Tuesday, 11th of January, 2022

Hello,

The “New Year - New Me” trend is real. Changing jobs is part of New Year's Resolutions, right? So maybe we should not be surprised so much by the information that Moxie Marlinspike is stepping down from his role of CEO at Signal. He is leaving to take care of a startup concentrating on… Bitcoin transfers.?

Did you hear the term “Great Resignation” - apparently 2021 was the year of quitting jobs. The trend was driven by an economic and psychological shift as employers struggled. In the UK for example, only in September over 4.4 million people left their jobs. Meanwhile, a new law has been implemented in New York to introduce pay transparency - perhaps this is the way to stop the wave?

Don’t forget to join us for the next episode of Disruption Talks with Sandra Wdowiak, Experience Designer at Pandora hosted by Sabina Bia?ek Senior UX Designer & Team Leader at Netguru. Together, they will dig deeper into the world of problem-solving combined with beautiful design and creative solutions. And if you don’t have time, check our podcast later to listen to the missed episode.?

Cheers,

Radek

Disrupting Retail

• Tesco is offering a new payment method to its 20 million Clubcard members. They can now apply online following a phased Tesco Clubcard Pay+ launch which began in March 2021 with a limited number of customers and Tesco colleagues. Shoppers can use a new debit card to pay, save and earn Clubcard points. Tesco is offering double Clubcard points for the first three months to pull people in. Read more.?
• Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has opened two retail stores in the Netherlands that it says will be manned with robots preparing and delivering packages. The “robotic shops” branded Ochama mark JD.com’s first foray into Europe with bricks and mortar locations. It highlights the Chinese giant’s ambitions to expand beyond China. JD.com’s entry into Europe marks the start of a potential challenge to U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon. Read more.?
• Abercrombie & Fitch said it saw strong demand from consumers over the holidays but that it didn’t have enough inventory to sell due to delays. “We believe that, if we had the inventory on-hand, we would have delivered sales within our previous outlook range,” said CEO Fran Horowitz. For the year, Abercrombie sees sales up 19% to 20% from year-ago levels.
• Bolt — the startup and app of the same name that operates on-demand ride hailing, shared cars and scooters; and restaurant and grocery delivery — has raised €628 million ($709 million at current rates), at a valuation of €7.4 billion ($8.4 billion). “All of our business units are growing,” founder and CEO Markus Villig said in an interview this week. Villig said that even its most mature business, ride hailing, “is seeing double digit growth,” while the newer businesses, being smaller, are expanding even faster. Read more.?

Finance & Tech

• Shares in money transfer giant Wise fell by more than 10% yesterday after Citi analysts downgraded the stock over "excessive long-term growth expectations". Wise shares closed down more than 10% down at their lowest price since the firm floated on the London Stock Exchange through a direct listing in July. In a note first reported by CityAM, Citi analysts say that Wise's share price had baked in 20% annual compound revenue growth over the next eight years - far more ambitious than the wider market. Read more.?
• Payments giant PayPal is "exploring" the launch of its own dollar-backed stablecoin, according to Bloomberg. The firm confirmed that it is investigating a possible PayPal Coin after a developer called Steve Moser found hidden code and images in its iPhone app. Read more.?
• Barclays has led a $6.6 million Seed round in Responsible, creators of an embedded finance platform designed to enable circularity in the fashion industry. Mark Dowds and Australian, Mitch Doust, Responsible operates a technology platform called Buy Back that is designed to provide shoppers and brands with an overview of the value of returned garments. Says Dowds: “The fashion industry manufactures billions of items every year and only 5-7% of these clothes are sold for a second time. We are enabling brands to not only become accountable for everything they produce, but also to financially benefit from a more circular and sustainable business model. Data sources like Black Book and Glass’s Guide transformed the automotive industry, we plan to do the same in fashion.” Read more.?
• Citigroup staff in the United States who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19 by January 14 will be placed on unpaid leave and fired at the end of the month unless they are granted an exemption, according to a company memo seen by Reuters. Read more.?
• French startup Qonto has raised a $552 million Series D funding round (€486 million). Following this investment, the startup has reached a valuation of $5 billion (€4.4 billion). This is one of the largest rounds in the French tech ecosystem. Read more.?

All Things Innovation?

• The European Union’s chief data protection supervisor has sanctioned the European Parliament for a series of breaches of the bloc’s data protection rules. The decision sounds a loud warning to sites and services in the region about the need for due diligence of personal data flows and transfers — including proper scrutiny of any third party providers, plug-ins or other bits of embedded code — to avoid the risk of costly legal sanction. Although the parliament has avoided a financial penalty this time. Read more.?
• U.S. electric automaker Rivian reported Monday it produced 1,015 vehicles in 2021 — a figure that is in line with expectations that the company lowered last month. Rivian delivered 920 vehicles by the end of 2021, according to a release issued Monday. The production and delivery numbers combined with a WSJ report that Rivian’s COO left the company last month sent shares down. Rivian shares closed 5.6% lower Monday to $81.44; shares fell another 3.3% in after market trading. Read more.?

A Number to Remember

?$60 billion

• Apple reported new figures indicating record App Store growth in 2021. The company in a press release said it has now paid out more than $260 billion to app developers since the App Store first launched in 2008, a number that’s up from the $200 billion Apple reported at the end of 2020 — meaning, in 2021 alone, Apple paid developers a total of at least $60 billion.

Reader’s Corner

• There has been a rather fervent acceleration in planned biometric data collection in recent months. If you’re not worried about it, you should be. In fact, silly as it sounds, try being more worried about it than seems normal. After all, for-profit biometric data collection has undergone an astounding degree of normalization in the last decade. The idea of Apple scanning your fingerprint on a daily basis once sounded startling. Now it’s how we unlock our banking app and our laptop — unless, of course, we do it with our face. It’s gone mainstream. Read more.?
• There has never been a tougher time to be a leader, whether that’s running a big company or being in charge of a small team, Bill Taylor writes in this piece. He offers three sets of questions to help leaders focus on what’s important right now. The first set involves managing time: how to handle the chaos of the present while also creating space to focus on the future. The second set involves the personal stress of leadership: how to solve problems that your organization has never encountered before, without burning out or giving up? The third set involves rank-and-file morale: how to encourage people to stay upbeat and energetic when it is so easy to feel anxious and beaten down. If you can devise answers to these three sets of questions, you have a chance to pass the leadership test of our time. Read more.?