The Sandhill: Recent Episodes
Kaustuv ghosh
Tech, venture capital, crypto. The voice of the New Global South which is the entrepreneurial world working outside legacy systems. Named after Sandhill Road, where it all began(well, sort of). Feel free to email me, love to have you on the show.
We talk about what startups should have by way of resources on day Zero- especially in marketing. Thanks to Mohammed Boumiza for a great photo on Unsplash.
Ian runs Krushbrands which brings you great and healthy food from wonderful local brands. It's about empowering local food businesses and bringing experience back to convenience. Something that stands out from the usual delivery businesses.
Tim and I speak about the immigrant experience. Discussing a problem that is out there is important-for everyone. Talking about our fears and wishes is the first step towards building a better tommorow. Tech lets us do this.
A Private Equity investor for almost two decades in his previous life, Shahram has become an established founder recently launching BRIDG to finance SaaS companies and make Recurring Revenues an easily tradable asset, the Nasdaq for Recurring Revenues, as he describes. We discuss his journey as a founder and his markets in Europe and Singapore and a lot else too.
One of the foremost exponents of startup brand practice discusses Agile with me and its impact on brands. We talk about marketing, the place of product and decentralisation. We will have an intellectual pow-wow every weekend so if you wish to join, one seat every episode is open.
Tim and I picked up where we left off. Long podcast recordings can be interrupted. That will end with live streaming. Tim talks LatAm, lending and life. The culture of work and entrepreneurship is there too. Great insights in his calm, laid-back fashion. You want wisdom, listen to Tim.
In this episode, Tim and I talk lending, his company and fintech. We had a rough start to this episode due to some buffering. This is real bootstrapped audio folks, don't mind-ok?
Tim talks about his early days as a Bay Area kid, dot-com founder, his work in banking, fintech and academia. We also talk about family. Since we are both Englishmen, we spend a lot of time on the weather.
Teri and Kaushik chat with Anirban and I about Knackstor, which brings self-sufficiency and meaning to the lives of older people. This is a very relevant and timely topic for all of us. The conversation is highly informative and fascinating as well as opinionated. We will do more of this soon.
I have quoted here from their website-"Knackstor is a subscription and fee-based online talent shop that enables adults55+™ to market their services and provides them with paid engagements, content and community.
Knackstor creates a gig economy for the retired, while serving small businesses, non-profits, corporations and families in need of temporary talent across a range of occupations—from accountants to zookeepers—and avocations.
Customers get 'experience-on-tap', and subscribers (fondly referred to as 'Knackstors') enjoy enriching content and community",
This is a great story and deserves all success.
Ricardo is CTO and co-founder of Superb, a fast growing startup in the hospitality s/w business. He is also a global traveller. We talk about Copenhagen, engineering, noisy tools and eating your own dog food. His sunny disposition and commitment to his trade come out strongly. I hope to hear more voices from other global startup folks! Here, on The Sandhill.
Gary and I talk about dependency graphs, knowledge management, machine language abstraction and ontologies. And the challenge of graph economics. We will have more episodes soon.
Guru, a veteran of the data space, gives us his insight on handling information complexity and harnessing business opportunities.
I touch upon a now ignored but vital part of what made bitcoin possible and infused it with it's special ethos.
Jack Sim made waves globally by setting up the World Toilet Organisation. Today, he is building a new ecosystem to empower the Bottom Of Pyramid population. Jack believes in the need to change our thinking around success, economics and doing good.
Mayor Francis Suarez got his wish on bitcoin usage in Miami city. But is Bitcoin headed where it was meant?
The success or failure of an app depends largely on consumers. I ask three questions around this issue. Join the discussion, come and have a chat on The Sandhill. Thanks to Nathan Dumlao for a grt pic via Unsplash.
Wombat gives reason to be cautiously optimistic about investment apps. Crypto needs to change it's game. People hold the key.
The Nanda Devi glacier break up gives us a reason why we should all care about sustainability. IEspecially those of us in tech. Shipton's ghost is watching. Shipton taught us about being light, nimble and respectful of nature. We can do that in tech today. It matters. Really, natural capital does.
Thanks to Swapnil Vithaldas for an amazing photo via Unsplash.
We speak about what young blockchain developers think of tech, community and crypto. We also talk about The Pink City and how life and tech mirror one another. There is a little gap at the start, which happens as I sit down and adjust my headphones. Apologies for that.
Disclaimer-Both I and the interviewee make these comments in our personal capacities and we stay away from comments on specific companies. There is no implicit or explicit recommendation to buy tokens-only opinions of people are recorded. We provide no investment advice. Do your own research.
Madhu runs his own travel start-up, 5sensestours.com, which offers curated cultural packages to inbound tourists in India. As we all look forward to resumption of normal life, let us hear his story.
The GameStop episode brings to us the power of the grapevine. It also hints at a larger transformation. Institutions are resilient and nimble and will see this as an opportunity.
Disclaimer-There is no investment advice, I own none of the stocks mentioned and please be responsible to yourself and society.
Most content publishing innovation is in the Global North, practically and symbolically. A massive market, otherwise penetrated by tech, is getting left out. The answer is not software but networks of empathy. The opportunity is massive.
"...The walls that separate writing from success have not come down yet. Despite the best intentions. This is because every innovation on publishing is being born in the US or someplace like it and that means access to funding. That makes it a tech story. Not a story story, not an art story or anything like that. Now, that gap is a huge opportunity for potential investors. Imagine. Millions of people everywhere want to read, write, record, listen. And many will pay a bit. The gap is two fold- the cultural context of consumption and the tech context of the publisher narrative. It is driven by our innate belief that software is eating the world. Well, seems to me COVID is, but never mind that. How about this? We do not have to deny that software is eating the world-but we can agree that organic, self-organizing networks make it seem like a small starter on an economy class meal. Can we start saying that software started it all but everything else is now finding its own path? Take no-code and low-code. If that is the future, are we not saying that we are abstracting out software? Would it not make it’s cultural dominance diminish even as it remains a pivotal player behind the scenes?
The world of innovation is as much about narrative, drama and culture as it is about tech. The world of writing and reading is as much about all that too. When tech brings writing to us, it can do a huge service by making it easier for everyone to earn money. That means breaching the final frontier-telling each of us-hey, read this thing that this totally unknown person wrote this morning. That requires a relook at networks and what they are supposed to do. A network should be able to create empathy based opportunities for the faceless, nameless folks on them and make them into giants. Or at least, give them a fair shot. Substack is doing good stuff. Wattapad is doing good stuff. So is Medium-well don’t get me started on the paywall. I did earn a tiny bit there. But we need to go one step further. Explode the market. Do not let a few eruptions sound like it’s Diwali. You know what Diwali is, right?
Enjoy the rest of the week".
Note-Many thanks to Marcos Paulo Prado for a great snap on Unsplash.
The Clubhouse has burst upon the scene as a phenomenon. It holds out transformational possibilities for content. Beyond that, it promises change to how we see innovation.
Singapore received 17.2 Billion dollars in investments in 2020, considerably more than 2019 and the highest annual number since 2008. It is being said that in general, inflows into Southeast Asia will continue. Innovation has the fuel it needs. Innovation can lead to spectacular things. And we will talk about one of the shiniest in that particular corner. Welcome to the Sandhill.
Clubhouse is a place where the favoured few hang out, listen and talk. It invites chosen individuals to be a part of intimate celebrity conversations. If you are in on the list, you can “hang out”. This is where Hollywood, Superbowl and the Silicon Valley get to meet. It could have been another talk radio station. Or one more chat software. But it now being backed by Andreesen Horowitz. The valuation is rumoured to be in excess of 1 Billion USD. Ashton Kuchher, Jared Leto, Drake and Estelle are there. You no longer need to gawp at the Kardashians. Things have moved on pretty fast. That always happens in tech. And then it impacts everyone else. Now we hear that there will be a way to monetize content on Clubhouse. This takes us into very interesting territory.
Let’s look at what is happening to content today. You can read a bit and then you pay for the rest. In general, paywalls have been welcomed. News organizations claim it gives them editorial freedom. Others claim it provides remuneration. All that is true.
But a hierarchy of knowledge access based on the ability to spend contradicts our aspirations. We want a flattened society but in trying to achieve that, build new edifices. I believe the argument around creative remuneration, editorial independence and universal access to content has not been fully played out. If the New York Times is unavailable to a lot people worldwide today-as it was not earlier-then it has chosen not to let it’s voice be heard by them. Yet, if it does not run a paywall successfully, it can be prone to editorial compromises. The cost of generating quality stories and providing deep news coverage is unaffordable on traditional revenue models. Or so, we are told.
But Clubhouse may offer a way around it. It might opt to have highly privileged rooms and rooms that are open to all. The level of content available on an ongoing basis may be significantly more than the free content outside paywalls. It may be possible to patch in live performers and newscasters. I look to a day when a niche cultural channel runs live in a Clubhouse room. Importantly, it is the voice of opinion leaders and creative achievers. That is an emerging bulwark for a dynamic society.
Bringing tech and privilege together has always been problematic. After all, tech is supposed to be the great leveller. It “solves problems”. However, as it attracts money, there is inevitably a hierarchy. There is a tech royalty. That ties in very well with Hollywood, sports and other personality driven industries. Here are the achievers of society, one might say. They are people who perform and whose very presence and creative skills lead to an explosion of new material for consumption. If you are half way to being where they are, you could join a hallowed circle via an app. To be fair, Clubhouse does allow you to join a waitlist and it promises to open up to everyone eventually. It will be interesting when it does. Those who are inside today may well find it a great platform to showcase their talents and their latest work. The fragmentation of media distribution and the re-shaping of content will continue, perhaps with more intensity. Clubhouse will have a far bigger role to play in society than we may think.
Have a great day ahead.
Thanks t Joao Victor Alves de Bastos for a great pic on Unsplash
Edward lives in Spain and tells us about life there, his passions, tech and other stuff. Uncut, unedited.
(Blockchain was not created for savings growth. That diminishes it's rightful global role. It is possible to change that).
The cult-like infatuation of the crypto faithful for a particular car brand is very well known. The intent to disrupt finance is being carried on the back of some very expensive wheels. That may sound like the mother of all paradoxes. But there is a larger paradox embedded at the heart of crypto. Welcome to the Sandhill.
As the highly visible demand for crypto grows, it is slipping further and further away from the reach of the common man. Most people cannot afford to buy Bitcoin. Even Ethereum is expensive. There is a bigger issue one needs to be concerned about. The price of gas is going up. Apparently it has increased by over 600% in a year. This makes life difficult for start-ups, sole proprietors and small businesses. If the crypto industry wants to get mainstream acceptance, it cannot be prohibitive to transact. If this continues, innovation will grind to a halt. We may hold interesting debates about BTC being the next gold. Well, you don’t really want that. Gold is inert. It has not been used a medium of exchange for god knows how long. Keep that in mind.
The biggest problem facing the broad middle and below the pyramid segments is not access to financial services. That has always been there. Perhaps it has become somewhat more efficient. But what would one do with an empty bank account? Or with an account that barely pays interest? People need to find a way for their money to grow at a reasonable pace. That means, without having to resort to reckless adventurism. If crypto is to address that, it has to take a big next step. Blockchain was intended to solve a double counting problem without having to resort to a trusted intermediary. I am not sitting with Satoshi’s paper in front of me. But no one seems to have mentioned growing what we have. So we need another algorithmic journey. How would that work?
First, the transport layer of crypto has to be decoupled from investible traffic. You do not increase your toll tax on a highway simply because there are more people paying toll. Of course you can charge more to de-congest. That means, it is an intent to exclude and thin out the ranks. That is not really the intent, of course. So we need to get this right. Secondly, the matter of savings. One short term solution might be for pension funds to be allowed for end-user investment into crypto. But that also comes with it’s hazards. There is no alternative to original coding, then. In the longer term, we need a completely new concept of how programmatic money can grow savings. Nick Szabo once said that we must protect what is important to us. That, I argue, is not only privacy. Or the right to choice. It is also the right to reasonable growth of savings.
In other words, the world needs a second Satoshi. Have a great day. Bye.
Wattapad is to be acquired by South Korean group Naver. Naver owns both Line and Webtoons. This sends out a few signals. South Korea is pressing on with it’s efforts to become a global creativity hub. The extent of Korean soft power realized through content beamed into homes worldwide is not often appreciated. There is more to tech than tech itself. Welcome to The Sandhill.
Wattapad has around 90 Million viewers. It is a platform where audiences and stories come together through a mobile app. Many of it’s users are young people with a significant skew towards women(80%). This is extraordinarily clear in terms of served segments. Many of it’s writers are not known in the world of publishing. Yet it is proving a sleeper hit in countries like Philippines and India. Now, Wattapad authors are getting book deals from storied houses like Simon and Schuster. It has now formed it’s own book publishing arm, creating a bridge between the digital and physical world One might recall the Amazon vs Barnes and Noble saga. We all used to shake our heads in wonder. Amazon got it right. B&N got it wrong. Maybe so. But Wattapad has shown that the last line has yet to be written in that particular play. What will the big guy do? Will it even want to do anything? We shall see. A quick disclaimer-I used to own Line shares. I no longer do.
There are two interesting points that are being made here. Women, especially young ladies, are a force to be reckoned with. Many of them are using Wattapad to create their own communities of creative consumption. This is significant, given that some of the leading markets have been usually seen as deeply patriarchial. The question is, what are marketers and start-ups missing? In our quest for “solving problems”, are we missing out on leading indicators? This is not new. The industry did not understand mobile. It did not get SMS. It totally misunderstood the popularity of GCash and Mpesa. Then there is Bitcoin. So we have a long list of what we got wrong, the first time around. That is fine. We just need to be a bit more humble when we make those predictions for the year. I would like to see more products oriented towards younger people, older people, women, challenged people. Let’s have less of what we see in the mirror. In the long run, that will lead to diminishing returns and the mirror will crack. Diversity is powerful. Believe in it.
The second point is that South Korea is becoming a player of consequence in the global creative arts game. That must not be under-estimated. The power of visual and performing arts in economic and political exchanges is palpable. America is a living testament to that. It is important to understand the enduring popularity of Korean content. No, it is not the whitening cream. Yes, it was K-pop- for a while. Korean film, drama and increasingly live shows address common sentiments and issues for people anywhere. There is little by way of a great nation or manifest destiny narrative. A lot of it has to do with people like us. Korean heroes are sometimes quite flawed and compromised. That they do excellent production quality helps. But their tales are universal. They are the real inheritors of the New Wave mantle. There is a lesson here again for us. Over time, there will be rivals to Korea. For now they are in the driver’s seat.
One must wonder what this means for Substack, Medium and Wordpress. But it should be a matter of interest, at least, that Wattapad has such a powerful female skew. There is a need to re-assess how we consider audiences. That can come only from a re-evaluation of how we study societies.
Have a great day.
Many thanks to Laura Chouette for a great pic on Unsplash.
There are some unusual things happening right now in the field of tech ventures. We need to look beyond the headlines to see the trends. The world is very noisy after all. It’s like those elevators outside my apartment. Welcome to The Sandhill.
Desktop Metal is one of the few high-profile firms in the field of 3D printing. And it was listed on NYSE via SPAC. It has bought Envision Tec, which is a specialist in polymer 3D printing. The battle for turf in Industry 4.0 is being fought on many fronts. We are only seeing the early thrusts, not yet the skirmishes. On one hand, we have the market for materials. The more materials you use to print products, the more of a market share you have. What is not yet clear is at what stage do printed metal and polymer products get used en masse in the value chain. More to the point, will the printers remain a competitive advantage or become commodified? You might crank out products by the million. But if your machine is just a tool, you are not adding value to your enterprise. I think we will see a few changes as the industry tries to go really commercial.
Let us take note, too, of the investments by Sequioa India into Indonesian start-ups. This indicates cross-border interest in ventures. It is putting an end to a long-standing orthodoxy in the VC world. That venture capital will become borderless is inevitable. What is remarkable is that it taken so long. Do investors usually not want to invest across borders? I believe they do. They invest in US stocks all the time and a few others. Some folks invest in all kinds of investment funds and mututla funds. Perhaps the reasoning is that the venture needs investors, mentors and managers in one place. COVID has put paid to that notion. Investments and deal-flows have to necessarily factor in disruption, isolation and lack of movement. Money and deal flows will move just as folks are moving. You know, to Savannah and Austin.
We work to get start-ups on their way. So for us, this is a very positive development. It may be that a lot of the norms around VC funding will change. I expect global approach, local value creation, regional market operation to be the path going forward. But I hope to see more possibilities opening up in the months ahead.
So two broad themes-one the growing momentum towards decentralised manufacturing around Industry 4.0; two, the globalisation of very early stage venture investment.
More to come. Have a great week ahead.
Bakkt is going for a NYSE listing via a SPAC. The implications for consumer retail payments are profound. Good morning and welcome to The Sandhill. A note of caution-you will hear some background noise. That is life in the age of social distancing and WFH. I deliberately do not edit that because we are not living in a sanitized world. Noise matters as much as voice.
Startups should not be a vehicle for just employment. They are agencies of change. If you want to join a start-up, keep this mind. Also remember- this is an entity that is starting up. The team has no one else to look to but itself. The company will live and die by it’s own sword. Welcome to The Sandhill.
Research concludes 21.5% of startups fail in the first year, 30% in the second year, 50% in the fifth year, and 70% in their 10th year. While the term start-up carries glamour, it is really not very different from “normal” shops and businesses at their inception. When we were kids, there was an air of mystery about “doing business”. It wasn’t something one usually did. Apparently it was inherited through a family tradition of sorts. In any case, we were supposed to become engineers, doctors and managers and receive a salary.
But in our late teens and youth, the government and public sectors began to crumble. We were suddenly told that “doing business” was the new thing. But of course that conversation stopped when one got a job. I see the same thing even today. There are long talks about consulting and doing your own thing when people are out of a job. Pressed for action, defensiveness kicks in. There are conditions and qualifiers. Then the conversation peters out. Of course, that is perfectly ok. Not everyone can run a start-up and often personal circumstances prevent one from doing so. Remember, the centre-spread heroes of the tech world take key bets on their futures. Sometimes they veer close to outright personal failure. It may sound pleasantly correct today, the word failure. But there are emptied out purses, broken homes and families behind that word. Believe me, no one wants to fail and do not wish it on your worst enemy.
Start-ups simply do not have the luxury of meandering through what-ifs and good to hear stuff . That is fine at our local coffee shop. There is a need for it. It is called social lubrication. But if you are a start-up person, you are on the meter. If someone wants to do stuff and then is not sure, be polite and cordial and get on with your life. If it is a friend, find time to counsel him or her and see if there are common goals and interests. Shoot the breeze by all means.
But the other person should be clear very quickly about what all this start-up stuff entails. Yes, you can support each other. That is important. But commitment is absolutely needed. This is also the reason why teams need to be small and frugal. If you want to cash in on the growth dividend, you should not be collecting it upfront on day one. Sustain by all means but do not indulge. This is a hard path.
Have a great week ahead.
Note-thanks to Matthew Osborne for a great pic on Unsplash.
Tech is often used to maintain status quo. But it lands up unleashing change, much of which we adapt to and then innovate on. Payments is often the area where this is most visible.
The interrelationships between very disparate industries come out strongly during disruption. Wood products are central to our lives and WFH is making them more important. There lies a story. Oh, by the way, I recorded this at an open window. Yeah, kids shouting in the background. I tripped over a line. That's life. Not perfect.
We pursue context within Knowledge Graphs. Context matters not only to the UI designer and the backend engineers who are building out a full product. It has a direct impact on an ongoing basis in the training of artificial intelligence interfaces. When the banks extract insights from the interactions between their apps and customers, they should be able to extract context as well. So there is an encoding and decoding of context at all levels which is necessary. Also read the blog https://kaustuv.substack.com/ and I look forward to your comments.
Thanks to Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash for the great photo.
Enterprise sales for startups is always a challenge and a necessity.
A new product from a new company is likely to have an extended time to contract, as someone told me over coffee. A start-up has limited resources for trade marketing. Even with reliable distributors and partners, it pales in front of the formidable track record of more established products. Enterprises prefer to stay with existing brands-after all, no one gets fired for buying….well, you know.
All of the above are true. These truths are compounded further by the fact that the start-up has to worry about raising cash while it is selling. Sales is expensive and who is to say that the best salespeople will bet their careers on new concepts from impoverished newbies? And yet start-ups in the B2B space refuse to fail. Datadog, Docusign, MongoDB, Servicenow. Atlassian. Just a few names.
(Episode cover art-Helena Lopes on Unsplash, many thanks!!)
Bundesbank looking at programmable money. Programmable money=Defi, an evolution from classical digital payments
There is pent-up demand for wealth creation and people with some cash are ready to take some risks. It is no longer possible to keep it in the salary account and do anything. What does that mean for banks? Well, Goldman Sachs wants you and me to put our weekly latte expenses into buying things we could not buy before. In our part of the world, there might be a knock-on effect. Marcus might be a more pervasive cultural brand in the months ahead.