Category: Capital

Singapore

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

I used to travel to Singapore back when I lived in Hong Kong and was always glad when I returned back to HK. It was probably the combination of the era and where my head was at the time. Fast forward many years and many countries and I am now living, proudly, in Singapore. I specifically targeted Singapore due to wanting permanent residency somewhere in Asia. HK has silly rules for it and most other countries don’t have the benefits for becoming one.

Singapore has a good PR program in my opinion. On top of that it is a safe country, with good schools and I like raising a family here. Sure – it is a small island and things can be expensive and a little boring at times. All in all though I enjoy the island but as a venture capitalist, I absolutely love this place.

Singapore is at the center of the Asian startup scene and this is no longer an emergent scene but a growth scene. All one has to do is look at the politics of surrounding countries or the shit show in America to be thankful for not only being in a safe place but in a country that understands it’s position but more importantly, has a detailed roadmap for how to stay in the lead.

Over the weekend I was reading this :: https://seedvc.blog/2017/02/12/weekend-reading/

I am going to dive into the full version during the week, you can find it here :: https://www.gov.sg/~/media/cfe/downloads/cfe%20report.pdf?la=en

I’ll try and digest some interesting sections in future posts.

happy monday.

 

Updated :: Upfront State of the VC & Tech Industry 2017

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

This is really good. I need to dissect it more and think about Asia in regards to some of the thoughts. Funny – Singapore is in the deck a few times but maybe not for what you think.

I wrote about the conference scene we are missing a little here so it is cool to have a nice deck to digest.

A good primer to the deck is this small digest from Mark Suster :: https://www.cooleygo.com/quarterly-vc-update-mark-suster-state-venture-capital-investing/

Lyft

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Was reading this about Lyft – http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-18/leaked-lyft-financials-show-the-struggles-of-being-no-2-behind-uber.

Not such a great business it seems but a quick takeaway for me is how the hell do they compete with Uber when they don’t have a big international footprint?

This was also news to me:

Andreessen Horowitz is currently Lyft’s largest shareholder, according to one of the documents obtained by Bloomberg. The venture capital firm holds 12 percent of shares. Bloomberg LP is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz. Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten owns 10 percent of Lyft shares, and the Mayfield Fund owns 6.6 percent.

What the hell is Rakuten doing?

Online Video post from A16z blog

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http://a16z.com/2015/01/22/online-video/

This read is a doozy. Pretty much agree with all of it and it will be interesting to see some of the predictions play out.

— There will be new business models for video beyond traditional advertising. The reality is that without the scale of a YouTube or Facebook, platforms will have to find more creative ways to make money, whether it’s through subscriptions, micropayments, exclusive previews, community benefits, or other methods.

Full agree on this one. Tough to build a big ad business unless you are huge and in regions where monetization is very advanced. YouTube has massive scale but I know lots of other players with big scale and it still isn’t enough for the ad play. I think micro TX are very interesting and models like daily subs with telco billing.

— The age of platforms not taking care of makers may come to an end. YouTube “stars” generate tons of views for YouTube, but those views don’t translate into meaningful earnings for most of them. As the size of the entire pie grows bigger, there needs to be a piece for everyone. In most media businesses, rents typically acrue to the creators. And this is critical to the long-term success of any two-sided marketplace that connects providers and consumers.

This one also interesting and I think YouTube super stars are making bank but you have to be big again to really make it. I am keen to see how vessel does and what other production companies or talent management will do but yet many of them rely on YouTube for their stars.

None of this addresses what happens to the video landscape once new or newly popularized mediums (such as podcasts, animations, mashups) or entirely new platforms — VR, AR, and so on — become more popular and create new forms of content that live in different ways next to video.

Personally I do see the next thing for video. I have ideas but still work with the type of media that is quite traditional and still finds things like downloading a movie to be really pushing it. So a whole new format or medium? I can’t wrap my head around that but I am sure it will happen eventually.

What we do know is that online video is far from done… so it will be interesting to see what even a little competition will do here.

I guess he means things like vessel for example and I am sure others but for the moment I don’t see a lot of innovation but stuff is always evolving. Just not sure I see where the next thing is coming from.

Attitudinal Anomalies

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I was reading this post from Om and was thinking a bit :: http://om.co/2014/11/21/aereo-fab-kaput/

You can skip the whole thing and go to the end of the post to ponder this:

PS: I think both those companies failed the “will I miss them or the service they provide” test!

In the end no matter what happens if people don’t need or yearn for the service then the service probably won’t make it.

For both Fab and Aereo though, the only thing I recall is hearing about the two CEO’s and the negativity around them. The Fab CEO was the I can do no wrong and I will spend huge sums of money to win. In the end it doesn’t look like it worked. He also pushed out a lot of core, early people and continued his very aggressive strategy to win all the way down.

With Aereo I actually feel like it was a neat invention and might have survived but the CEO started out picking a very public fight with the very people who owned the content versus maybe starting out by saying disruption was needed but he would kick revenue back to broadcasters versus make money on them while bad mouthing them. Whether the service was needed or not the company was tainted by the loud mouth of the CEO. Also didn’t work in the end.

Of course there are exceptions to all of this – Uber is good one. Company is killing it even though they have an exec team that appears, but I don’t think they really are, tone deaf to moral issues.

Here is Om again with a perfect post on this dilemma :: http://om.co/2014/11/26/technology-and-the-moral-dimension/

What happens when I dive into all this reading is I think a lot about what I am working on. Does the stuff I do really matter? Will anyone miss it when it goes away? Are my customers delighted? What’s tough for me is sometimes I see people or products succeed even when the people behind them have no moral compass. I know I should not look at it what way but sometimes envy can cloud my own moral compass. I have to remind myself that I should always strive to do the right thing by my product, my co-workers and my customers. 

I do believe Karma wins in the end. 

 

Dissecting Bubba

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Digging this post by Bubba and wanted to respond to some of it.

http://bubba.vc/2013/07/08/9-ways-a-billion-dollar-new-mobile-company-might-be-created/

#1 – Totally agree. More importantly I think for any startup, unless you find some biz model I don’t know about, there is no point developing for old phone ecosystems. They are dead. Please also add Rim to that list – if you think they are coming back you are in denial. Also the old Nokia ecosystem is also dead.

#2 – Is interesting. I tend to group them together but that might change down the road.

#3 – Very true but all depends on what you are building and how. However all that aside the fragmentation is real and  a pain in the ass. It translates to having to have more resources on Android than iOS for a similar app outcome but at the same time the revenue is clearly lower on Android by a large margin.

#4 – True but how does one get around the AppStore in iOS? We all know that users want the buy button in the app and doing anything to get around that brings the Apple wrath. In some sense you can do it all around mobile web but it is more work and less transactions. However at least with the App ecosystems payments are easy and people use them. This is brining the carrier billing costs down – hardly any carrier can look at you with a straight face and ask for more than 30% these days. It is changing fast. I don’t know where real disruption will come from unless people like Google or Apple allow it to enter the ecosystem. I am doubtful.

#5 – I guess if you mean user generated content but I think building for Apps is better than building web for the way I work.

#6 – Don’t know but I think only the power users need it since most peeps are consumers and even struggle at times with the basics. I think we will be in constant evolution and iteration but it might take a new player to disrupt the current UX. iOS 7 is changing some things but they are not rocking the boat much. I personally hope voice gets much more powerful.

#7 – Probably true. I am only working on video ads and even that is a total pain in the ass. huge disruption could be had across all the ad stuff but so far I am not seeing it. Yahoo could do some cool things if they applies it worldwide but I am not holding my breath yet.

#8 – Speaking for my work experience I think people will pay for content if it makes it more convenient, broadly accessible and a great quality experience. We see it happening with Spuul but takes time to evolve it. I think the global payment issues are one of the big stumbling blocks more than user willingness to pay.

#9 – Good point. I think what happens is the big incumbents like to buy the mobile play to take it out or fix their own mobile play. I think this will change at the big guys check their own mobile boxes but it will take time to build something big and standalone.

Great article though and hoping for more from Bubba!