While we’re not even one full month into the new year yet, a lot seems to have happened already! And of course there’s that extra enthu lot who are already penning down their 2024 goals and getting a jump start to their LinkedIn gyaan posting…
But for the rest of y’all - Hope those new year resolutions are still going strong!
So far in this new year we’ve seen two Indian-origin CEOs fighting for the next stage in AI, Mamaearth’s DRHP getting torn apart by the gyaani LinkedIn gurus and influencers taking their hard knocks from their phone screens onto the actual ring (yep that’s Salt Papi vs. Brueckner I’m talking about).
This year is going to be insane and I’m here to share not only the mainstream, but all the fun fringe content collection from the depths of this wonderful world wide web.
This newsletter was synthesized using Chat-GPT, Notion AI Assist and Synth
Why is everyone so pissed at Mamaearth? Calm down lads
[Tech] Big ideas that Tech will tackle in 2023 - an a16z omnibus [a16z blog]
- AI will become more mainstream, and companies will focus on creating products that can be readily embraced by everyday consumers
- New companies will enable sellers to tap into alternative sources of inventory, giving consumers access to products they wouldn’t normally be able to get their hands on
- GPT technology unlocks credit counseling services at a much lower cost than human labor, helping subprime and early credit consumers improve their credit files by providing personalized financial advice
- A consumer health tech company is likely to become the biggest company in the world, with two paths to achieving this: vertically integrated payvidors or horizontal marketplaces or infrastructure layers that enable other care delivery companies
[Ride Hailing app economics] Why Uber & Ola drivers cancel trips: An economic analysis [Nishant Mittal]
- The root cause of Uber and Ola’s unreliable service and surge in trip cancellations is the discontinuation of artificial discounts and bonuses that they used to offer in order to “capture market share”
- Ola's 20% commission and expenses for drivers are too high for them to actually make a decent living
- It is important to understand that cab hailing services were never intended “for everyone”, and will only reach true profitability when India’s discretionary spending ability increases to roughly $6k (INR 4,80,000/year)
- PS: The article breaks down the economics as well - worth going through
[AI - ChatGPT] Integrating Google Sheets with GPT [Linkedin]
- For all excel nerds - you need to try this integration out!
- You can run many non-trivial functions with this, with an easy prompt such as “What is the max value on this sheet”
[Funny] How Shane Gillis (famous comedian) gets drunk at sporting events [Joe Rogan, Youtube]
- Extremely funny bit on the Joe Rogan Podcast, on how comedians in the US go about their sporting events
[Economics] A study of lights at night suggests dictators lie about economics growth [Instagram]
- Dictators are often seen as ruthless but effective. But research finds that autocrats greatly overstate their countries’ economic growth
- In a peer-reviewed article, Luis Martinez, an economist, investigated dictators’ GDP-growth figures
- To do so, he obtained data on the brightness of countries’ lights at night, as measured by satellites, a well-known proxy for GDP. He combined it with data from Freedom House, a think-tank, on countries’ political systems
- Assuming that the most democratic countries reported growth figures accurately, he then used the satellite data to estimate if other countries under- or over-stated theirs, as these charts show:
[Financial modelling] Exploring Figma's Self Serve Forecast Model [Equals]
- Excellent post on Figma’s model to forecast their annual sales - with an accuracy of 95%
- Figma is a classic bottom-up SaaS business model. In its early days, the company was predominantly selling to customers through a Self Serve motion. That meant the team needed to nail the Self Serve forecast to understand performance at the overall level
- The article also contains a link to the template of the model, with dummy data
[Interesting - Brand] Playstation 2 ads by Sony (2000) and other creatives [Instagram]
- This is an interesting take on Sony’s marketing in early 2000s, here’s a snippet from the same:
[Business - Startups] Current list of 1000+ unicorns [twitter]
- More than 50% are probably/ going to be dead?
And that’s all folks! Wishing you all a happy new year!
I’d love to improve this curation, please do give your feedback to [email protected] or reply to this email thread.
