crazy pizza unpacking
#59
Hey guys, how are you all doing?
Christmas is round the corner and a year that seemed like ten is about to end.
Looks like the Covid situation is deteriorating, at least here in Sweden where, for the first time since the pandemic started, the government advised people to wear masks when using the public transportation. Yes, advised. Also, not imperative as in from now on, but, you know, maybe after the holidays, starting with January 7. :D
Anyways - hope everyone’s well and hanging in. I will take the next few weeks off and it’s unlikely I will do the Sunday CET. We’ll see how it goes and take it on week-by-week cases - if I won’t, I want to wish all of you Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Now, onto business.
Euro strat
❄️ Powder:
🇮🇹 Cysero
🇪🇸 Kapita
🇮🇱 Qumra Capital
🇭🇺 Flashpoint Venture Capital
🇬🇧 New Wave
🇳🇱 ABN AMRO
🔥 Interesting deals:
🇧🇪 e-moped operator
🇮🇹 marketplace for household technicians
🇬🇧 air-monitoring startup
🇸🇪 producer of plant-based shredded salmon alternative
🇩🇪 SAAS developer for roads safety
🤓 Observations:
🇪🇺 EU revealed more details about their plan to regulate Big Tech. If companies refuse to obey, they could be forced to hand over up to 10% of their European turnover.
It’s long due as the last scheme was made 20 years ago.
While the EU will never admit it publicly, this one looks like it’s particularly made as a groundwork for controlling more what Americans are doing in Europe.
The politics and regulators are far behind in understanding and controlling what businesses do with technology these days, and this is a catch up, reactive move.
There are some good points in there, there’s no doubt, but, in general, regulation is one of the main deterrents of innovation. And Europe badly needs incentives to be innovative and come up with strong stuff.
This ain’t one, as this aims to prevent the other guys from doing stuff. And it is inevitable that this is the kind of regulation that will, sooner or later, also affect equally European tech, should we ever have an Euro FAANG.
Here’s an example of a rule that will prevent competition and innovation:
companies will be obliged to not use data gathered via their main service to launch a product that will compete with other established businesses
This is exactly one of Spotify’s complains against Apple. Word by word.
While I agree with Spotify’s position that Apple is being unfair and aggressively using its Store power to promote their competing inferior service, they are not right in this case.
And moreover, making an unsubstantiated complaint a general rule with the power of law doesn’t make sense to me and think it is unjustified.
Let’s unpack it a bit.
Let’s say I have an Italian restaurant and my customers are crazy about pizza. I know that because I have a loyal clientele, I know everything about them and I make a good business out of it. That’s data.
However, I notice that there’s another restaurant, pizza only, which has a good dish that sells like crazy. A dish that I don’t have in my restaurant. That’s an established business.
Should I add a similar one in my menu? Yes, if I am business savvy, my customers will probably like it and my shareholders would say that I am a proactive manager.
However, the above rule would restrict me to sell a similar dish for my loyal clientele. That would be a new product competing with an established business.
And this, in layman’s terms, prevents competition. And that’s not right.
Other examples: banks complaining that Klarna is using its users data for launching banking services. Or Spotify complaining that a radio station is using its customers data to launch a digital music database service.
You get the idea. That is to say that the data gathered in a lawful way about your users behaviour and preferences is proprietary IP and is a competitive advantage. In a free economy, you should be able to use your competitive advantages against other players.
I understand where it comes from and I feel for Spotify as Apple is a rich loser abusing it in many ways but this ain’t one.
This kind of stuff prevents a market to work properly. Really hope there’s a larger context and clearer boundaries defined beyond that. Would be curious to hear other opinions.
🇪🇺 Google says that the Fitbit deal is about the hardware rather than getting access to its health data. The EU got some sort of assurances and greenlit the deal.
Google is a media company good at tech advertising, and has no idea and capabilities for building good hardware. They have tried and failed many times.
The Fitbit deal is very strategic as G wants to compete with Apple Watch, which is already a platform and which has a huge upside potential. They sold more than 100 million units already and grow double digits yoy.
It’s harder to get it and grasp the size of it because you don’t see it now in Europe since Europeans are cheap and prefer Android devices. Therein lies the opportunity.
On the other hand, if you want to see good corporate strategy rollover, study Apple watch’s evolution from launch till today.
And Apple is beatable, there’s a strategy playbook for it.
🇪🇺 The United States has attracted most of the public listing action, with a record $81 billion of IPO proceeds this year so far.
In contrast, European IPOs have raised just $19 billion this year, the lowest in at least a decade, partly because there are more attractive alternatives on offer such as private equity deals.
19 billions is 19 unicorns. Unicorns go to US, where the market is liquid and values them greatly.
Also - bankers say online food delivery business Deliveroo, cyber-security firm Darktrace, e-commerce website musicMagpie, e-retailer Moonpig and reviews site Trustpilot are among those looking to go public next year.
🇪🇺 The Midas List Europe where journalists made some sort of ranking of the top VCs from the region.
It’s just a vanity thing that had some relevance 30 years ago and which now just makes for a good PR op and a nice social media status. Other than that nobody cares, especially not the entrepreneurs.
There’s many other better ways to find out who’s doing good VC work.
⚡ Quickies:
🇪🇺 A list with investment funds announced in the Nordics in 2020.
🇬🇧 VCs make money from making introductions. £500 a pop.
🇸🇪 Good piece that is an indication about where the VC market is going in Europe.
Which begs the question I always ask when I advise entrepreneurs: why would you go where the competition is higher if other parts of the market are underserved or empty?
🇫🇷 Is PhD the new MBA as a gateway to entrepreneurship?
No, of course not. That’s just talking of VCs who were never entrepreneurs.
🇫🇷 When some high ranking French fonctionnaires were asked what is deeptech to them, one replied "what the state decides it is". For real.
🇪🇺 4 of 10 most expensive cities in the world are from Europe.
🇨🇭Swiss say Uber Eats must register as postal service provider.
🇺🇦 Background story of some Ukrainians doing intriguing pet tech in US.
🇪🇺 Palantir joined as contributing founder at GAIA-X, the cloud project built by EU to get “data sovereignty”
🇫🇷 The French built a self-driving freight train which is energy efficient.
🇪🇺 British Airways parent buys Air Europa for half what it offered in 2019: 500 million
🇪🇺 In US the market doesn't care who you are or where you came from, you have to be ruthlessly competitive to succeed.
In Europe, your place in society and where you went to school are very important.
🇬🇧 How London grew into a financial powerhouse.
🇫🇷 Meanwhile in France, the City of Paris was fined for appointing too many women to senior positions.
🇪🇺 The European Union is paying less money than the United States for a range of coronavirus vaccines. Here’s the breakdown.
🇧🇪 People are broadcasting porn on public buildings in Belgium these days.
Other stuff
VC life these days: just guys on Zoom with a fund.
Good (pre-seed) portfolio breakdown analysis.
PitchBook’s 2021 US Venture Capital Outlook
A list of alternatives to VC funding.
The newsletter fatigue: people will start deleting newsletters unread as fast as spam, until they are moved to cancel.
Apple in mid-2023.
Thousands of Airbnb hosts received an email invitation to buy company stock ahead of its initial public offer. Many, though, didn't take the email seriously.
Facebook ran full-page ads this week saying Apple kills small biz because they’re making it harder for them to collect data that can be used for targeted ads.
Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes will change the internet as we know it, and force websites and blogs to start charging you subscription fee or add in-app purchases due to a lack of personalized ads.
What Apple actually does is offering users an opt-in/opt-out data tracking option. And that is why Facebook is afraid - it ain’t the Wild Wild West on the internet anymore.
And btw, why asking people to pay for content on the internet is bad?
The data that apps use to track you, according to Apple
What cities are the US tech workers moving to.
A 1% increase in the unemployment rate is associated with a 1% drop in the birth rate.
Obama’s favorite movies and TV shows for 2020.
Happy Sunday!
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