JPMorgan (JPM) shareholders reveal their true opinions of CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon on Tuesday, but it won’t be the first time. At the bank’s annual shareholder meeting last year, 40% of shareholders voted to strip Dimon of his chairman role. They’ll gather today in Tampa, FL to cast ballots on three separate proposals, the [...]
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Following Yahoo’s $1.1bn acquisition of Tumblr Pandodaily published an article asking why Tumblr and Foursquare, New York’s top consumer web startups, haven’t had the same success as Twitter and Facebook. First the numbers, as measured by 2012 revenues Foursquare and Tumblr are a long way behind:
Pando points out that one would expect Tumblr and Foursquare’s proximity to New York’s strong advertising industry to give them an advantage over their Valley competitors when it comes to building an advertising business, but then comes to the conclusion that the reason they fell behind is more likely to do with access to cash and talent. Valley based companies are more easily able to raise money and have a larger pool of people with scaling experience to recruit from.
That argument makes sense, and I’m sure explains part of the discrepancy in performance, but for me the bigger reason is that the use cases for Twitter and Facebook are important parts of our every day lives whereas Tumblr and Foursquare are more nice-to-haves. Keeping up with news and staying in touch with friends are more important for more people than self expression and checking in/restaurant discovery. More important use cases means more people coming back more often and greater tolerance for ads, and hence much bigger opportunity.
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JPMorgan (JPM) shareholders reveal their true opinions of CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon on Tuesday, but it won’t be the first time. At the bank’s annual shareholder meeting last year, 40% of shareholders voted to strip Dimon of his chairman role. They’ll gather today in Tampa, FL to cast ballots on three separate proposals, the [...]
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The media are consumed with multiple Washington scandals: the IRS, Benghazi, the Justice Department wiretapping. But what about the tragedy of the dim prospects for this month’s college graduates?
In a commencement address at Morehouse College on Sunday, President Obama told graduates, “Your generation is uniquely poised for success.”
But young Americans who campaigned for Obama, voted for Obama, and turned out their friends for Obama are graduating from college with substantial debt, few job prospects, and the requirement to buy expensive health insurance. They might be poised…
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Yahoo’s narrative arc as a company can be defined by its acquisitions, which taken together also serve as one take on the history of the web itself. In the Yahoo version of that history, founders and backers of overvalued companies …
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Yahoo is paying $1.1 billion to acquire the hip blog network Tumblr. Here’s exactly how much advertising needs to be sold, across three different categories, to make the deal pencil.
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Yahoo is paying $1.1 billion to acquire the hip blog network Tumblr. Here’s exactly how much advertising needs to be sold, across three different categories, to make the deal pencil.
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Pinterest has become that rarest of specimens, at least in the consumer/social world: an independent, massively scaling service that not only bestows the “cool” factor that every large company seems to crave but, in Pinterest’s case, offers a huge opportunity …
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Silver prices have slumped to their lowest level since September 2010 and gold prices are down 18% year-to-date leading many market observers to declare that the super-rally in commodities is over. Jim Rogers, the legendary investor and Chairman of Rogers Holdings, says the commodities bull market continues. He calls the latest slump in prices a [...]
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At eight o’clock this morning — eastern time, before most of its West Coast-centric workforce even woke up — Yahoo announced it is going to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. There was a press release, and company CEO …
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At eight o’clock this morning — eastern time, before most of its west coast-centric workforce even woke up — Yahoo announced it is going to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. There was a press release, and company CEO …
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Yahoo! (YHOO) announced this morning that it is buying social blogging company Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. Tumblr is a six-year old company based in New York. It is run by a charismatic 26 year-old entrepreneur named David Karp, who will pocket hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal and has therefore become [...]
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Is air coming out of the precious metal commodities bubble? Silver’s sharp slide early Monday could be proof that the bull market in gold and silver has reached its limit. Silver fell nearly 9% in the first 10 minutes of Asian trading to $20.30 an ounce — its lowest level since September 2010. Silver’s stumble [...]
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Venturebeat has an article up this morning titled Startups and big corporations embrace the maker movement which reports that the annual Maker Faire has this year introduced a ‘Startup Pavillion’ which it cites as evidence that the maker movement is moving beyond hobbies to being a ‘rich source of economic potential’. Here’s a selection of the 20-odd startups at Maker Faire:
- SeeedStudio, an “open hardware company develops and brings to market innovative and cost-effective prototyping solutions for hobbyists and aspiring inventors.”
- RedBearLab, which makes a wearable BlueTooth 4.0 board you can use to interface with an iPhone or Android device.
- Formlabs, makers of a high-resolution 3D printer aimed at engineers and design professionals.
- Deezmaker, another 3D printer vendor, this one aimed at making an affordable printer called the Bukobot.
- BioLite, a company that aims to reduce third-world pollution with a small wood-fueled stove that converts heat from the fire into usable electricity, improving combustion while allowing users to charge small devices.
- BlinkM, makers of multicolored, programmable LED lights for use in your electronics projects.
- Smitten, a maker of handmade “artisan truffles.”
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been asking myself if we are witnessing the beginning of a major trend here or whether there will only ever be a small number of successful ‘maker-centric’ or innovative hardware companies.
Here are my observations and emerging thoughts:
- the number of startups in this space is definitely increasing – there are a small number that have been around for a few years, like Jawbone, Micro Mobility Scooters, GoPro, and DFJ Esprit portfolio company Graze, and a much larger number that have been founded more recently, including Nest, Sphero, Local Motors, and Pebble.
- A number of factors are combining that enable faster product iteration in hardware
- 3D printing is reducing the cost of prototyping
- Short run manufacturing is getting cheaper and cheaper due to robot manufacturing and improved supply chain management techniques
- The labour component of manufacturing is falling increasing the feasibility of local manufacturing
- Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms are radically improving capital efficiency because customers are now paying for product months in advance and because first demand validation is now virtually free
- Arduino and other open source hardware platforms are reducing costs in the same way open source software reduced costs for web companies
- Companies are aggregating global audiences and selling direct making new product categories viable which wouldn’t have worked when national distribution limited customers to single countries – companies which build communities around their interest area are particularly powerful in this regard – e.g. DIY Drones
- Consumers like buying from companies that embrace the ‘maker’ ethos – i.e. companies that have a human face and a genuine interest in delighting their customers
- In contrast to other investment themes that turned out big it is unclear how many opportunities there are in innovative hardware – most of the companies listed above look obvious in hindsight, but it isn’t easy to list large numbers of new opportunities in the way it was for ecommerce or mobile, or to see how these companies will transform the world in the way social media has
- It is still unclear how much capital these businesses will require or what the exit market will be like
Writing and reading back this list it strikes me that whilst it is too early to know how big this wave will be there is more than enough going on to want to start making some investments.
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Jamie Dimon, CEO and Chairman of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), will find himself in the hot seat this week when the company’s shareholders are expected to vote on whether or not he should keep both of his roles at the bank. Just over one year ago the world’s largest bank revealed that it had lost $6.2 [...]
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