Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO yesterday, intends to stay on as Chairman. Sad news and nothing much to comment – the praise has been doled out before here. We only wish him the best and highlight a few links with amazing, heartfelt reaction around the web.
We present updates on two story lines we’ve published this year: Salman Khan’s very promising education initiatives deserve a large story at Wired, and George Soros’ departure was discussed further on Bloomberg and the Financial Times.
Quick notes: First, two profiles on the two top execs at Goldman Sachs, CEO Lloyd Blankfein and his heir apparent, COO Gary Cohn. Together they form an interesting picture of the world’s most loved/hated bank. Second, Seth Godin’s post today about quality and how to define it. It appears at first as it’s “more of the same”, but given his background he’s clearly focusing on media/marketing; therefore the “types of quality” framework take on a different, but no less useful, meaning.
MySpace killed Friendster only to be gobbled up by Facebook. Six years after NewsCorp bought MySpace for US$ 580 million it’s now sold for US$ 35 million. Google just launched its own “Facebook-killer” yesterday. There is absolutely no evidence yet whether Google Plus or any other competitor or substitute will bother Facebook. There is even less evidence about what’s “in the prices” – what prices? what metrics? what predictability of future cash flows? – so Social Media buyer beware.
Groupon’s IPO filing has given it a “financial high profile” that it’s probably regretting. So many people have been poring over its numbers and criticizing the business model quite vocally that it may even cool off some of the excitement. Why should we care? Because once you ignore the IPO-hype noise, the underlying criticism is, for once, based on analysis of the business model via its reported numbers. It’s still imperfect, but it’s better than the guesswork of a few months ago.
Groupon’s IPO filing is finally here, and the revenues growth curve is staggering. The company makes no money and doesn’t expect to make any so soon (it’s expanding extremely fast). There are plenty of doubts about the sustainability of its business model, competition and – much more importantly – margin of safety, especially given the preliminary level of disclosure and a few corporate governance quirks such as a dual-class share structure and a preference for “earnings before all the bad stuff” metrics. Yet it’s a business that one almost has to follow for insights on how these companies can impact anything from traditional retailing to data analytics. We suggest previous posts in Buysiders.com for background.
We wrote last Thursday about LinkedIn’s IPO, which closed the first day of trading up almost 110% with some “interesting” valuation metrics. While there’s talk of other Web 2.0/ Socialmedia companies IPOing, Vanity Fair had a recent profile on Zynga – a “Web 3.0″ company, certainly a buzzword we’ll hear a lot in the next few months. We remain interested in the business models arising from social media – if not in the valuations surrounding the sector.
The Financial Times had a very interesting article about the differences between Chinese and Brazilian business cultures – and why it’s important that Brazilians learn about the other side, quickly. Also, Brazilian magazine Veja had a special on Amazon.com finally entering Brazil, initially via the book market. That they plan on doing so stimulating e-books for Kindle reveals challenges and opportunities for local publishers.
LinkedIn’s IPO had staggering numbers today, and we highlight many stories discussing it – including one that highlights potential conflicts of interest between sellers and intermediaries in the IPO process.
Netflix is pushing into Latin America and the strategy is interesting: it’s trying to acquire content such as soap operas to stream them into customers’ homes. It’s good to imagine the trade-off playing in the Media companies’ strategy sessions – between the fear of cannibalizing sales and the need to partner with this strange ally now, while they’re still offering decent terms. We’re glad to sit on the sidelines.
