What do you think?
Monday, August 6, 2018
History of Money - Crytpocurrency is the next logical evolution
What do you think?
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Universal Basic Income Trials around the world
Australia - Don’t we already have this withthe Dole?
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Friday, July 27, 2018
From kids’ disco parties to global tech company: AmazingCo secures $2.3 million cap raise
AmazingCo, a data-driven experiences platform, recently announced a $2.3 million raise led by Rampersand VC, including Macdoch Ventures, Aconex’s founders Leigh Jasper and Rob Phillpot, Luxury Escapes co-founder Adam Schwab and Richmond AFL captain Trent Cotchin.
AmazingCo creates and manages experiences that help people connect and spend their time in a meaningful way.
From kids entertainment to wine tours, date night activities and team building events, each experience is created and customised based upon personal preferences and a unique set of interactive planning and booking tools.
The first iteration of AmazingCo was founded by Silvia Hope, Jeremy Cox, Nick Brozovic and Daniel Cox in 2012 as a traditional kids entertainment company. After delivering more than 6,000 events a year they realised they had more data and insights into consumer preferences and desires – and in particular unmet demand.
What is AmazingCo looking to achieve?
“Traditional entertainment businesses don’t scale well, so it has remained largely a cottage industry. With our combination of experiences across entertainment, data and technology, we were able to take a different view,” Ms Hope said.
“We developed a centralised platform that understood what people wanted and, as a result of our scale and search traffic, identified where demand was not being met. And because of our scale we could build solutions, quickly, to meet those demands.”
“Not only did that turbocharge our ability to scale, it also allowed us to expand into new verticals and new geographies. We’re now a leading provider in multiple categories across Australia and have also launched in 8 US cities in the last 8 months,” she said.
The entertainment and recreation industry is one of the largest in the world, with data group IBIS World estimating it as more than USD 450 billion in the US alone, including the performing arts, events and food & entertainment industries.
Rampersand VC cofounder Paul Naphtali commented: “We watched as Silvia and Jeremy grew their team and business and were struck by the clever way they are able to use the data and bring technology to a previously analog industry. It is remarkably similar to how Netflix uses data to create content, AmazingCo uses data to create experiences. The true magic is the ability to do so at high margins, with off the charts customer satisfaction.”
What is AmazingCo doing differently?
AmazingCo is the first to tackle this highly fragmented, antiquated market in the way Netflix approached digital content production.
“No one saw the opportunity to operate as a holistic experiences platform in this huge industry before, as events companies traditionally don’t scale or manage well across multiple types of experiences,” Ms Hope said. “We now have proof our processes and platform can operate successfully across very different verticals. So we’re uniquely positioned to be the first company to do so and to scale globally.”
After the successful initial expansion of the company’s experience offering, AmazingCo is turning its focus to international growth and expansion.
Part of the company’s aggressive growth plan is to expand its operations across the US, already having launched in 8 major cities, including Los Angeles, Boston and most recently Philadelphia. The decision to raise capital was made to support the company’s aggressive growth plans, and to keep evolving the AmazingCo experience portfolio and proprietary platform.
“Having run a sustainable business for a few years meant that raising capital wasn’t imperative to sustain the business as it was,” Mr Cox says.
“But with our proprietary platform and data-driven processes we have found ourselves in a unique position to help people spend their most important free time in a more meaningful way. We have the chance to help people build stronger connections and improve their quality of life, and that’s way too exciting to not put in a higher gear. So we made the decision to raise capital to accelerate our global expansion and growth.” Mr Cox says.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
6 Traits that make Millennials different
1. They are “The Connected Generation”
2. Millennials are Self-Starters, self empowered and entitled
3. Millennials Put a High Value on Quality of Life and balance
4. Millennials Don’t Shy Away From Uncertainty
5. Millennials Have Multiple Passions
This is an exciting time!
Monday, July 23, 2018
AI is not all bad for jobs
AI is not all bad for jobs say PWC UK - source https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/17/artificial-intelligence-will-be-net-uk-jobs-creator-finds-report
(Thanks to Vint for the find)
A report from PWC UK suggests that artificial intelligence, robotics, drones and driverless technology is set to create more than 7m new UK jobs in healthcare, science and education by 2037, more than making up for the jobs lost in manufacturing and other sectors through automation.
The report estimated about 20% of jobs would be automated over the next 20 years - in factories , retail and services - and no sector would be unaffected, however, employment could increase by nearly 1 million on a net basis, equivalent to more than a fifth of existing jobs in the sector.
Professional, scientific and technical services, including law, accounting, architecture and advertising firms, are forecast to get the second-biggest boost, gaining nearly half a million jobs, while education is set to get almost 200,000 extra jobs.
Healthcare is likely to see rising employment as it will be increasingly in demand as society becomes richer and the population in the UK ages.
While some jobs may be displaced, many more are likely to be created as real incomes rise and patients still want the ‘human touch’ from doctors, nurses and other health and social care workers.
On the other hand, as driverless vehicles roll out across the economy and factories and warehouses become increasingly automated, the manufacturing and transportation and storage sectors could see a reduction in employment levels.
PwC estimated the manufacturing sector could lose a quarter of current jobs through automation by 2037, a total of nearly 700,000.
Transport and storage are estimated to lose 22% of jobs – nearly 400,000 – followed by public administration and defence, with a loss of almost 275,000 jobs, an 18% reduction.
Clerical tasks in the public sector are likely to be replaced by algorithms while in the defence industry humans will increasingly be replaced by drones and other technologies.
Impact of artificial intelligence on jobs. Illustration: PwC analysis
London – home to more than a quarter of the UK’s professional, scientific and technical activities – will benefit the most from AI, with a 2.3% boost, or 138,000 extra jobs, the report said. The east Midlands is expected to see the biggest net reduction in jobs: 27,000, a 1.1% drop.
Regional analysis from PWC
Response from Kartik Garda
At the moment, there are 6.5 million open positions in the US. This is even after the fact that never in a century have immigrants been such a large share of the population. But there are still at least 3 million who are underemployed. As jobs become more fragmented, this mismatch will widen.
A few elements of terminology that people should start internalizing :
i) Vertical Skill Gap : A truck driver cannot become a software engineer, especially in just 3 months of training.
ii) Horizontal Skill Gap : A dermatologist cannot become a software engineer after just 3 months of training.
The solutions, of course, are :
i) There has to be a huge focus on lifetime retraining, and funding this should be one of the primary functions of government. Expect 20-25% of the workforce to be in training for new careers at any given time.
ii) There has to be a cushion in the form of a UBI, funded through the monetization of technological deflation.
iii) There has to be a phaseout of income tax, because that is the single biggest job killer. The aforementioned safety net is funded by the monetization of technological deflation which has to be done anyway.
iv) There has to be a more favorable regulatory (and tax, as in 0% income tax) climate for entrepreneurship, because the elimination of jobs via technology is exactly proportional to the amount of free money that agile entrepreneurs that no longer have to hire humans to get certain work done, can make.
Any job eliminated = the employer is pocketing that money, so become an employer positioned to capture all those savings at scale.
This is the first thing I tell all of my investment banking clients and all of my students at Stanford, in the hopes of getting the gears turning in their minds.
Thanks,
-Kartik
From Curt Carlsson
It is interesting that in America there is now more jobs than advertised than in the work force. That should tell us something.
As Jack Ma points out there are still 4B people left to be served so how bad could it be?
I have always looked at:
1. Is there opportunity for new businesses (never been a better time)
2. Are there unserved markets (most of the world of 7B people still poor)
3. Can we create new innovations (entering a whole new generation of amazing technologies)
The issues are elsewhere — government, education, and immigration (we should aggressively be recruiting the super achievers).
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Millenials…walking around like they rent the place
The companies carry a high risk, with scooters already being banned or impounded in San Francisco and Denver. Already valued at $2 billion,
The auto industry. Millennials have a lower rate of car ownership than previous generations did at their age.
Big Auto has embraced millennials’ lack of purchase commitment as an inevitability. Volvo has begun offering subscription services for its vehicles.