BIG NEWS!
@ENVintel to be acquired by @BainCapVC for $4.5 billion -- A thread 🧵
This has been talked about for years and finally come to fruition.
A few thoughts:
�� If Bain did this deal last November, the price would have been only half as much 1/x
https://t.co/w4FW5ul3L9
Classic startup problems at Vise:
💰 too much money
🏢 too little industry experience
🚨 no product market fit
💸 poor financial oversight
Vanity metrics like $$ raised, employees hired & valuation aren't drivers of a good business.
https://t.co/HADlNRrIFt
@cgledhill As Long as there are big balance sheet in demand for the asset class private debt with the offered risk-return profile, „p2p“ provider will favor these institutionals for various economic reasons. Famous German example is auxmoney
“OK Reed, I’ve got another one. Personalized shampoo!”
Reed shifted his eyes from the road to glance over at me. He raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“No, this is a good one,” I assured him. “We’ll have people cut off a lock of their hair. They’ll mail it to us, and our team of hair scientists will formulate a custom blend. They’ll automatically get sent a fresh bottle every month!”
Reed didn’t say anything, turning his attention back to the road, flipping on his blinker and moving to pass a sand truck that was slowly laboring it’s way ahead of us up Highway 17.
From the outside, I’m sure he seemed to be just another commuter on his way to work in Silicon Valley. But I knew what was really going on behind that blank face: a rapid-fire evaluation of pros and cons, a high-speed cost-benefit analysis, a near-instantaneous predictive model about possible risks and scalability.
Five seconds would go by, then ten, then fifteen. But almost invariably, after about 30 seconds he would turn and say, “That will never work,” swatting the idea away the same way he had dismissed all my others.
Personalized dog food. Custom sporting goods. Online vitamins. These were all ideas I pitched to Reed during our morning commute.
One idea I had been particularly excited about was video rental by mail.
“It’s perfect,” I explained to Reed. “People will pick out a movie from our website, we’ll FedEx it to them, and when they are done, they will send it back.”
It didn’t take long for Reed to shoot that one down too. This was 1997, and video came on VHS cassettes. They were big and heavy, and shipping them was expensive.
But one morning a few weeks later, Reed stopped the car at the end of my driveway and mentioned having heard about a new storage technology - still in test market - called a DVD. It held a movie. It was thin and light.
“I was thinking,” he explained, “Maybe we do that video rental idea after all? We can use the post office to deliver the movies. Cut out Federal Express entirely.”
We stared at each other both wondering the same thing: “Could this actually work?”
All thoughts of the office forgotten, we drove into town to buy a DVD and find out.
We couldn’t find a DVD, so we settled for buying a used music CD. We went a few doors down to the stationery shop and found an appropriately sized envelope. We put the CD inside, addressed it to Reed’s home, bought a stamp, and dropped it into a nearby mailbox.
And went to work.
The very next morning, when Reed stopped to pick me up, he didn’t need to say anything. He just held up a little pink envelope, with an unbroken CD inside, that had gotten to his house in less than 24 hours for the price of a postage stamp.
And if there was a moment when the idea for Netflix was born…that might have been it. Because that was the first time we both realized, this just might work.
(I'll be posting all week about my most significant Netflix moments. Make sure to follow along so you don't miss tomorrows post).
🇺🇸#Acorns acquires 🇬🇧UK @GoHenry, a fintech focused on 6- to 18-year-olds:
US-based savings and investing startup @Acorns has acquired London-based #GoHenry, a startup providing money management and financial education services to 6- to18-year-olds in an all-equity deal.
@TechCrunch: https://t.co/BON99bUMzp #WealthTech dyk @bigdrckenergy?
We did not find a #WealthTech Event in Germany - so @Fincite2020 created one. Invite-only.
We will have 100 selected guest from Private Banking, Investment Advice, Family Offices and Asset & Wealth Management. In case you contact us via pm.
#WealthManagement trends:
21 trends, grouped in the 3 categories Alternative Assets, Mass Personalisation and Frictionless Experience.
#WealthTech Radar 2023 by @Fincite2020: https://t.co/Hi5RsnPPd8 HT @RalfHeim!
As🇨🇭Swiss new EAM #regulation deadline looms, #banks and others eye big changes:
100s of external asset managers may vanish through closure, merger, or sale as new Swiss regime comes into effect from January 1st 2023.
@WealthBriefing: https://t.co/fwvT3PI5jx #WealthManagement
Ranks of #millionaires to expand nearly 40% by 2026:
Private #wealth grew strongly in 2021, but so far this year has been a challenging one. Even so, the number of HNWIs will increase sharply within the next years.
🆕@CreditSuisse#GlobalWealthReport: https://t.co/ZSbkL4ePFQ
And we finalized!
Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.
We’ve put together an awesome analysis of the key factors around the #Eth#merge at @ConsenSys
One of my favorite graphs shows the scale of the network relative to @Visa — bigger this year
Check out the full article here
https://t.co/yM6LbNRLHX
1/Wealthfront-UBS speaks volumes about something many people don’t understand—the difference between buying a business vs. investing in a business at a certain valuation.
Why would UBS be willing to do one but not the other?