Apple's Big Bet, Maybe Buffett's too.

Apple $1 Billion Bet

Apple announced Thursday that it had invested $1 billion in Didi Chuxing, the leading ride-hailing service in China. This is a surprise considering Apple usually reluctant to make big investments in the past, with the last largest purchase, being Beats for $3 billion. It is now obvious that Apple is very serious about transportation, with rumors of Apple’s “open secret” car project. It is possible that Didi Chuxing could be Apple’s first customers when and if Apple’s car come out.

With China being a critical market for Apple, this huge investment might make it easier for Apple to expand into the country that has recently ban iTunes Books. Apple is the most successful American tech company in China, and the country has been Apple's main engine of growth in the past few years. Last year, Apple pulled in $59 billion in revenue from China.

Warren Buffett Is Bidding For Yahoo

Legendary billionaire investor, Warren Buffett, and Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert are bidding for Yahoo’s internet assets. Apparently Buffett is backing a group of investors in the bidding war for Yahoo’s web assets. This is shocking considering the fact that the famed Berkshire Hathaway’s Chairman usually opposes to investing in companies that he doesn’t understand (i.e. technology companies). The only company close to the Yahoo in his portfolio is IBM, which have seen a few bumpy past years. Yahoo is currently in the second round of bidding for its core assets.

YouTube's New Challenger, Facebook and LendingClub is in Trouble

Amazon Video Direct vs YouTube

The battle of internet giants refreshes once again as Amazon releases its own YouTube like service Amazon Video Direct. Amazon will let people post videos on its website and earn money through advertising, and royalties, very similar to Google’s own Youtube. Whole Amazon already offers movies and television shows that compete with Netflix, it is obvious Amazon sees video as a way to attract new customers and retain existing ones. The new Amazon service gives video producers many ways to get paid. They can sell or rent their programs on Amazon, or make videos available to all Amazon customers (not just Prime subscribers) in an advertising-supported format. Another option: Provide videos to Amazon Prime members and get royalty payments based on how many times the content is streamed, or as part of an add-on subscription.

Facebook Is In Trouble

The Senate Commerce Committee has sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to answer some question regarding Facebook’s Trending Topics feature. Trending Topics displays daily trending news and headlines, next to the main news feed. Facebook faces allegations that the social media giant was suppressing conservative media on its social platforms, while Facebook denies these allegations, it seems like the government wants some answers.

LendingClub CEO Fired

On Monday Renaud Laplanche who was the founder of fintech company LendingClub that upend the finance industry by connecting borrowers directly with investors, was ousted from his firm after the board said it found problems with its lending practices, as well as the executive’s lack of disclosure surrounding his personal investments. A board review found that the company sold an investor $22 million in loans whose characteristics violated the investor’s “express instructions.” The board found that some people at the company knew the loans didn’t meet the investor’s criteria and that the application date on $3 million of those loans had been altered to make them comply.

Why this tech "bubble" is not like the Dot-Com one.

A few weeks ago famed venture capitalist Bill Gurley, who has invested in Uber and Snapchat wrote on his personal blog that “there has been a fundamental sea-change in the investment community that has made the incremental unicorn investment a substantially more dangerous and complicated practice.”

If you don’t yet know what unicorns are, they are startups that are valued at $1 billion or more (Uber/Snapchat), and in 2016 there are more than 160 unicorns now, and of course not all unicorns are worthy of their valuations. With many bad press, and trouble facing unicorns this year (bankrupted Powa, Theranos FDA investigation), many are beginning to talk about a possible tech bubble.

At the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000 many companies that gone public, only to disintegrate and run out of money completely, hurting the public investors that bought into the hype.

However the reason this bubble might be different is because of where the money are coming from this time. This time the funding sources are hedge funds, sovereign- wealth funds, investment banks, and high net worth investors, thus if there is indeed a bubble burst there will be a much reduced pressure on the general public, as they have less exposure to these companies.

Another reason is debt. During the Dot-Com bubble many companies borrowed billions of dollars to finance their company, and they lost money, unable to get new financing, the companies in the current environment have very little debt, and therefore if it burst the economic damage will be much less painful than the 2000s.

Just who is the Inventor of Bitcoin? Twitter tries hard to let us Connect.

Will the Real Satoshi Please Stand Up?

Australian Craig Wright has officially confirmed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of crypto-currency Bitcoin and claims to provide “extraordinary proof”. Wright told the press “I firmly believe that ­bitcoin and the blockchain can change the world for the better. I didn’t take the decision lightly to make my identity public and I want to be clear that I’m doing this because I care so passionately about my work and also to dispel any negative myths and fears about bitcoin and the blockchain.” So the week ahead many people will be glued to Wright’s blog to see the proof that he claims to have, only time can tell…

Twitter’s Connect

Twitter has announced a new feature that makes it easier for their users to find relevant users to follow on its service. The new “Connect” tab is located in the top left of the Twitter app on both iOS and Android, which combines the ability to find associates from your phone’s contact list and Twitter’s own recommendations. While the ability connect was always available on Twitter, this new tab just make things easier. With Twitter stocks dropping to all-time lows, let us just hope this new addition helps connect Jack Dorsey with Wall Street.

Is Foursquare the future of Investing? Twitter co-founder un-pivots Jelly

The Human Powered Search Engine

Christopher “Biz” Stone, co-founder of Twitter and Medium is in his words trying “un-pivot” his ask and answer startup Jelly. Jelly is was started in 2012,  from Stone’s belief that the future of search will not be to be thinking up some keywords, getting lots of results, and then hopefully getting an answer. Instead Jelly will work in ways similar to Quora or Yahoo Answers, where a person ask questions and then just live their life until they get their answers. Biz Stone states Jelly is “Helpful answers for busy people.”

Basically, Jelly learns which people know what things and it learns what your question is about. Then, it pairs your question with people who are most likely able to help you. As a bonus, you can follow up with these real people to get into specifics, and for those who wonder what about trolls who give answers that are irrelevant to the questions, Jelly will have a ranking system where people rate those that give the best questions, and therefore the highest ranking people will be the ones that have their answers shown.

The Future of Investing

Chipotle reported its first quarterly loss on Tuesday, with massive decline in sales, falling nearly 30%. While many investors was expecting a decline, they were still caught off guard by the scale of the drop. However there was one company that was no surprised. Foursquare, the social-media app that allows users to check in and tell their friends what they are up was able to predict a 29% dip in Chipotle visits from its users.

This is the future of investment that many are calling “alternative data”. Alternative data is where obscure data sets can be turned into tradable information. Such firms such as RS Metrics which uses satellite images to examine traffics going into and from stores. RS Metrics was able to predict an increase in traffic into JC Penny from the amount of vehicles in the parking lots of the retail store.

As more and more firms begin to adopt the use of "alternative data" it seems that mining raw and unstructured data for investment insights is going mainstream. Investors are hiring data specialists and putting projects in place to make sure they aren't left behind. At some point this "alternative data" won't be so alternative anymore.

The Future of TV

 Netflix released its Q1 earning last week with disappointing results, however there is still few people who can argue that the video streaming company has not completely changed the face of television.  With Facebook announcing its live streaming service, and Twitter’s signing a deal with the NFL to live stream, which will include pre-game Periscope (Twitter’s livestreaming service) broadcasts with players and team, it is clear that the future of TV will be split into two categories: Live-Stream and On-Demand.

The time of switching through channels looking for something at least moderately entertaining is over, the main reason, that people are still subscribed to cable services, are because of the monopoly cable has over sports events. But as these sports associations begin to realize that they need to begin following the trend of millennial cord cutters, many will start to look for more option to reach their audience, as did the NFL with Twitter.

The future of TV is simple, there will be the side where we watch live-streamed events such as the sports, award shows, musicals, news, and so on, while the other side will be shows targeting specific audiences. With this being the clear path that TV will take, channels such as HGTV, Home Shopping Network, Lifetime might soon be forgotten and ultimately removed from our lives.

Medium Raises $50 Million, Uber loses $100 million, and Sean Parker (Re) launches another startup.

Medium Raise $50 million in funding.

Medium, the social online publishing platform announced that it has raised $50 million in Series C funding. Less than a year ago they raised $57 million in Series B. Medium was founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams in 2012, and the startup is a pioneer in what many call social journalism, Evan William created Medium as an idea that encourages users to create longer posts than the standard 140- characters of twitter.

Uber Loses $100 million lawsuit.

Uber has reached a settlement in two class-action lawsuits in California and Massachusetts that contested that Uber should be classifying its drivers as employees instead of independent contractors. In exchange for up to $100 million to the 385,000 drivers represented in the cases, both sides have now agreed that drivers will remain independent contractors and not employees. Although this might seem like a bit hit for Uber, many see it as a win for Uber, as they can still present their employees as independent contractors instead of taking them up as employees.

Sean Parker Relaunches Airtime.

We previously reported Silicon Valley “Bad Boy” launched Screening Room, the start that is trying to bring recently released movies into the living room. Now Sean Parker is relaunching his failed social media/ mobile chat app Airtime. Originally, Airtime was a mobile app that simulated chat roulette where users chat with different people each time, this time Airtime is presented as a mobile chat room where friends can share photos, music, video that they can all experience simultaneously. If Airtime becomes successful it will face competitors like Snapchat, and possibly chip away at market shares from the social network he helped create: Facebook.