What I Wrote Last Week
Book Review – Breakneck China’s Quest To Engineer The Future
Business
Lululemon Is Having an Identity Crisis. Its Founder Blames the CEO. It must be unpleasant to have an antagonizing founder as a loud critic who happens to own a lot of stocks. While the decline of Lululemon vindicates some of what the founder said, it’s different to run a company whose revenue is more than $10 billion than an up-and-coming startup. Like one of the former executives said: “it’s easy to romanticize the old days”.
Microsoft lowers AI software sales quota as customers resist new products. If companies don’t find AI features useful enough, they won’t pay. Simple as that. Without revenue from the corporate sector, how will “AI-first” companies pay for the high investments, either made or committed? Also, Microsoft has a tight association with OpenAI. If the Seattle-based company is struggling to generate AI revenue, how would OpenAI? See below
OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates. There is a saying that there is more fiction written in Excel than in Word. What HSBC is trying to do here is to say that OpenAI will need to raise a lot more money to continue its fictionary tale.
China Used to Be a Cash Cow for Western Companies. Now It’s a Test Lab. Foreign brands no longer find China as lucrative, growth-inducing, profitable and accessible as it once was. Some are coping with the pressure better than others, but all brands admit that they have to have perfect execution, fast go-to-market strategy and constant innovation, if they wish to stay competitive. I find it interesting that one CEO said if they did not compete with Chinese brands in China, soon they would have to compete with Chinese brands globally. Hence, competing in China seems like a form of defense.
Bad Dye Job. Interesting commentary by John Gruber, a long-time Apple observer and analyst, on the departure of Alan Dye and on his replacement.
Other Stuff I Find Interesting
DOJ and RealPage Agree to Settle Rental Price-Fixing Case. This case is a great example on how intervention from a government helps protect consumers from greedy corporations. Landlords work together, with the assistance of RealPage, to impose high rent on renters. With this agreement, pending a court’s approval, RealPage will cease its role in this scheme and cooperate with prosecutors in inquiries over renters who want to exploitatively charge renters.
Working From Home Is Harming Young Employees. They’re Starting to See That. Young employees should NOT make life decisions based on an assumption that they will be able to work remotely. Even if that prospect is possible in the near term, it’s never good enough for long.
Digital wallet use outpaces regulators. Digital wallets are pervasive in our lives, especially among younger generations who use the wallets for payments, flight tracking or even opening a car door. Some of the wallets are among the trusted brands in the world such as Apple or PayPal. Nonetheless, they still need to be regulated and monitored to make sure there is no abuse towards consumers. With the increasing adoption of cryptocurrency, the need to do so is more urgent than ever.
Are millennials frozen out of the housing market? The reality may be more interesting. “So what’s going on? Are millennials delaying homeownership or are first-time home buyers just as young as they ever were? The answer is yes on both counts: For buyers, the median age at which they purchase their first home is about the same, based on the American Housing Survey data that looks at a huge swath of households. But millennials are a big generation. There are more Americans born in 1990 and 1991 than any other years — people who are now 34 and 35 years old. And because fewer homes are being sold, fewer of those millennials are becoming home buyers at all. It’s probably not true that the average first-time home buyer is that much older than before, despite the NAR’s questionnaire results. But it is true that millennials have found homeownership harder to attain than earlier generations.”
Stats
“Gemini app has 650 million monthly active users”
Adults aged 18 to 24 in the US used their phones for 45% of all payments
Minh Quang Duong 
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