What I Wrote Last Week
Business
Inside OpenAI’s Ad Rush. If you wait long enough, eventually any popular business will run ads. Popularity means a lot of eyes and attention. It’s a waste not to monetize that resource, especially when ads margin tends to be high, helping businesses boost both the top and bottom line. I am not surprised that OpenAI is going down this route. They are outcompeted by Anthropic in the enterprise segment. In the consumer segment, there is not enough value from ChatGPT to convince enough people to shell out a sizeable fee every month. For good measure, costs of training models and chips keep increasing. Hence, the need for ads. However, the skills needed to create an LLM are not transferable to building an ads platform. If it were that easy, we would see a lot more ads. It took Netflix time to stand up its ads capability. For OpenAI, there is also a question of how they can make ads and AI-powered answers work together. Will users trust the authenticity and accuracy of the responses when they see ads pop up? One thing I do want to see, though, is how Elon Musk would react to this development. He sued OpenAI and Sam Altman because he felt that the company was no longer a non-profit and any attempt to have a for-profit identity would betray the principles of a non-profit which he helped found years ago. That man has proven that he is willing to go to war and he has plenty of resources at hand to spare.
How United is building a post-COVID airline. Scott Kirby has been doing a hell of a job growing United Airlines. The airline is generating demand on unpopular routes with non-stop flights from its domestic hubs. To make it economically feasible, it employs narrow-body aircrafts and uses the destinations to pool demand across the US. On the other side of the equation, the expansive network breeds brand loyalty and motivates passengers to become holders of United-branded credit cards; which results in another lucrative revenue stream for the airline.
With Emmys Haul, Apple Joins the Big Leagues of TV. Having a long-term view and the patience to follow through that vision is one of Apple’s competitive advantages. Every company says they do things for the long run, few actually do it. Apple does it. I think the presence of the new CEO, John Ternus, at the Emmy’s sent a signal that he supported what Apple TV team was doing.
Inside South Korea’s university programs offering a direct route to Samsung and SK Hynix. A fascinating development in South Korea to make sure there are enough workers to sustain a critical industry that is paramount to national security. I doubt it will be replicated across the US. The job market right now favors employers. There is no shortage of white-collar workers. Why would companies do something extra when they receive hundreds of applications per position?
Kylian Mbappe ends long-term Nike partnership to lead On’s football boots expansion. Things are getting from bad to worse for Nike. It lost the 20-year relationship with a global soccer superstar in Kylian Mbappe. Mbappe is not Messi or Ronaldo, but he is among the world class level superstar that is known around the world. The latest snub is indicative of a worrying trend. If Nike wants to stick to sports for growth, this is not assuring to investors. A few years ago, they lost Roger Federer. Before that, they humiliated Stephen Curry so bad that they never had a chance at signing arguably the greatest shooter that ever touched a basketball. Iga Swiatek left and now it’s Kylian’s turn. Besides sports, there is no evidence that supports growth. I mean, the stock price shows the level of confidence that investors have in Nike’s outlook.
Other Stuff I Found Interesting And So May You
The most important product decision is what you don’t build. A solid writeup on why we still tend to reward production, even when it doesn’t necessarily generate added value. The article ends with the famous story of Steve Jobs lowering the number of products at Apple from 52 to 4 upon his return. To Jobs and the people that had the experience of working closely with him, focus was about saying no. It was about saying no to the things that every fiber in your body said yes to. THAT is hard.
New York has a food waste problem. South Korea has already solved it. The Koreans manage to turn food waste into fuel and prevent harmful gas from entering the atmosphere. New York tried to replicate such success and still has a long way to go. But that is much better than many other cities in the country could say.
The GDR and Vietnam: From Fake Coffee to Coffee Empire. “The German Democratic Republic (GDR) always struggled to procure enough coffee for its population because, for climate reasons, it couldn’t grow its own and had to buy it on the world market. That not only cost money – in hard currency – but was also fraught with difficulty. For the first two post-war decades, West Germany attempted to isolate East Germany with the so-called Hallstein Doctrine, which amounted to a pretty solid trade embargo. Countries trading with East Germany risked the ire of the much more powerful West Germany, which saw this as an “unfriendly act”. Given that the Vietnam War had ended and the last Americans left in 1975, leaving the country devastated but communist, there was an ideal opportunity here to grow real coffee in a “brother state”. Vietnam also desperately needed to rebuild and recover, and the GDR could help with that. A deal was struck in 1980. East Germany sent lorries, farm machinery and equipment to install complex irrigation systems. In Dray H’Linh, a hydropower plant was built, costing the equivalent of $20 million. In exchange for this enormous aid package, the GDR was to receive half of Vietnam’s coffee production for twenty years. This project was hugely successful. Vietnam is now a leading coffee producer with only 6 per cent of the yield used internally, while the rest is exported at an estimated annual worth of $3 billion. East Germany stood to gain half of this – enough to satisfy its own demand and create additional revenue through exports – but coffee plants take years to mature and produce their beans. The first proper harvest of the East German coffee project in Vietnam only came in 1990 – too late for the GDR, which ceased to exist in the same year.“
Stats
In Germany, a gallon of gas costs $11
Japan has more than 107,000 people aged 100 or older, 88% of which are women.
On average, a family of four in the US wastes about $56 of food a week
Minh Quang Duong 
Leave a comment