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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Yes Theory – Not Posting – But This Video Explains (Video)

Yes Theory is a YouTube channel that tries to push people out of their comfort zones to do something amazing.

Most of their videos are based around travel, but during the Coronavirus it has been a little difficult for them to produce the videos they would normally want to do.

Here is a quick explanation from Yes Theory on why they haven’t been posting and what are their next plans.