Please accept our apologies 🙏- How to get rich 💵-China vs Tech 🇨🇳- NFTs for fans 🦄- Lebron James's Space Jam 🏀 - Macroeconomic outlook 🌎
Top insights from key opinion leaders, every week
Episode #21. Dear reader of The Timestamp, pls accept our apologies for disturbing your summertime when most of you are on vacation. We curate this newsletter so that it may be one of the only few reads you can enjoy while taking some time off. Inspiration and new ideas are always welcome when your mind is free.
This week, you will get access to a new dose of weekly takeaways brought to you by our gentle verified users of the Clind app. Even during their time off, these experts read hundreds of newsletters, books and listen to countless podcasts every week. What they think is worth sharing is here in The Timestamp, a 5-minute read that can fuel your clever mind.
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Discover this week :
How to get rich now written by Paul Graham and curated by JF Marti,
How China’s communists are taking control of tech curated by Julien Triverio,
NFTs for creators and true fans curated by Christian Riedi,
LeBron James as a business from me (Gilles Chetelat),
Should we get worried about the economic outlook curated by Julien Triverio (yes 2x featuring this week > Follow takeaways from Julien in the Clind app ).
#1 How can you get rich in 7/8 years?
How people Get Rich Now published on April 2021 in Paul Graham’s blog and curated by JF Marti.
In 1982 the most common source of wealth was inheritance. Of the 100 richest people, 60 inherited from an ancestor. By 2020 the number of heirs had been cut in half, accounting for only 27 of the 100 biggest fortunes.
1. Part of the reason it's getting easier to start a startup is social. Society is (re)assimilating the concept. If you start one now, your parents won't freak out the way they would have a generation ago.
2. It's easier to start a startup now as it's cheaper. Technology has driven down the cost of both building products and acquiring customers.
3. The companies themselves are more valuable because newly founded companies grow faster than they used to.
This trend has been running for a long time. IBM, founded in 1896, took 45 years to reach a billion dollars in revenue. Hewlett-Packard, founded in 1939, took 25 years. Microsoft, founded in 1975, took 13 years. Now the norm for fast-growing companies is 7 or 8 years.
Jean-François Marti is the founder of Nealite now part of PwC. He is also an author and expert in Design Thinking; you can read and subscribe to his newsletter 🇫🇷 “7 about” on Substack here; a weekly newsletter about business and tech he writes with 4 hands with his wife.
#2 China vs Tech
China’s communists take control of tech on July 10th 2021 in The Economist and curated by Julien Triverio.
Didi, a Chinese ride handling firm with 493m users (more than Uber) in China, Brazil, and Mexico, was listed in NY on June 30th; they raised cash from global investors to be valued at $68B. Recently Didi was banned from mobile app stores in China, as they violated rules on collecting personal data according to the Chinese regulator.
➡️ warning sent to all investors and anyone hoping to do business in China.
Even though Didi has foreign shareholders, cosmopolitan executives who worked in US firms, with shares listed in the US and HK, the Chinese regulator message is clear: powerful tech firms must defer to Communist Party, bosses should keep quiet (poke Jack Ma) and foreign investors rights can be violated.
Optimistic view: it is only a threat and a political theater, for the Chinese government to gain control over large tech firms or specific sectors e.g. banks...
But this time may be different, foreign investors lost billions of $ and may be less keen to supply capital to China as a higher risk of state intervention/regulator. Chinese entrepreneurs will then have to rely on less sophisticated mainland markets for fresh cash.
Julien Triviero, Multi-Asset Investment Manager at State Street Global Advisors. Julien helps clients to achieve their investment objectives and meet their risk targets.
#3 NFTs for true fans and creators
NFTs and a thousand True Fans on Feb 27th 2021 in the a16z blog and curated by Christian Riedi.
🤝 The news is that the internet is trending back to Kelly’s vision: creators now connect directly to fans, with social platforms capturing most of the value by playing the intermediaries.
🔒 Crypto and specifically NFTs can accelerate the trend of creators monetizing directly with their fans. Social platforms will continue to be useful for building audiences (although these too should probably be replaced with superior decentralized alternatives), but creators can increasingly rely on other methods including NFTs and crypto-enabled economies to make money.
🔐 NFTs are blockchain-based records that uniquely represent pieces of media. The media can be anything digital, including art, videos, music, gifs, games, text, memes, and code. NFTs contain highly trustworthy documentation of their history and origin and can have code attached to do almost anything programmers dream up (eg: ensures that the original creator receives royalties from secondary sales).
3 reasons why NFTs offer fundamentally better economics for creators:
1️⃣ Removing rent-seeking intermediaries.
2️⃣ Enabling granular price tiering. Advertising money is one size fits all, newsletters and substack is one step beyond focusing on hardcore fans vs you can -with NFTs- finetune the pricing to the demand.
3️⃣ Making users owners (CAC -customer acquisition cost- reduced to zero ?). Look at the development of the blockchain without any marketing done around this.
Christian Riedi, Business Angel & Writer at his newsletter Le Wrap Up 🇫🇷. x-Directeur Développement @TF1 with 15 year experience in media. You should check his newsletter as well if you like curation.
#4 LeBron James as a business 🏀
LeBron’s Billion Dollar Business on July 14th 2021 in Huddle Up and curated by me (Gilles Chetelat).
Lebron James and Maverick Carter founded together “the Springhill Company”, focusing on content entertainment business development and production (2020). 💵 Raised last year (2020) $100m and would now be discussing a sale to Nike at a $750m valuation
The company is a combination of 3 businesses:
> a production company founded in 2007, Springhill entertainment, having a TV show (The Wall) on NBC and releasing the movie Space Jam, a new legacy starring Lebron James,
+ a marketing agency delivering “brand and culture consultancy”,
+ a content company called “Uninterrupted LLC” providing athletes a platform to share their stories”.
The company has experience working in partnerships with the world’s biggest brand and platforms (Netflix, Disney+, Universal, Audible for TV). They also created a unique IP that they monetize across content, merchandise, and events.
Whether it happens or not, it is interesting that Nike explores diversifying into studio production where they do not have much experience.
Gilles Chetelat, Founder at Clind, born on an island 🏝, raised close to volcanos 🌋, and building Clind for clever minds. I enjoy reading less to learn more.
#5 How is our economy?
Why investors are worried at profit squeeze in 2022 published on July 17th 2021 in The Economist and curated by Julien Triverio (Bravo 2x featuring this week).
In aggregate, public companies are expected to reveal the largest increase in profits since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-09...but the outlook is not looking bright as concerns emerged about GDP growth + rising costs = profit squeeze.
Evidence of GDP slowdown:
PMI (a marker of activity) fell in June - Global retails sales going sideways since March peak,
China already slowing down (emerged from lockdown sooner than the rest of the world),
Rising costs: supply bottlenecks pushed up prices for inputs e.g. semiconductors,
Wages are the biggest part of a firm's costs and evidence shows a tight labor market. The obvious solution: raise prices... but companies tend to change prices only once a year (except food/petrol) as they are mindful of losing clients.
But profits squeeze might be avoided if we see a bumper infrastructure bill in the US, more policy stimulus in China, easing bottleneck supply. Nice to know: Cyclical companies (such as oil, mining, and heavy industry) are the main contributor to change in earnings forecasts as they have stable costs but large variation in sales leading to profits rise and fall.
Julien Triviero, Multi-Asset Investment Manager at State Street Global Advisors. Julien helps clients to achieve their investment objectives and meet their risk targets.
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