What I wrote last week
Amazon continues to impress with another blow-out quarter
Uber & Gopuff. Amazon Prime Video streams NFL games in 2022
Uber’s Delivery is on fire despite $600 million expense set aside for the driver dispute in the UK
Business
How Apple does M&A: Small and quiet, with no bankers. Information is extremely valuable in business. Apple’s known culture of secrecy is meant to keep competitors from knowing what it has in the pipeline. We don’t often see Apple make huge purchases. Instead of buying companies to grow the top line, they focus on the people, especially technical engineers. That’s a smart move.
A great Business Breakdown episode on Twilio. If you don’t know about the business, have a listen.
What Is a Business Model? 54 Successful Types of Business Models You Need to Know. This type of content renders expensive MBAs obsolete.
Clubhouse’s downloads plummeted in April. I have been on Clubhouse for 2 months, and yet I haven’t made it to the end of one single chat. Plus, it’s not appealing to the end users that there is no recording. Not everyone has enough time in a day to wait for talks to come and listen to everything. Not so surprising to see the app’s popularity take a huge blow. I just wonder what a16z saw in it.
Amazon Expanding Garage Grocery Delivery to more than 5,000 cities
A great podcast episode on Visa. This company probably has one of the strongest moats out there. Its market cap is higher than those of big banks.
How Shopify’s network of sellers can take on Amazon
What Is an Entertainment Company in 2021 and Why Does the Answer Matter?
What I found interesting
Green gold: Avocado farming on the rise in Africa
Playlists and podcasts? Netflix is exploring developing ‘N-Plus’
Stats that may interest you
60% of Instagram users eligible to link up with their Messenger account did use the feature
20% of electric vehicle owners in California switched back to gas because charging is a hassle. This is indeed not great news for EV as well as hydrogen cells. But I believe that the great potential of green energy cars is here to stay and we’ll overcome this challenge somehow.
Facebook Workplace reaches 7 million paid subscribers. I do wonder how far Facebook’s push into the corporate world will go. I don’t see how they can overcome the disconnect between their own brand and the seriousness that the 9-5 world carries
95% of iOS 14.5 users disabled App Tracking. There are two sides of this debate. Proponents of privacy applaud this move by Apple because it aids consumer privacy and stops cross-app tracking. Critics say that Apple’s motive isn’t altruistic. Instead, they argue that Apple wants to harm the advertising industry, to inadvertently strengthen the position of Google & Facebook and to boost Apple’s own advertising business. Well, when two parties have conflicting interests (advertisers and consumers), Apple must choose one to side with and in this case, whatever their motive is, they side with consumers.
Social commerce made up 40% of Southeast Asia’s $109 billion e-Commerce in 2020
Minh Quang Duong 