What I wrote last week
A great podcast episode on Formula One as a business
Business
The World Relies on One Chip Maker in Taiwan, Leaving Everyone Vulnerable. The whole tech industry relies so much on TSMC and the story is likely to continue in the near future. It’s expensive and time-consuming for other countries to build anything that can compete with TSMC. On the other hand, this puts TSMC in an awkward position where it has to deftly navigate the complex political conflicts between superpowers.
Shop Pay available to all businesses on Facebook and Google. I think Shopify is trying to do two things here with this move: 1/ it’s trying to use Shop Pay as an acquisition tool. By making the checkout option available to even non-Shopify merchants on Facebook and Google, it is hoping that the tool can lure these merchants into selling on their platform. 2/ Obviously, this is going to also help Shopify increase revenue. Even though Shopify’s GMV has grown seriously in the last few years, GMV of non-Shopify merchants should be a lot bigger. Taking a slice of every non-Shopify transaction can be a lucrative business
Amazon labels millions of unsold products for destruction, new investigation finds. Lately there have been way too many articles that shed light on distasteful aspects of Amazon, from unbearable waste to unacceptable treatment of its worker. I have to admit that even though I am a fan of the business as I learned a lot from its story and I am a shareholder, I am strongly considering selling it as it’s just not comfortable any more.
A timeline of Google’s attempts at building a messaging app. The fact that you may be more familiar with Zoom, Teams or Slack should tell you a lot about how successful these attempts have been. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that they won’t succeed, ever.
Facebook officially launched audio rooms and podcasts in the U.S. Facebook is an extremely fast follower that is quite often deadly and effective at scaling what others made known. How they are going to make these new features will be interesting. I mean I am not an active Facebook user and neither are most of the people in my circle. Who will use these features to create content? Will celebrities and people that have a following choose to host their content on Facebook? Especially given that they should already have a home on either Twitter or Clubhouse? One big advantage that Facebook has over Twitter and especially Clubhouse is that it is much more famous and the network effect is easier to scale.
This one email explains Apple. The article does a good job of fleshing out a very interesting email exchange that could well be the foundation of the App Store
What I found interesting
Incredible 15th-Century Japanese Technique for Growing Ultra-Straight Cedar Trees. I love Japan and its culture. This is just one of the many many reasons.
Adobe launched tools to create 3D
Marc Andreessen just had a very interesting interview recently. In response to the question of what advice he would give to a 23-year-old, here is what he had to say
Don’t follow your passion. Seriously. Don’t follow your passion. Your passion is likely more dumb and useless than anything else. Your passion should be your hobby, not your work. Do it in your spare time.
Instead, at work, seek to contribute. Find the hottest, most vibrant part of the economy you can and figure out how you can contribute best and most. Make yourself of value to the people around you, to your customers and coworkers, and try to increase that value every day.
It can sometimes feel that all the exciting things have already happened, that the frontier is closed, that we’re at the end of technological history and there’s nothing left to do but maintain what already exists. This is just a failure of imagination. In fact, the opposite is true. We’re surrounding by rotting incumbents that will all need to be replaced by new technologies. Let’s get on it.
Source: Interview with Marc Andreessen by Noah Opinion
Stats that may interest you
The average age of vehicles in the U.S was 12.1 years in 2020
Minh Quang Duong 