Author: Steve

Naomi Osaka – Withdraws from the French Open 2021 – Mental Health is Important for All

Naomi Osaka has officially withdrawn from the French Open 2021.

Naomi stated at the beginning of the tournament that she wasn’t going to do after match press conferences because they affected her mental health.

Since that time she has faced a lot of questions (outside of the press conferences).

The vast majority of comments have been negative and focused around the fact that those press conferences are required and part of the job. The French Open then came out and gave Naomi a fine of $15,000 USD after her first round win because she didn’t attend the press conference. Later they also stated that if she continued in this way she would be forfeited out of the tournament and then potentially banned from future tournaments. Naomi also receive no support from any of her fellow players.

Now I think Naomi has taken the steps she probably should have done at the beginning of the tournament and withdraw. This will now give her time to see the correct help and then come back to tennis even stronger!

Leicester City Football Club Win the FA Cup 2020/21 – and Well Done King Power – Leicester City Owners!

On Saturday I sat down like millions of people here in the UK to watch the FA Cup final.

Leicester vs Chelsea

Chelsea came into the game as the strong favourites. However, after an amazing goal by Leicester midfielder Youri Tielemans the foxes took away the FA Cup for the first time in their history.

However, the most amazing thing about the game was the celebrations between the Team, the Manager and the Owners. When we now live in a world where premier league football clubs are owned by billionairres its very rare to see the owners at the games – let alone loved by the fans, the manager and the team! Leicester and their owners (King Power) are loved by all, because unlike nearly every other owner of a premier league football team – they ACTUALLY CARE about the Club, Fans and Community in which their club stands.

Its a refreshing change.

Well done Leicester football club – Team, Manager, and Owners!

Stripe Invoicing – Misses the Point!

Stripe has just launched a new invoicing tool to help its customers create invoices faster and more efficiently. However, it misses the point!

Stripe has offered invoicing options for some time within its standard platform, but now they have decided to segment it out and try to charge for something that was previously for Free (without telling anyone).

Additionally, the invoicing product only seems to be tailored to its current customer base, which is very tech / startup / businesses that require a developer heavy!

Oh… and I forgot to mention that they want to take 0.5% of your entire invoicing price just to provide you with super basic tech you really should be getting for Free.

No wonder this is getting heavily downvoted on ProductHunt!

Better luck next time Stripe. This could have been good, but missed the mark.

Will I get a copyright strike if I submit my song to RouteNote or CDbaby after I upload it to my YouTube channel?

No.

Within these platforms you should be able to whitelist your artist channel or even have your artist channel in their Networks.

In some cases you might be claimed, but all you need to do is to dispute the claims or talk with the support teams at these services and the claim will get removed immediately.

Ideas are just a Multiplier of Execution

I came across this image a while back from Derek Sivers (who started CDbaby). Its an old image, but I think it explain a lot.

A few people have mentioned to me recently that they have new business ideas, but they are scared to tell too many people as they think their idea could be copied. I replied to them stating that they shouldn’t be worrying about the idea – and everything comes down to execution!

Running a Business is All About Your Ability to Learn – Quickly

Life feels like an endless To Do List at the moment.

Its amazing – when you learn about business the courses really teach you about being able to run a small business. They never tell you that as it gets bigger your job becomes harder and harder and its all about your ability to learn a completely new set of skills at every different size of the business.

Man City and Chelsea Leaving European Super League – Football is About Fans Not Greed of Some

Manchester City has officially pulled out of the European Super League – and now Chelsea is going to be the next one.

This league was all about American PE greed!

Americans don’t understand football here in the UK and Europe. Football here is Tribal. Its all about the average working person wanting to watch their favourite team play every week … from big clubs to small local clubs.

Football is about the fans!

Inspirato By Numbers – Revenue, Members, Vacation Homes, Locations, Prices

Inspirato is a luxury vacation home rental startup that simply just lets you pay a subscription to access unlimited rentals for $2500/month or on-demand rates with a $600/month subscription.

Its 18,000 members can book 1,200 vacation homes in 395 locations.

My Thoughts:

Somehow Inspirato is going public at what looks like might be a $1 billion valuation. Based on the numbers there is potential the company has a $45 million revenue. We have to be in a bubble for anyone to consider this type of business thats growing at 30% year on a year – to be valued anywhere near $1 billion.

Coinbase Goes Public – I Expect it to Drop to $30 billion Valuation then Rise Again!

Coinbase went public the other day on the NASDAQ. Coinbase have a very exciting business and I have been trying to learn as much as possible about the Crypto world for the past year or so (but feels like I’m barely scratching the surface).

At one point Coinbase hit $100 billion in valuation, but I suspect that will drop below half over the next few months as the froth from the initial trades die down.

It will be very interesting to see how Coinbase performs over the long term, but it does seem to be a good hedge if you expect cryptocurrencies to be strong in the next 10 years or more.

Prediction – it drops below $30 billion in market cap and then it starts to climb again.

Xiaomi EV is Coming Soon and Im Excited

Xiaomi entering the EV market.

I think Xiaomi is one of the most interesting companies in the world. Xiaomi has managed to develop a huge portfolio of products with the aim of selling them with low margins to gain as much market share as possible and then make most of their margins from software based services for these products.

Xiaomi has now announced that they are going to spend $10 billion USD over the next 10 years to manufacturing electric cars, embarking on its biggest-ever overhaul to enter China’s booming EV market.

Xiaomi didn’t specifically state whether they were going to develop the software for these EVs or develop the entire Car (much like Tesla).

I would assume they will go down the Tesla route to market and will develop an amazing EV.

Investors With Inflated Ego

Do you need to have a big ego to be an investor?

I have had an experience for a long time now with one investor who for the most part is your perfect type of investor (silent and then helps when required). However, the only problem is that they tend to over inflate their involvement to everyone they know (even to the point of flat out lies), which then end up making their way back.

Why?

Why can’t some people just be happy with what they have? Why can’t they simply say they have got the best investment of their lives and they didn’t even need to do anything apart from be in the right place at the right time with a little bit of money at Seed stage?