Category: Business

Spotify Buys Megaphone for $235 million – Who is Losing Out? Consumers

It was confirmed that Spotify is buying Megaphone for $235 million.

Megaphone is a podcasting hosting and advertising company – it’s easy to see how this fits into Spotify’s plans for world domination in the podcast market, but it will throw up a lot of concerns on how powerful Spotify is in this market now and how they plan to control all the data around podcasts.

These podcasts should be platform agnostic – like music. However, they seem to be getting acquired and then made exclusive for either Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal or whoever has the most money at the time.

Who is going to lose out? CONSUMERS!

Amuse Fast Forward Charges Artists 12% Interest on Their “Advances” / Loans

Amuse announced the other day that they were expanding their Fast Forward program – which allows artists to have an advance on their royalties of between $250 and $300,000 (MA).

However, all these “news outlets” forgot to mention that Amuse will be charging artists 12% interest on the loans they provide as advances on their royalties.

12%!

I’m struggling to understand why any artist in the world would consider this a good idea!

This also goes against the artist first idea of Amuse. It’s not artist first in any way!

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Announces They Are Currently Changing Their Offices to Adapt to a Hybrid Model in Future

Google seems to think the future of work lies in between the office and working remotely.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that Google were currently making changes to its physical spaces to better support employees in the future. He didn’t specific state what those changes were.

“I see the future as definitely being more flexible,” Pichai said during a video interview for Time 100. Pichai was an honoree on this year’s list of the most influential people in the world. 

“We firmly believe that in-person, being together, having that sense of community, is super important for whenever you have to solve hard problems, you have to create something new. So we don’t see that changing, so we don’t think the future is just 100% remote or something,” he said. 

Pichai said that Google is “reconfiguring” its office spaces to accommodate what he called “on-sites” — presumably, days where employees, who mostly work from home, gather in the office. 

Amuse.io Music – Release Financial Figures for 2019 – $9.5m Revenue – $10.9m Loss!

Amuse.io is a new music upstart that has been getting a lot of press of late. Amuse.io has just released their official 2019 financials and it’s very interesting reading.

Revenues = $9.5 million USD

Profit / Loss = $10.9 million USD Loss

Staff = 49 staff

Cash Liquidity = 208%

This basically means that Amuse will need to raise another round of Venture Capital within the remainder of 2020 or start of 2021 to be able to survive.

Source – https://www.merinfo.se/foretag/Amuseio-AB-5590367016/2kgcyso-1hslk

Tesla Shares See Their Biggest Ever Single Day Decline!

Tesla shares have finished the day at 21.06% down. This is the biggest single day share decline for the company in its history.

Why this matters: Tesla is a company going after a big dream. However, it also seems to be the company that is riding a very high valuation based on very little fundamental numbers being it. Revenues have increase 14% in the past 12 months, but the share price has increased 573%.

My views: I love the company and I love what they are trying to achieve, but it seems like they have become the poster child for a heavily overpriced stock market based on poor fundamentals.

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

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.

Uber and Yandex Spin Out Russian self-driving car subsidiary into its own entity

Uber and Yandex will be spinning off their self-driving car subsidiary into its own entity – MLU BV.

MLU BV will have $150 million in new capital from Yandex, including $100 million in equity and $50 million as a convertible loan.

In connection with the deal, Yandex will hold 61.7% of MLU and Uber will own 33.5%. Bloomberg reported in June that Yandex had been looking to buy all of Uber’s initial 38% stake as an alternative to taking the taxi business public. Uber merged its Russian operations with Moscow-based Yandex in 2017.

What is the Difference Between Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A and BRK.B Shares?

There is very little difference between Berkshire Hathaway’s BRK.A and BRK.B shares.

BRK.B shares were created because Warren Buffett noticed that the BRK.A shares were growing considerable high is cost per share and that these shares were less obtainable by the average retail investor and could only be purchased by either very wealth individuals, unit trusts or mutual funds.

Thus, Warren decided to create BRK.B shares to provide the average investor with the opportunity to purchase shares in Berkshire Hathaway without the huge cost associated with BRK.A.

There are other very small differences, but the above is the only one that really counts.

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.

Why would a public company want to split it’s stock?

Get share price down, for public companies. Still an issue today. Apple at $1000+ makes each share hard to buy for smaller investors.

Match a typical IPO share price, pre-IPO. Start-ups still like to IPO around $15-20 per share, plus or minus. This gives room for a “pop” and a share price still well under $100. If your private, pre-IPO share price is say $40, then a 2-for-1 forward split will get that down to $20, with the same economics for each shareholder and employee.

Apple and Tesla are both splitting their stock at present. This is to really drive some demand with smaller investors and allows them to have ownership over a great number of full stocks.

Wayfair is up over 250% in the past Year and Growing Faster than ever in Home Improvements and Gardening

Wayfair has seen amazing growth over the past year to the point of growing over 250% in the past 12 months.

Why?

Coronavirus has caused a lot of people around the world to work from home and to remain at home. It seems people have been focusing on home improvements and gardening.

Nutanix Shares Jump as Bain Capital Invest $750 million and Dheeraj Pandey Announces Retirement

Nutanix shares have jumped nearly 30% as Bain Capital announce that they are investing $750 million in the company.

Nutanix is a very interesting cloud software giant that has an amazing future. However, its CEO and co-founder Dheeraj Pandey has announced that he is retiring soon.

“There is no better time for me to make this transition to a new leader who can guide Nutanix through its next decade of growth and success,” Pandey said in a statement.

Who is really the richest person in the world? Putin? A Rothschild?

Jeff Bezos is currently the wealthiest person on the planet due to his controlling stake in Amazon. (However, he has a lot of private investments also).

The wealthiest remaining Rothschild has a net worth under $2 billion. Family fortunes tend to become diluted and squandered through the generations. The Rothschild’s wealth is exaggerated by outdated, anti-semetic conspiracy theories.

Putin is certainly very wealthy, but my guess is that he couldn’t exercise full control over all the money he nominally controls without alienating his fellow oligarchs or tanking the Russian economy.

This leaves Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest person on earth.

TikTok Has Already Had Opportunities to Sell to Microsoft, Oracle, Sequoia and General Atlantic – But Decided No

It seems like everyone wants to piece of TikTok before D-Day in the USA.

Microsoft have been in talks for some time but don’t seem to be progressing.

Oracle are now reportedly in talks, but there has been no real confirmation of those talks from either side (plus I don’t know why Oracle would think that it would be a good fit to run a video consumer product).

Sequoia and General Atlantic attempted to buy a majority stake in TikTok last month, but both seem to have failed.

I think TikTok won’t be selling any stakes as it seems like they have had adequate opportunities already, but have decided not to move forward with those advances.

It going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Is Zoho a Private Company or Public Company?

Zoho Corporation Private Limited is an Indian software development company. … The company was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas in Pleasanton, California, and currently holds its presence in seven locations with its global headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India and corporate headquarters in Pleasanton.

Zoho is a software giant that no one is really talking about (purely because it is a private company and not a public company).

How to Submit Your Music on Sony Music or Universal Music Record Labels?

Universal Music and Sony Music don’t have an official website and app for submissions at present. They have always selected music based on their A&R team who keep a close eye on artists and platforms all over the world and then select the artists that are performing well.

If you want to be a major label artist you should focus your efforts on building your own fan base to start and getting your music into the world’s largest stores and streaming services via a platform like RouteNote.

Steve Jobs – Speech About Apple When They Were Weeks Away from Bankruptcy (Video)

Great speech from Steve Jobs just after he returned to Apple.

At the time he gave this speech in the background the company was only several weeks away from going bankrupt.

It was a very important speech for Apple and I also think it was a very important speech for Steve Jobs himself.