One Step Up Issue #26
This week, we look at Super Apps, AirBnB, tech entrepreneurship, the online gambling market, SPACs and leverage
Why super apps are proliferating across emerging markets
A super app is a digital platform that leverages one or more core business assets across multiple use cases (i.e. service verticals) in order to increase efficiency and/or user experience.
It seems to be the case, then, that super apps may enjoy a distinct advantage in markets with the following characteristics: cost-conscious consumers with low but growing purchasing power, high relative costs of internet data, relatively recent adoption of smartphones, and ‘mobile-first’ leapfrogging of the PC era.
These characteristics are prevalent across emerging markets. It is thus no surprise that savvy operators are introducing super app models far and wide in these regions.
From Gozem in Francophone West Africa, to PiPay in Cambodia, to Rappi in Latin America, to Opay in Nigeria, to Zalo in Vietnam, a new generation of super apps are taking lessons from WeChat and its early successors to create and capture value in a novel way.
The AirBnB S-1 (an SEC filing used by companies planning on going public) is out and Byrne Hobart at The Diff has done a fantastic job of summarizing it.
Technology entrepreneurship and the disruption of ambition
I’d recommend everyone read this full article.
The most important concept in such a sketch is the idea of a ‘technology of ambition’. This is the ‘technology’ that gives an individual maximum ability to have impact in a given place and time. Maximizing impact is the essence of ambition, so ambitious individuals seek out paths that give access to their era’s dominant ‘technology of ambition’.
This is the most profound shift of all. Moving from the J.P. Morgan model of ambition to the Mark Zuckerberg model shifts the balance of power from capital to talent. Ambitious people have gone from writing cheques to writing code. Today the most ambitious individuals don’t own the means of production, if they can write code they are their own means of production (Marx would, perhaps, be surprised). This gives ambitious people unprecedented power.
Online Gambling: An emerging e-commerce mega-category
Good summary/write-up about the growing online gambling market (trends, key players) with an investment overview of Flutter Entertainment & Evolution Gaming.
Going Public Circa 2020; Door #3: The SPAC
Unless you’re living on a different planet, it’s hard not to have heard of the term SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies).
Bill Gurley details the broken traditional IPO process (underpricing, high fees) and what makes SPACs attractive today.
We Have A Right To Be Happy Today
A Commencement Address by Will Durant, delivered at the Webb School of Claremont, California, on June 7, 1958.
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.
Till next time.
Human dynamics are surprisingly constant.
From Barack Obama’s latest memoir - A Promised Land
