Will Facebook read your brain? 🧠- Community is king ⛓- France Vs Vaccine 💉- NetFlix next level 🕹- Against Advice ⛔️
Top insights from key opinion leaders, every week
Episode #22. Dear reader of The Timestamp, this is summertime. I will make it super brief as an intro. I really enjoyed selecting those key takeaways shared this past week in the Clind app.
Even during their time off, 10s of vetted experts read hundreds of newsletters, books and listen to countless podcasts every week. What they think is worth sharing to thousands of readers in the Clind app. We are selecting a selection of their key insights, their best takeaways, here in The Timestamp, a 5-minute read that can fuel your clever mind.
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Discover this week :
Will Facebook really read your mind? curated by Noemie Kempf,
Why building a community is key? curated by David Guerin,
What is it with France vs. vaccine? curated by Julien Triverio,
What’s next for Netflix? curated by Julien Triverio (yes 2x Featuring streak!),
Why good advice might be … not to follow any advice written by Max Nussenbaum and curated by me (Gilles Chetelat) On Deck power 🙌.
#1 Facebook reading your mind?
Facebook is ditching plans to make an interface that reads the brain published on July 14th 2021 in the MIT Technology Review and curated by Noemie Kempf.
🧠 In 2017, Facebook started exploring the possibility of building a brain-reading interface that would let users type 'directly from their brain', and kicked off a drastic research project.
👩🔬 Research around brain-computer interfaces has made headway these past few years and shown great results for treating medical patients with specific conditions, but it is far from being mature enough to venture into the consumer goods market.
😨 There are also growing concerns about ethics and privacy: what would happen if Google, Facebook, or any company could access your thoughts?
🦾 Facebook announced recently that it was discontinuing the project to focus on a device that would enable typing in Virtual Reality (VR) by reading muscle signals in the arms, which would allow a shorter go-to-market.
💸 This pivot still highlights Facebook's intention to facilitate the growth of the VR industry.
Noemie Kempf, Writes a newsletter about storytelling, tech, and our crazy society 🇫🇷. Pls check her blog at http://thestoryline.substack.com and like 142 followers, do not miss any of Noemie’s takeaways in the Clind app.
#2 Why communities really matter
Community is not marketing: why we need go-to-community, not just go-to-market published on June 15th 2021 in Future, the blog from a16z, and curated by David Guerin.
👯 Community is the “new” moat. Having a community helps protect against competitor companies or products entering your territory.
😩 One of the biggest challenges for companies today: a lack of a go-to-community strategy. -> Why? 🤨 Too often, companies view a community as a nice-to-have, an add-on to the GTM efforts.
🙈 Most people think ”community = marketing”, but community and marketing have different inputs and different outputs.
🙋♀️ Companies with a go- to-community strategy will be more incentivized and equipped to participate in building a better relationship with their customers. 🛠 This means that go-to-community needs to be a first-class competency: one with the team, budgets, tooling, and a spot at the leadership table.
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 How France is really doing vs vaccine
The right and wrong ways to reduce vaccine hesitancy published on July 24th in The Economist and curated by Julien Triverio.
Hesitancy about taking the Covid jab has declined steadily almost everywhere, from 45% in Jan to 20% in June.
2 mains drivers are:
- pace of vaccination: more shots are available and more people taking the shot without side effects help to convince.
- gravity of pandemic: if lots of people are dying, fear of virus > fear of vaccine.
🇫🇷 France example: hesitancy dropped from 60% in Jan to 20% in July as the vaccine program got rolled out (and the daily death toll fell from 300 to 20).
🇹🇼 Taiwan example: hesitancy fell from 66% in April to 27% in June when a serious outbreak begins with 700 people died vs 12 (long before vaccination ramped up).
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 What’s next for Netflix?
Raising the curtain on Netflix’s ambitious third act also published on July 24th in The Economist and curated by Julien Triverio.
Season 1: renting DVD by mail
Season 2: video streaming subscription
Season 3?
Rich markets are maturing and Netflix is looking for growth overseas. Set to win the international battle vs competitors as:
- well position in rich Asian countries (Australia, Jap, and SK).
- few competitors at the international level (vs US domestic) + Warner HBO Max could be delayed by the regulator.
- more European TV shows in production than BBC, France TV, and German ZDF combined.
To attract a younger audience, Netflix is looking into Video Games. As per CEO Hastings, Netflix competes with Fortnite as much as HBO in the attention economy. But cracking into video games is tricky as:
- requires different infrastructure to 1-way video streaming.
- popular games make money through in-game purchases (not subscriptions like Netflix) - Stadia (GG) and Luna (Amazon) examples.
One solution could be external growth through acquisition. The target could be Activision-Blizzard, the biggest US game publisher with a market value of $70B. "Doable" for Netflix which is worth $228B. Another solution could be a deal with Microsoft which has cloud gaming and games studio.
Julien Triviero, Multi-Asset Investment Manager at State Street Global Advisors. Julien helps clients to achieve their investment objectives and meet their risk targets. Julien is sharing a lot more on the Clind app, follow his profile in the Clind app and you will learn a lot with his takeaways.
#5 Don’t trust any advice
Against advice published on July 25th in the newsletter from Max “My Super Secret Diary” and curated by me (Gilles Chetelat).
Love this quote: “What advice would you give to the younger version of yourself?” My answer is always the same. It doesn’t matter what advice I’d give, because the younger version of me wouldn’t listen anyway.
Very fun essay from the author about Not giving advice or not following any advice because
> most people have no idea about why they have been successful or unsuccessful,
> most advice cannot apply to the mass while it holds some truth for one individual.
The largest successes are found by blazing new ways. Individual drive and motivation are too personal to replicate.
Max Nussembaum, spelunker, herpetologist, ultracrepidarian, propagandist, has a hook-hand. Program director at On Deck. He also writes the newsletter http://mysupersecretdiary.com
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