Softbank’s potential investment in Uber

Regarding Softbank’s potential investment in Uber over the weekend, Mergermarket’s research editor Elizabeth Lim has commented below about the deal:  

• Sunday’s news of SoftBank’s bid with a consortium for a significant stake in Uber shows the company’s continued effort to be the king of high-profile start-ups.
• SoftBank also owns stakes in other ride-sharing startups around the globe, including Brazil’s 99Taxis, China’s Didi Chuxing, and India’s Ola, though it does not currently have a stake in Uber’s main competitor in the US, Lyft.
• To date this year, the company has engaged in a record 29 transactions, almost 5x the number for the whole of last year, and with only one transaction having lapsed – a US$1.8 billion attempt to acquire Luxembourg - based satellite provider Intelsat in the first half of the year.
• SoftBank’s buys have been fairly representative of a market share grab taking place throughout the industry, and have ranged from medical testing start-ups (Guardant Health) to budding autonomous vehicle companies (Nauto) to artificial intelligence (Appier; Petuum) and robotics firms (Boston Dynamics; Schaft) to co-working spaces (WeWork). Investments have especially picked up following the Vision Fund’s formation and close with US$93 billion.
• Deals that have closed over just the last few months have included such ventures as a US$250 million bid with Accel for popular messaging platform Slack, a US$114 million bid with Qualcomm Ventures for autonomous robot company Brain Corporation, a bid as part of a consortium of sponsors for an undisclosed consideration of indoor farming start-up Plenty, and the full-on acquisition of US cyberdefense company Cybereason, also for an undisclosed consideration, among many others.
• Most of SoftBank’s bids have been as part of various consortia – altogether, they have taken stakes in companies worth a combined US$25 billion so far this year, with no sign of letting up on that momentum.
• Uber has attempted to move past its recent woes by resolving certain issues within its board, which paved the way for this investment to take place. With plans for an IPO in 2019, SoftBank's stake buy and two new board seats signal a move forward finally for the ride sharing company.

ICICI bank launch India’s first voice base remittance service

ICICI Bank, India's largest private sector bank by consolidated assets, today announced the launch of India's first voice-based international remittance service to enable non-resident Indians (NRIs) to send money to any bank in India.

With this new feature in the ICICI Bank's Money2India app, an NRI customer can instantly initiate a remittance to his/her existing payees in India with just a simple voice command to Apple's virtual voice assistant, Siri, on his/her Apple iPhone / iPad.

A first-of-its kind cross border remittance service by a bank in the country, it improves customer's convenience significantly as it replaces a five-step process, which was required to initiate a remittance to India earlier.

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Alex Lew, CFA 

UOB hackathon 2017

Modular architecture: Control vs. Openness

A firm seeks to attract different partners to design and develop new components outside a platform core.

These firm's innovation activities influence each other by being reciprocal and recursive. Thus, the innovation is the demand side based.

Firm needs to have the capability to create new uses of its services and platform. Just think of Amazon who was a bookstore in the beginning, but now sells basically everything.

Today's platform market has become a dynamic mashup of unforeseen dependencies among content, devices, networks, and partners. PayPal exemplifies this change. The payment service uses a sophisticated digital platform seamlessly to integrate with websites from which music, videos, movies, application, magazines and books can be purchased.

On one hand, the platform provider seeks to maximize innovation through open innovation and layer module architecture. But on the other hand, the platform provider seeks to keep some parts of the platform under strict control. So, every layer in the digital platform include designed rules, data control and govern the platform and its components.

Network effects tends to lead to concentrated markets

Consumers prefer credit cards accepted by more merchants, while merchants prefer credit cards carried by more consumers.

An additional customer on demand side of the market will add value to the other side of the same market. In another example, more gamers on Steam platform will increase the value of game content manufacturers. More merchants accepting American Express increases the value for American Express cardholders.

This eventually leads to concentrated markets. This is why network effects typically lead to giants – Wechat, Facebook, Twitter. 

Productivity through outsourcing

Outsource outsource outsource. At your job, don't be the one who soaks up bullshit work from bosses

Many executives also spend too much time on operational details, such as the best flight to take or the seating plan at a corporate dinner. Such tasks should be delegated, if possible, to an executive assistant. Of course, the boss must be able to rely on this person to get the tasks done correctly, quickly, and politely. Once confidence is established, he or she should go to great lengths to support and retain such an assistant, who is crucial to being productive.

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Alex Lew, CFA 

Porter’s strategy

Strategy is about choosing what NOT to do. Strategy is not just about creating nice slides. Good companies ponder daily their business mix. 

(An extract from Jeff's article)

Finally, simplification was all about reallocating resources to fund more growth and identify and solve customers' problems better. When companies are slow, it is typically a sign that their costs are in the wrong place. One of the reasons big companies fail is that they don't think they can afford something and aren't willing to free up the resources to make bold moves. We are investing heavily in making GE a digital industrial company. Last year we put about $4 billion into developing our analytics software and machine-learning capabilities and another $2 billion into building a leadership position in additive-manufacturing equipment and services—an emerging field that is going to revolutionize manufacturing. We had to run leaner in other places to make those investments.

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Alex Lew, CFA 

Bitcoin consensus and stakeholders

Bitcoin required consensus

Consensus of rules – which kind of block exists

Consensus of history

Consensus that coins are valuable – who owns the coins

These consensuses provide incentives for bitcoins mining. Bitcoin relies on consensus, it relies on agreement by the participants and that that consensus is a fragile and interdependent thing.

Who are the stakeholders?

Miners write history, make the blocks, record transactions. Investors decide if the bitcoin has any value. Merchants and users influence its acceptance.

FAQ: Why is blockchain attractive?

Beauty of blockchain lies in common agreement

Everyone can agree upon a single published block chain that is the agreed upon history which transactions have happened.

People can agree which transactions are valid and which transactions have actually occurred.

Ability to assign IDs to things in a decentralized way.

This means there is no need for central authority. No one has the final say unlike cash, where central banks decide the volume of money.

FAQ: How do we know if a blockchain transaction is valid?

4 premise to check for transaction validity

• First, if the consumed coins are valid, that is they really were created in previous transactions. 
• Second, that the consumed coins were not already consumed in some previous transaction, this is not a double-spend.
• Third, that the total value of the coins that come out of this transaction is equal to the total value of the coins that went in. 
• And finally that the transaction is validly signed by the owners of all of the consumed coins.