Hey All! Hope your week is going well! Tech and Chinese politics have become so intermingled. The recent China news resulting in Apple taking down HKmap.live is a good example of this. Apple has a lot to lose by not taking the app down. To extend this further as Ben Thompson articulated in cThe China Cultural Clash content in TikTok is being censored. Should the US Govt, more specifically CFIUS get involved in such acquisitions? Tik Tok, really? But then again there is censorship of free speech … The world we live in needs new rules ...
TikTok similarly acquired Musical.ly without oversight and relaunched it as TikTok for the Western market; it is worth at least considering the possibility of a review given TikTok’s apparent willingness to censor content for Western audiences according to Chinese government wishes.
1) Is your product reaching this stage where one can’t tell what has changed? What do you do about it? Is it even a bad thing? (Source)
2) Progress and moving the needle [LINK]
I loved this article from Eli Dourado on what making progress means. I like to connect this back to technology and while there are lots of people who don’t believe that technology can change certain industries, technology is certainly pushing the envelope in the right direction. These may be at the fringes (health records for example) but that is a start.
3) Scott Galloway on Capitalism’s MDMA : Slick founders with a gift of gab [LINK]
Who said sales is dead? This article in fact should be a PSA. BTW you do realize who’s money goes into these venture funds and finally these IPO’s right? Yours, indirectly from all those funds you invested in
4) Who pays more taxes in the US? The rich or the poor? [LINK]
Imagine this; what kind of broken capitalism is a society in which the richest people make the laws to pay less taxes resulting in a never ending flywheel where the rich invest, get richer and the poor get poorer. Sad state of affairs
Income tax rates ….
5) The creator stack [LINK]
These stories are indicative of a larger trend: call it the “creator stack” or the “enterprization of consumer.” Whereas previously, the biggest online labor marketplaces flattened the individuality of workers, new platforms allow anyone to monetize unique skills. Gig work isn’t going anywhere—but there are now more ways to capitalize on creativity. Users can now build audiences at scale and turn their passions into livelihoods, whether that’s playing video games or producing video content. This has huge implications for entrepreneurship and what we’ll think of as a “job” in the future.
6) Early stage startups and MVP [LINK]
This article has a good list of ways to “create” your MVP without spending too much money. Most startups head directly into building every side of the platform confident that customer conversations yielded the right information. I think this really goes back to good PM’s or a good GM’ing strategy. How can you run your business, while at the same time, not burning out your engineers
7) More on Product Market Fit
This article talks about places to find Product-Market fit. How do you offer something to the market that will make them sit up and take notice? [LINK]
This blog by Christoph Janz (screen grab is all his) was a good articulation on metricizing the “feeling” of PMF. [LINK]
8) NFX’s James Currier speaks with Scott Cook on the subtle nuances of PMF. A worthy read/listen [LINK]
9) Chatbots and commerce [LINK]
An interesting read for those working on chatbots with a commerce bent. China has managed to crack the chatbot experience