Category: Tech

Telstra Ventures – Bullish on the Chinese Technology Sector and Private Companies in China

Even though there has been a huge crackdown in the Chinese Tech companies – it seems like there are still many Venture Capital firms that are bullish on the future of the Chinese Tech sector.

One venture firm that is looking for more opportunities is Telstra Ventures. Telstra Ventures is the venture capital arm of Telstra – Australia’s largest telecoms company.

Telstra has been investing in China for the past six years. It now counts three Chinese unicorns in its portfolio.

Keep an eye on Telstra Ventures investments as it seems like their research is finding some of the best opportunities in the Chinese Tech sector.

Apple Acquires Classical Music Streaming Service – Primephonic – Dedicated Classical Music App Coming Soon from Apple

Apple has announced that they have acquired Primephonic, the classical music streaming service.

Apple Music now plans to launch a dedicated classical music app new year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface with more added features. It will be interesting to see if Apple are able to take Primephonic to a more mainstream audience – and how will this dedicated app be differentiated from the standard Apple Music app, which obviously includes the classical music found in Primephonic and far more.

Primephonic is no longer available for new subscribers and will be taken offline beginning September 7.

Apple says that, when it launches, its new dedicated Apple Music Classical experience will offer “the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search capabilities by composer and by repertoire, detailed displays of classical music metadata, plus new features and benefits”.

In the meantime, current Primephonic subscribers will receive six months of Apple Music for free, including its library of Lossless and high-resolution audio, as well as hundreds of classical albums in Apple Music’s Spatial Audio.

Charles Hoskinson and Cardano Live Stream Updates

Charles Hoskinson is a celebrity in the crypto world. He has been live streaming on YouTube for years now and I have been learning a lot from watching all his videos over the past few months.

If you want to learn about the crypto world and specifically about Cardano and the progress on their platform, then take a look at his YouTube channel.

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

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.

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

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.

Wise Goes Public Today on LSE – Great Investment Opportunity

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.

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.

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.

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.

Spotify Acquires Locker Room – Watch Out Clubhouse!

Spotify Acquires Locker Room and Announces Plans for a New Live Audio Experience

“Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we’re excited that soon, we’ll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform,” said Gustav Söderström, Chief Research & Development Officer at Spotify. “The world already turns to us for music, podcasts, and other unique audio experiences, and this new live audio experience is a powerful complement that will enhance and extend the on-demand experience we provide today.” 

This makes perfect sense for Spotify and an area that I’m sure they are going to be strong in.

Clubhouse has performed well because everyone has been in lockdown, but I’m not sure it will perform as well on its own over the long term as people get back to their normal lives at the end of the summer.

Twitter Becoming More Innovative! $300 billion Market Cap inside 10 Years!

I have found myself Tweeting a lot more over the past couple of months and getting more engagements and interactions on the platform. There seems to be something in the water at Twitter at the moment – as they seem to be going through a big change in innovation and launching more and more product (Twitter Spaces is a great example of this).

I would love to see Twitter Space become its own standalone app (as currently it is quite hard to find who is talking, when and where). Twitter also recently acquire a Newsletter company, so it seems like they are now trying to make a conscious effort to push through monetization for creators in all shapes and forms.

Great moves overall… Im very bullish on Twitter over the next 10 years.

(at the time of writing this Twitter has a $48 billion market cap with $3.7 billion in revenues over the last 12 months). In 10 years I can easily see Twitter being a $300 billion market cap company.

Justin Kan – Killing it on YouTube with his Business Tips

Justin Kan (Co-founder of Twitch and Justin.tv) has started to vlog on YouTube with handy business tips. Justin has had a lot of adventures with Twitch and beyond and its great to see him giving something back.

Plus, these videos are actually entertaining, short, and provide a recap at the end (which is great).

Keep up the good work Justin!

Synchedin Sound Effects Live – Royalty Free Sound Effects for All Creators

Synchedin is our licensing platform for creators of all shapes and sizes.

Synchedin Sound Effects is now live – https://synchedin.com/sound-effects – we have thousands of Sound Effects being added – in both CC0 and Subscription packages.

Costs:

  • $3.99 per month – standard subscription
  • $39.99 per year – standard subscription
  • $3.60 per month – if referred by affiliate program
  • $36.00 per year – if referred by affiliate program

Key Selling Points:

  • CC0 (free downloads) and Royalty Free assets (paid subscription downloads)
  • Affordable price for all creators
  • Unlimited Downloads
  • Unlimited Commercial License (any project worldwide in perpetuity)
  • Community lead – See more information on this below

Affiliate Program:

The affiliate program allows any account to refer a friend. The Referrer will receive 10% of the subscription fees for the life of the subscription (percentage can change). Referree receives a 10% discount if they use a referral code (to insentivise using a referral code).

Sourcing SFX:

People can apply to Synchedin as a contributor. Once approved by the Synchedin team, they can add to the sound effects catalogue. The Synchedin team are also adding CC0 sound effects monthly i.e. NASA sounds, Presidential Speeches etc.

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.