There aren’t many business books that tell you to fire your customers. But there should be. Enterprise value > revenue was a big theme on this week's pod along with more conversation about the huge shifts happening in how consumer startups make money and get financed. I even got a John Malone fax story in. Hope you enjoy, and please send us feedback and share your thoughts via a review.... Read more ›
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By the time Jonathan Greenblatt jumped on the phone at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time this Wednesday, he had already made the rounds on CNN, CNBC and MSNBC. It had been a high blood pressure day for the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League. And that was before X owner Elon Musk fired off the latest in a barrage of tweets taking direct aim at “Jonathan at ADL,” whom... Read more ›
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Chatter around initial public offerings appears to be enticing investors to bid for shares of private companies on secondary markets, but not always the price they’re willing to pay for those shares. Caplight, which tracks private markets, said the dollar value of bids to buy shares of pre-public companies more than doubled this year through August, compared with the same period last year. Offers to sell shares were largely unchanged.... Read more ›
15
For more than a decade, the Raine Group has wielded its connections—especially to SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son—to land big deals and punch above its weight on Wall Street. Next week, one of the most hotly anticipated initial public offerings in years will serve as the latest test of their partnership. Raine holds a flagship position on SoftBank-owned Arm Holdings’ blockbuster offering, which could be a coup for a bank that... Read more ›
3
A U.S. government probe of a high-risk “trading site” called MyForexFunds, which the government has accused of operating a Ponzi scheme, has entangled others from the fintech industry. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, during an investigation of MyForexFunds that covered a period between late 2021 and late 2022, subpoenaed Deel and Coinbase for information about payments between the services, according to a court document seen by The Information. Read more ›
17
So much for business as usual. The abrupt ouster of Dave Clark as CEO of Flexport is not just a story about the startup world rejecting a big tech (in this case Amazon) executive. It’s not just a story about a founder who regretted stepping aside, who probably didn’t love the life of a venture capitalist and decided to jump back in. It’s really a story about how the playbook... Read more ›
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Dave Clark knew something was off when the executive chairman of Flexport, Ryan Petersen, showed up on the video call on Wednesday with Robert Swan, a board member at the freight forwarder. Clark—a former star Amazon executive whom Petersen had lured to Flexport to become its CEO last year—had expected Petersen to be on the call by himself. Petersen and Swan quickly broke the news to Clark: Wednesday was his... Read more ›
19
A decade ago, companies tapped college students to hand out t-shirts, rep their gear (think: wearing a Red Bull backpack to class), and give out flyers on university campuses. Now, many of these college ambassador programs are turning college students into mini influencers. For beauty company Clinique, for example, students create and post content on Instagram and TikTok to “create buzz” about its products. And they must have a modest... Read more ›
14
Welcome back!For months I’d heard murmurings about Midjourney, a little artificial intelligence image generator company that had grown to almost 15 million users and hundreds of millions in revenue without any venture funding. I found that the company is also profitable, a major feat for a bootstrapped startup. (Read my profile of the startup and its eclectic founder, David Holz.) I also discovered that Discord, a gaming chat valued at... Read more ›
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Dave Clark, a veteran Amazon executive who helped transform the company into a logistics juggernaut, made a huge splash last summer when he announced he was joining Flexport, a startup looking to shake up the old school freight business that had ballooned to an $8 billion valuation with backing from SoftBank and Andreessen Horowitz. But Clark, who had earned a reputation as a big spender and bold risk taker at... Read more ›
3
The one constant of 2023 has been a sense of accelerating change as media businesses shift from distributing content through intermediaries such as cable providers to engaging directly with consumers. Change alone creates uncertainty. Change in areas where recent attempts to navigate a transition have largely failed is scary for managers and investors alike. The situation reminds me of the final moments of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” when... Read more ›
3
In the race to win the large-language model race, one big tech name has not surfaced as a contestant: Apple. Until now.My colleague Wayne Ma reported on Wednesday that Apple created a team four years ago, long before the current generative AI hype cycle, to develop large-language models. In other words, Apple may not be as much of an LLM laggard as people thought.That shouldn’t be surprising, given that Apple... Read more ›
90
After years of anticipation, a trial next week in Washington, D.C., will attempt to answer a critical question: Did Google break antitrust laws by striking deals with companies like Apple and Samsung to make its search engine the default on their products? Those business arrangements are expected to be at the heart of the 10-week trial, which will shed new light on Google’s path to dominating the search market and... Read more ›
0
The Inflation Reduction Act was meant to keep companies like Huayou Cobalt, a leading Chinese supplier of battery-grade nickel to Western carmakers including Tesla, Ford and Volkswagen, out of the U.S. battery supply chain. But the company is attempting to break into the U.S. market anyway and qualify for IRA tax credits.In a conversation this week, an executive from Huayou’s U.S. strategy team provided one of the clearest glimpses yet... Read more ›
27
Behind the scenes of its much-anticipated initial public offering, SoftBank-owned chip designer Arm has pushed a clear message to skeptical analysts and investors: Growth is coming soon. The company told investment banking analysts last month in Cambridge, England, that its recently flat revenue growth would re-accelerate over the next few years after it hiked royalty fees by about 40% on smartphone companies using a new version of its chip technology,... Read more ›
2
Memo to would-be CEOs: Next time a company founder approaches you about taking the reins from them, run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. As we were reminded on Wednesday, when former Amazonian Dave Clark said he was yielding the top job at freight forwarder Flexport to founder Ryan Petersen, successfully filling a founder’s shoes involves more than ensuring they’re the right size. Clark joins a long... Read more ›
0
Clubhouse, after laying off half its staff in April to “reset” the company, on Wednesday revealed a long-awaited revamp. It’s updating the app to feature voice-only group chats with friends or friends of friends that happen asynchronously. The live, public audio groups that Clubhouse popularized during the pandemic shutdowns aren’t going away, but they’ll no longer be a primary focus for users. The news isn’t a total surprise: The app... Read more ›
34
Apple has been expanding its computing budget for building artificial intelligence to millions of dollars a day. One of its goals is to develop features such as one that allows iPhone customers to use simple voice commands to automate tasks involving multiple steps, according to people familiar with the effort. The technology, for instance, could allow someone to tell the Siri voice assistant on their phone to create a GIF... Read more ›
63
Crypto firm Genesis, whose lending unit filed for bankruptcy in January, said last week that its parent company, Digital Currency Group, and a committee of creditors had tentatively agreed to a restructuring deal that would be a big step toward paying back customers. But there’s been a lot more going on behind the scenes.Crypto exchange Gemini, which is the biggest Genesis creditor, has been quietly pitching an alternative plan to... Read more ›
0
In the past two months, the number of people using a Discord server dubbed Pika has quietly grown from zero to more than 160,000. Thousands of users post requests such as, “a sleek, electric car silently glides across the screen against a backdrop of futuristic cityscapes” and “clouds move with breeze.” The server spits back three-second AI-generated video clips in return.The startup hasn’t gotten much press attention, but it’s gotten... Read more ›
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Most popular sources
Business Insider
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26% 4 |
Tech Wire Asia
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26% 10 |
Eurogamer.net
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5% 2 |
The Verge
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5% 0 |
Android Authority
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4% 1 |
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30.11.2024 02:41
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