Bill Ackman is a very interesting person in the world of investing. Below is a great interview with Bill that talks about everything Pershing Square, hedge funds and learning from your mistakes. There are a lot of great quotes inside this interview.
Category: Business
Xiaomi Lamp is Finally Available to Buy on Amazon
The world class Xiaomi Lamp is finally available to purchase on Amazon.
Xiaomi has won many design awards with this lamp and I read that is by far and away their most popular product. It provides a sleek and simple design that can fit into pretty much any office design.
Music Industry – Old Money, No Longterm Thinking, Lacks Innovation!
Now the music business sees TikTok as its tool. After being caught flat-footed by the success of “Old Town Road,” and then bringing it in-house at Sony, the labels decided they wanted some of that action. If TikTok could build the unknown Lil Nas X, imagine what it could do with a known quantity, a star?
The music business used to be first, but now it’s last. Because it is controlled by old people who did not get the memo, who believe they are indispensable and that no one can resist their money.
But isn’t it funny that not a single musical star has captured the zeitgeist of the Minneapolis/Black Lives Matter explosion in a song we all know. Illustrating that reflecting life, and opening up an audience’s eyes as to the way of life, are not part of the equation. In the music business, it’s all about collecting fans and milking them dry. When one of the biggest acts in the business, Justin Bieber, tries to manipulate the system to make his record number one, who in the hell is gonna listen to the words of a pop star?
via Bob Lefsetz
The quote above is from the most recent newsletter / article from Bob Lefsetz. Bob has been a long time music industry journalist and I thought that the above section is by far the best thing I have read about the music industry in the past 12 months.
Lefsetz is right!
The music industry has long been run by 60 year old businessman who don’t under the generations they are targeting. It’s no longer about the music and the industry runs more like buying and selling real estate than an art form at the top.
Pop music struggles to tell stories and really drive emotions. This is exactly why tracks from John Lennon, Elton John, Rolling Stones, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, are still getting very large numbers of plays even with the youngest audiences.
Elon Musk – University Speech – Life Advice to Change Your Outlook
I found myself stumble across this video and this is one of the best speeches I have heard in a while.
It made me step back and ponder.
I hope it does the same for you. Enjoy!
SpaceX Bought An Entire Village When Setting Up Their Original Space Port
Very interesting video about SpaceX and how they purchased a very small village called Boca Chica for their original space port.
Tour of the Tesla Factory with Elon Musk
This has to be the best factory tour of Tesla I have ever seen. Best of all its very information and runs through a lot of different parts of the factory.
Well worth a watch.
In what ways is Google Waymo a threat to Tesla and its Self Driving Technology?
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.
Rocket Science 101 with Elon Musk – Learning Some Basics
Elon Musk isn’t the best public speaker in the world and sometime he finds it very difficult to get the words from his head and out of his mouth before he his thinking about the next thing to say (which actually is exactly what I have a problem with).
However, in this video Elon explains rocket science in such a simple way that even the average person can start to understand some basics.
Rocket Science 101!
WMG – Warner Music Group Starts Selling Shares on the NASDAQ Today
Warner Music Group is going live on the NASDAQ today. Warner are offering 77 million class A shares at $25 a share. If Warner opens up at $25 per share that means they will have a $12.8 billion valuation.
It’s going to be very interesting to see if investors have an appetite for music companies again.
Underwriters for the new offering include Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs. Ticker symbol will be WMG.
Warner Music Group has an amazing catalogue, but I’m very keen to learn more about their recent investments and what other industries they think they can enter, because doing the old record label model just isn’t going to gain enough growth over the next 20 years.
UBER Now Don’t Have a COO, CTO or CPO. When will the Executives Stop Leaving?
Uber have no COO, CTO or CPO as their executive team keep leaving the company.
These changes happen quite frequently at very large companies, but it seems strange they all these positions are now empty and executives keep leaving.
I think Uber has one of the best CEO’s in the world right now and the right person to lead the company in difficult times.
But WHY??? Why so many leavers? Are they not backing the new vision of the company? Do they think there are too many large issues within the company?
Time will tell I guess.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-is-now-lacking-a-coo-a-cto-and-a-cpo-2020-4
What is the fundamental difference between Amazon and Alibaba? They seem similar, but with different business models
Here is the key difference.
Alibaba is a marketplace. They do not own the inventory of the merchandise sold. They put buyers and sellers together. Buyer and seller agree on terms online via their platform or offline.
Amazon’s main business is they own the inventory, and sell directly to the customer.
Both models have their Pros and Cons. Amazon has also turned into a very strong third party seller platform in recently years, but they still like to control a lot of the fulfilment.
Is Alibaba a Trillion Dollar Company?
No.
At the time of writing this article Alibaba (BABA) has a market cap of $545 billion.
Source: Yahoo Finance (BABA)
What Companies Show The Entire World How Much Salary Each Staff Member is On?
The first company I know to publish the salary of every staff member was Buffer. Buffer have long had an open policy on their wage algorithm.
Buffer recently updated their wage algorithm – you can see the full google spreadsheet here.
Will Airbnb IPO on a Public Stock Market Any Time Soon?
Short Answer: NO – I doubt it.
Airbnb was in a good position to IPO at the end of last year, but seemed to push it back. Since then the follow has happened:
- Coronavirus has all but stopped their business.
- Combination of debt & equity from Silver Lake, Sixth Street Partners
- Previously raised $4.6 billion
- Financial Times reported new $25b valuation last week
Airbnb won’t be seeing the public markets any time soon as they really need to focus when the Coronavirus lockdowns start to exit and the world opens up for business again.
Do Music Producers Get Music Publishing Royalties?
It depends.
Producers can receive some music publishing royalties if that is what is negotiated in the publishing agreement. Sometimes high end producers will insist on taking a percentage of the tracks that they produce.
Why Did Microsoft Buy Wunderlist and Then Kill The Product?
Microsoft buying Wunderlist seemed to fit nicely with the business productivity suite that Microsoft has developed over many year.
The Wunderlist acquisition was only $150 million and it sounds like a lot, but it is only 0.1% of Microsoft’s market capitalisation.
Wunderlist fits in nicely with Outlook and running tasks from within email – plus it can go nicely with Office 365 inside a suite of much larger products – it also might have been to hire the amazing talent at Wunderlist.
Why is In-and-Out a Private Company and Not a Public Company?
In-and-Out remains a private company because it is hard to run a public company and there are limited upsides.
Lynsi Snyder is the current owner and she is a billionaire without the stress of being public. Public companies require a lot more regulation.
What is (NRZ) New Residential Investment Corp New Dividend Rate After Coronavirus COVID-19?
(NRZ) New Residential Investment Corp have announced that because of the Coronavirus they are reducing their next dividend payment to $0.05.
This now means that the yield will be around 5%.
Quibi Launches Today! Quibi Will Flop for Sure!
Quibi launches today.
Price point: $4.99
Reason: Immersive video content on a mobile device.
Funding: Quibi has raised over $1.8 billion in funding to date.
I think it’s very easy to see that Quibi is being made by a bunch of executives who aren’t or connected to their target audience. Quibi is built for a younger generation who don’t really want to consumer full length films on their mobile devices only. The younger generation are all about short form content and getting information as fast as possible (eg. TikTok).
p.s. their target audience also don’t have enough money for yet another subscription service at $4.99 per month.
Conclusion: Quibi will be a flop!
Im expecting that we are all sitting here in 12 months saying that they just haven’t been able to get the subscriber numbers that they wanted or needed to hit with $1.8 billion in funding.
Twitch Sees Big Viewership Growth But Needs to Expand Beyond Games to Generate $1 billion in Ad Revenue
Twitch has seen a huge wave of growth in its viewership in most part due to coronavirus. Twitch wants to generate $1 billion in ad revenue and commerce this year, according to The Information. The company reportedly delivered about $300 million in ad revenue in 2019.
The only way Twitch are going to achieve this is by expanding beyond just hardcore gamers. Brands will want to see diversity of content – Games, Music, Chat, Entertainment and more.
Twitch seems to be the first part of Amazon’s grand plan for gaming. Amazon will soon launch its very first game from its recently established gaming studio.