Great insights for clever minds: China killing Edtech ☠️- Finding your wave 🌊 - Bitcoin = Zero 💸- Train yourself 🪜- Get back or not? 🏢
Top insights from key opinion leaders, every week
Episode #25. Hi there! I'm Gilles, the founder of Clind and author of The Timestamp. You're getting this letter because you signed up to The Timestamp, a weekly newsletter featuring key takeaways shared by our community of curators in the Clind app. Thank you for reading us. If you enjoy reading this letter, please forward it to a fellow learner.
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Discover this week :
Will China kill its Edtech? curated by Mehdi Cornilliet,
Finding your wave? curated by David Guerin,
What if Bitcoin went to zero? curated by Julien Triverio,
Train yourself curated by Geraldine Trippitelli,
Who’s ready to get back to the office? curated by me (Gilles Chetelat),
#1 China vs Edtech
Life sentence for Chinese Edtech (La condamnation à mort des EdTechs chinoises) published on August 1st 2021 in La Revue Edtech 🇫🇷, written and curated by Mehdi Cornilliet.
The following takeaways have been translated into English for you.
All Edtech companies operating in K12 must now become …non-profit. Tutoring pupils during weekends and public holidays is now forbidden.
Since 2000, the Chinese government was pushing for economic growth at its maximum; it created a side effect by growing inequalities vs education. The cost of tutoring classes became a major part of their budget for families.
In 2016, $30bn had been invested in the Edtech sector… and those investments are not worth a lot now. Some EdTech tycoons fell from hero to zero in China. This move can be seen as logical as some were taking advantage of a market where kids were suffering some heavy stress. This comes as a reminder for investors in EdTech that education is great if grown responsibly.
Mehdi Cornilliet is an entrepreneur in education (co-founder @2Empower, a media group for ambitious students ) & Writer of a newsletter La Revue Edtech 🇫🇷. If you are into EdTech, you should definitely subscribe to his newsletter.
#2 Finding your wave before growing
Lessons of greatness: Find your wave before your market published on July 19th 2021 in the podcast called Starting Greatness with Matt Maples Jr, and curated by David Guerin.
If you want to start something “great”, don’t try to think of a market (at least not at the beginning), instead you should find the right wave first. - Try to picture the future and build a product that fits into that future. The goal is to bring early true believers to your product. One way to find great waves: live in a time machine and get out of the present (Yahoo!, Mosaic browser, Okta, etc.)
The different types of waves that signal major shifts in behaviors: (1) Tech wave (e.g. Moore’s law; sequenced DNA, GPS in iPhones), (2) adoption wave (e.g. smartphones, AirPods, telemedicine), (3) regulatory wave (new laws) **Example: Sharing economy and ride-sharing (Uber, Lift, etc.) combined two waves: (1) tech wave (GPS in smartphones, telecom infrastructure) and (2) adoption wave (# of available smartphones).
The waves ALWAYS come first, not the market.
Summary:
1. You don't want to skip the insight phase. If you start building a product based on customers’ development, you will likely limit the true potential of your product.
2. Instead get out of the present by defining massive/powerful tech waves that you think will change the landscape in the next 5-10 years. 3. Identify gaps in the market of tomorrow (not today). The biggest markets come from unexplored territories.
David Guérin, Principal at Brighteye Ventures. David helps entrepreneurs build EdTech companies via his EdTech focused VC. He is also an On Deck Writer Fellow (ODW2). Check David’s blog at https://davidguerin.net and get to read his latest piece about “VCs falling in love with a startup”.
#3 What if bitcoin went to zero?
What if bitcoin went to zero published on August 7th 2021 in The Economist, and curated by Julien Triverio.
Institutional investors have joined retails and account now for 63% of trading value in crypto.
There are 3 types of crypto investors:
fundamentalists: crypto will replace gov-issued currencies.
tacticians: crypto value will rise as more people invest in it.
speculators/gamblers.
A crash in bitcoin will affect the crypto economy: miners, exchange platforms, payments firms, and other cryptocurrencies.
But contagion could spread to Wall Street / mainstream asset classes through:
Leverage: investors would liquidate traditional assets to meet margin calls as they used swaps to get exposure to crypto.
Stable coins: they are backed with commercial papers, secured loans and corporate debts. A massive drop of bitcoin could trigger large redemption in stable coins that could affect the credit market.
Sentiment: as crypto is more mainstream now, more entities are exposed to it. Thanks to low-interest rates, investors are taking more risk through exotic assets and the correlation between bitcoin and equity has risen. A sharp drop in bitcoin will likely be reflected on equities.
Julien Triviero, Multi-Asset Investment Manager at State Street Global Advisors. Julien helps clients to achieve their investment objectives and meet their risk targets.
#4 Train yourself to be smarter
This is exactly how you should train yourself to be smarter published on December 19th 2017 in the newsletter Accelerated Intelligence from Michael Simmons and curated by Geraldine trippitelli.
Train yourself to be smarter through mental models: eg. Peer review (scientific method).
These thinking tools are used by successful entrepreneurs Elon Musk, Ray Dalio, etc.
Author Michael Simmons collected 650+ mental models showcased in a striking visual 👆
You might already have heard of:
▫️First principles (goal setting) ▫️Moore’s Law (meta-tool) ▫️Deliberate practice (learning) ▫️Subdividing (problem-solving) ▫️Lollapalooza (cognitive bias) ▫️Bottleneck (prioritization)
… Which mental model will you master next?
Geraldine Trippitelli is the founder of a digital marketing and innovation agency called Mazette Media.
#5 Who’s getting back to the office?
Who wants to return to the office published on August 11th 2021 in ABCNews FiveThirtyEight.
100m Americans worked remotely during the pandemic and 52% wish they can continue working remotely at least part-time (mid-2021).
White men are 2x more motivated to return to the office while black and white females are equally motivated. This would be explained because black males have to adapt to a workplace created by white males while females have had to adapt to a man-created environment.
« The American workplace started to integrate women and people of color in the 1940s and ’50s. » Willingness to get back to the office might be related to a population less exposed to micro abuses, harassment, or any other kind of aggression.
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