Tag: TikTok

Business

Weekly reading – 11th February 2023

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 11th February 2023

What I wrote last week

Apple had the first revenue decline since Q3 2019. Why I am not worried

Amazon is no longer on Day 1

Business

‘iPhones are made in hell’: 3 months inside China’s iPhone city. As an Apple shareholder, I condone the working conditions at the company’s suppliers. With the bargaining power that Apple has, it can make a difference in this area, especially when the tech giant doesn’t seem to waste any opportunity to tout its efforts to improve everyone’s lives.

EV Startup Vinfast to Cut U.S. Jobs Amid Restructuring. VinFast delivered almost 1,000 cars to the US, only for them to be stopped there because of “software updates”. While cars haven’t hit the roads yet, VinFast is reportedly downsizing operations not only in Vietnam, but also in North America. I used to work for the conglomerate. I am not foreign to the way Vingroup does business and everything said in the article sounds awfully familiar

Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count. Firing employees on a whim, product management by tweets, low morale, lack of leadership. All the things that one can imagine of terrible management are on full display at Twitter owned by arguably one of the greatest business executives that we have seen. What power and wealth can do to a person.

Google employees criticize CEO Sundar Pichai for ‘rushed, botched’ announcement of GPT competitor Bard. The urge to launch an AI tool quickly is baffling to me. I mean, ChatGPT may be cool and offer some value, but it’s still not commercialized. What good does it go for Google to have a half-baked alternative out? Why didn’t they wait to have a working product? This is not a good look for Sundar and his leadership team. As a CEO, he made a mistake in hiring too many employees too quickly. Now, he botched this product launch. And there is a report out there that the company even got the layoff improperly. These make you wonder what kind of CEO Sundar is.

Disney CEO Bob Iger’s potential willingness to sell Hulu is a reversal in strategy. Given the important of bundles to Disney’s streaming business and the subsequent importance of Hulu to the bundles, I doubt that Disney will sell its stakes in Hulu. This interview is just Bob Iger trying to gain some bargaining power and changing the narrative. As much as I was not a fan of Bob Chapek, he is a smart guy (otherwise he wouldn’t be CEO of Disney) and if he and his team thought buying out Hulu was strategically sound, I don’t see how the rationale changed in only a few months between then and now.

Zelle
Net profit per vehicle by car brand
Source: Visual Capitalist

Other stuff I find interesting

How New Ideas Arise. There are two takeaways from this article for me. The first is that ideas can come anytime from anywhere. How ideas come pretty much varies from one person to another. What works for one person may not work for others. Find what works for you. Second, the only commonality is that ideas are puzzles. The more pieces one has, the more likely one can put together the puzzles. Hence, your personal experience in life and what you read matter!

Visual design rules you can safely follow every time. Even when you are preparing for your term paper or a document to your boss, these tips can come in handy

A guide for Van Life in Japan. I found this post inspiring. As a long-time admirer of Japan, reading this blog makes me want to travel to and explore the country even more.

TikTok’s Secret ‘Heating’ Button Can Make Anyone Go Viral. “According to six current and former employees of TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, and internal documents and communications reviewed by Forbes. These sources reveal that in addition to letting the algorithm decide what goes viral, staff at TikTok and ByteDance also secretly hand-pick specific videos and supercharge their distribution, using a practice known internally as “heating.” “The heating feature refers to boosting videos into the For You feed through operation intervention to achieve a certain number of video views,” an internal TikTok document titled MINT Heating Playbook explains. “The total video views of heated videos accounts for a large portion of the daily total video views, around 1-2%, which can have a significant impact on overall core metrics.”

Fragrant fungi rewards Himalayan foragers. “For a few weeks each autumn, fine-dining kitchens across Japan are rich with the aroma of the matsutake mushroom. Japan consumes more than 500 tons of the delicacy in that short window, despite prices of up to 70,000 yen a kilogram. Ninety percent of the mushrooms are flown in, and foragers in exporting countries can earn a significant premium over their ordinary incomes. One Himalayan kingdom has been reaping the benefits. Matsutake grow wild at an altitude of 2,900 to 3,100 meters. Like that other prized fungus, the truffle, these mushrooms are hard to cultivate artificially. So foraging begins with a climb up the mountain path.”

Stats

Average price of a new car reached $47,362 in January 2023

Total credit card debt to a record $930.6 billion at the end of 2022

On average, Americans eat more than 9 pounds of Mexican avocados a year

Uncategorized

Weekly reading – 4th February 2023

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 4th February 2023

What I wrote last week

Banks plan to compete with Apple Pay & PayPal

X1+, a credit card for when things go wrong on travel

Business

Understanding Tesla’s operating leverage. A good post on how Tesla managed to increase its operating margin while vehicles prices dropped

($) Americans Are Gobbling Up Takeout Food. Restaurants Bet That Won’t Change. Quite an interesting trend in the restaurant industry. I have no idea how it will go because my personal experience is conflicted. My wife and I are often marveled at the long line in front of every Chick-fil-A store that we pass by. On the other hand, I saw fast food stores with no line, no car in the parking slot and very few diners. Takeout may increase sales for restaurants, as long as they survive

Aldi, H-E-B among growth leaders in 2022: Report. “Small-format stores are cheaper to build and require less land or space to buy or lease. This allows access to more markets than a larger-format store would. Furthermore, as retailers continue to invest heavily in e-commerce, these smaller stores can act as fulfillment centers for online orders.”

($) Bed Bath & Beyond Used to Be Great. These Two Are Why. Bed Bath & Beyond’s founders serve as an example of honesty, authenticity, frugality and customer orientation. They are not afraid to admit their own mistake, including not realizing the potential of the Internet. At first, when the company’s budget was tiny, the two men used cardboard boxes as trash bins and still make sure both sides of scrap paper are used. I also found it awesome that they finally learned to let go of their creation after being pushed out.

TikTok is driving an offline lift in sales for some brands. Very helpful and interesting examples of how TikTok is helping brands drive sales.

Other stuff I found interesting

First use of Apple Emergency SOS in B.C. may have saved two lives. Apple’s innovation is increasingly proven valuable in real-life crises. Even one of these cases is even worth working on

($) Japan, Netherlands Agree to Limit Exports of Chip-Making Equipment to China. A great triumph for the Biden administration in hampering China’s ambition in this critical area. Without the most advanced materials and technologies from ASML, Nikon and other important manufacturers, China won’t be able to scale their semiconductor operations and bridge the gap to the US

($) The U.S. Consumer Is Starting to Freak Out. Signs of the troubling times to come are here

The highest rail route in northern Europe. “Connecting Norway’s stylish capital with its most picturesque city, the 496km, 39-station Oslo-Bergen railway is one of the world’s most beautiful train journeys.”

The Antidote to Envy. Understanding yourself is the best way to avoid envy

Package Deal: In 1915, Coca-Cola had many imitators. Then it designed a patented bottle nobody could copy. The origin story of the iconic Coca Cola bottle is a fascinating one.

Stats

Mount Olympus on Mars is the tallest mountain in the Solar System, three times as tall as Mount Everest

Customers loaded $3.3 billion onto Starbucks gift cards during the quarter ending December 31, 2022

Mount Washington in New Hampshire experienced wind chill at -108 Fahrenheit degrees or -78 Celsius degrees. Lowest ever recorded in the US

Source: JLL Research
Source: 9to5Mac
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 24th December 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 24th December 2022

Business

Fortnite Video Game Maker Epic Games to Pay More Than Half a Billion Dollars over FTC Allegations of Privacy Violations and Unwanted Charges. This announcement is devastating to Epic Games. Two record-breaking settlements in the history of the FTC that amount to more than half a billion dollars unquestionably hurts. Not only financially but also legally and reputationally. Epic Games has been involved in legal battles against Apple, claiming to fight for developers. Instead, they were caught red-handed. This case shows that Apple has a point in centralizing payments in order to protect consumers, especially minors. I am not saying Apple is perfect. Far from it. But in this case, Epic Games is the worst company on the market that brings an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Apple lawyers cannot have a better start of the week.

($) Supply Chains Upended by Covid Are Back to Normal. “Goods are moving around the world again and reaching companies and consumers, despite some production snarls and Covid outbreaks inside China. Gone are the weekslong backlogs of cargo ships at large ports. Ocean shipping rates have plunged below prepandemic levels. “It’s obvious that freight rates peaked and began to normalize, driven by falling demand and an easing supply-chain congestion,” said Soren Skou, chief executive of Maersk. In November, the shipping company lowered its 2023 forecast for container demand—a proxy for global trade. It now expects a decline from 2% to 4%, from a maximum decline of 1% previously.“

How Mastodon is scaling amid the Twitter exodus. It is fascinating that Mastodon has 2.5 million monthly active users yet is maintained as a non-profit organization by one person only

The Blackstone of Innovation. A quick overview of the Venture Capital business. I’d recommend the Venture Deals book if you were interested in the VC world and key terms that are often mentioned on the news.

Why YouTube spent the money on NFL Sunday Ticket. YouTube wants content creators to spend more time creating content for Shorts. The more content, the more eyeballs and hence the more advertising revenue. Platforms are fighting one another fiercely to keep creators and generate quality content. Even though this deal is not cheap, it does seem to serve YouTube in more than just one way

Invisible asymptotes. At a certain point, every company will have a ceiling that caps its growth curve if there is no change in strategy. Such a ceiling is called invisible asymptote. Eugene Wei wrote a great post on invisible asymptotes of some of the biggest tech names out there.

A fascinating Twitter thread on perfume ads

Other stuff I find interesting

#WorldCup on Twitter: The G.O.A.T.

($) Many Hospitals Get Big Drug Discounts. That Doesn’t Mean Markdowns for Patients. “Under the program, hospitals buy drugs at reduced prices and sell them to patients and their insurers for much more, often at facilities in affluent communities. One participant is the Cleveland Clinic’s flagship hospital, which reported $1.35 billion in net income last year. The hospital doesn’t admit enough Medicaid and low-income Medicare patients to qualify for low-cost drugs under the program’s original requirements. But a quirk in federal law allowed the hospital to qualify as a “rural referral center,” despite its location near the center of Cleveland. Despite the benefits, the program hasn’t resulted in new drug discounts for low-income Cleveland Clinic patients, nor has it caused the hospital to increase the financial assistance it offers to those who can’t afford care. The charity care the main hospital writes off represents less than 2% of its patient revenue, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of hospital Medicare filings.” How much patients would benefit if the government could look into loopholes like this and close them?

TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists. This is very devastating to TikTok and concerning for everybody else. I deleted my TikTok app a long time ago and never regret it even for one second. Stories that surfaced recently show that TikTok gathers a lot of data on user and engages in surveillance tracking. The US government already bans TikTok on government devices. But why stops there? Why not outlawing the service throughout the US? In that case, it would badly decimate TikTok’s ads business and could probably bankrupt the company. That’s not to mention the EU that is even less forgiving on this kind of surveillance than the US. Honestly, I don’t see a way back for TikTok.

The Secret To Better Habits in 2023. A great timely read

Unpacking India’s growth, geopolitics, technology and superpower potential. “I asked him to make the strongest case he could against the growth story. He set the stage by saying India is a vast and diverse country. There is no other democracy of this size and heterogeneity in both a social as well as geographical sense. Rajeev has held a view that the Western countries want India to do well enough to be an attractive market for their own companies but that they may not actually want India to keep building economic capabilities because, with economic size and capacity, India could become more competitive in the foreign policy realm in particular.”

Stats

The EU will grant €1.13bn to tech startups in 2023. Still it doesn’t seem enough in the grand scheme of things

World Cup Final Draws Record 16.8 Million Viewers for Fox

Amazon Fresh is currently operating 44 stores

Servers cost Twitter $1.5 billion a year

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 17th December 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 17th December 2022

Business

How Walmart is pursuing omnichannel profitability. Automation can indeed help retailers like Walmart pursue profitability. Increased productivity and lower labor costs are the key main drivers, However, it should be pointed out that Amazon has been using automation in their fulfillment centers for years and look at what happened to their eCommerce site. Last quarter, their profitability mostly came from AWS and their US operations suffered a loss. Walmart may have a few short-term wins, but in the long run, will the gains from automation persist?

The global microchip race: Europe’s bid to catch up. Even though the US and Taiwan are the two prominent names when it comes to chip design and manufacturing, Europe has the potential to catch up. It is home to a handful of companies that are indispensable to the industry such as Carl Zeiss SMT, ASML or Trumpf. Without them, ASML would not be able to produce extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines; TSMC would not have the equipment to manufacture cutting-edge chips; the likes of Apple would be constrained technologically and consumers would be deprived of the latest advances. However, Europe doesn’t own other pieces of the chip value chain nor does it set aside enough capital to compete with other countries. Most importantly, there is a shortage of skilled labor. Europe can address that problem by aggressively wooing talent and taking advantage of the terrible immigration policies of the US that don’t seem to get better any time soon. The question is: will they?

What the Kroger-Albertsons merger means for their private label portfolio. Putting Kroger’s private labels in Albertsons stores and vice versa is an interesting idea, but it would also come at a cost. What makes private labels valuable to retailers is the exclusivity. Breaking that exclusivity may lead to cannibalization of store revenue and perhaps some unintended and unforeseen consequences. What I am interested in is the bargaining power that the combined company would have over suppliers for their private labels. A roster of private labels worth $40 billion in annual revenue must command a lot of respect.

Bob Iger vs. Bob Chapek: Inside the Disney Coup. Great reporting into the frayed relationship between Chapek and the CFO as well as that between Chapek and Iger. Hiring is hard. The fact that Chapek was Iger’s pick and he personally wrote a public recommendation for him just for Iger to be disappointed at his successor is high-profile evidence of that. Moreover, Christine took a lot of risks by pitching Iger on the prospect of returning to the CEO spot and taking the idea to the board. But she did so reportedly from the place of love. You have to love the place you work for enough to rush to a return from a battle with cancer while caring for a sick spouse. Last but not least, I do think the board and Iger himself have to take responsibility for the mess that Disney has been through.

Visa to invest $5 billion in Africa in the next 5 years. There are half a billion people that are unbanked in the continent. Africa is also home to the youngest population on Earth. The growth prospect is limitless. And that’s why Visa commits this amount to tap into that growth. Apparently, their rival Mastercard shares the same feeling

Other stuff I find interesting

($) California Long Ruled U.S. Shipping. Importers Are Drifting East. “The hierarchy of U.S. ports is getting shaken up. Companies across many industries are rethinking how and where they ship goods after years of relying heavily on the western U.S. as an entry point, betting that ports in the East and the South can save them time and money while reducing risk. The share of all U.S. containerized cargo handled by Los Angeles and a neighboring port in Long Beach fell through the first 10 months of the year to a combined 25% as measured by weight, according to census data analyzed by Jason Miller, interim chair of Michigan State University’s supply chain management department. That was their lowest level in nearly two decades, down from a height of 33%“

New Zealand bans young people from buying cigarettes for life. I honestly cannot think of a good reason to smoke cigarettes. The argument that small convenience stores would go bankrupt due to lost cigarette revenue should not stop a government from looking out for its citizens.

TikTok’s Secret Sauce. An interesting theory but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence to back up.

Stats

US Vegetable Prices Soar Nearly 40%

Only a quarter of US iPhones are sold through Apple

Nov. ’22 U.S. eGrocery Sales Total $7.7 Billion, a 10% Drop Versus Year Ago

Source: unctad.org
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 29th October 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 29th October 2022

What I wrote last week

Uber plans to advertise to riders based on destination data

Business

Forget Netflix and Disney: a local streaming service is king in Indonesia. Vidio is winning because it understands the local audience and what they want from a streaming service.

ESPN, Formula 1 Extend Track With New Rights Deal. Formula 1 has seen its popularity soar high across the globe and in the US in the past two years. Some say that Netflix’s Drive To Survive elevated the sport’s standing. Others say that being one of a few sports organized during the pandemic to entertain folks at home helped too. Whatever the reason is, it’s undeniable that more American viewers know about Formula 1 than ever before. Viewership has never been this high. Next year, the country will host races in Las Vegas, Miami and Texas. There is a strong chance that an American driver, Logan Sergeant, will be on the grid too. The stars seem to be aligned well for the sport I love

($) The Fantasy of Instant Delivery Is Imploding. Some venture capitalists are poised to book millions of dollars in losses. “Along with entering too many markets, they overspent on marketing, with billboards in Times Square and European soccer and Formula One team sponsorships, former finance executives say. During Gopuff’s billion-dollar funding rounds, the co-CEOs had also sold portions of their stock to investors. (Rank-and-file Gopuffers were not allowed to sell shares unless approved by the company.) After they became multimillionaires, they purchased a Gulfstream jet and mansions five minutes from each other along the Intracoastal Waterway in Miami’s Golden Beach. Gola also bought Joe the Jeweler a home in Cherry Hill to replace the one he’d lost when his cash-for-gold business went bust.“

Exclusive: YouTube’s new redesign is built to feel more like TV. Some insights into how YouTube redesigned its User Experience. It must have been a massive undertaking and I’d love to be a fly on a wall of the meetings that led to decisions being made on the new design.

Square sells access to your inbox. No one seems to know if the law cares. Read how Block (Square) collects your email and sells access to said email to hundreds of sellers. The company also goes to great length to circumvent regulations pertaining to consumer privacy.

Apple on iPhones, Chips, Privacy, Working From Home and More | WSJ Tech Live 2022. I like Joanna Stern as a journalist and a tech reviewer. She is smart, funny and knows her stuff. This interview was really good and featured some hard-hitting questions that, unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, Craig and Joz evaded. Their response to Joanna’s question regarding EU mandate on USB-C was more nuanced than what was widely reported on the news. Their opposition to the Metaverse, a concept that Facebook/Meta champions, was noteworthy. Plus, I found it good Joz’s brief explanation on why ATT was introduced. Overall, if you have 30 minutes to spare, you really should check out this interview.

White House hammers economic issues with attack on ‘junk fees’ two weeks out from Election Day. While they are at it, they should talk to AirBnb CEO Brian Chesky on the outrageous fees that hosts on his platform charge to guests.

Other stuff I find interesting

Little rules about big things. Morgan Housel is one of my favorite writers and he struck gold again. “Most financial mistakes come when you try to force things to happen faster than is required. Compounding doesn’t like when you try to use a cheat code. Risk’s greatest fuels are leverage, overconfidence, ego, and impatience. Its greatest antidote is having options, humility, and other people’s trust.”

Voyage of the Gross Even though every other option is better, most of New York’s trash still goes into a hole in the ground. A fascinating piece that describes the journey of…trash in New York

($) The World’s Biggest Source of Clean Energy Is Evaporating Fast. “The water woes of China’s iconic mega-dam are part of a global hydropower crisis that is being made worse by global warming. From California to Germany, heatwaves and droughts have shrunk rivers that feed reservoirs. Hydroelectricity output fell by 75 terrawatt-hours in Europe this year through September — more than the annual consumption of Greece — and fell 30% across China last month. In the US, generation is expected to fall to the lowest level in six years in September and October. It’s a cruel irony that’s forcing utilities to reconsider the traditional role of hydropower as a reliable and instant source of green energy. Dams are the world’s largest source of clean energy, yet extreme weather is making them less effective in the battle against climate change.“

Stats

84% of maternal deaths in the US are preventable

“Only five percent of plastic waste generated by US households actually gets recycled”

One out of four US adults under 30 gets news on TikTok

The FDIC’s 2021 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households also found an estimated 4.5 percent of U.S. households were unbanked

Online spending in Southeast Asia is forecast to reach $200 billion in 2022 and $330 billion by 2025

Source: Reddit
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 17th September 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 17th September 2022

What I wrote last week

Relocation from Vietnam to the US with a cat

Business

JPMorgan Chase acquires payments fintech Renovite to help it battle Stripe and Block. Incumbent financial institutions are sparing no coins to invest in their technology stacks. Capital One has always touted itself as a technology company. JPMorgan Chase has plowed so much money into fintech that the long-time CEO Jamie Dimon is under pressure to justify the investments. But that’s the name of the game. Any company that wants to compete in finance in the future will need to put money where its mouth is

Goldman’s Apple Card business has a surprising subprime problem. Given the lack of disclosure from either Goldman Sachs and Apple on earnings calls, it’s helpful to finally to see some performance metrics of the Apple Card portfolio. The headlines are that more than 25% of the overall outstandings is from folks with FICO lower than 660 and the loss rates are among the highest in the industry. The article did well to note that Apple Card is a young business; therefore, its loss rates may not be fully comparable to other fully established ones. I’d also love to learn about the share of balance from Apple purchases. My theory is that since a lot of people use the Apple Card to break their payment into installments, the lower FICO crowd is responsible for the bulk of such payment plans’ balance. Is that necessarily a good thing? I don’t know. But if these “bad apples” are barred from holding an Apple Card ever again, whoever is left will be good loyal customers.

Apple’s Next Big Thing: A Business Model Change. Apple’s executive team doesn’t get enough credit for their long-term vision, the ability to pivot & execute and their relentless patience.

($) How a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; ‘There Were a Lot of Doubters’. Vicki Hollub sounds quite a businesswoman, an operator and an executive!

How to blow $85 million in 11 months: The inside story of Airlift’s crash. Another one on a long list of examples of how companies collapse due to the “move fast and break things” mantra.

($) Instagram Stumbles in Push to Mimic TikTok, Internal Documents Show. If I were Meta investors, I would be worried. The company commits huge investments, HUGEEEEEEE, to the Metaverse, a concept championed by the CEO which, in my opinion, is very very far from reality and of course, monetization. Its business model built upon surveillance tracking is under pressure from Apple’s privacy-centric, though controversial, policies. Meanwhile, Reels, which is one of the highest priorities, is no match against TikTok. According to the Chief Operating Officer of Instagram, Reel’s differentiation comes from the ease of sharing content. I mean, that’s a very weak point. “Instagram users cumulatively are spending 17.6 million hours a day watching Reels, less than one-tenth of the 197.8 million hours TikTok users spend each day on that platform, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that summarizes internal Meta research. The internal document showed that nearly one-third of Reels videos are created on another platform, usually TikTok, and include a watermark or border identifying them as such. Meta said it “downranks” these videos, meaning it shows them to smaller audiences to reduce the incentives for those that post them, but they continue to proliferate. For Reels users, the result is that often they are shown videos recycled from another, more popular platform. The portion of Instagram users who think the company “cares about” them fell from nearly 70% in 2019 to roughly 20% earlier this summer. On the question of whether the product was “good for the world,” the score fell from more than 60% in 2019 to slightly over 45%.”

Other stuff I find interesting

Good enough. On Twitter and business websites, you see all kinds of people trying to predict the performance of a stock or a business. Some do it with a breath-taking degree of condescension and over-confidence. At work, the phrase “data-driven” which refers to the practice of using historical data to back up a course of action is just overused and bores me to death. Instead, I like what Morgan proposed. Make all the predicting and forecasting good enough and then spend the unused bandwidth on something else. I don’t know, like understanding the industry, the customers or what is holding the company back and fixing it.

Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World. A great perspective by Morgan Housel

Shanghai emerges as China’s semiconductor highland. “In total, the market size of Shanghai’s semiconductor industry reached 250 billion yuan (US$36.95 billion) in 2021, or about a quarter of China’s total, according to Wu. The city has attracted over one thousand key industry players and over 40 per cent of the country’s chip talent, Wu added. Shanghai’s relative success in cultivating a big local semiconductor industry has been partly helped by the city’s preferential policies. To attract semiconductor businesses, talent and investors to the city, the Shanghai authority has rolled out a series of preferential measures, from government subsidies to tax breaks. Even during the city’s draconian lockdown in April and May, the local authority gave priority to semiconductor businesses to resume their production and operations as soon as possible.”

The Oldest Restaurant in Kabul: Where Tradition Trumps Rockets. “During the four decades of war that Afghanistan has been through, the Broot family never left the country. They kept their restaurant open and continued serving chainakito the hungry people of Kabul as rockets rained on their neighborhood, bombs exploded, and regimes changed.“

Discipline is Destiny: 25 Habits That Will Guarantee You Success

Stats

Indonesia, Brazil, Ghana and Suriname accounted for 80% of tropical forest loss due to industrial mining between 2000 and 2019

Top-Ranked US Colleges All Cost More Than $55,000 a Year. BEFORE room and board.

U.S. mortgage interest rates top 6% for first time since 2008

Source: Twitter
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 9th July 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 9th July 2022

Business

Payments “Revolution” — Visa drives a surge in digital transactions. A great interview with the CFO of Visa. In this episode, Vasant talked about how Visa makes money in general and the company’s position with regard to the supposed threats such as Open Banking, Buy Now Pay Later or Cryptocurrencies.

($) TikTok Turns On the Money Machine. “ByteDance’s hit video app is on track to triple revenue this year to $12 billion, threatening Facebook’s hold on social media. TikTok has an edge against Meta that Apple Inc. helped solidify. Last year, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company updated its iPhone operating system so that users have to opt in to let apps like Facebook track their activities as they used other software on their phones. Most users decided not to let Meta track them, a change Zuckerberg has blamed for financial troubles like those in February. TikTok, it turns out, isn’t relying so much on that kind of tracking data. Its artificial intelligence discerns a user’s likes or dislikes largely from activities on the platform, picking up on how long you watch, say, a cat video, a skateboarding clip or lip-synced dancing. TikTok’s algorithms can then match up users with not just content, but advertising too.”

($) Americans Have Had It With Inflation. Consumers are showing signs that spending is not as strong as some companies make it out to be. With damaging inflation showing no signs of abating, persistent supply chain issues and vulnerable consumer spending, the future looks bleak

($) The Secret Sauce That’s Made Slutty Vegan a $100 Million Chain. A fascinating story about a business founded by a fascinating 34-year-old woman.

How the man behind the Apple Store presided over a Spac catastrophe. Ron Johnson is richer and more famous than most of us, but one thing that we haven’t done is to lose millions of dollars in a business catastrophe in a short time. Past credentials are useful as signals, but they don’t guarantee the same success in the future. Just because someone is rich and famous doesn’t also mean that they have the right opinions or can do everything.

Online grocery shoppers spend more but less loyal. “The vast majority of the 45% of consumers who shop for groceries online are omnichannel shoppers. While their monthly average grocery spend is $594 compared with $388 for in-store-only shoppers, online shoppers spend their dollars across a greater number of retailers monthly, between 3.9 to 6.6 stores per month compared with 3.2 for in-store only, the customer data science firm said.”

($) Intel Bets 17 Billion Euros on a Tech Revival in Eastern German. Intel has made a lot of headlines lately with their planned investments. The key here is that everything is just a plan and full of promises. Nothing has actually come to fruition yet. Intel fell far behind their competitors in terms of technology. In the world of semiconductor, it’s very challenging to make up ground. And I wonder how Intel will pull that off while fulfilling their promises to build plants in Europe and Ohio. Or is that the case of, and I quote somebody in the article, “promises are cheap”?

Other stuff I find interesting

How football shirts chart the rise and fall of tech giants. Football is THE global sport. It’s no surprise to see companies craving for eyeballs spend millions of dollars to appear on teams’ shirts.

Layover or nonstop? UCLA Health research says unique pattern of connectivity lets highly creative people’s brains take road less traveled to their destination. About 15 years ago, somebody said something that stuck with me till this day: it’s all a big giant jigsaw. The more pieces you gather, the more likely you can complete the jigsaw. You just need to find the pieces, whether it’s through experience or reading. It really motivates me to read and improve myself constantly. When I read the article, it reminded of that lesson. In this case, highly creative people have the “pieces” required to take the less traveled path. Somehow, their upbringing, their personality and life experience give them the pieces they need to be who they are and think the way they do.

The local news crisis is deepening America’s divides. You can’t make great decisions without being informed. I don’t think national news outlets have the resources to cover everything in every local community. As more regional news outlets shut down, citizens don’t have enough information on their communities; which affect their votes and decisions. And if there is one thing everybody should know about politics in America in the last 10-15 years, it’s that voting matters at every level.

Japan’s shochu capital becomes new hot spot for whisky. “Traditionally known for its shochu, a clear liquor made from grains, potatoes, sugar cane and more, Japan’s southwestern region of Kyushu has become home to a budding whisky industry as craft distillers chase a larger, more global audience. Surrounded by vegetable fields and rice paddies, Shindo Distillery began producing whisky in the Fukuoka Prefecture city of Asakura in summer 2021. The facility belongs to Shinozaki, a storied barley shochu maker founded in 1922. Shinozaki is branching out “because demand for Japanese whisky is skyrocketing,” said Michiaki Shinozaki, who is part of the eighth generation of the founding family.”

Tips for Productivity, Thinking, and Doing. I wholeheartedly agree with this post, especially on the morning routine, the value of writing and the benefits of getting the most important thing done early.

What Is the Pesco Mediterranean Diet? I am actually following the Pesco Mediterranean Diet right now. It’s more about my love for sea food than trying to meet the daily protein intake. It also makes the transition to a plant-focused diet such as Mediterranean Diet easier. If you are looking for a diet that is great for your health, look this up.

Stats

India consumed 6 million tons of meat in 2020

40% of Google users use IPv6

In Zambia, only 10% of the adult population uses a debit card.

FedEx estimates savings of $400 million annually from retiring mainframes

Amazon Prime reportedly had 172 million members in the US as of June 2022

Weekly readings

Weekly reading 25th June 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading 25th June 2022

What I wrote last week

Books on Payments

Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and took away abortion rights

Business

Inside the Reinvention of Albertsons Cos. The over-arching theme of Albertsons’ plan moving forward is to use technology and data to make decisions so that efficiency can improve and so does customer engagement. Grocery is a hard business. Margin is low and competition is fierce. Albertsons said their goal was to have shoppers complete grocery shopping at their stores without visiting rivals’ footprint while offering local assortments. It means that the selection has to be broad, but the stores at the same time cannot expand in size forever. They also need to keep a close eye on costs and margin as well. That would require a lot of data analytics, coordination in the case of omni-channel shopping and great execution.

($) Retailers’ Inventories Pile Up as Lead Times Grow. On top of the ever-changing consumer behavior and sky-high inflation, retailers now have to deal with long lead times in production which make it even more difficult to match demand with supply while keeping costs in check. Hold a lot of the wrong inventory to avoid supply chain and production issues, and you will be punished like Walmart or Target. Be nimble with inventory and you don’t have well-stocked shelves to woo customers. Hard times ahead.

Consumer watchdog eyes crackdown on credit card late fees as inflation threatens to increase them. If CFPB introduces regulations on late fees, it will affect how issuers generate revenue from credit cards. Late fee is a significant source of revenue by itself, but it also encourages consumers to pay off balance to avoid further penalty. If late fees are further capped or even outright banned, such an incentive will go away and consumers may carry more balance. It will increase risks and reduce revenue for issuers. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.

($) Canada to Compel YouTube, TikTok and Streamers to Boost Domestic Content. I am generally supportive of having the right kind of regulations in place to help businesses. Hence, I would be in favor of the Canadian government giving these streamers incentives to promote Canadian creators’ work. I am not; however, ok with a government mandating a preference of local content.

($) GM and Ford, Driving to Beat Tesla, Turn on Each Other. An interesting read on how two iconic American car manufacturers are going at each other for market shares in the EV area.

($) How Singapore Got Its Manufacturing Mojo Back. “In courting factories like this, Singapore has become a rare wealthy country to reverse its manufacturing downturn. The city-state had faced industrial decline, with World Bank figures showing manufacturing falling to 18% of gross domestic product in 2013, from 27% in 2005. Then manufacturing made a comeback in Singapore, rising to 21% of GDP in 2020, according to the World Bank’s latest figures. Singapore has aggressively wooed highly automated factories with tax breaks, research partnerships, subsidized worker training and grants to local manufacturers to upgrade operations to better support multinational companies, among other enticements. There’s a caveat: Singapore’s success has come by automating away many jobs. It has more factory robots per employee than any country other than South Korea. Business executives say Singapore has succeeded because it has a welcoming, low-tax government and a strong base of English-speaking science, engineering and mathematics graduates and manufacturing managers. Relatively loose immigration laws make it easy to hire foreign engineers.  Executives also say they trust intellectual-property protection laws in Singapore, unlike in places like China where they sometimes worry their partners will copy their products.”

Source: Twitter

Other stuff I find interesting

Japan to subsidize TSMC’s Kumamoto plant by up to $3.5bn. Semiconductor companies get handsome subsidies from governments from all over the world. Japan will give TSMC $3.5 billion while Europe hands Intel billions of euros to build a plant there. That goes to show how countries value the strategic importance of semiconductor going forward

Why America Will Lose Semiconductors. A good run-down of problems that America faces in semiconductor. It’s a nice complementary read to the previous link

Friendly fungi help forests fight climate change. “A 2016 study led by researchers from Imperial College London revealed that one particular type – ectomycorrhizal fungi – enables certain trees to absorb CO2 faster (and therefore grow faster) than others. This is known as the “CO2 fertilisation effect”. These fungi live in the root system of a host tree. In a symbiotic relationship, fungi help the tree to absorb more water, carbon and other nutrients. In exchange, the tree provides food for the fungi by photosynthesising. Ectomycorrhizal fungi have also been found to slow down the process of rotting; decomposition breaks down all that locked-away carbon and releases it into the atmosphere. So the fungi, in effect, have two methods of fighting global warming.”

The most dangerous place on Earth. “Nestled on Lithuania’s southeastern border, Druskininkai opens onto a narrow notch of strategic territory known as the Suwałki Gap. Stretching about 100 kilometers along the Lithuanian-Polish frontier, between Belarus in the east and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the west, Western military planners warn the area would likely be one of the Russian president’s first targets were he ever to choose to escalate the war in Ukraine into a kinetic confrontation with NATO.”

($) Erdogan Is Hung Up on the Power One Kurdish Woman Has in Sweden. “Amineh Kakabaveh’s journey from Peshmerga fighter to Kurdish refugee and then Swedish lawmaker has thrust her into her adopted homeland’s standoff with Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is holding up Sweden’s application to join the NATO alliance, saying it harbors “terrorists” — his catch-all label for those with links to Kurdish militancy — and he’s hinted at Kakabaveh’s influence as a particular problem.”. Just an amazing story by Amineh

Stats

Edmunds reported that the average price of an EV exceeded $60,000

Since November 2021, more than $2 trillion in cryptocurrency value has evaporated

Covid vaccines saved 20 million lives in the first year

TikTok had $4 billion in revenue in 2021. Its US-based users spent on average 29 hours on the platform, compared to 16 hours on Facebook and 8 on Instagram

Source: IMF

Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 28th May 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 28th May 2022

Business

Apple Looks to Boost Production Outside China. It’s good for Apple to at least consider operations in other countries to hedge risks. However, it’s not easy to move out of China completely. The book “After Steve” mentioned an episode in which Apple practically had to beg Foxconn to help stand up an assembly line for Apple Watch (I am not 100% about the product in question) overnight because the other chosen supplier screwed up. Foxconn had the resources to do wonders. Replicating such expertise and capabilities in other countries will be very time-consuming and difficult. Plus, doing business in China certainly helps Apple cultivate a relationship with the government. In such a regime, that’s critical.

Cannes: How Japanese Anime Became the World’s Most Bankable Genre. Japanese Anime has incredible IPs. Streaming introduces viewers to content that they had never seen before. Even in my 30s, I am still following some of the anime franchises that I read as a kid. I’d love to explore more if I had the time. It’s not just for kids. Adults love anime too

It’s TikTok’s World Now. Facebook Just Tries to Make People Care About It. The biggest takeaway I have from this piece is that Facebook seems to have trouble dethroning TikTok more than it did any challengers before. Creators still make money on Instagram, but that doesn’t seem to stop TikTok from growing. Interestingly, Facebook had a chance to buy TikTok years ago, but passed. Now, they must rue that decision every day.

Plant-Based Dairy Reinvigorates Milk Category. I do think the popularity of plant-based dairy results from the fact that consumers are more health-conscious. Have you looked at the difference in calorie per serving between meat-based and plant-based milk?

50 years in: Nike’s game plan for winning with women. For obvious reasons, I don’t know anything about women clothing, but it is interesting to read about Nike’s approach to winning this category. Unless there are specific reasons, I naturally support a simple product portfolio. Consumers don’t get confused. Brands can put more marketing dollars and focus behind each product.

Google Takes Yet Another Run at E-Commerce—and Amazon. A super interesting read on Google’s latest efforts into e-Commerce. Based on the article, this time, Google may be onto something. Consumers start to use Google to search for products more than previously, a territory that used to belong to Amazon. E-commerce was also a leading contributor to the bump in search revenue in 2021. With that being said, 2020 and 2021 were great for e-Commerce, but since the economy opened up and folks went back to stores and office, e-Commerce has seen its growth dampened. Whether this trend will affect Google’s effects in the future remains to be seen

Other stuff I find interesting

The Trouble With Lithium. This grim ripping read on Lithium is in line with what I read so far about the element. Demand far outweighs supply, pushing the price to unprecedented heights. The trend will persist for a few years to come. For good measure, even though extracting and producing Lithium have adverse impact on the environment, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative on the horizon.

The butterflies we may never see again in Britain. Super beautiful

The Science Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives. For the life of me, I don’t understand how an 18-year-old who cannot get a beer from a bar legally can buy an automatic weapon and shoot dead 19 people. It’s just insane. Take driving as an example. Try driving after either 3 beers or 2 Old Fashioneds and see if you get a DUI. We ban people who consume alcohol from driving, but we close our eyes at folks who may have malicious intent and try to get a weapon. How does that make sense? Look up how Japan regulates gun possession and usage. Then compare the deaths in mass shootings between the two countries. To be perfectly clear, nobody is arguing to take away the right to bear arms. Just like nobody wants to take away the right to drive. We just want access to fire arms to be regulated and controlled so that the tragedies stop. And I read the 2nd Amendment. I don’t think the proponents of the Amendment understand it well…

Stats

Domestic air fares in April 2022 were up 27% compared to April 2019 and 8% month over month

US online grocery sales in April 2022 declined by 4% year over year

45% of devs that earned more than $1 mil in 2021 were not on the App Store or had less than $10,000 in earnings five years before

US Hotel room rates in April and first two weeks of May 2022 were 10-14% higher than the same period in 2019

Source: STR
Weekly readings

Weekly reading – 7th May 2022

by MQDuongLeave a Comment on Weekly reading – 7th May 2022

What I wrote last week

Apple’s Q2 FY2022 results

Book Review: Just Keep Buying

Business

DTC brands are slowly warming up to Amazon. The ability to tell stories and appear authentic to shoppers on Amazon is hugely important. The commission may cut deep into margin, but Amazon commands the kind of online traffic that few others can rival. Some retailers now use Amazon as an acquisition tool. Sell part of the catalogue on the site, lure shoppers to their own native page and hopefully convince them to buy what is not on Amazon. It’s not as straightforward as it should be, but if you can’t win every battle, you may as well pick the ones that can help you win the war

Amazon Will Close Six Whole Foods Stores in Four States. I look forward to seeing how Amazon’s physical store strategy unfolds. Will it transition all Whole Foods to the cashierless version that Amazon Go pioneers? Will it keep both brands at the same time? Or will it designate Amazon Go as the flagship store brand moving forward?

Snapchat’s flying camera Pixy. Kudos to Snapchat for making a portable, small and allegedly easy-to-use drone. There is certainly a niche market for Pixy: consumers who want to film drone footage but can’t afford a drone or do not want to carry a heavy one around. I am certain that Snapchat will iterate furiously to improve Pixy: longer lasting batteries, higher quality cameras, better integration into the Memories section and more AR effects. Snapchat is already great at software. Hardware is hard, but if it can be great at it too, it’ll be formidable (ask Apple).

Formula One Finally Found a Way to Get Americans to Care. Cracking the America code is fantastic for Formula 1 as a sport and a business. A long-time fan of Formula 1, I noticed the difference after Liberty took over. Prior to the take-over, clips in which experts explain aerodynamics, rear wings or floor of F1 cars didn’t exist. Beautiful charts that discuss where one driver is slower than another in a lap were the stuff of imagination. For a global sport such as F1, it was unfathomable to think that it didn’t even have a subscription app to watch races. The Americanization of the sport is not perfect. I am not a fan of how much Drive To Survive excessively dramatizes F1. Just ask Max Verstappen or a few other drivers about it. Having more than one race in the US is…nice, but the final verdict should wait till we get a feel of how the new tracks are. Austin is a great spectacle that provides awesome racing. Miami and Vegas should offer a gigantic boost in popularity, but I am not sure about the racing. We’ll see. For now, I am happy for the sport that I have loved for the past 17 years.

Mercedes-Benz Says Self-Driving Option Ready to Roll. Mercedes is the first car manufacturer that achieves an internationally valid certification for self-driving level 3. This looks a big progress in this space. From the technology perspective, I am excited about self-driving cars. From a practical perspective, I still don’t grasp the actual benefits of driving a driverless vehicle on busy urban streets. Accidents happen all the time. Reliance on computers just makes careless drivers more careless. Plus, if you are in a car and don’t have to drive it, what could you do in the meantime? It’s not like you can go to the back seat and have a nap…

TikTok’s Work Culture: Anxiety, Secrecy and Relentless Pressure. The older I am, the more put off I become of a workplace like TikTok. Imagine needing marriage therapy because you spend your dinner time with your husband on the phone discussing work.

American Consumers Are Shopping, Traveling and Working Out Like It’s 2019. Among a slew of bad news such as high inflation, supply chain constraints and stock market crashes, this is probably the best silver lining for companies. The question is: how long can this strong consumer spending last?

Other stuff I found interesting

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known. A lot of goof stuff that I wish I had known 10 years earlier

The Arc of the Practical Creator. “A Practical Creator doesn’t view a boring job as a dead-end endeavor, but as an active patron of their creativity. When you’re in this first stage, you must rigorously work on your creative endeavors after your day job responsibilities. This is an absolute must “. I love this website.

Stats

Zenly, a subsidiary of Snapschat that is very popular in Russia, has 35 million monthly active users

Internet companies in China raised $3.51 billion in Q1 2022, down from $15 billion in Q1 2021

The average price for ground beef in America grocery stores has jumped 18% from a year ago

Dr Strange 2 minted $36 million in preview performance, the 8th largest of all time. For comparison, Avenger’s Infinity War notched $39 million and Spiderman: No Way Home did $50 million

US reaches 1 million Covid deaths

Airbnb said more than 800,000 people flocked to its careers page after it announced that employees could live and work anywhere