Business
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Avoid herd behavior by cultivating intuition and rooting decisions in data — the two disciplines that let you shift the field of play when others are playing the wrong game.
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Innovation is infinite — not zero-sum — and North Carolina’s Triad has everything it needs to become a major tech hub without losing itself chasing the Inner Ring.
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Zoom, Zoom, Zoom! The Exclusive Inside Story Of The New Billionaire Behind Tech’s Hottest IPO While reading this piece, all I could think about was how different Zoom was from other Silicon Valley unicorns-turned public companies that are more well-known. The company registered to go public with a profit after having already turned a profit.…
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Mellody Hobson and Jason Hirschhorn had a really nice conversation here covering a range of topics. Below are notes on things that stood out. On Board Participation Have a clear picture of who you have a fiduciary responsibility to Pay attention to the line between what is management’s responsibility to solve problems and your responsibility…
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Welcome to the Future Whatever Flutterwave and Andela cofounder Iyinoluwa Aboyeji is building, its focus on building a shared vision for the future of Africa is something I can get behind. Excited to see where this goes. Ghanaian startup mPharma is buying Kenya’s second-largest pharmacy chain You don’t see too many deals where a startup…
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Take Bigger Risks: Shellye Archambeau, Former CEO, MetricStream I’ve seen Shellye Archambeau’s name around and have been intrigued to learn more about her story. Her appearance on Masters of Scale gives a great peak into how she’s navigated her way through Silicon Valley. What stood out in particular was her telling about a Bible her…
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3 Thoughts: Cashless| Amazon|Masayoshi Son
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In a world where advertising rules everything around me, how do I keep CultureBanx’s subscribers front and center while growing this business? Financial news streaming startup, Cheddar, announced yesterday that they raised $22 million. As part of the announcement, they declared that they are doing away with paid subscriptions. My mind went back to their…
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As I’ve spent the past year studying whatever I can get my hands on to get insights on the business of media the past year, I’ve come across some fantastic podcasts. The Adlandia podcast is one of them. Their latest episode with Ross Martin, CEO of Blackbird, had a lot of gems. The one that…
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Thinking about Ads Differently https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/936323784155414529 One of the latent questions I’ve had about the tech industry is the seemingly unchecked dominance of advertising in tech company business models. Google. Facebook. Snap. Advertising is practically the sole driver of their businesses. Aren’t there more creative revenue streams for their businesses? Benedict Evans turned that question on…
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This is a fascinating conversation between Guy Raz and Bob Johnson. I had no idea he was a policy guy who then got into lobbying. His work at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association opened his eyes to the opportunity in cable TV, a nascent idea that hadn’t yet caught up with broadcast television. The…
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Facebook has been on the hot seat as more information comes to light about the role it played in Russia’s meddling in the November 2016 election. The hot seat treatment brought the company’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, to DC for an exclusive interview with Axios co-founder Mike Allen to discuss the situation and what Facebook was…
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Several weeks ago, Chamath Palihapitiya did an interview with Kara Swisher on Recode/Decode that really got my attention. He was talking about how the venture capital industry was overdue for a shakeup to meet the needs of technology startups. He talked about using data science to identify investment opportunities and scale companies, similar to what…
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Netflix went live in 130 countries today. I wrote something on their shareholder letter from last summer. In the letter, Reed Hastings mentioned that the plan was to go completely global by the end of 2016. Delivering on that goal 12 months early is amazing, or at least a good move in managing expectations.
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Aly-Khan Satchu, one of the most respected equity investors in Kenya, discusses briefly how US-China cooperation would be a benefit to African countries. This aligns with comments Bobby Pittman, managing director of Kupanda Capital made at a session discussing the Electrify Africa Act. More on that sometime later this week. There are rumors of Anheuser-Busch…
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One more before bed. Netflix released its shareholder letter today and had some interesting results. Jake Bright mentioned in his comments during the book launch for The Next Africa, that Netflix is paying attention to what is happening in African markets in the internet TV streaming space. So, when I saw that Netflix released its…
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A couple of weeks ago, several banks agreed to pay criminal fines close to $9 billion for currency rigging, a felony crime. Around the same time, the corruption deal with FIFA started heating up. I get that billions of people love the beautiful game and the corruption in the sport has been ongoing for decades.…
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Every time I see announcements of foreign companies locating operations in the US, I dream about more African companies doing the same. Companies like United Bank for Africa have US operations, but I am talking about big announcements at the scale of Porsche’s $100 million investment in its North American headquarters near Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in…
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From LinkedIn. ECONOMIC PAIN CONTINUES – Moody’s downgraded South Africa’s five largest banks, nine of its municipalities, its two development finance institutions, following the firm’s downgrading of the government’s debt ratingand Eskom’s bond rating last week. While the outlook remains stable for the banks and one of the development institutions – the Industrial Development Corporation…
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President Zuma Skips Monday’s innovaBRICS & Beyond Conference – link South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma cancelled his scheduled Monday appearance in London at the innovaBRICS conference, hosted by Deloitte. South African publication City Press reported that President Zuma cancelled his appearance due to not being able to secure a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron,…
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Oil Discovered Off Senegal’s Coast – link The wave of West African countries discovering oil continues with Cairn Energy, a Scottish Oil Company, striking oil about 100km off the coast of Senegal. The company is not yet sure about the size of the discovery – a first for Senegal. When Ghana discovered oil in 2010,…
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Here’s the rundown on last week’s episode of New Rules Africa. Check out the video for our deep dive into Africa’s stock exchanges: Link Marriott Plans to Build 50 Hotels in Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt by 2020 – Link Marriott is putting both feet in Africa, where it projects to have its highest revenue growth through…
Kwame Som-Pimpong 