Category: Tech

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.

How has Xiaomi grown so quickly?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How much can you earn from a Spotify podcast?

Podcasts are completely free on Spotify at the moment. Thus, Spotify won’t pay you any royalties no matter how many times your podcast is played or downloaded.

How Do I Make Money on Podcasts?

Advertising / Sponsors is the main way to monetize a podcast at present. You will need to create a podcast with listeners and then go out and find Sponsors.

Synchedin – Royalty Free Music for YouTube Video Creators

Synchedin is a sync licensing service that lets creator subscribe and use any audio track in the catalogue in the videos they create on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and more.

Key Selling Points:

  • Affordable price for all creators ($4.99 per month or $49.99 per year)
  • Unlimited Downloads
  • Unlimited Commercial License (any project worldwide in perpetuity)
  • Royalty Free
  • Known Independent Artists
  • Claims Control – Directly partnered with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, to be able to release claims if required.

If your looking for royalty free music for your videos then take a look at Synchedin. Its great value for money and will allow you to make more money and focus more on the videos you are creating.

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.

Notion – How Do Medium and Large Businesses Use Notion?

Notion is an amazing new product that has been growing in popularity very quickly. If you have never used Notion it is a Wiki, Notes, Docs and To List manager all in one product. Notion allows customer to use the service in whatever way they choose and it’s a completely customisable toolset to meet each persons needs.

Notion is all run by a very small team at present of around 50 people and worth a valuation of around $2 billion.

At my company we have started to use Notion as we needed an internal wiki as our company has been growing very quickly from around 30 staff to now 80 staff. Notion provides a great place to have staff members collaborate on documents and organise as much information as possible.

I have been wondering for some time how other medium and large companies are using Notion? However, there seems to be very little information about this online at present.

If you have been using Notion at your organisation I would love to hear how you have been using the product to benefit collaborate, communication and transparency.

What are my Top 3 Affiliate Network Sites in 2020?

There are three main affiliate sites that standout at the present and they are:

However, that being said a lot of big companies have start putting their own affiliate programs into their own hands as they want to control the relationships with the websites and not leave it to affiliate networks, which they have been doing for so long.