Tag: tech

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Business

Creating a Brand is Hard and It Takes at Least 5 Years!

The other day we official launched RouteNote Create under the RouteNote umbrella.

RouteNote Create was originally intended to be a standalone product – but I learnt a lot about starting a brand over the past 12 months and it is getting harder and harder with time to build meaningful brands online. The landscape and places you need to be visible are getting larger and larger and it’s very difficult trying to keep them all up to date and heading in the same direction with the same branding, tone of voice and message.

Note to self – If you are going to build a brand – then make sure it focuses on a new customer type and expect it to take at least 5 years to really show fruit!

Categories
Tech

Justin Kan – Q&A – Solid Startup Advice

I’m a big fan of Justin Kan (co-founder of Twitch). He has been running a YouTube channel for quite some time and here is his most recent Q&A.

If you’re looking for very simple and easy to digest startup advice then look to his channel.

Categories
Tech

How do you check if Google AdSense ad code is inserted correctly?

google ads

I have recently added Adsense to Crenk.

I wondered how long it takes before the ad code starts to show correctly on your site once it has been added.

Answer = random.

If your using the same Google account or the same IP address as you did when you inserted the code then Google won’t show you an ads and you will see a big white blank space.

However, if you get in touch with a friend and get them to test the site for you then they should be able to generally see the ads. It normally takes a few hours after the ad has been inserted, but sometimes it can be faster.

Categories
Music Tech

Synchedin – Music for All Creators – Unlimited Music for Your Videos

synchedin-screenshot-homepage

Creators are always looking for great music – that’s why we created Synchedin! But Synchedin also allows the musicians to finally get a strong revenue share from a licensing service!

The music is fully controlled by Synchedin and is completely safe to use across social media, etc, globally.

For only $4.99 per monthly – creators now have an amazing choice of great tracks and the catalogue is growing daily.

Categories
Business Tech

Wise Goes Public Today on LSE – Great Investment Opportunity

wise logo blue

Wise is one of my favourite companies and has been for a long time.

Today Wise goes public on the London Stock Market – under the ticker – WISE.

They have been a leader in the P2P money transfer space forever, but I think they have a huge number of opportunities in adjacent markets to enter.

Today they will go public for around $7 billion USD.

I can easily see this company being worth $70 billion within 3-5 years.

Categories
Business

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?

Categories
Tech

Venture Capital is a Game of Outliers – Here are the Numbers / Chances of Success

Venture Capital by Numbers:

Venture Capital business is 100% a game of outliers

  • 4000 venture fundable businesses per year
  • 200 will get by top tier Venture Capital
  • 15 will some day get to $100 million in revenue
  • Those 15 – provide 97% of all the returns for the entire Venture Capital category for the year.
Categories
Business

Companies Get Harder as they Get Larger (not easier)

It’s funny… when you start a company you think the larger it gets the easier it is going to be – as you’re able to start handing off jobs and deligate your team.

However, no one really explains to you the larger it gets the harder it actually gets.

Yes.. you can hand off those jobs to the other members in your team and they can take complete autonomy over the decision making, but there are all the little things that no one ever talks about – culture, strategy, team structure, heirarchy, wages, policies on pretty much everything from HR to Finance.

Sometimes a lifestyle business in which the owner can have an amazing lifestyle really is the best way to go!

Categories
Tech

What is meant by NFT?

Non-Fungible Token. Never seen the word “fungible” before? Hint: it has nothing to do with mushrooms, and do not feel bad that that’s where your brain went first (totally not trying to make myself feel better).

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique entry on a blockchain which is not interchangeable with any other (not fungible).

NFT – How do they work.

Categories
Business Tech

Is the S&P 500 Over Weighted in Tech Stocks or Not?

The S&P 500 is an index of some of the leading companies in the United States. The S&P 500 doesn’t push extremely high in one area as its supposed to show a cross section of America.

Here is the breakdown the S&P 500 by Market Sector:

As you can see there is a very broad cross section of companies in all sectors of America. Technology is the leading sector, but it’s not the whole S&P 500.

Categories
Music Tech

Free Spotify Music Distribution within 48 Hours!

RouteNote-stores

There are a growing number of musicians and labels all over the world that would like to get their music live for Free in Spotify! Music distribution to Spotify and other services can take some time and the vast majority of them have poor customer service – however, you should check out RouteNote.

RouteNote is a very large music distribution service that allows artists and labels to get their music live in Spotify and other stores for free within 48 hours. This is outstanding!

RouteNote is free to create an account and artists can upload for free and keep 85% of the royalties with monthly payments straight into your Paypal account or International Bank Account.

Im a huge fan so click here to take a look for yourself!

Categories
Tech

What is Slaps.com and Who Owns It

Philip Kaplan seems to be the owner of Slaps.com, which is a new music website. Phil is a serial entreprenuer who seems to create a lot of startups and then a few years in will get a little bored and start a new project.

Slaps.com seems to be a very early and very basic Soundcloud streaming services, but with basically no features and hip hop heavy.

Categories
Business Tech

Warren Buffett: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Has Changed The World

NEW DELHI, INDIA - MARCH 24: Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire Hathway and Trustee of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation during the press conference at the Hotel Oberoi on March 24, 2011 in New Delhi, India. (Photo by Ankit Agrawal/Mint via Getty Images)

Warren Buffett’s views on Jeff Bezos and how he has changed the world. 

Why this matters: Warren Buffett for a long time has been watching Jeff Bezos and commenting on how amazing the run of Amazon has been. It would have been very interesting if Warren Buffett understood the technology industry at the beginning of the internet as it would have provided a lot of great investment opportunities.

Categories
Tech

How has Xiaomi grown so quickly?

xiaomi phone lineup

Xiaomi is a very interesting company with a very interesting business model.

The vast majority of phone manufacturers around the world create a smartphone with a cost of around $100 and then they spend a huge amount of money on marketing and branding. The company then believes that the smartphone has a much higher percieved value – so they sell it for $400 or above.

Xiaomi doesn’t do this!

Xiaomi is aiming to sell all of its products as close as possible to their costs – as they want to have as many products available in the world as possible.

Once out in the world and being use – Xiaomi then looks to drive revenues from providing software and services around these products, which has a much higher margin that the hardware itself. Thus, driving higher demand, more product adoption and thus more revenues from services.

Categories
Business Stock Market Tech

Asana Files to Go Public via Direct Listing on NYSE – Asana by Numbers!

Asana is one of the world’s most popular project and task management software (we use Asana in our office). A week ago Asana filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Instead of an IPO – Asana has elected to file for a direct listing (which means that they aren’t selling any new shares in the listing only the existing ones).

By the numbers:

  • For the year ending Jan. 31, 2020, Asana had a loss of $118.6 million on $142.6 million in revenue. For the year ending Jan. 31, 2019, it lost $50.9 million on $76.8 million in revenue.
  • The company says it has more than 3.2 million free account users and 75,000 paying customers with a total of 1.2 million paying users across 190 countries.
  • Asana’s biggest shareholders are co-founder and CEO Dustin Moskovitz, Benchmark Capital, Generation Management, and Founders Fund.
  • According to its most recent secondary trades, Asana’s stock traded at a volume-weighted average price of $15.82 in fiscal 2020, $15.98 in Q1 2021, and $17.26 in Q2 2021.

Categories
Tech

Blackstone Acquires Ancestry for $4.7 billion from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, Permira, Silver Lake, Spectrum Equity

Blackstone has acquired Ancestry for $4.7 billion from a group of private equity investors (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, Permira, Silver Lake, Spectrum Equity)

Within eight years those private equity investors purchased Ancestry for $1.3 billion and have now sold for $4.7 billion. Not a bad return!

Ancestry currently has $1 billion in annual revenue from a base of more than 3 million customers who pay for its various family history services.

Categories
Business Tech

In what ways is Google Waymo a threat to Tesla and its Self Driving Technology?

waymo_minivan_HP

Waymo at present has a private valuation that is twice as high as Tesla.

How can this be?

Margins! Tesla is focused on the full production of the car where Waymo is focused purely on the underlying technology with self driving cars. Thus, Waymo will have a Gross Margin that is extremely high in comparison to Tesla.

Eric Schmidt talked about this a lot. How Google and its products always wanted to be focused on providing the technology sub stack instead of the full product as it keeps margins at a high level and thus maximising value.

Categories
Tech

What is the Biggest Tech Company That Uses Contractors or Remote Workers?

Google is one of the world’s largest technology companies and at present the majority of its work force are contractors. Its reported that there are over 90,000 direct employees at Google.

Google’s Alphabet Inc. employs hordes of these red- and green-badged contract workers in addition to its full-fledged staff. They serve meals and clean offices. They write code, handle sales calls, recruit staff, screen YouTube videos, test self-driving cars and even manage entire teams – a sea of skilled laborers that fuel the $795 billion company but reap few of the benefits and opportunities available to direct employees. 

Source: Fortune

Categories
Tech

Discord Launches Noise Cancelling Background Noise Tool (Early Testing Phase)

Discord voice chats have been known to have quite a lot of background noise (especially when one of your friends has a mechanical keyboard). However, for sometime Discord has been working on suppressing that background noise and they currently have a new tool in early testing.

The company stressed that the technology, from Krisp, runs entirely locally and doesn’t share data with anyone else.

Development is still “early” for the noise suppression tech, and a phone version is in development. Don’t despair if the technology still feels rough around the edges, then — Discord still has a lot of work to do before noise suppression exits this test phase.

Categories
Tech

Apple Maps will Soon Show Everyone All COVID-19 Testing Locations

covid-urgent-screenshot

Apple will soon be showing all users where their closest COVID-19 Test location is in Apple Maps. There will be a red medical glyph icon, and a special banner in the Apple Maps card.

Apple has launched a portal for hospitals, healthcare providers and businesses to register as a COVID-19 testing location. Apple will review the application and when approved, the location will start appearing on Apple Maps.

The testing locations will appear with a red medical glyph icon, and a special banner in the Apple Maps card.