • Rakuten TV to expand movie streaming to 42 European countries (Reuters)
  • Delta Electronics nets NT$7.00 per share for 2018; Delta has entered the supply chains for Tesla and China-based EV vendors and expects sales from the EV sector to reach US$500 million in 2022. (Digitimes)
  • Atlassian goes national in remote working revolution (AFR)
  • IRESS: End-to-end mortgage journey will be a reality this year (MI)
  • Formula One complexity drives PWR margins higher (AFR)
  • Kogan.com launches marketplace to compete with Catch, Amazon (AFR)

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

  • SoftBank, Toyota in talks to invest $1 billion in Uber’s self-driving unit: sources (Reuters)

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

  • Blind users can now explore photos by touch with Microsoft’s Seeing AI (TC)
  • Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (if you have a Pixel) (TC)
  • Amazon will no longer dictate how sellers price their products (CNN)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • China’s on-demand delivery providers to tighten merchant inspection, as regulator finds 35,000 illegal restaurants on their platforms (SCMP)
  • The Chinese education ministry wants to clamp down on the proliferation of campus apps (KRA)
  • How China’s e-commerce playbook can help emerging economies transform (SCMP)
  • How China’s KOLs convert fans to sales, creating a nearly US$9 billion industry; More than 70 per cent of Chinese Gen Z consumers prefer buying products directly via social media (SCMP)
  • Asian tech companies struggle to adjust to iPhone slowdown (Nikkei)
  • Hyperlocal goes wide; Startups take the horizontal route, delivering everything from food and groceries to medicines and stationery. After a catastrophic start, hyperlocals are back in vogue with Swiggy and Dunzo locked in a fierce battle (Forbes)
  • Feeding the machine: Optus partners with AI startup Metigy (Age)
  • ‘Overnight success is a farce’: Aussie founder sells startup last valued at $25.4m to American Express (Age)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Meet The Billionaire Who Defied Amazon And Built Wish, The World’s Most-Downloaded E-Commerce App (Forbes)
  • Wayfair is nuts, when’s the crash? (FT)
  • Enterprise Tech Race Spurs M&A Deals; Firms looking to boost digital capabilities last year pushed the value of deals in the enterprise-software sector to $182.2 billion (WSJ)
  • Pandora Pitches Ads Targeted to Amazon and Google Smart Speakers; Brands try to crack voice marketing in the restrictive worlds of Alexa and Google Assistant (WSJ)
  • ‘We Know Them. We Trust Them.’ Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave. (NYT)
  • How big data really fits into lending (FT)
  • US-based TodayTix in cheap ticket plan to attract millennials (Age)
  • AI Needs Memory to Get Cozier with Compute (EET)
  • Newsela, An EdTech Startup For Generation Z, Lands $50M From TCV (CB)
  • African e-commerce startup Jumia files for IPO on NYSE (TC)

Life

  • Hallucination vs. Vision, Selling Your Art in the Real World: Brian Koppelman Interviews Marc Andreessen (a16z)
  • The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore; Warren Buffett, a friend of Gates, says that his measure of success comes down to one question: “Do the people you care about love you back?” (qz)
  • Here’s a trick smart people can learn fast to improve decisions (AFR)
  • Nobel-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on Science, Spirit, and Our Search for Meaning (BP)
  • A Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating 1930s Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want (BP)

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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