Wednesday, May 07, 2014

The Alibaba IPO

AliBaba
AliBaba (Photo credit: Stewf)
I never doubted Marissa Mayer's fundamentals as a tech executive, I think she is a trailblazer, but cynics claim 100% of her "success" at Yahoo can be attributed to Yahoo's stake in the Chinese tech giant Alibaba. Alibaba sells actual things. This is a signal that investors in America and other developed markets need to eye other emerging markets. There is an Alibaba waiting to happen in India, in Nigeria, in Brazil. And just like one Craig's List has fragmented into dozens of new, massive companies, and one inbox has fragmented into dozens of massive companies, Facebook among them (since you shared pictures over email before Facebook came along), I think Alibaba itself is a signal the Chinese ecommerce market can be broken up into smaller, more well-defined pieces. Alibaba's number one thing is ecommerce. There is a lesson. That you need a local approach to ecommerce in unique markets like China, and homegrown companies are best served. Other than founding Yahoo, investing early in Alibaba might be Jerry Yang's major masterstroke in life.

The Chinese are coming!

Alibaba Files to Go Public in US IPO of E-Commerce Giant
Founded by former English teacher Jack Ma, 49, in a Hangzhou apartment, Alibaba started with a few dozen items for sale. Alibaba’s market value is estimated at $168 billion, bigger than 95 percent of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index -- and the most valuable Internet company after Google Inc....... Alibaba now provides various marketplaces for buyers and sellers, as well as services that help them conduct their businesses. Taobao Marketplace, founded in 2003, enables millions of individuals and small businesses to sell products. Tmall.com operates as a virtual shopping mall, with retailers and brands offering products. Alibaba’s other businesses include Juhuasuan, a flash-sales model, and eTao, a shopping search engine.
Alibaba’s Massive U.S. IPO Could Top Facebook’s Debut
Last year, the Chinese e-commerce business that is part-owned by Yahoo handled $248 billion in transactions, more than Amazon and eBay combined. ..... If successful, Alibaba’s IPO could eventually value the company at substantially more than $150 billion ...... a windfall for Yahoo, which owns 24% of the e-commerce giant...... dominates the Chinese e-commerce market, powering four-fifths of all online commerce in that country ..... the company also operates a digital payments service and a cloud computing business..... Alibaba accounts for about 75% of Yahoo’s valuation ...... At $200 billion, Alibaba would be worth more than U.S. tech titans Facebook and Amazon, but it would still trail Apple and Google, the world’s two most valuable technology companies. ..... Last year, Alibaba handled $248 billion in online transactions ... more than Amazon and eBay combined. ....... Alibaba’s meteoric growth has been powered by economic and demographic trends in China, including the ongoing emergence of a large, tech-savvy middle class. In its IPO filing, Alibaba cited China’s population of 1.35 billion people, including 618 million Internet users. The company said there are 500 million mobile Internet users and 302 million Internet shoppers in China. ..... There is less of a retail culture in China, ie. ‘Let’s go shopping on Sunday,’ ..... “The bottom line is that Yahoo’s stock continues to be driven by Alibaba results”
Yahoo’s Alibaba Stake Is Valued at $26 Billion
its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, another Asian asset where it has a stake estimated at $9 billion..... Together, those holdings are worth about $35 billion, just under Yahoo’s current market capitalization of $36.7 billion. ...... Yahoo paid $1 billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba in 2005 and in 2012 Alibaba agreed to repurchased more than $7 billion in shares. Yahoo now owns 22.6%, according to Alibaba, and is required to sell 208 million shares in the IPO, worth $10.4 billion based on the most recent fair value. ..... Alibaba paid Yahoo $561 million in 2012 to license its intellectual property
With Alibaba IPO filing, pressure mounts on Yahoo
Marissa Mayer has dramatically changed the story line at Yahoo during her nearly two years as CEO ..... But even as Mayer has moved Yahoo away from under the cloud of worry which dogged it for so long, she'll soon be under growing pressure to prove that the company's turnaround is for real and not simply the result of a brilliant investment decision almost a decade ago. ...... In 2005, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang led the company through an investment in the little-known Alibaba, ponying up $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in the company. Today, Alibaba is valued anywhere from $150-$250 billion. Yahoo currently owns a 22.6 percent stake in the company. After Alibaba's IPO, Yahoo could end up with $12 billion in cash on its balance sheet ........ the challenge Yahoo faces as it seeks to compete in all these areas is that the incumbents are some of the fiercest names in technology: Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and others. And without the security blanket of leaning on Alibaba's might during earnings reports, the pressure is on for Mayer to find something else to fill the void.
Alibaba's $1 billion IPO: The numbers to know
Known in the U.S. primarily for its association with Yahoo, Alibaba is an eBay-meets-Amazon and then some kind of business....... Most of Alibaba's revenue derives from online marketing and ads. Other revenue streams include membership and transaction fees, value-added services, and cloud services.
Meet Alibaba’s Jack Ma
Chinese Giant Alibaba Files for IPO, Perhaps the Largest in U.S. History
How Alibaba could change American business
Alibaba Sees SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Staying on Board Post-IPO
10 Surprising Things You Can Buy Using Alibaba
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Sunday, May 04, 2014

A Good Enough Camera For The Internet Of Things?


Lens-Free Camera Sees Things Differently

Good enough is good enough. When you are just trying to count the cars and the people, this would be great.

This is a remarkable jump from the camera that we use today. I wish a similar jump were possible for the phone battery. A 10,000 mAh battery would be nice.

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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Houston Hall In The West Village

Houston Hall in the West Village on 222 Houston (take the 1 train to Houston and it is steps away) is an awesome place. I like the bigness of it. And there is an authentic ambience. Two big screens of sports help too. Friday and Saturday evenings here are epic, if you like large crowds.







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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Net Neutrality In Danger?

Logo of the United States Federal Communicatio...
Logo of the United States Federal Communications Commission, used on their website and some publications since the early 2000s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tim Wu: Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination
The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge some of the world’s highest prices, around sixty dollars or more per month for broadband, a service that costs less than five dollars to provide.
It is a matter of disbelief to me that net neutrality should be in jeopardy. That is quite a statement on the political system. This impacts quite literally everybody. And yet the vested interests are ploughing along. What should instead happen is deregulation that brings the price down on broadband services.

So long, net neutrality? FCC to propose new pay-for-preferential treatment rules
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Saturday, April 05, 2014

India


Selfie


Saturday, March 29, 2014

Hunger Games

The Hunger Games (film)
The Hunger Games (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


For the longest time I avoided the movie. What? Kids getting into fights kinda movie? I thought. But once I watched one, I realized the last time I got this excited about a movie was with the Bourne movies. Movie effects can't carry a movie. But they can help a strong plot. And there has to be a timelessness to the theme.

Technological advances will not cure the basic savagery of human nature. There are other remedies to the savagery. And The Hunger Games speak to that. With the Bourne movies it was the idea of a super soldier going to battle with a super government agency. That is the eternal tussle between the individual and the state.
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