- Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet.
- Warning: Some Unicorns May Be Smaller Than They Appear.Protections for Late Investors Can Inflate Start-Up Valuations. The recent proliferation of so-called unicorns — start-up technology companies valued at more than $1 billion — has been greeted variously as a sign of healthy innovation or an indication that valuations have become dangerously overheated. Led by the likes of the car-hailing service Uber at $41 billion and the home-rental website Airbnb at $10 billion, the global ranks of unicorns have more than doubled, to 102, over the last 15 months, according to PitchBook Data, which tracks private financial markets. Less noticed is that the reported valuations of many unicorns have been inflated by the terms of the private investments that set those valuations before any initial public offerings of stock — often with little or no disclosure of those terms. Increasingly, venture investors say, late-stage financing terms include extra protections, like a discount to the price of any eventual initial offering, a minimum return on investment or extra shares if the company later raises money at a lower valuation. Such protections are controversial among start-up investors. Early-stage investors warn they can jeopardize a company’s financial stability, diluting the value of their original stakes and worsening a company’s prospects in a downturn. But the protections appeal to company founders because they provide new cash at the highest nominal valuation, reducing dilution if all goes well. And later-stage investors argue that they provide valuable insurance. The protections, known among investors as structuring or ratcheting, can inflate a unicorn’s indicated valuation 10 percent to 25 percent and the phenomenon has been part of a general “frothiness” in late-stage valuations. Since the start of 2014, 11 technology companies have priced their initial offerings below the investment price of the last financing rounds before the offerings. In addition to Box, they include the software providers Apigee and Globant and the big-data manager Hortonworks. In addition, it was estimated that that more than two-fifths of venture-backed technology companies had fallen below their initial offering price in the same period.
- Managing Developers: Just Because You’re In Charge Doesn’t Mean You’re In Control. The great irony of management is that the higher up you go, the less actual control you have. When you are but a humble coder, you make the computer do exactly what you want; when you’re a manager, you only hope that people understand what you want, and then trust/pray that they do it both correctly and in a timely manner. The Shit Work Is Your Work. Basically a manager’s job is to make other people more productive. What’s one really good way to do that? Do the work that is getting in their way. Which means: find out what kind of important work your developers dislike the most, and do it for them. Don't BS. Unfortunately, as you probably already know, people suck. People flake, screw up, ignore you, pester you, disappear, quit, and/or lose faith in you, frequently for no good reason. But you know how people — surprisingly — often don’t suck? Not to get all wifty and woo on you, but this was the most surprising lesson of my professional career: once people learn that they can trust you, then you can usually trust them back. So don’t bullshit anyone, ever.
- Remittances at the Click of a Smartphone Button are disrupting traditional players like Western Union: A growing shift is taking place in how people send money to each other around the world. While the likes of Western Union have offered international money transfers for decades, new tech start-ups and traditional telecom operators are taking advantage of the rapid rise of smartphones in many emerging economies to reduce the barriers — and costs — of sending cash overseas. Analysts say the changes are shaking up the global remittance market, which will be valued at almost $600 billion this year, according to the World Bank. New technology, for example, has helped cut the price of sending traditional remittances in half, to an average of $4 for sending $100, according to the GSMA, a telecom trade body. Sending money can take just a few minutes. Individuals log into the companies’ online services either through a computer or — increasingly — a smartphone. They enter the recipients’ details and their own bank details, and submit the request. Transactions typically take less than a few hours, compared with several days for traditional remittance companies. Recipients receive a text message when the money is available for pickup or has been credited to their mobile money account. Because the operations are automated and don’t rely on outdated systems, operators can offer international remittances at cheaper rates. To send the money, people only need to type in another person’s cellphone number into their phone’s mobile money service, enter a password and confirm the transaction. These sort of mobile payments have not caught on in many Western countries. But mobile money is now a fixture across large parts of the developing world. With limited access to traditional bank accounts, people have often turned to services like M-Pesa — a mobile money offering from Vodafone, the European telecom giant — as the de facto method to pay for goods and send money to friends and family.
- Property listing site 99acres sees sharply declining growth, increasing losses. Property listing site 99acres hits Rs 100Cr revenue mark, sinks deeper into losses in FY15. Net revenue growth, which has been sliding slowly over the previous three years but remained around the 50 per cent mark, saw a sharp deceleration to 32 per cent last year. It hit a milestone of crossing Rs 100 crore in net sales, though. The firm's operating EBITDA loss increased almost eight fold over last year. While losses are not unusual in a fast growing internet segment, 99acres was generating marginal profits till FY12. 99acres competes with MagicBricks, IndiaProperty, Housing, CommonFloor and PropTiger among others. Meanwhile, 99acres’ growth in paid listings on its site mirrored the performance on its net sales (the company also generates revenue from other channels). It lost one-third of growth momentum last year with paid listings rising 19.2 per cent to 2.46 million against a growth rate of 30 per cent the previous year and a still faster rise in the years before that.
- HTC Drops to Decade Low After Cutting Quarterly Sales Forecast. HTC Corporation fell to the lowest in a decade in Taipei after the smartphone maker cut its sales forecast as much as 35 percent and announced plans to write off $94 million of impaired assets. Shares fell by 9.9 percent, the daily limit, to the lowest since May 2005. Slower demand for high-end smartphones and weaker sales in China prompted the Taiwanese company to forecast second-quarter revenue of as low as NT$ 33 billion, compared with an April 28 forecast for NT$46 billion to NT$51 billion. The lower sales and writedown mean HTC will post a loss for the current quarter, it said.
- Apple is set to introduce Apple Pay in Britain, The Telegraph reports. Apple is planning to introduce its mobile payment system, Apple Pay, to Britain this summer, The Telegraph reported on Saturday, citing industry sources. Apple is expected to make the announcement on Monday in San Francisco at its annual conference for developers, the paper said. The Telegraph said the iPhone already contains a wireless microchip similar to those found in contactless payment cards, which will allow Apple Pay users to pay by waving the handset over a terminal to pay. Transport for London, the paper said, was already accepting Apple Pay from American tourists.
- The confessions of a reformed technology evangelist - He was sure technology would save the world. Then he went to India. For a long time Kentaro Toyama was a believer in technological utopianism. He studied physics at Harvard and earned a PhD in computer science at Yale. Toyama went on to do research at Microsoft. The work was demanding, but something was missing. In 2004, when his boss asked if he was interested in opening a research center in India, Toyama accepted on the spot. He’d never even been to India. But he was hungry to make more of a direct contribution to society. Here was the chance to sprinkle tech fairy dust on a developing nation and watch success after success. Except it didn’t play out like that. The humans mattered a lot more than the technology, he found. Toyama settled on a new view of technology. It’s an amplifier of human intentions, not a cure-all for human problems. For technology to be a part of positive change, the environment it enters must already be moving in the right direction. Toyama believes it’s foolish to think education is about having content available to study. “The fundamental problem of education is not content, it’s motivation. You have to find a way to help productively direct the motivation of the student,” Toyama said. “The idea that they can do this just because we have fed it to them online possibly through some fancy interactive graphic I think is just a crazy notion.” He notes how Thomas Edison thought the motion picture would revolutionize our education system. “Television was supposed to uplift millions,” Toyama writes. “Instead, millions sit in thrall to the Kardashians.”
