3 From Techquity

Will The Real OpenAI Please Stand Up?

OpenAI appears to have righted itself with Sam Altman back as CEO and the company’s talented workforce staying put. However, governance issues could continue to dog the company. There are good reasons why you do not see many for-profit companies valued at tens of billions of dollars nested within non-profit parent organizations. This convoluted management structure, says Matt Levin, the excellent 彭博资讯 BusinessWeek columnist, could lead to more problems down the road.

Techquity Take: Clear governance and ownership structures of startups are critical to ensuring that funders, founders, and employees are all properly aligned. Unorthodox structures usually don’t pass the test of time. We’ll see how OpenAI evolves.

Veev, By Lennar Was Not A Software Company

From unicorn status to shutdown in less than a year is a rare event. That’s what happened to tech-enabled pre-fab home builder and real estate developer Veev this week. Construction and technology plays to improve the industry has long been a Bermuda Triangle for startups with numerous highly funded companies going bankrupt over time. Construction and development is an exceptionally juicy target — one of a handful of indsustries that have become less efficient over time on a per-square-foot basis. Pre-fab was supposed to finally introduce economies of scale and industrial production capabilities. If only.

Techquity Take: Since its founding nearly 14 years ago, Veev appeared to pivot multiple times. But what often happens in cases like this is investors value a company as a software play with high multiples when, in fact, it is more of a traditional business like WeWork with nominal technology improvements.?

Have Your Book And Read It Too?

The experience of audiobooks has long been challenging. 亚马逊 's Audible does a credible job but the prices are rather insane — the same cost, roughly, per title as purchasing a physical copy. 苹果 makes it nearly impossible to read books on their device that are not purchased either through an app in the AppStore or through Apple Books. The best experience, arguably, has been the free library app Libby, which is the only true all-you-can-read audiobook option. Kindle will read titles with an AI voice but those titles are close to what you pay for bookstore paperbacks. Spotify has long chafed at these strictures and also wanted to offer a more expansive auditory plate of offerings. Now the Swedish streaming giant is rolling out a service for all-you-read books, including many bestsellers, for a single bundled price.?

Techquity Take: ?Compared to music and video, ebooks and audiobooks have remained in a transactional-only model which has been a factor in the relatively limited adoption rates compared to music and video.? Publishers have been the barrier, but the business has stagnated even as streaming revenues have risen.? It is a matter of time before the streaming model hits publishing and Spotify might be able to be the catalyst as they were with streaming music subscriptions.? What’s more, sales of vinyl records are now the fastest-growing segment of music industry revenues. This hints at what might happen should the publishers finally allow people to pay a monthly fee for unlimited books — an increase in consumption and streaming revenues combined with, over time, higher prices and more boutique cache for physical copies.