I find it incredibly ironic that it took me about 30 seconds to go to the author's profile, see him plaster all the social media platforms we can reach him on. Went to his Instagram and could tell where he lives, where's staying at when he travels, that he enjoys walks with his mom in Centennial beach in Delta, BC and what he does for hobbies.
All this in under a minute and yet here we are panicking over a Russian Company that can do whatever it wants with your face pictures.
> I've been a journalist, analyst, and corporate executive, and have chronicled the rise of the mobile economy.
Thats because he needs to be able to be contacted to gain outsized benefits from society. Writing about this stuff "first" gets you tapped for corporate executive roles or lucrative expert witness roles in judicial proceedings. It is called "thought leadership"
He is much more objective about doing this than malleable people fearing missing out
Sanctions imposed by the U.S that hold no merit according to WTO or International law aren't even legal and are in fact considered an act of war. The only crime committed here is by the U.S.
Meng's arrest is for actions she allegedly took to help Iran evade sanctions years ago, during the period in which U.N. sanctions on Iran were in force.
Like the numbers investors saw for Snap before it’s IPO and it’s not doing so well right now. This 120B valuation doesn’t make sense regardless of the numbers. Especially considering they just did a bond sale with an 8% coupon. What company worth 120B sales bonds with an 8% coupon? Absurd tech bubble with ridiculously valued “unicorns”
8% on an 8 year coupon for $1.5B sounds like a heck of a deal for a growth company relative to raising another round. That's just around $2.8B paid back 8 years from now. If the company modestly triples from their current value over 8 years, that's a $1.7B savings.
Typical problem of "path to least resistance" which is also the reason Amazon succeeded so well by recommending products ( Netflix does the same with show recommendations) We are by nature prone to take the path that requires the least effort so Cooking vs Ordering food ( which arguably has been made a LOT easier with the likes of Postmates,foodora, Uber eats etc...) means that people will have a tendency to order food instead of cook. Especially when you consider the amount of competition among these food delivery companies and the discounts/promotions they throw at users to retain their business.
I'm currently reading a book called "Financial Shenanigans" and I'd highly recommend it. It's about account shenanigans companies do to make their business seem more profitable than it really is. Not sure if this applies here but interestingly there's a section that discusses IPO's and how investors should be very careful when companies decide to do an IPO through a M&A (Merger and Acquisition) instead of the usual IPO because it circumvents a lot of the SEC scrutiny that they'd normally be subject to in a normal IPO. Found it interesting that SAP acquired Qualtrics a few days before their IPO. Anyways just food for thought.
I think what you're referring to is a reverse merger instead of an IPO -- This is entirely different, just a standard merger transaction. Reverse mergers are when a private company that is trying to go public (often with shaky financials) "merges" with a company that is already public, usually on some OTC board somewhere. This process avoids the scrutiny of the S1 / roadshow / etc and allows a cheap and easy way to 'go public'. Typical mergers involve a lot of due diligence from the acquiring company, they can still go wrong but it's a much different proposition.
Qualtrics is an exception to the typical unprofitable unicorn. they've been cashflow positive for over a decade.
(I was a growth engineer and an admin for the Stripe instance, Their stripe account had lots of money flowing through and that was just for sub-5k deals.)
Dating apps are more directed towards younger generations ( Millennials, Generation Z) and if you look at recent use those generations seem to be dropping Facebook.
Swiping all the way down the screen to unlock with FaceID is going to be a big burden on the Ipad Pro. Less of a burden on the iPhone series for obvious reasons but really? Why not let people swipe up anywhere on the screen to unlock FaceID.
Evan thinks he's steve jobs. Lost god knows how many users of Snapchat because he felt compelled to completely redesign the app himself and looks like he off course when Instagram started copying Snapchat's features. A lot of these companies that aren't profitable rush to become public without a proper business model and end up getting crushed ( eg: HMNY company of movie pass) It's no surprise that Snapchat is doing so poorly and lots of us could have called this ahead of time. I really don't see this company being around in 2-3 years.
Seems like every wanna be Steve Jobs completely misses the point of what made Steve Jobs great, but then use all the bad parts about his personality to justify doing horrible, stupid, crazy things.
Jobs never changed his vision - build stylish easy to use appliances of the future. What drove Next down was the same philosophy that made Mac lineup so popular mid 00s when the technology finally caught up to Jobs vision
All jokes aside. This is great from Apple!