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monstersdownthepath · 6 years

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Deity: Whittle, the Creaking Condemnation

Neutral Evil Archfey of Vengeance, Poisoned Promises, and Dark Groves

Domains: Darkness, Death, Destruction, Evil Subdomains: Loss, Murder, Hatred, Corruption

It is said that when Count Ranalc first unveiled his traitorous ways, the black words the Eldest spat at him tore a deep and horrid hole in the First World and poisoned any being unfortunate enough to hear them. Ever the gentleman Ranalc took them all in stride, and even went so far as to carve a few of the more creative bits of hatred thrown his way into his cane.

It’s not known exactly which of the Eldest snatched his cane from him at that very moment and cracked him across his head with it (many say the Green Mother, many say Shyka, but the most popular is that Ng’s legendary stoicism broke for just one precious moment), but the action shattered his cane into a thousand pieces, each of which fell into the dark hole their words had previously carved and dug into the poisoned soil beyond it.

It was in this wicked space that each of the shards grew, fed by hatred and screams of vengeance, into a grove of seemingly dead trees which would come to be known as the Path of Poisoned Promises. From the largest shard, onto which specific damning words were carved, grew the entity that would come to be known as Whittle. It is within this grove, where the air is so thick with toxic mist that even the hardiest of the fae struggle to breath, that Whittle now dwells, reaching into the world to expand his horrid collection.

Below, you’ll find a bit more on the Creaking Condemnation.

---------- “Religion” ----------

Whittle does not truly wish for a “faith” of his own, and acts to scatter organizations that form in his name, seeing his doctrine too easily twisted and ruined to the point it becomes counterproductive. Those who wish to “serve” Whittle are often steered away just the same, as frequently the ones who want to work for him already have hands stained with innocent blood, or blood otherwise spilled for the sake of profit or self-defense, which he doesn’t find particularly attractive. Those who take vengeance for someone else (i.e. hitmen, assassins, or mercenaries) are especially annoying, often missing the point of what he desires in his victims in the first place: The wondrous blend resulting from the rush of achieved vengeance and the death of someone truly deserving, that subtle crack in the soul that forms when someone otherwise innocent finally not only takes a life (or several), but delights in it, bathing in the sensation of achieving their wicked goal... THAT is what Whittle wants to experience, over and over. THOSE are the memories he wants to relive each time he looks over his collection of stolen hands.

It’s just no fun when someone who’s already been twisted does the deed for someone else. The same sensations don’t occur! Thus, Whittle turns away or even actively torments anyone who wishes to work for him but fails to understand why he does what he does, cursing and plaguing them until they cut ties with him. If someone wishes to worship the Creaking Condemnation, they must not use their power to get someone’s revenge for them, but rather give the person the means to wreak horrible vengeance themselves.

Organized worship of Whittle is rare to the point of nonexistence in both the First World and the Material Plane, and true cultists (ones that he actually provides for rather than sabotaging) are difficult to find to the point that it’s easier to let them come to you. Twisted generosity is the name of the game for a cultist of the Creaking Condemnation, giving riches, blessings, boons, and many other forms of assistance to others so they can commit horrible deeds to fulfill their desire for vengeance.

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A Call into the Dark

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Gaining the attention of the wicked wood fey is rather easy. While Whittle usually keeps one eye in the future to see upcoming pleas for vengeance, he can only see so much at a time--the First World and Material Plane are very, very large, after all. He hears all calls for vengeance and all terrible promises spoken into darkened groves of trees, and so anyone that doesn’t accidentally call to him can do so on purpose by seeking out a shadowed grove and whispering (or speaking, or shouting) their words into the darkness. It’s very rare that Whittle does not answer such calls personally, but on the rare occasions he does not (or can not), he will mobilize an agent or two to the area to meet his newest victim.

Whittle’s power is immense, even for an Archfey, and there is very little he cannot grant to someone who begs for his help. He tends to keep his gifts singular and simple, though--perhaps he will grant the caller a boost to one of their ability scores, or craft them a powerful weapon from nearby materials (or their own emotions, if those are strong enough). Maybe he will give them money to fund their plans, or a means to take money from someone who has wronged them. Perhaps he will give them something as humble as information about their target, or as fantastic as enough knowledge to advance into an entirely new player class (though only to the first level) to give them the power needed to set them on the proper, poisoned path. He'll play the long game if he has to. How much attention and assistance Whittle devotes to a particular mortal and what sorts of boons he grants them depends entirely on how badly he wants their hands, or how they may play a role in a greater plot he may have (though this is rare), and is thus subject entirely to the DM’s discretion. In most cases, barring the ‘granting a class level’ case, the boons Whittle grants should be achievable by the use of a Wish spell.

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A Bargain is a Bargain

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Attempting to weasel your way out of a deal made with Whittle isn’t an intelligent thing to do (neither is bargaining with him in the first place, but many cannot be faulted; he seeks them out when they’re at their weakest and most emotional). Once a victim has successfully taken their revenge and their hands are stained (metaphorically or literally) with the blood of the one(s) that wronged them, Whittle owns the victim’s hands from there on out. At his leisure he may come and collect them, emerging from any nearby shadow and twisting them straight off the wrist. Whether or not this process is painful depends on how much the victim tries defending themselves or backtracking on trying to pay what they owe. There are stories of people thinking they were being clever, surrounding themselves with lights so that Whittle had no shadows to emerge from... Only to be wracked with unspeakable agony as his wooden arm shot from their very own mouth and traumatically tore their hands off, leaving them bleeding and likely dying.

However, if a victim especially willing to hand over their hands, Whittle may elect to let the victim keep them... For a time. He always takes them within 44 days of the victim achieving their goal; Plenty of time, in his mind, for them to make peace with or find ways to adjust to their looming limb loss. Sometimes, though, a victim may find this time limit passing without incident. At that point, they should truly fear, because it means Whittle has plans for their hands. The hands, after all, do become his the moment they achieve their vengeance, and he can assume control of them at any time with nothing more than a thought. What he may have in store for the puppeted limbs varies; sometimes it’s as “innocent” as having the victim move their hand in the right way at the right time to set off a domino effect that will let the wood fey arrange for someone else’s quest for revenge. Sometimes he uses it to maim a mortal (or otherwise) that’s been bothering him, an especially popular use when he has to slap some sense into irritating cultists. Sometimes he uses them to write helpful messages, either to the victim, or to someone else.

Sometimes he just enjoys having a pseudo-agent out in the world. Whittle peeks at the future now and again to see what it holds, and having the right (or left) hands in the right places at the right times can save him a lot of headaches... or provide a lot of amusement. Beings spared from having their hands severed will often become his Feysworn, sometimes out of gratitude for what he's done, or as part of a greater revenge scheme, and sometimes because doing so usually (usually) means they get to live the rest of their life with all their limbs still attached... At the cost of becoming part of his grove when they die.

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Obedience & Boons

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Between Whittle directly sabotaging efforts to organize faiths in his name, and turning away anyone who doesn’t fully understand what he wishes to do, his ascent into a true Eldest is stunted. Despite this, being born of the cursed words spouted by all of the Eldest (save for Count Ranalc himself), Whittle possesses a level of power significantly greater than many other Archfey.

Using the Fey Obedience feat, a worshiper of Whittle gain gain certain Boons upon reaching a certain amount of Hit Dice. These Boons are granted at 12HD, 16HD, and 20HD, though the Feysworn Prestige Class allows someone to achieve the Boons much, much sooner. Whittle’s status as an Archfey means he grants very simple Boons; spell-like abilities that may each be cast 1/day.

Obedience: In an area of dim light, think deeply upon all those who have wronged you or someone you know in the past, whether or not you’ve achieved vengeance against them yet. Spend time visualizing of all the dark things you have done or plan to do to them, all while practicing with a weapon, or practicing with cantrips/orisons/knacks/etc. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus to Sleight of Hand checks. This bonus increases to +6 to conceal a weapon or other harmful object on your person.

Boon 1: Hold Person

Boon 2: Harm

Boon 3: Wooden Phalanx

#Original Concepts

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wichmannmcleod7-blog · 5 years

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cladeymoore · 3 years

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Axie Infinity, Yield Guild Games & the play-to-earn economy

Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. In this edition, Justin Mart, Connor Dempsey, and Hassan Ahmed explore the growth of NFT games and the play-to-earn economy. Plus, a look at NFT marketplace activity and the Poly Network exploit.

We’re at an exciting time in crypto: one in which cryptonetworks are blossoming into full-fledged virtual economies. Nowhere is this more on display than with NFT gaming.

At the forefront of NFT gaming sits Axie Infinity and its play-to-earn model: a model that pays people in crypto to play a fun video game. With over one million daily active users, Axie Infinity has exploded in popularity in emerging markets and is showing the potential to be a trojan horse for on-boarding the next generation of crypto users.

On top of that, Axie Infinity and play-to-earn gaming has spawned its own thriving financial services sector.

The rise of Axie Infinity

Over the last 30 days, Axie Infinity generated a head turning $343M in fee revenue. This is more than any app or protocol in crypto aside from the Ethereum blockchain, according to Token Terminal.

So where’s that revenue coming from?

How Axie Infinity generates revenue

The Axie Infinity economy consists of a governance token (AXS) and a second token called Smooth Love Potion (SLP) that serves as an in-game currency, along with NFTs that represent both game characters and virtual real estate.

The gameplay itself is often compared to Pokemon, where players battle “Axies” (pictured below) against those of other players. Different Axies have different strengths and weaknesses, and the strategy of the game comes down to playing to your Axies strengths better than your opponent. Players get paid in SLP for defeating opponents. Additionally, players can compete daily quests to earn additional SLP. Axies can also be “bred” together to create new Axies which can in turn be sold to other players for profit.

Every time an Axie is traded, a plot of real estate is sold, or two Axies are bred, the protocol takes a fee priced in a combination of AXS and SLP. Rather than go to the developers, this revenue is placed in the Axie treasury, which has ballooned to nearly $600 million.

https://medium.com/media/a5881a034e856752cd2d7fe775bd476d/href

An emerging markets phenomenon

While the protocol revenue numbers alone depict the emergence of a new breakout crypto application, what’s more exciting is where Axie Infinity is taking off: in developing nations where players can often earn more playing the game and selling SLP for their native currencies than they can with a typical day job.

With an estimated 50% of daily active users (DAUs) coming from the Philippines, the game is also picking up steam in other emerging markets like Indonesia, Brazil, Venezuela, India, and Vietnam.

Created by game developer Sky Mavis in 2018, Axie started picking up organic traction in the Philippines in early 2020 after a few players realized they could make legitimate incomes by playing. When Covid lockdowns hit and many were put out of work, more were encouraged to give it a try. A documentary on the game’s growth called PLAY-TO-EARN went viral in May 2021 and DAUs went vertical soon after.

Business models of the metaverse

Unlike many mobile games, Axie Infinity is not free to play. To get started, players need to obtain 3 Axie Infinity characters. In the earlier days of the game, the average Axie was selling for under $10. With the game’s rapid growth and the broader NFT rally, the average Axie is now selling for nearly $500 according to CryptoSlam.

Given Axie’s base within the Philippines and other emerging markets, a $1,500 entry tag is a non-starter for most would-be players. To mitigate this barrier to entry, an informal market emerged in which NFT owners began lending players the NFTs needed to play the game in exchange for a cut of their winnings. This is done through QR codes that let players use Axie NFTs in game without the lender having to cede ownership on-chain.

This informal market has blossomed into a formal play-to-earn financial services sector. The largest and most prominent player is a project called Yield Guild Games.

Yield Guild Games (YGG)

Founder Gabby Dizon likes to say that Yield Guild Games is one part Berkshire Hathaway and one part Uber.

Just as Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company for a multitude of businesses, YGG is essentially a holding company for play-to-earn gaming assets. Starting in 2020, they’ve been buying up yield producing NFTs, governance tokens, and ownership stakes in promising gaming projects and protocols.

Similar to how Uber pairs people who want to earn money driving with people who need rides, YGG pairs people who want to make money gaming with the NFTs they need to earn in play-to-earn games. In many parts of the world, people are opting to work with YGG over Uber simply because it pays more.

YGG recently released its July Asset & Treasury Report that offers an interesting glimpse into the new kinds of business models NFTs and play-to-earn games are creating.

YGG by the numbers

Within YGG, there are scholars and community managers. Scholars receive NFTs that they in turn put to work earning crypto. Community managers recruit and train new scholars. 70% of winnings go to scholars, 20% to community managers, and 10% to the Yield Guild Games treasury.

According to the report, 2,058 new scholars joined YGG in July bringing the total to 4,004. In the same month, YGG scholars generated 11.7M SLP by playing Axie Infinity, which equated to over $3.25M in direct revenue. From April through July, scholars and community managers have earned a cumulative of $8.93M.

From its cut of all SLP earned by scholars, YGG earned $329,500 in July and a total of $580,000 since April. YGG’s expenses currently outstrip revenue, as they spent $1.62M in July alone “breeding” new Axie’s to meet scholar demand (breeding can cost anywhere from $200 to $1,200 per Axie).

The YGG Treasury

The YGG treasury consists of tokens and stablecoins held in a wallet, NFTs, and venture investments made in various play-to-earn games. The project has been funded by a $1.325M seed round led by Delphi Digital and another $4.6M round from a16z. They also raised $12.49M from the sale of the YGG governance token, while holding 13.3% of its outstanding supply.

As of the end of July, the YGG wallet’s holdings stood at $415M, with the majority stemming from the YGG token ($373M). The YGG token is part of Yield Guild Game’s plan to transition into a community-governed DAO.

https://medium.com/media/62856357da8af3813154056ea8ff43ab/href

The price of YGG has tripled in August, meaning their treasury currently stands at over $1B.

https://medium.com/media/ad2c70e2ac461dd1cfc6d0faaf9bc986/href

Much of YGG’s capital has been put to work buying NFTs that can earn yield from play-to-earn games. By the end of July, the YGG treasury had amassed 19,460 NFTs valued at over $10M across 12 play-to-earn games. Axie Infinity NFTs comprised close to 90% of that value.

https://medium.com/media/df13de155b6354a002f814bf13a0e5d8/href

YGG has also made early stage investments across 8 play-to-earn games via SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens), and locked in ~$1M for yield farming in blue-chip DeFi projects.

https://medium.com/media/98e46ab915bf0e874d9c866897c36252/href

Play-to-earn in the real world

A key element of the YGG model is that players are lent NFTs with zero downside risk and without having to put down any upfront capital. In return, they surrender 30% of their winnings but retain the majority — a critical hook to onboarding a new class of crypto users that have historically been priced out.

In fact, some players in the Philippines are earning 5–10x what they were making from their previous jobs. New homes have been purchased, charitable acts have been made, and even shops are accepting SLP as payment.

Beyond the wealth Axie Infinity has created, the game’s popularity has served as a means for getting a large new class of users comfortable using crypto applications. As these 1 million users interface with cryptocurrencies, NFTs, digital wallets, and DEXs, it’s not hard to see this new cohort as natural users of other DeFi and Web3 applications.

Play-to-earn sustainability

If Axie Infinity is its own digital nation, game developer Sky Mavis serves as its Federal Reserve. Where the Fed has various tools it uses to influence the economy, Sky Mavis can adjust the SLP issuance rate and breeding fees with the aim of keeping the Axie economy healthy. Just like a real economy, digital economies have to consider the effects of inflation.

ETH has been flowing into the Axie economy due to high demand for Axie NFTs. Increased demand for Axie NFTs has led to rising Axie NFT prices. Higher NFT prices have made breeding more profitable. Breeding requires fees paid in SLP & AXS, leading to a rise in token prices. With rising SLP prices, playing becomes more profitable, encouraging others to join. A powerful positive feedback loop no doubt — but what if market conditions change?

Winning Axie Infinity battles and quests yields SLP, inflating the SLP supply. And since breeding is priced in SLP, additional supply of SLP equates to cheaper breeding fees to create new Axie NFTs, inflating Axie NFT supply. These dynamics could have an impact on NFT market prices, which in turn may have a direct effect on the economics for players — a possible negative feedback loop.

Ultimately, Sky Mavis has to keep the SLP supply in-check while improving overall gameplay to keep its player economy and ETH deposits growing. They must also offset the number of players seeking to extract a profit with players who are pure consumers — i.e. playing for the fun of it.

Playing the Long Game

While Sky Mavis works to keep the Axie economy strong, Yield Guild Games is banking on the continued growth of play-to-earn gaming as a whole. By replicating its model for Axie Infinity across new games, it seeks to build a play-to-earn empire. Over the long run, founder Gabby Dizon sees YGG as the “recruitment agency of the metaverse” that ultimately competes with the Ubers of the world for labor. A future straight out of Ready Player One in which millions of people earn a living in the digital world in order to cover expenses in the physical one.

Final word

With the exploding revenue of Axie Infinity, the emergence of DAOs like Yield Guild Games, and the multitude of play-to-earn games on the horizon, it’s clear that this trend has legs. With DeFi, NFTs, and now crypto gaming, we’re rapidly evolving past the original crypto killer app of speculative trading and into a universe of expressive new apps and models. We’re in fascinating times as crypto’s utility phase marches forward with a full head of steam.

Quick Hits

OpenSea Hits $3B monthly volume

In the month of August, NFT exchange OpenSea hit $3B in monthly volume as over 1.5 million NFTs changed hands. Its August volume alone exceeds that of every other month in its history, combined.

https://medium.com/media/094a28282f83142b39aee985b760ecd3/href

OpenSea’s August volume is on par with $3B in gross sales Etsy put up in all of Q2: another sign of just how big the NFT market has grown relative to other online marketplaces in a very short timespan.

Data from The Block shows how dominant OpenSea’s dominance over the NFT landscape really is.

https://medium.com/media/65a33b506b8871ddaa65ed0389cf023c/href

Notably absent from this exchange landscape are any kind of decentralized venues for trading NFTs. This follows past market cycles in which centralized exchanges found product market fit first, before ultimately paving the way for decentralized alternatives (think Uniswap during the DeFi summer).

The DEX market for NFTs is still nascent but one we’re watching is the recently launched Punks.house which is a permissionless venue for trading CryptoPunks made by Zora. We’re also seeing NFT markets begin to decentralize themselves, with NFT art marketplace Super Rare making the first move with the introduction of its RARE governance token. Many suspect OpenSea will eventually take this route as well.

Lastly, while OpenSea is a centralized for profit entity, its code is open source. It wouldn’t surprise us to see a low-fee competitor forked from OpenSea emerge in the coming months.

$611M whitehat hack?

In the largest DeFi hack to date, an attacker drained over $611M from the Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon blockchains. Then in a surprise move, he returned almost all of it.

The hack was done by exploiting vulnerabilities on the Poly Network, a cross-chain interoperability protocol that connects different blockchains. These types of networks are usually among the most complex, owing to challenges in getting two different blockchains to talk to each other in a secure, safe fashion (it’s hard enough getting one blockchain to be secure!). And complexity is the enemy of security because added complexity increases the surface area for attackers to find exploits.

In this case, the hacker tricked Poly Network’s smart contracts into thinking that the hacker’s address had permission to unlock the $611M+ across chains (detailed technical analysis here, simple explainer here). But in an odd turn of events, the hacker ended up returning nearly all of it to the Poly Network team (sans $33M USDT frozen by Tether).

There remains speculation around the hacker’s motives to return the funds. Security firm SlowMist stated that they were able to identify the hacker’s IP and email addresses, so some think the funds were returned because the hacker knew they wouldn’t be able to launder that much money undetected. The hacker, on the other hand, conducted an AMA and stated that they did it, “for fun.” And in a separate twist, the Poly Network team offered the hacker a job as their Chief Security Officer in addition to sending a $500,000 bounty for returning some of the funds.

What’s going on here? We can’t know for sure, but it is rare for a hacker to return funds, especially in such a public fashion. Occam’s razor suggests that the repercussions involved with getting caught (if their info was truly identified) were too great to bear.

While it’s disconcerting to see more hacks happening, we should note that this is simply an evolutionary fitness-function in action. Each hack teaches us how to improve, and we learn, adapt, and improve. While bleeding edge crypto protocols pioneering new use cases will inevitably carry more risk, the space hardens over time.

And Poly Network is not alone. Note the other week when Paradigm’s samczsun discovered and reported a vulnerability in SushiSwap’s MISO platform that would have left $350M ETH at risk. Most recently, Cream Finance was exploited in a flashloan attack for $25M.

But for crypto to really succeed, we need security guarantees. Insurance markets are critical.

Retail news

Binance Tightens KYC Requirements — Leans into Compliance

The 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index: Worldwide Adoption Jumps Over 880% With P2P Platforms Driving Cryptocurrency Usage in Emerging Markets

Crypto grows from 2% to 41% of Robinhood’s total revenue in past year

Japan’s Liquid Global Exchange Hacked; $90M in Crypto Siphoned Off

‘Novi is ready to come to market,’ says David Marcus as Diem’s future remains uncertain

Facebook Considering NFT Support in Novi Digital Wallet

Austrian crypto unicorn Bitpanda raises another $263 million

Institutional news

US Mortgage Lender UWM Plans to Accept Bitcoin Payments

Galaxy files for ETF that provides indirect exposure to bitcoin

Bloomberg and Galaxy team up on decentralized finance index

Former SEC chair Clayton joins Fireblocks advisory board

Galaxy reports losing $175 million during the last quarter in recent earnings call

Wells Fargo Launches Passive Bitcoin Fund for Wealthy Clients

Ecosystem news

Visa Enters Metaverse With First NFT Purchase

Budweiser buys Beer.ETH domain and a rocket NFT

Twitter taps crypto developer to lead decentralized social media initiative Bluesky

TikTok Picks Streaming Service Audius to Power New ‘Sounds’ Library

DeFi projects could come under SEC’s oversight, says chairman Gensler

a16z announces $4.6 million financing round in Yield Guild Games

Avalanche launches $180 million DeFi incentive scheme with Aave and Curve

Walmart is looking for a crypto product lead

Polygon acquires Hermez in $250 million deal that includes first-ever token ‘merger’

Ethereum 2.0 Staking Contract Now Holds the Most Ether: $21.3B

Tweets

Chris Dixon: Blockchains are the new app store

Santiago R Santos on play-to-earn and the Future of Finance

Muneeb on the L1 landscape

Ryan Watkins on TVL across smart contract platforms

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Disclaimer: This material is the property of Coinbase, Inc., its parent and affiliates (“Coinbase”). The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Coinbase or its employees and summarizes information and articles with respect to cryptocurrencies or related topics that the author believes may be of interest. This material is for informational purposes only, and is not (i) an offer, or solicitation of an offer, to invest in, or to buy or sell, any interests or shares, or to participate in any investment or trading strategy, (ii) intended to provide accounting, legal, or tax advice, or investment recommendations or (iii) an official statement of Coinbase. No representation or warranty is made, expressed or implied, with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the information or to the future performance of any digital asset, financial instrument or other market or economic measure. The information is believed to be current as of the date indicated on the materials. Recipients should consult their advisors before making any investment decision. Coinbase may have financial interests in, or relationships with, some of the entities and/or publications discussed or otherwise referenced in the materials. Certain links that may be provided in the materials are provided for convenience and do not imply Coinbase’s endorsement, or approval of any third-party websites or their content. Coinbase, Inc. is not registered or licensed in any capacity with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Axie Infinity, Yield Guild Games & the play-to-earn economy was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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peakwealth · 4 years

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Cancelled

Grim reapers, new look. (Electrical box panel, Puglia, Italy 2019)

Only a few months ago, a group of so-called stakeholders in the British airline industry got together to try and do something about their damaged reputation. Flight shame had become a big thing in the media and the finger of climate blame was being pointed, perhaps somewhat hypocritically, at civil aviation. Calling itself Sustainable Aviation, the group included British Airways, Heathrow Airport, EasyJet, the engine maker Rolls Royce, Airbus and the air traffic controller NATS (*). They proposed to cut net carbon emissions of commercial aviation to zero as early as 2050. This would essentially be achieved through carbon 'offsets' (hence the tricky word net), accompanied by charming initiatives such as planting grass on terminal roofs and installing beehives.

They could not have imagined just how dramatically the world was about to change. How little time it would take for the airlines to ground their planes by the thousands, for countries like India to ban all international flights, for Spain to close its borders and airports, for Germany to 'strictly prohibit entry for purposes of tourism'.

Suddenly there was no more need for beehives. In a matter of days aviation had become so sustainable it was dead or just about. The airlines were begging for money to survive.

I remember when, more than twenty years ago, a newcomer called Air Asia started flying in Malaysia and beyond. It was South-East Asia's first major low cost carrier. The planes, all identical Airbuses, were painted with a big red-and-white slogan that proclaimed NOW EVERYONE CAN FLY. And they could. Air Asia grew to have hundreds of planes with more being ordered all the time. Within a decade Asians had become as addicted to air travel as anyone else with spare cash in their pockets.

Today Air Asia's aircraft are parked in neat rows, like those of most other airlines. No one is flying. This much we know. What we don't know is what happens when the epidemic subsides and travel restrictions are lifted. Will the airlines be resuscitated (with public money) or will things never be as they were?

The outcome will be closely watched because air travel is a key enabler of the wider economy. If the planes aren't taking off, large parts of the economy will remain paralyzed.

C'est si bon, de partir n'importe où.... (French song. Screenshot)

________________________________________________________________

This raises the next, far bigger question which everyone has been agonizing about: if the pandemic is indeed a historic turning point, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for society to reinvent itself, what sort of new world should we aim for, if any? Because it would be such a bummer if we just sat on our sofas, waiting for the green light, and then went back to IKEA and Starbucks while the central banks and Goldman Sachs restored the old order.

Thinking Big

One could start off small, take two steps back, turn down the heat of urban life, be creative. But that only works for those with money in the bank and a secure space to retreat to. The instant chaos provoked by the lockdown in India and elsewhere is a reminder that billions of people don't have this luxury.

One step farther would tell us to reduce private consumption (e.g. by closing retail commerce and limiting car traffic one or two days a week) or to push back against the grotesque waste of food in rich countries.

One could also think big. In an interview with BBC radio a few days ago, the novelist Isabel Allende suggested we start by doing away with patriarchy since it clearly isn't working too well. That could be said about a lot of things: late-stage capitalism, religious fanaticism, climate laisser-faire, what have you. Chacun à son goût.

But it can serve as inspiration.

Why not begin by advocating the restoration of the public good as the overriding moral principle in society, rather than the neo-liberal economic model, the stock markets and their shareholders. The Western world has drifted away from the essential ideals of social democracy ever since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put the knife in it, back in the early eighties. That could now, at long last, begin to change.

While we're at it, why not ban political lobbying once and for all and resolve to rope in financial markets and regulate the banks? This may need to be done mano dura because the financial 'industry' has demonstrated that it is incapable of meaningful self control. Having failed to put its house in order after the crisis in 2008, it has become a permanent threat to the world's stability and collective well-being.

Of course, the sudden primacy of the public interest would come as a seismic shock to the global economy. Once the profit principle is subordinated to the urgent necessities of global survival, it is going to hurt a lot of corporate interests, starting with the pillars of what was, until last year, the new liberal world order: so-called big tech, or more accurately the totalitarian oligopolies of digital capitalism - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Huawei, Apple, Alibaba, etc.

Shortlists might depend on personal grievances, on one's own level of disenchantment with the way things are. First in line for a major reset might be tobacco, big pharma and private health care. For decades business has tried to chip away at public health care all over the world, hoping to see it collapse into their laps. The pandemic has demonstrated that only universal public health care can do the job.

Equally obvious and fundamental would be the re-affirmation of education as a basic right and a public responsibility, bolstering the credibility and accessibility of free schools.

Talking about basics and health, one should not forget the global food giants (hello Nestlé and Kraft, watch out McDonald's) and all the other corporate purveyors of obesity and disease. Elsewhere, the military-industrial complex has long been one of the darkest corners of human greed, it requires serious de-escalation. Then there is a growing list of sunset industries now heading for the exit faster than expected. One of the most obvious is fossil fuel (particularly oil sands and shale oil, coal being a no-brainer) and some of the industries in its orbit like the car industry and everything that swirls around it. Goodbye Harley-Davidson.

Decade after decade, travel and tourism have grown to be the world’s number one business and many countries have hitched their economic futures to the leisure industry. Tourism relies on the froth of disposable income, on mobility and security. All three have been badly damaged, as have the incomes of tens of millions of people, many in precarious jobs. In fact, the bottom has dropped out of tourism.

While tourists will surely trickle back, the business may never return to where it was only a few weeks ago. Nor should it. Now might be the right time for some serious pruning, like putting limits on the frenzy of airline travel, or doing away with socially destructive bad habits like AirBnb. Cruise ships have multiplied in recent years to become not only an environmental pest, but a disturbing display of social inequality and conspicuous waste. They would not be missed.

If the future is to be one of reduced circumstances, then the casino ghettoes of Macau, Las Vegas or Singapore might feel like lacking in legitimacy and purpose.

Other forms of commercial entertainment may look equally overripe in a post-coronavirus world, such as Formula One car racing (supported with public money while the proceeds go mostly into private pockets) or, yes, the Olympic games. Time to ditch it, permanently.

If some of this sounds a little drastic, it may well be that we need not actively worry about it: the epidemic could take care of it all by itself. The contraction of the economy, the disappearance of income flows, the collapse of employment, the insolvency of businesses and countries alike might, in such a scenario, be enough to restore - dare I say it - a measure of sanity to the global economy, at least temporarily, and give the climate a fighting chance.

The obvious flipside of such a scenario would be that the true pain would be borne by the global poor. While plummeting output and evaporating wealth might hurt the 1 %, or the top 10%, it would be catastrophic for billions of others. Governments would have to re-enigineer public (and, yes, private) finances to prevent total collapse and provide some sort of universal basic income. Its day seems to have come. But even within the utopia of a newly redistributive economy, the gap between winners and losers might still widen, depending on where they happened to live. A transfer of wealth to the global south, especially to Africa with its burgeoning population, has become ever more urgent, if only out of naked self interest.

Because whether we want it or not, a new world order is already emerging. A few months ago I dwelled, somewhat self-importantly, on the nature of sober, well-intentioned government, grounded in democratic institutions and led by smart people. It is early days still, but the pandemic is showing the benefits of competent governance and straight thinking (if not always the usefulness of democracy). Tomorrow’s world order might very well track those countries which have proved nimble or proactive in limiting the epidemic, countries with adequately funded public health care and switched-on leadership.

Despite all the obfuscation and mistakes that were made, beginning with the unconscionable trade in endangered animals that is credited with igniting the pandemic, China seems to be managing the crisis rather well. So is its unloved cousin across the straits, Taiwan. South-Korea and other Asian countries also appear to have a handle on the crisis beyond the desperate measures to flatten the time-vs-infection curve. Aside from New Zealand and Europe’s Nordic countries, Germany has stayed one step ahead of the virus as have such outliers as Greece and Portugal (which acted more decisively than its Spanish neighbour).

All of this remains to be seen, so much is yet to be revealed, but the tectonic plates of global power are audibly grinding below the surface. Needless to say, this carries great risks as the crisis is opening the door to radical surveillance, political regression, parochialism and waves of xenophobia.

Yet this is not the time to lock the door and hide under the bed. The pandemic is a unique reminder that we’re all in this together, the whole wide world, and that change can and must happen, particularly considering the climate challenge still ahead of us. If not now, then when?

________________________________________________________

(*) https://www.sustainableaviation.co.uk

Thanks to my friends who contributed ideas.

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seanmeverett · 5 years

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Emerging Trends of Master Product Management

What you need to be at the top of your game in 2019

I. THE WORLD HAS CHANGED

The world of Product Management is no longer changing. It has changed. At some point over the last few years we transitioned into a new way of thinking when it comes to technology. Let’s review the situation as we move into the last year of this decade.

What used to be emerging tech a decade ago has now become the de facto standard. VCs used to be enamored by SoMoLo (Social, Local, Mobile) and Gamification, but the new emerging technologies revolve around Spatial Computing. The focus now is about taking computing from behind a rectangular piece of glass and bringing it into the real world. This includes Augmented and Virtual Reality as the interface layer, Artificial Intelligence as the logic layer, and Blockchain as the emerging database layer. With 5G connectivity and the proliferation of IoT devices and sensors, we enable new things like self-driving and Pokémon or Amazon Go.

The future of Humanizing our Tech

Our interfaces are becoming ever more invisible as we begin to wear our computers. AirPods in the ear and speaking to voice assistants like Siri and Alexa our in the world or at home. Even physical touch interfaces went from some-of-the-time with smart phone taps to all-of-the-time with vibrating wearables and always-on heart rate monitoring.

Meanwhile, blue chip industrial companies are investing in SAAS-based technologies and because Wall Street no longer rewarding a gigantic sales team that has to start each quarter from zero. The sawtooth revenue curve of the past is being replaced by curves that look more like hockey sticks. It’s not just software that’s eating the world, it’s also their business models. Namely, moving from one-time payments to Monthly Recurring Revenue from Software as a Service. Did you know Salesforce got its start by convincing customers they shouldn’t use installable CDs, but rather a website that gives them updates every day? Now this is taken for granted but changing software buying patterns was hard in the beginning.

Today, everyone has a startup or a side hustle. What we used to hear five years ago, “I’ve got an idea for an app”, is now, “I’m raising $1M on a $5M pre- and have traction with 100,000 users”. Wait, what? You’re only 15 years old? Which brings us to our next point. Digital Natives, Gen Z, and yes, Millennials, have overtaken mindshare, marketing, and advertising share from the Baby Boomers. Many of us with decades of Product experience merely adopted the tech, but these individuals were born into it. Christopher Nolan, eat your heart out.

Valuations have soared since 2008, and new millionaires are minted so regularly that we now collective keep count in billions. Growth at all costs, even profits, have created an irrational exuberance the likes of which Greenspan could hardly comprehend during the go go dot-com days.

Even retailing has changed. The anchors of malls aren’t seeing the foot traffic they once did, Sears is shuttering its doors and Best Buy is struggling. The reason is because we get free shipping and cheaper prices shopping online, and at least in the US, eCommerce executive’s go-to-market strategy is simply www.amazon.com.

As we transition into the mindset of investors, we see a more modern Private Equity, new family offices sprouting up in record numbers, new regulations like the JOBS Act, and new funding mechanisms like Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Security Token Offerings (STOs) enabling much more capital flowing into tech than ever before. Because traditional LPs have been reading the same blogs and would rather source and diligence their own deals than pay a middle man their 2-and-20 fees, we see more demand than ever for the best deals and unique deal flow as a competitive differentiator. The leveraged buyouts of yore targeting low-growth manufacturing firms are now targeting niche software companies because the economics and multiples are better with the same consistent cash flow.

As we turn our attention to go-to-market strategies, the traditional ad budgets spent on TV and display continue to evolve more towards a universal view of a person. Spend on Influencers have shifted from Movie Stars and Athletes to the Kardashians, and then to micro-influencers, and now to pico-influencers with 500 followers who are all personal connections. It’s the word-of-mouth virality that spells success for many products, after all. GDPR regulations that came online in mid 2018 means every website we now visit has a horribly thick bottom bar overtaking our screens. As a result of all this hypertargeting, user tracking, and dynamic content, the user experience of the web has decreased dramatically, especially when including abysmal loading times resulting from excessive overuse of Javascript. Did you know there are now 7,000 MarTech startups, up from 5,000 only a few short years ago, creating a bewildering amount of programmatic ad choices, and ever-increasing customer acquisition costs. The result being building quality product mechanics for incenting organic virality and engagement are 10x harder than they used to be.

Finally, there’s a resurgence of interest around outer space and private rocket companies. Space Tech is a thing and with falling prices of launches by Blue Origin and SpaceX, the cubesat subsector will ultimately enable next-generation cellular connectivity from space. This is how the other 50% of humanity gets internet access while also being a source of cash for the burgeoning New Space industry in desperate need of investment.

II. THE WINNERS & THE LOSERS

Taken together, we’re all playing a whole new ballgame. The playing field has become shorter while the game has become faster, and harder. Greenfield opportunities where you used to be competitive with a buggy LAMP stack and lackluster UX has even stopped working in the Enterprise. High-quality consumer apps that everyone now uses means we expect the same from all our software, including what we use at work. And desktop apps are no longer enough. The world has become smaller but we’re traveling more often and so we’d rather lose our luggage than our smart phone. We expect our work software to be just as efficient as the apps we use for play. Customers and users don’t care that it takes 320 different video encoding renditions for a single video file shared behind a firewall. “It’s just a play button, why is that so hard?” They don’t care how the sausage is made, expect perfect connectivity and high-resolution streaming. And expect it to be as cheap as YouTube.

We have reached a significant milestone for humanity. Half the human population is connected to the internet, mostly with mobile phones, and everyone is in search of the next gigantic growth product. Skill and talent has blossomed in unexpected markets around the world. France is a key global spot for world-class software development, Africa is emerging as a new startup capital learning from the likes of the Valley and Singapore, while China and the US are in an AI arms race for powering the world of our future. Information is shared in tiny bursts through text messages and short-form videos, with the entire world is trying to steal market share of eyeball for their Monthly Active Users.

At this point you may be feeling a bit down, wondering why you should even consider starting a new project. With the degree of difficulty steadily marching up-and-to-the-right, what hope do you have for standing out in a sea of competing projects, apps, sites, and initiatives?

The winners will be the ones who both Accept & Acclimate to this new world quickly. There’s no time to debate. The winners take action. The losers, on the other hand, will continue to exist in the Web 2.0 or, even worse, pre-connected world. It’s true that legacy business models and declining markets have a much longer tail than anyone realizes, but it’s getting shorter.

In either case, you’re either compounding in a positive direction or a negative direction. The graphic below from Farnam Street tells the story better than any amount of words could.

Source: Farnam Street

The key insight here is that it doesn’t require organization-wide adoption to reap the benefits. It only takes a single “2-pizza team”, as Jeff Bezos famously states, to kickstart action in the right direction. But whom you pick for those teams makes all the difference in the world.

So it begs the question: with a discipline as varied and misunderstood as Product Management, how can we begin to slice the skill sets required to determine the right person for the first project but also the second? Is it a mini-CEO, a turnaround genius, a mobile app maven with hundreds of daily builds, or a growth hacking expert who’s earned the stripes from a decade in the trenches? As a high-performing Product Officer, you need all of these next-level skills to stay at the top of the capabilities mountain.

The Product winners understand the importance of spending the time and budget to go find the right talent before doing anything else. The team is the single biggest difference maker between 2x and 10x. The Product losers, on the other hand, focus on business as usual and going with whomever is a phone call away, whether or not they have the requisite skills required to execute in this new world.

III. THE PROMISED LAND

But what does it look like to win? It means you’ve got a successful project on your hands. Your KPIs are up, the product is working, the team is energized, and the kudos stream in from around the internal organization and external community. Most importantly, your revenue and/or users are growing with a healthy k-factor above 1. The A/B testing and Cohort analysis is paying off once you found the correlation between Retention and Engagement. You’ve maintained quality and are in a great repeating cadence of 1) customer development, 2) agile design and development, and 3) continuous deployment and retrospectives.

Master-level Product Management means that the compounding flywheel effect applies to your product, but also the operations of your team, whether that’s a small 3-person group or a large 10,000 person global conglomerate.

A well-run machine is the opposite of chaos. You’ve developed esoteric metrics, like how many Slack messages are sent and how many files are sent back and forth to tell you how good the team is working together and how high-quality the work product is. And of course, that the entire group works backwards from the customer or user, and not forwards from the technology, unless we’re in Hard Tech territory like Quantum Computing.

Master Product Managers have been doing all these things for years but as we move towards 2020, a new set of skills has emerged.

IV. TOP 3% PRODUCT MANAGEMENT MASTERY FEATURES

Below are the top things you need to execute on to maintain your role as one of the best Product Managers in the world, or in identifying them for your next project.

Focus on one KPI: Revenue. Paul Graham of YC fame said a Startup could be defined by a sigle word: growth. Projects and businesses can also be defined by such a word. If the business is not making money, then eventually it ceases to exist. So, for any Master Product Manager, the starting base-level KPI for any project must have Revenue in it somewhere. Even a consumer app with MAU as a metric eventually needs to become self-sufficient at some point. You can choose a monthly subscription fee (Netflix) which has gained popularity above the one-time purchase to match ongoing revenue with ongoing costs, or an ad-supported model (Facebook) to sustain itself. Pricing strategy is understood as a key component of this. If you double the price and demand decreases by less than half, then you just created additional revenue growth with nearly zero marginal cost. In short, the right Product also has the right Price. Note that we’re leaving aside Not-for-Profits as they have a different motivation and core KPI, which would typically center around positive impact, measured by Human, Animal, or Environmental improvement.

Understand and design business models, especially applying them in new ways. A project starts by answering the question of “Who buys what from whom, for how much, and why?” For a lemonade stand, the answer is: a customer buys lemonade from us for $1 because she’s thirsty and we’re located right next to the park she walks her dog at. There are a limited set of business models that exist, like Remove-the-Middle-Man or Give-Away-the-Razor-To-Sell-the-Blade. Flipping standard business models on their head creates new insights and the Master Product Manager has a list of them at the ready with examples. One such example is the new online school that kept the definition of the customer the same (the student), but shifted when the student pays. Instead of paying every semester for classes as a big up-front cost for a buyer with very little money, this startup shifted the cost for the student to a percentage of salary for the first two years after graduation. Of course, the school makes a promise that they will help the student get placed. So, the novel insight here was shifting the business model to a transaction fee of the benefit rather than an up-front fixed cost. Payment processors have been using this model for some time. You submit an invoice to someone and in return for a company processing that payment, you’re willing to give them a fee because it’s small compared to the amount of money you just earned. It’s the same concept, now applied to a different industry: education. Gamification and Incentive design also play a part and have been recognized widely in the tech community since the days of Foursquare and Gowalla. Today, with the emergence of Initial Coin Offerings and its successor, Security Token Offerings, creating an app that becomes an economy means a Master Product Manager needs to understand the intricacies of micro and macroeconomics down to the granular level of “How do users earn tokens?” and “Where do users spend tokens?”. In the beginning of Bitcoin, for instance, it was much easier to acquire the cryptocurrency than it was finding who would accept it as payment. Thus, supply, demand, and transactions are important for unleashing value creation and developing a healthy economy. See Metcalfe’s Law for more.

Position Brand as a key differentiator. A brand is not a logo or a design. A brand is how it makes you feel. Apple feels different than Google which feels different than Facebook or Amazon. They do different jobs for their users, but it’s wisely said that the money in a company’s bank account is really just a physical measure of the trust that their customers or users have in the organization. People spend more money and return more often to brands they love. Today, when consumers are much less brand loyal and are willing to switch providers and products on a dime based on the service they receive (i.e., how it makes them feel), getting Brand right is a big deal.

Executes as CEO of the Product and the real CEO. As the world moves faster, demands of shareholders and the team become larger, and quality-at-speed becomes the new standard, CEOs and Founders are spread more thin than ever. Master Product Managers understand the intricacies of the entire business, not just their own product, in order to successfully deliver on where the puck is heading. They can run the business if the CEO was on leave for a month, they see around corners, understand where the industry is headed, talk with the Board and investors, raise capital while maintaining cost controls, hire grade-A talent, work with adjacent industries to establish new critical Business Development opportunities, and execute capital allocation strategies. See the book Outsiders by William Thorndike for more on how the top 8 public company CEOs over the last half century allocate capital.

Embed social and moral ethics into the atomic unit of the product. MNI Targeted Media’s study showed that more than 50% of Gen Z (i.e., between age 3 and 23) favor a brand who is socially conscious, so the $4B in buying power they have today will transform into tens of billions more when they reach full maturity. Master Product Managers not only act as technology builders, but as an ethical voice of the product and organization as well. They are not afraid to raise a red flag, take a stand, and stick to what’s right and just. Even the CEO of the most valuable brand in the world, Tim Cook, has taken stands for human rights and privacy, total shareholder return be damned (though studies have shown it actually helps). In addition, while operating ethically within business has long been a subset of the standard CFA exam, it is a growing requirement when news spreads around the world in an hour, and talent has the ability leave in a moment’s notice to work for anyone from anywhere. Long-term relationships matter because the apprentice of today will be the master of tomorrow, and reputations are written in stone on the internet.

Has smooth PR and media presentation skills. Master Product Managers know how to talk to the media about the product succinctly. A “repeatable sound bite” is just another way of saying “viral marketing”. Because if the viewer can’t remember it and repeat it, that alone can negatively impact the product’s k-factor. Today, the builder is more important than ever, as it’s less the CEO talking about the product and more about the the trade-offs the people building it had to make. Jony Ive is a hot commodity because the way he thinks is a leading indicator of what gets built. Great Product people are comfortable on camera, and don’t use the “ums”, “ya knows”, and “likes” that have become so prevalent in spoken conversation. As the steward of the product, you represent the product both on camera and on social, whether or not your profile says, “my thoughts don’t reflect my employer”. Again, who you are definitely becomes what you build, especially when customers and users care so much about what Products do with their data, they research who the people are behind them. In terms of efficient communication, a former McKinsey consultant, Barbara Minto, literally wrote the book on it, called “The Minto Pyramid Principle”. She teaches you the way to craft concise memos, reports, presentations, and talking points for a short attention span audience. World-class product people study not just the art of Judo, but also the subtle art of communication.

Exist outside the tech bubble. There are 7.5 billion human beings in the world. These are the users and customers of your product. They have feelings, stresses, and relationships that machines don’t have. Understanding consumer behavior is arguably the most critical aspect of any product. The Job-To-Be-Done framework must also include something new called The-Feeling-It-Creates framework. Is your product about saving time, money, and stress, or is it about escape, fun, and entertainment? As an example, BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model was used almost entirely as the core product mechanic for Instagram, because Kevin Systrom took his class at Stanford and remembered it when investing his product from location-centric to image-centric. Dale Carnegie’s famous book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is another great resource as is Chip Heath’s book, “Made to Stick”. These are all now table stakes. Understanding human consciousness, and the move towards mindfulness are necessary requirements for building a product that moves past addiction, and into transcendence. Technology always changes, but humans never do.

IV. IS THIS POSSIBLE & WHAT’S NEXT?

What we’ve laid out here may seem overwhelming, especially for those Product people just entering the discipline. But because the best Product people are ruthless prioritization experts, and agile enough to climb seemingly insurmountable challenges, we believe this gets the best and the brightest excited.

This is a juicy new problem to solve, and a new vector for investing in ourselves and our discipline. “Give me more to learn!” we hear some of our close friends in the industry constantly saying.

So, yes, it is possible. Similar to the documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the mountain of mastery reaches ever higher, and even after seven decades spent as a master, it’s an unreachable target. So, if you’re more junior, or know nothing about Product, but need someone who does, you’ve come to the right place.

The subtleties in Products often end up making the most difference but can take decades of experience to uncover. Thankfully, this is where many of the top Product people in the world call home, to work together, and learn from each other.

We are equally as excited as we are humbled, to build the products that influence future generations.

— Sean

Emerging Trends of Master Product Management was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Stories by Sean M Everett on Medium http://bit.ly/2Cw8at5

#Stories by Sean M Everett on Medium

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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A Q&A With Matthew Moulding, Founder of the Hut Group – WWD

https://pmcwwd.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/matthew-moulding-1.jpg?w=640&h=415&crop=1

LONDON — Matthew Moulding may be the mastermind behind The Hut Group, a billion-plus pounds tech company in the beauty and wellness space, but he’s not one for a Silicon Valley cliche.

The 48-year-old Moulding, a self-made entrepreneur whose net worth is approaching 1 billion pounds, according to The Sunday Times of London Rich List, not once during an hourlong interview drops the words, “lean in,” “disrupt,” “learnings” or “synergistic.” He doesn’t preach about the importance of “community,” nor does he appear to have the messiah complex that’s so common among the tech businesses founders.

Serious, soft-spoken and—by his own description—risk-averse, the muscly Moulding (he’s a major fitness fan) is not made in the mold of the showy, party animal British entrepreneur (see Richard Branson, Philip Green and Richard Caring) or the stereotypical tech founder, although tech has always sat at the heart of The Hut Group, whose holdings include Lookfantastic.com, Glossybox, Espa and Christophe Robin.

From the beginning, the straight-talking Moulding insisted that all tech be developed in-house by the Manchester-based group, which is why a large chunk of revenues come from supplying know-how to outside brands.

Originally from Burnley, in Lancashire, northwest England, Moulding studied industrial economics at Nottingham University, started his career as an accountant for Arthur Andersen, and then worked as a finance director for the mobile phones group founded by one of Britain’s wealthiest men, John Caudwell.

Keen to explore selling on the Internet, he used a windfall from work to start The Hut Group in 2004 with a business partner. British retail giants Stuart Rose, former chairman and chief executive officer of Marks & Spencer and Terry Leahy, former Tesco ceo, were among his early investors. Today, Moulding and THG management are the largest single shareholders, while KKR and Balderton Capital hold significant minority stakes.

BlackRock Funds is among the smaller investors in the company, which turned over 1.14 billion pounds in 2019, a 24 percent uptick on the previous year. Some 66 percent of sales generated internationally, with some of the fastest growth coming from Asia. EBITDA rose 22 percent to 111 million pounds in the same year.

The Hut Group also has a portfolio of hospitality businesses, including two high-end hotels in Manchester and a health club and spa in Cheshire, England. It is a multifaceted investor: Two years ago, it acquired Language Connect, a language translation and localization services company, to help it build web sites and businesses in markets worldwide.

The Hut Group began selling games and electronics online, eventually moving into beauty and wellness when Moulding realized he could generate hefty margins, and make a difference in the industry, enabling brands large and small to spread their reach; developing and marketing new products, and offering back office services to companies of all sizes.

He’s not out to save anyone’s soul or rescue a troubled world. His goals include getting products into consumers’ hands—quickly, and at scale, untangling knots in the supply chain, solving problems and helping THG’s people to shine – and share the wealth. More than 20 percent of THG’s share capital has been awarded to employees since the group was founded.

While a stock market listing may happen at some point, Moulding said he has zero interest in selling his stake the in company, and moving on.

“We haven’t ever even sold a building, never mind the business!” he says. “What else would I do? All I intend on doing is just building The Hut Group into something that stands out over the foreseeable future, and I don’t see an end to that.” Here, Moulding talks about his strategies, his vision for the beauty and wellness businesses, his appetite for future acquisitions and his new fleet of Hut Group planes, which are meant for speeding up deliveries, and not for jetting to Barbados.

What was your original vision for The Hut Group?

Matthew Moulding: The reality is I didn’t have it all figured out. I don’t believe many people when they say they had an idea at the start, and it’s the same idea today. I wanted to get into the Internet, and I wanted to launch an online business. It was a retail-focused business at the outset. I didn’t know anything about the Internet or retail. I didn’t even know about the category we went into—entertainment—CDs, DVDs and games. Back in 2003, when I originally was thinking about this, entertainment was a very big category. The dot-com bubble had passed; things were gaining pace on the Internet. I chose TheHut.com as a name back then, because it was general, and I never really intended to stay in entertainment. Quite quickly it became clear that to scale a business in that sector, using other people’s technology was just going to be unworkable. It was too expensive. Within weeks of launching, we recruited two developers and started to build our own technology so we could replace the platform we were using. By mid-2005, we had our own live platform, and the cost effectiveness was off the charts.

Why did you decide to move out of entertainment?

M.M.: The business scaled fast. We went from zero to 35 million pounds in sales by 2008. And it was profitable. The issue was that in 2007, Apple had launched the iPhone, and all of a sudden digital was a very meaningful threat, because the iPhone was transformational, and posed a definite risk. Our margins went down every year as digital took hold. So we used that technology to trial every other category on the Internet, and we didn’t want to expand into the wrong category. We tried everything—fresh produce, delivery products like washing machines, running machines, sweets. It was quite disheartening at one point. Outside entertainment, I wasn’t convinced that you could make money in any categories because they all have issues. Choosing your competition is key as well. We didn’t want to be competing with Amazon if we could avoid it.

The two categories that absolutely stood out were wellness and beauty. And they were two categories I really enjoyed. The fitness and nutrition side appealed to me, and you really have to be passionate about the products as well. Since the company started, I had been looking at beauty as a category. What I found with health and beauty is that they’ve got very similar customer behavior traits to entertainment. People come back very often, you’re dealing with relatively small items, it can go global. There were lots of attractive things about the business model, and I just enjoyed the sectors.

Beauty is a fragmented business with a handful of well-established major players, a sea of smaller and start-up brands and often complex distribution networks. How did you establish the relatively unknown Hut Group as a player?

M.M.: L’Oréal and Estée Lauder were hardly going to hand me a distributorship, so what I wanted to do was acquire in that space so we could get going. We’d put our technology, which was getting ever more advanced, into play while showing brands what we could do, and that we were serious about the sector. The first one we bought was Lookfantastic. I raised a little bit of money, bought Lookfantastic in December 2010. I think we paid 20 million pounds.

The profitability was low and the majority of its sales came from GHD. But, to me, the real value within Lookfantastic was the fact that they had a L’Oréal contract, and a great relationship with L’Oréal. That’s why we bought it. We went to work on nurturing those relationships, proving to the industry that we were deadly serious about investing every penny we generated in the industry, and that we could be a positive force for everybody. Since then, Lookfantastic has grown 20-fold in size. If you strip out Ghd, it’s probably grown 40-fold.

Six months later, we entered the wellness space with a bodybuilding brand, MyProtein, which turned over less than 20 million pounds in revenue. We’ve grown that business 25-fold since then, and completely changed it. It was probably a brand more synonymous with steroid users in the gym than a lifestyle brand that could appeal to all nationalities across the world.

Why is it so important for you to own your own brands and technology?

M.M.: We typically buy small brands that have got challenges. We like to show what we can do with them. At the same time, we’ve invested hundreds of millions of pounds in technology, and infrastructure like warehouses, data centers manufacturing capability. We’ve also realized the importance of product development, of bringing great products to market at speed rather than waiting out the two-year life cycle that these things sometimes take. We did a search of the U.K. manufacturers and decided to buy a business called Acheson & Acheson. There is great talent there. We are trying to embed ourselves across the industry as the go-to partner for brand. We’ve now got, if not the largest digital platform in the world, certainly one of the largest. We’re certainly the largest pure-play platform in the world with Lookfantastic. We’ll give Sephora a good run for the money in terms of who’s the biggest online.

Can you talk about your Ingenuity platform, the white label end-to-end technology and operating platform services that you offer to third party brands and retailers?

M.M.: When we speak to brands, we say, “We’ve got the biggest platform, so we can get you anywhere in the world. We can make you a success in all the different territories. If you’ve got challenges in bringing products to market, we’ve got a first class global manufacturing capability with product development throughout. We’ll help you speed up your products to market.” Everyone needs a [direct-to-consumer] solution that works, their own high growth and in demand web site where they can really showcase what they do. Typically, they’ll pick certain territories and say, ‘Can you give us a solution to serve those marketplaces?’

You can choose from a suite of services, and you can have anything you want. Every country needs its own bespoke translation and web site operation, so we’ll translate the products for you. You’ll need local courier service. It requires a lot of tech to be able to link up with all the different providers in each country. And you need different payment platforms for everywhere in the world. We can switch you on to all of those. We have Europe’s largest content studio based out of Manchester at the moment, which has just been built. What we typically do is give you all the content you need. We then have an influencer platform, our own technology, it’s called THG society, which has got thousands of influencers on it. They work on our brands, they work on other people’s brands. Typically in every scenario, we run [the sites] from start to finish. And we’ll handle the marketing for them.

We work with Nestlé, even in the U.S. with Clorox. We’ve just launched Burt’s Bees, for them. They’ve had some challenges in d-t-c over the years. After we launched for them, products which they thought would take two months to sell sold out in 48 hours. What we can do is take that risk out for them. We’ve got the machine in hand to deliver success straight away.

You have warehouses across the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. To service this global network, you brokered a deal with Singapore Airlines to charter flights to ship goods across Asia. You about to launch THG Air, which will operate two dedicated cargo planes that ship products internationally. Why the planes now?

M.M.: I’d wish we’d done it earlier, although this isn’t a cheap foray. It’s a major exercise. The reason we needed our own planes is just based on capacity. When passenger planes were running, it was already constrained for us because we’d been growing in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan on a serious scale. There was just not enough capacity for what we needed and we had to take control of that. When you add to that coronavirus, which then grounded all passenger airplanes, which carry 90 percent of the cargo across the world, then you have a serious shortage of capacity. The Singapore Airlines partnership was locking down a very scarce resource. We might be doing one with AirAsia as well, to give you an idea of the scale we have in that territory. Whilst we have that Singapore Air deal, we actually launched two of our own A330 planes. They’re actually in livery at the moment being spray-painted, so that’ll be in the skies pretty soon.

How do you leverage the all-important data that you gather?

M.M.: What we’re trying to do with that data is just make the experience better for the customer. We feed it back to the brands to try and give them an idea of how we think things should be developing or changing. Lots of these big tech giants have been criticized about how they use data. I, for one, have no issue with a web site giving me what I want to see in the best possible journey. Obviously, everyone’s time is precious and you want to make it work. So it is what we do with data. We don’t have listening devices, but we do have a mine of information that we can share with brands on how they can do things better.

Are you looking at similar companies, competitors and other tech giants, and modeling yourself on anyone?

M.M.: To be brutally honest, no. I admire what everyone else does. All we’re trying to do is fix problems. Everything we’ve done has been around fixing problems. Fundamentally, if you’re serious about scaling to become a very large business, there are always problems that need fixing. We are very passionate about that. We don’t look at all the other players in the market and try and emulate what they’re doing. We’re looking at our business, and how best to serve the customer. And if we can fix our problems, then it’s going to make the business stronger every year.

Where do you want to take The Hut Group in terms of size and scale?

M.M.: I don’t have a specific target. I think if you have a target, that’s essentially as good as putting the business up for sale. I genuinely have no interest in that whatsoever. I focus on what the next challenges are, and what’s stopping us from being a very big business. It’s always very tempting when people try and buy you. You can say, “I’ll sell, and I’ll do it again.” But I’ve never met anyone who does it again. It’s really hard to do it multiple times at such a large scale. All I intend on doing is building The Hut Group into something that stands out over the foreseeable future. I don’t see an end to that. I don’t think about it. So, billions and billions of revenue is your answer. But how many billions and billions?

WWD: Would you IPO the business?

M.M.: I’m proud of getting this far in a private arena because that, in itself, is very rarely done. Even the big U.S. tech giants, the vast majority were public by this scale. There will come a point, no doubt, when some of the investments I want to make will be incredibly large. There will be big numbers, and trying to do those investments in a private arena becomes ever more complex. The short answer is that I will always be open to consideration of that. So far, I’ve been lucky enough to find some great partnerships in investors.

WWD: What about future acquisitions? What do you have planned?

M.M.: Beauty brands for sure. We are there to invest in brands across the industry. We’ve got a relatively small portfolio today, nothing like the scale of the big houses, so there’s lots and lots of road for us to invest in small beauty brands, big beauty brands, hair care brands. We’re very passionate about brands, and we think that we can make a massive difference to them. We have a large M&A team that is constantly trying to find brands. I’d be disappointed if we didn’t do more in that space.

On top of that, tech is something we’re always invested in. Where we have a need, we will obviously build in-house. But sometimes, you know, you just go and buy some tech. Then there’s infrastructure. We would be very keen on infrastructure assets, warehouses, cargo airlines. Infrastructure is a very, very broad term. We’ve got a couple of hotels, which is part of our influencer model, part of showcasing our brands. They are a real marketing asset to us.

We’re also looking at sports nutrition, and brands across the nutrition space, such as snacks and bars, and other add-on categories where we can gain some expertise. We’ve got a wide-ranging approach to it, which doesn’t mean we’re going to do everything, but we’ve got a clear view on what we need to do to further the group.

Did you always know you’d be an entrepreneur on this scale?

M.M.: You always dream, don’t you? But, actually, did I ever think I would? No. I don’t take big risks if I can avoid it, although it might look to the outside world that I’m taking huge risks every day. What I’m doing is what I genuinely believe I need to do because a bigger risk is round the corner. In setting the business up, I just was passionate about it. There was something that I felt was deliverable. I happened to have had a really big bonus, so I had some money to put to work. I’d been through a painful separation. I felt like I needed to kick my life on a bit. That’s why I did it. The brutal honesty is it looks great from the outside, but for the first five years, it was the worst, most painful thing I’ve ever taken on. I would have given it away for free.

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endenogatai · 4 years

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Zynga acquires Turkey’s Peak Games for $1.8B, after buying its card games studio for $100M in 2017

Today, some news of a huge acquisition out of Turkey that represents the first billion-dollar-plus exit for a startup out of the country. Social gaming company Zynga confirmed that it is buying Istanbul-based Peak Games, the company behind popular Candy-Crush-style mobile gaming apps Toon Blast and Toy Blast, for $1.8 billion — $900 million in cash, and $900 million in Zynga shares.

Interestingly, this is the second time that Zynga has made a Peak Games acquisition. In 2017, it purchased the company’s mobile card games business for $100 million (more on that below).

The news caps off a short period of speculation about an upcoming deal, with local tech publications like Webrazzi calling the sale (and correct price) last month.

Peak’s investors had included European VCs Earlybird and Hummingbird Ventures — both active backers of startups in emerging markets in the region — and Endeavor Global (the nonprofit that invests via its Endeavor Catalyst fund). Sidar Sahin, the founder and CEO, had been the company’s biggest shareholder.

As with all M&A in the world of gaming, Zynga is getting a couple of big gains out of this sale.

The first is picking up two very popular titles/franchises that it doesn’t have do develop from scratch (in hopes of investing R&D budget in what it hopes but can’t guarantee will be a hit). Toon Blast and Toy Blast together total more than 12 million DAUs. And on top of that, those two games are some of the highest-grossing among all in Apple’s App Store, ranking among the top-10 and top-20 games in the past two years, Zynga noted in its announcement.

It’s not just about adding popular games content, but expanding Zynga’s advertising business as well. Significantly, Peak Games’ primary users are outside of Zynga’s home market of the US, representing a real growth opportunity for the company to cross-sell other games. Zynga says that bolting on Peak’s games network to its own will boost its number of mobile daily active users by 60%, which mean a lot of scaling up for its ad network.

Of course, sustaining both of those titles and their respective franchises as hits for the long run is not a given — the world of gaming regularly sees blockbusters fizzle out when the next big thing comes along — although these “forever franchises” with their steady popularity have a strong play to be exactly that.

However, the long play is also where the third big asset comes in: talent. Peak has 100 employees working on its current franchises and other games. So while the back ends (and revenues) may be getting combined, Zynga says Peak’s people will stay put and continue to work under the Peak brand on the existing franchises as well as on new projects that are already in development.

Zynga says the deal will close in the third quarter of 2020, and it’s updated its guidance already on the news, sending its stock up more than 5% in pre-market trading. Specifically, Zynga today said it believes the deal will bump up revenues by $40 million for the year, to $1.840 billion.

A startup so nice, Zynga bought it twice

The deal is notable not just because of what it’s adding to Zynga today, but because it highlights some interesting history between the two companies.

Back in November 2017, Zynga acquired one division of Peak Games, its mobile card games studio, for $100 million in cash.

The deal included games like Spades Plus and Gin Rummy Plus, respectively the largest spade and rummy mobile games in the world at the time; and games that were popular in Peak’s home market, 101 Okey Plus and Okey Plus. And according to analysis from Apptopia, it looks like Zynga was set to recoup the money it paid out by 2019, meaning that business is now profitable.

The remainder of Peak Games is another story. If Zynga tried to buy the whole business two years ago, it might have been that Peak was reluctant to sell its remaining two titles — its own Candy Crush crushers — Toon Blast and Toy Blast for anything near $100 million. And with good reason, since (as Zynga itself pointed out) they went on to become some of the consistently highest-grossing games in all of the App Store.

In the intervening period, Zynga tried to create its own rivals, namely Wonka’s World of Candy, but it’s never been as big of a hit as the others. (Apptopia’s Adam Blacker today told me, after I published this piece, that in fact Wonka’s World has made but a tiny fraction of the revenue of Peak’s titles.)

Hence, two years on, Zynga possibly finally found the “right price” for the whole of Peak Games.

“We are honored to welcome Sidar and team to Zynga. Peak is one of the world’s best puzzle game makers and we could not be more excited to add such creative and passionate talent to our company,” said Frank Gibeau, Chief Executive Officer of Zynga, in a statement. “With the addition of Toon Blast and Toy Blast, we are expanding our live services portfolio to eight forever franchises, meaningfully increasing our global audience base and adding to our exciting new game pipeline. As a combined team, we are well positioned to grow faster together.”

“This is a monumental partnership not only for Zynga and Peak, but for the whole mobile gaming industry,” said Sidar Sahin, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Peak, in a statement. “Both companies share a common vision — to bring people together through games. Peak’s culture is rooted in relentless learning and progress, so as we embark on this new chapter in our journey together with Zynga, we remain as committed as ever to our unique culture. We’re very excited for our combined future and what we will accomplish together.”

Zynga and games business strategies aside, this is also a huge deal for Turkey’s tech ecosystem.

Turkey has been a steady presence straddling both the European and MENA markets (much as Turkey’s wider economy and political presence does), but so far with little impact in terms of exits and activity that extend outside of the region.

This acquisition is a testament to the exciting companies and talent that are being developed in the market, and is of course yet another sign of how big tech companies based out of more established centres like the Bay Area will continue to take bigger leaps to tap talent ever further afield, in their ongoing consolidation push and search for both business and audience growth.

One impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been that many are starting to see a much faster decentralisation in the world of technology. People are working remotely, and some are even planning to move away from tech hubs; and deals are getting done not in person but over videoconferencing links. This acquisition also demonstrates how that is also playing out in the world of M&A, too.

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theinvinciblenoob · 5 years

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There are few things in this world more difficult than launching a successful startup. It takes talent, know-how, money and a hell of a lot of good timing and luck. And even with all of those magical components in place, the odds may still be against you.

At TechCrunch, we take pride in covering the best and brightest of the startup world. But while covering the startup world is one of the most exciting and fulfilling parts of our job, death is a part of any life cycle. Sadly, not all startups that burn bright ultimately make it. In fact, most don’t.

As we wrap up this year and look forward to the next, let’s take a moment to remember some of those startups we lost in 2018.

Airware (2011-2018)

Total Raised: $118 million

Airware created a cloud software system to help construction companies, mining operations and other enterprise customers use drones to inspect equipment for damage. It also tried to build its own drones, but found that it couldn’t compete with giants like China’s DJI.

The shutdown appears to have been very sudden, coming just four days after Airware opened a Tokyo office, with an investment and partnership from Mitsubishi. In a statement, the company said, “Unfortunately, the market took longer to mature than we expected. As we worked through the various required pivots to position ourselves for long-term success, we ran out of financial runway.”

Blippar (2011-2018)

Total Raised: $131.7 million

Blippar was one of the early pioneers in augmented reality, but unfortunately the AR market has yet to live up to the hopes for mainstream adoption. And despite raising a funding round earlier this year, the startup was apparently losing money quickly as it sought new customers.

Not helping matters was some shareholder drama, where an emergency influx of $5 million was blocked by Khazanah, a strategic investment fund from the Malaysian government. In a blog post, the company said this was “an incredibly sad, disappointing, and unfortunate outcome.”

Bluesmart (2013-2018)

Total Raised: $25.6 million

One of the major casualties of the FAA’s ban on smart luggage, this New York-based startup was forced to close its doors in May. CEO Tomi Pierucci was extremely outspoken when airlines started to enforce the new rules early this year, calling the news “an absolute travesty.”

From the standpoint of Bluesmart, he was right. The startup went all-in on connected luggage, and ultimately found it impossible to adapt when battery packs were no longer allowed on flights. The startup ended all sales and manufacturing, selling what was left of its tech, designs and IP to luggage giant TravelPro.

Doughbies (2014-2018)

Total Raised: $760,000

Things came crumbling down for San Francisco-based Doughbies in July, when the 500 Startups-backed, same-day cookie delivery service announced it was shutting down immediately. But it wasn’t because the startup ran out of money. Doughbies was actually profitable. Rather, its founders, Daniel Conway and Mariam Khan, just wanted to move onto something new.

TechCrunch’s Josh Constine argued at the time that Doughbies really didn’t need venture backing and that pressure to deliver adequate returns may have weighed more heavily on Doughbies than it was willing to admit. RIP Doughbies.

Lantern (2012-2018)

Total Raised: $21.5 million

Like many failed startups before it, San Francisco-based Lantern was forced to shutter operations after an acquisition deal fell through. The mental health startup, founded by Nicholas Bui LeTourneau and Alejandro Foung, had raised millions in venture capital funding from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s venture arm, Mayfield and SoftTechVC, but failed to follow through on its promise.

What was that promise? To offer personalized tools to deal with stress, anxiety and body image based on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques via a mobile application. Despite being an early mover in a now overly crowded field of mental wellness apps, Lantern wasn’t able to find enough customers to survive.

Lighthouse AI (2014-2018)

Total Raised: $17 million

Smart security camera maker Lighthouse AI had a promising product with a natural language processing system that allowed users to navigate their footage. But it also faced a crowded market, and it seems consumers didn’t embrace the product. The company announced this month that it’s winding down.

“I am incredibly proud of the groundbreaking work the Lighthouse team accomplished – delivering useful and accessible intelligence for our homes via advanced AI and 3D sensing,” wrote CEO Alex Teichman. “Unfortunately, we did not achieve the commercial success we were looking for and will be shutting down operations in the near future.”

Mayfield Robotics (2015-2018)

Total Raised: N/A

Mayfield, which was originally part of Bosch, created the adorable home robot Kuri. However, it announced in July that it would stop manufacturing Kuri, and followed with an announcement that it would cease operations altogether.

“Our team is beyond disappointed,” the company said in a blog post. “Together we’ve spent the past four years designing and building not just Kuri, but also an equally incredible company culture and spirit.”

Rethink Robotics (2008-2018)

Total Raised: $149.5 million

A major player in industrial robotics, Rethink was founded by iRobot co-founder Rod Brooks and former MIT CSAIL staff researcher Ann Whittaker. The Boston area startup grew into one of the most important players in both the collaborative and educational robotics space, courtesy of creations like Baxter and Sawyer.

Ultimately, however, the company served as yet another testament to just how difficult it is to launch a robotics startup. Even with brilliant minds and nearly $150 million in funding, the company couldn’t turn enough profit to stay afloat. A last-minute planned acquisition fell through, and Rethink was forced to close up shop in October.

Theranos (2003-2018)

Total Raised: $1.4 billion

Startup stories don’t come more film-ready than this. Even before it officially closed its doors, Theranos was set to be the subject of a book, documentary and an Adam McKay-directed feature film starring Jennifer Lawrence as founder Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes founded the company in 2003, promising a breakthrough in blood testing. By age 31, she became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

Theranos would go on to raise $1.4 billion, with a $10 billion valuation at its peak. In 2015, medical professionals began to mount criticism against the company’s methods. The following year, the SEC began investigating Theranos, ultimately charging it with “massive fraud.” In September, the company finally called it quits, with Holmes agreeing to pay a $500,000 penalty, while being barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years.

Shyp (2013-2018)

Total Raised: $62 million

NEW YORK, NY – MAY 06: Co-founder and CEO of Shyp, Kevin Gibbons speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015 – Day 3 at The Manhattan Center on May 6, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

A $250 million valuation and capital from some of the best investors (Kleiner Perkins, Slow Ventures) failed to keep on-demand shipping startup Shyp from dissolving. The San Francisco-based startup raised multiple rounds of venture capital amid a major hype cycle for on-demand shipping companies, but wasn’t able to scale successfully beyond the Bay Area.

“To this day, I’m in awe of the vigor the team possessed in tackling a 200-year-old industry,” CEO Kevin Gibbon wrote at the time. “But, growth at all costs is a dangerous trap that many startups fall into, mine included.”

Telltale Games (2005-2018)

Total Raised: $54.4 million

Over the past few years, Telltale Games seemed to reinvent adventure gaming, adapting big franchises like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Batman into episodic stories where players’ choices seemed to have real weight. It even partnered with Netflix to bring a version of “Minecraft: Story Mode” to the streaming service.

But it seems the company has had longstanding business issues, with 90 employees laid off in November 2017, then another 250 let go in September of this year. Although a skeleton crew remained employed to finish the work for Netflix, it looks like Telltale is dead. And the fact that those employees were let go without severance seems to reinforce an earlier report of toxic management.

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christopherross7601 · 5 years

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Remembering the startups we lost in 2018

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At TechCrunch, we take pride at covering the best and brightest of the startup world. But while covering the startup world is one of the most exciting and fulfilling parts of our job, death is a part of any lifecycle. Sadly, not all startups that burn bright ultimately make it. In fact, most don’t.

As we wrap up this year and look forward to the next, let’s take a moment to remember some of those startups we lost in 2018.

Airware (2011-2018)

Total Raised: $118 million

Airware created a cloud software system to help construction companies, mining operations and other enterprise customers use drones to inspect equipment for damage. It also tried to build its own drones but found that it couldn’t compete with giants like China’s DJI.

Blippar (2011-2018)

Total Raised: $131.7 million

BlueSmart (2013-2018)

Total Raised: $25.6 million

Doughbies (2014-2018)

Total Raised: $760K

youtube

Lantern (2012-2018)

Total Raised: $21.5 million

What was that promise? To offer personalized tools to deal with stress, anxiety and body image based on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques via a mobile application. Despite being an early mover in a now overly-crowded field of mental wellness apps, Lantern wasn’t able to find enough customers to survive.

Lighthouse AI (2014-2018)

Total Raised: $17 million

Mayfield Robotics (2015-2018)

Total Raised: N/A

Rethink Robotics (2008-2018)

Total Raised: $149.5 million

A major player in industrial robotics, Rethink was founded by iRobot cofounder Rod Brooks and former MIT CSAIL staff researcher, Ann Whittaker. The Boston area startup grew into one of the most important players in both the collaborative and educational robotics space, courtesy of creations like Baxter and Sawyer.

Theranos (2003-2018)

Total Raised: $1.4 billion

Startup stories don’t come more film ready than this. Even before it officially closed its doors, Theranos was set to be the subject of a book, documentary and an Adam McKay directed feature film starring Jennifer Lawrence as founder Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes founded the company in 2003, promising a breakthrough in blood testing. By age 31, she became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

Shyp (2013-2018)

Total Raised: $62 million

NEW YORK, NY – MAY 06: Co-Founder and CEO of Shyp, Kevin Gibbons speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015 – Day 3 at The Manhattan Center on May 6, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

A $250 million valuation and capital from some of the best investors (Kleiner Perkins, Slow Ventures) failed to keep on-demand shipping startup Shyp from dissolving. The San Francisco-based startup raised multiple rounds of venture capital amid a major hype cycle for on-demand shipping companies but wasn’t able to scale successfully beyond the Bay Area.

Telltale Games (2005-2018)

Total Raised: $54.4 million

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rickhorrow · 6 years

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15 TO WATCH/5 SPORTS TECH/POWER OF SPORTS 5: RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF SEPT. 24

with Jamie Swimmer & Jacob Aere

Tiger Woods wins his first PGA Tour event in five years, and with the victory will not only be the main storyline at this week’s Ryder Cup, but the focus of the 2019 golf season to come. More immediately, the Ryder Cup is becoming "the biggest one-off weekend in sport," as rivals U.S. and Europe "join forces to offer new global commercial deals" worth in excess of $261.5 million, according to the London Telegraph. Ryder Cup Europe and the PGA "are breaking with tradition by combining efforts to lure new worldwide sponsors, a move which industry experts predict" will send profits surging. Partially thanks to Woods’ resurgence, record numbers "are due to follow the action" at Le Golf National, near Paris, starting Friday. In previous years, "sponsors have been put off big-money global deals because they have been forced to negotiate" with marketing execs on both sides of the Atlantic. However, this year UPS was named the tournament's second "global partner" in its history. There are currently 34 Ryder Cup partners, suppliers, and licensees. The average price per sponsor for the event in Europe is around $2.6 million, while in the U.S. it is closer to $5.2 million – largely because of the big money deals top PGA Tour pros, including Woods, command.

The City of Pittsburgh, the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation and Dan Towriss, CEO of Group1001, have announced plans to design and construct a new youth athletic field in honor of Pro Football Hall of Famer Curtis Martin. Located near the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh where Martin grew up, the new multi-sport synthetic turf field will be used for football, soccer, and baseball/softball and provide local youth with a safe place to play. The new field will be made possible thanks in part to a generous $5 million donation to the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation from Towriss and Group1001, used to build a total of ten Youth Development Parks over five years in 10 cities across the country. Each field will receive up to $500,000 in funding from Group1001 and will support the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation's MLB RBI (Reviving Baseball in the Inner City) partnership, designed to provide baseball and softball league-play for underserved youth, as well as other youth-serving organizations. The Stargell Field revitalization project comes after three years of planning by grassroots organization Homewood Community Sports (HCS), which has been in existence since the 1960s. As the NFL regular season settles in and baseball heads to the playoffs, the timing of this game-changing announcement couldn’t be more appropriate.

Fort Lauderdale will be the first stop on the FIVB Beach Major Series tour for the second straight year. The fifth edition of the Major Series kicks of February 5-10 and continues throughout the summer. In 2018, Fort Lauderdale watched as hometown stars Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena topped the podium alongside Brazil’s Barbara Seixas de Freitas and Fernanda Alves. “Fort Lauderdale is probably currently the best spot in the Beach Major Series,” Hannes Jagerhofer, CEO of the Beach Major Series said ahead of the 2018 event. “We can find here everything for a recipe for success.” Next up on the slate is the World Championships June 28-July 7 at Rothenbaum Stadium in Hamburg, Germany, the site of the last two World Tour Finals. The 48-team event will bring the elite of the world to the tournament, where an automatic berth to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is on the line. The final stop of 2019 is Danube Island in Vienna, home of the 2017 World Championships. Beginning with Fort Lauderdale, the FIVB series joins the pantheon of eagerly-awaited mega events in South Florida and beyond.

The newly-created NFL Hall of Fame Board is demanding proper compensation for years of service. According to JohnWallStreet, board Chairman Eric Dickerson penned a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, and HOF President David Baker “demanding health insurance and an annual salary (i.e. share of league revenue) for the Hall’s living alumni.” The letter notes that instead of enjoying a peaceful life in retirement, many of the NFL’s greatest players have struggled with financial and health issues since retiring from the league. The letter was signed by more than 20 of football’s greats, including Jim Brown and Jerry Rice, and threatened that a failure to meet the stated demands would result in “many high-profile players abstaining from future Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.” The NFL generated $14 billion in revenue last season and the Hall of Fame Board claims that without them, the league would not be what it is today. “Simply looking at it from a cost standpoint, to insure every living hall of fame player would cost the league just $4 million/year or the equivalent of $0.03 for every $100 generated.” However, several HOF members, including Rice, have claimed they never signed the letter and refuse to move forward unless health and other benefits are extended to all NFL alums, not just Hall of Famers. Stay tuned.

Michael Jordan and the Charlotte Hornets are stepping up to help the community following Hurricane Florence’s devastation of North and South Carolina. According to the Charlotte Observer, Jordan is donating $1 million to the Red Cross and another $1 million to the Foundation for the Carolinas Florence Response Fund. The Red Cross is "providing food and shelter to those displaced by the storm," while the FCFRF "directs funds to non-profits in North and South Carolina.” Jordan hopes that his money will not only help with immediate relief, but will go toward addressing the “long-term effects on people all over the Carolinas whose lives have been changed for the worse.” "People need to understand this will not be a week-long process,” said Jordan. “This is going to have a huge disruption on people's lives — not for 10 days, but for years.” In addition to pledging money, more than 100 members of the Hornets organization will help package disaster food boxes for those in need around the region. Hands-on response has also been pledged by the Carolina Panthers, the NFL, and multiple college programs in the region.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has agreed to contribute $10 million toward women’s organizations in the wake of an investigation into the team’s workplace. According to ESPN.com, the NBA launched the investigation just over half a year ago after allegations of harassment and violence toward female employees came forward. A report in Sports Illustrated described "a corporate culture rife with misogyny and predatory sexual behavior that spanned decades in the Mavericks' organization, including numerous allegations against former CEO and President Terdema Ussery, who left the Mavericks in 2015.” The investigation saw an outside law firm speak to 215 current and former Mavericks employees and concluded that the team’s management “was ineffective, including a lack of compliance and internal controls.” Cuban spoke emotionally in an interview, saying, “It just never in my wildest dreams that I think that this was happening right underneath me. And I never — the pain that people went through, the pain that people shared with me as this happened, the tears that I saw…It just — it hurt.” There is no place for harassment in any industry – including the male-dominated sports world – and it’s gratifying to see the long-progressive NBA take an unsparing leadership role as more #MeToo investigations come to light.

Despite inking a deal to play a regular season match in the United States, La Liga still might not be allowed to do so. According to ESPN.com, the 15-year joint venture signed between La Liga and Relevant, a multinational media, sports, and entertainment group, in August is up in the air pending FIFA’s approval. FIFA President Gianni Infantino expressed doubt about Barcelona and Girona playing in Miami this January after admitting that “the idea is not appealing to him.” “I would prefer to see a great MLS game in the U.S. rather than La Liga being in the U.S.,” noted Infantino. “In football, the general principle is that you play a 'home' match at 'home,' and not in a foreign country.” News of the deal stirred up excitement in the United States, but drew heavy criticism from La Liga players and the club’s domestic fan base — much uncertainty remains.

The Las Vegas Golden Knights have signed the first team sponsorship deal with a bookmaking company. According to SportsBusiness Journal, Las Vegas-based William Hill U.S. is teaming up with the NHL’s newest and hottest team — a “historic, and fitting, marriage between the first global sportsbook to enter the U.S. market and the first major sports franchise to make the world's gaming capital its home.” Neither side would confirm the financial value of the partnership, though it is a multiyear and non-exclusive contract. The Golden Knights have made a conscious effort to keep a diverse sponsorship portfolio, going beyond the assumed ties they would have with Las Vegas bookmakers and gambling entities. "We hope people will be sitting at T-Mobile and betting between periods," said William Hill U.S. CEO Joe Asher. "Frankly, we know they do that already. We're hoping to be able to get more people to our site because the brand will be right there in front of them." How far we’ve come – it was only a few short years ago that people swore Vegas would never have a pro sports team due to the gambling stigma.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are preparing to unveil a newly-renovated Quicken Loans Arena. According to Crain’s Cleveland Business, the Cavs have followed a league-wide trend by reducing their capacity to “the mid-19,000 range,” down from a previous 20,562. Only five NBA arenas can hold more than 20,000 these days — The United Center in Chicago (20,917), Little Caesars Arena in Detroit (20,491), Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. (20,356), the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia (20,328), and Quicken Loans Arena. The renovations are expected to cost $185 million in total after the team committed another $45 million toward upgrades — $115 million of which will be covered by the Cavs. The additional $45 million boost will go directly toward a “total overhaul” of the team’s locker room, which will be ready before the start of the new season. Cavs Executive VP of Communications Tad Carper said that the project "did not generate" $45 million in cost overruns, but rather that the team "opted to invest the extra money to improve upon the already-planned upgrades. From cutting edge uniforms to first class locker rooms, amenities matter to players and prospects, and the Cavs have clearly paid attention.

10.The Portland Trail Blazers are now the 24th team in the NBA to sign a jersey patch sponsor, reaching a multiyear agreement with Illinois-based Performance Health. According to the Oregonian, Performance Health’s pain relief product Biofreeze will be featured on the breast of Blazer jerseys this year, while also appearing on practice jerseys and on the team’s Summer League uniforms. Despite “flirting with multiple partners” last year, the Blazers decided to wait to find the right fit for their first jersey patch sponsor. Performance Health currently holds sponsorship deals “with tennis player Sloane Stephens; Gold Medal-winning U.S. snowboarder Shaun White; multiple MLB teams including the Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants and Yankees; and marquee marathons in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.” Financials around the deal have not yet been released, but such deals have proven to be lucrative for teams, the NBA and sponsors alike; during last year’s pilot program, the NBA generated around $137 million while sponsors “have earned nearly three times that on social media alone.” As NBA teams report to camp on Tuesday, look for all 30 NBA squads to have jersey patch deals by the 2019-2020 season a year from now.

The inaugural Racquet & Paddle Sports Conference will be held January 23-25 and co-located with the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando. The multi-faceted tennis, racquet, and paddle sports event will feature a hands-on product demo experience and opening welcome party at the USTA National Campus in Lake Nona; and a curated ONE2ONE buying summit, Tennis Owners & Managers (TOM) Conference, and an exhibit pavilion of racquet, paddle and tennis vendors and organizations at the Orange County Convention Center. The Racquet & Paddle Sports Conference, while co-located with the PGA Merchandise Show at the OCCC, will be a stand-alone event. A significant number of PGA Merchandise Show attendees representing golf and resort properties also have an interest in racquet sports offerings. The PGA Merchandise Show, called the “Major” of Golf Business, draws more than 40,000 influential PGA Professionals, manufacturing executives, VIP retailers, international industry leaders, and top-decision makers. Look for tennis and other racquet sports to benefit.

12.Amazon is taking another step to establish itself in the sports world after acquiring the title sponsorship rights to the 40th IRONMAN World Championship. According to JohnWallStreet, Amazon will now serve as the Official Sports Nutrition Retailer of the “iconic endurance event” taking place October 13th in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. This comes as a departure from Amazon’s traditional pathway into sports, which has been about acquiring exclusive and non-exclusive streaming rights across an array of events domestically and internationally. NBC Sports platforms, ironman.com, and IRONMAN NOW on Facebook Watch all have select broadcast and streaming rights for the event, leaving Amazon off the table in this instance. IRONMAN was bought by Dalian Wanda Group back in 2015 for $650 million and bolsters a sponsorship portfolio consisting of companies like Amazon, Marriott, Gatorade, and United Health Care. With Amazon signing on as the official title sponsor, business for IRONMAN continues to boom.

13.The Philadelphia 76ers have hired former NBAer Elton Brand as their new General Manager. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the 76ers chose to stay in-house with the hire to replace Bryan Colangelo, promoting Brand from his previous role as VP/Basketball Operations and General Manager of the G League Delaware Blue Coats. Brand’s appointment caps a wild 23 month period; he went from playing for the 76ers and coach Brett Brown to being his peer to now being his boss. The move has drawn both praise and scrutiny from observers, as Brand has no previous front office experience for such a role. After conducting second interviews with Utah Jazz GM Justin Zanik and Houston Rockets Executive VP/Basketball Operations Gersson Rosas, 76ers ownership "believed Brand had sold them on vision, preparedness and the ability to grow into the role at a crucial time for the organization.” While not necessarily a part of their famed “process,” with all the management turmoil the franchise has faced it’s not surprising they tapped one of their own for this critical role.

The NHL is intent on breaking into the Chinese market going forward. According to the New York Times, the Boston Bruins and Calgary Flames recently concluded their trip to the Asian country as part of the 2018 ORG NHL China Games, which consisted of one game in Shenzhen and another in Beijing. The NHL has long since lagged behind the NBA in terms of tapping into the Chinese market with its nearly 1.4 billion residents. NHL Exec VP/Media and International Strategy David Proper said that if hockey "grows in China over the next decade 'to a point where it’s not NBA level but something significant, well then we may reassess not just growing the sport but how to build our business.’” Growing the sport in China will not only bode well for the NHL and its business, but for building momentum ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics that are set to be staged in Beijing.

South and North Korea have officially agreed to place a bid to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympics. According to Yonhap, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jung-un recently met in the North’s capital of Pyongyang where the matter was discussed. As part of the plan to show peace and unity on the Korean Peninsula, the two nations will form “more unified teams at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and other international competitions,” building from the joint ice hockey team that was fielded at this year’s PyeongChang Winter Olympics. “We sincerely wish that these political talks produce the necessary progress for a successful candidature,” commented IOC President Thomas Bach. “Sport could once more make a contribution to peace on the Korean Peninsula and the world.” Nations around the world have been reluctant as of late to bid on the Olympics due to “rising costs and lack of domestic support,” which could give the joint Korean bid a greater chance of success. Once again, sport may play a critical role in the greater good of world peace and prosperity.

Tech Top Five

New York Giants wide receiver superstar, Odell Beckham Jr., has his own Facebook Watch reality show. The show, “I Am More: OBJ,” is produced by Uninterrupted, the sports-media company founded by LeBron James and business partner Maverick Carter. The NFL Pro Bowler takes center stage in the series which now streams exclusively on Facebook every Friday during the NFL football season. According to Variety, the 16-episode series, which began on September 14, will follow the wide receiver throughout the 2018 season and promises an inside look at his weekly prep routine before each game; his recovery from last year’s injury; and his life off the field. Beckham Jr. also plans to use Facebook Live throughout the season to share his thoughts after each matchup and answer questions from fans. He’ll deliver behind-the-scenes content on Facebook-owned Instagram in between weekly episodes of “I Am More: OBJ,” and is Facebook’s latest sports star after running similar series on athletes including Tom Brady and Dwyane Wade.

UEFA’s marketing director Guy-Laurent Epstein reveals that UEFA is developing its own Over the Top streaming service. It is expected that the OTT service will provide more airtime for categories like women's soccer and futsal. According to SportsPro, the high-income entities such as the Champions League and Europa League will remain in the hands of major broadcasting networks as they account for the majority of UEFA’s revenue. Despite not wanting to take live coverage away from traditional broadcasters, Epstein encouraged that the new platform could be used to house additional programming, content, and features. He sees it as a means to communicate with fans who might not be able to watch games on pay-TV and hopes to include summaries, delayed games, backstage pictures, grassroots competitions, and the aforementioned women's soccer and futsal matchups. Epstein also pointed to the fact that an in-house streaming platform would open up a new revenue stream for UEFA, creating an additional opportunity for interested brands to attach their name to the organization.

According to Sports Techie, a new feature has debuted for CBS Sports Fantasy Football that will offer voice-enabled lineup advice on which fantasy players to draft, start, add, or trade through Google Assistant. CBS Sports Fantasy football players will be able to receive personalized lineup advice and information tailored to their teams beginning in October, which includes score updates, value comparisons of players, reports on bench or waiver wire players, and injury updates. The mission of the Google Assistant and CBS Sports Fantasy partnership is to cut down on fantasy players’ time and eliminate the difficulty of searching for draft and lineup advice across multiple sources. Voice-enabled artificially-intelligent home assistants, such as Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, are nudging their way into the world of sports. With this latest product coming in a new era of legalized gambling, the potential of its fantasy suggestions could help users make real-money wagers.

A new iPhone app uses just augmented reality and a smartphone for players to improve their jump shot. HomeCourt, an iPhone app which Apple recently announced, uses augmented reality to track basketball shots and artificial intelligence technology developed by HomeCourt maker Nex Team to detect a hoop and basketball which then measures kinematics, trajectory, release times, and number of shots made. According to GeekWire, Apple even brought out former NBA star point guard Steve Nash and Nex Team founder David Lee to unveil the app on stage. Nash is an investor in HomeCourt, as are other NBA affiliates including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Atlanta Hawks point guard Jeremy Lin, and former Philadelphia 76ers GM Sam Hinkie. Apple is investing heavily in augmented reality tech and expects to see basketball game play at all levels improved directly from their cutting edge technology.

5. DAZN stamps a landmark deal with Combate Americas, the premier Hispanic Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) sports franchise. The deal will bring a minimum of 13 fight nights per year to the live and on-demand sports streaming platform. According to Business Wire, DAZN is now the exclusive home of Combate Americas' English-language broadcasts in the United States and Canada with the first match having streamed live from Phoenix on September 14. This deal will bring the action-packed Combate Americas to English-language viewers for the first time. DAZN, the monster OTT platform, now sits at 80+ fight nights per year following the announcement of deals across Matchroom Boxing, Bellator MMA, World Boxing Super Series, and the most recent Combate Americas agreement. The platform is slowly swallowing the Boxing and MMA on-demand markets and has left little room for other players to make a name for themselves in the OTT fight landscape.

Power of Sports Five

1. The Baltimore Orioles embedded themselves in history by wearing Braille jerseys. On September 18, the Baltimore Orioles’ orange and black uniform had the addition of Braille letters to replace the script on the front and back of their jerseys. The jerseys were worn in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the National Federation of the Blind moving their national headquarters to Baltimore and were autographed, authenticated, and auctioned off for charity after the game. According to Yahoo! Sports, this moment marked the first time that a professional U.S. sports team has worn Braille-lettered uniforms during and after a game. In addition to the jerseys, the Orioles’ starting lineup graphic was also in Braille; attendees were given a Braille alphabet card before the game; Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind, threw out the first pitch; and Carlos Ibay, a blind concert pianist, sang the national anthem. To commemorate this moment, one of the historic jerseys was sent to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

2. Brazilian soccer icon Pelé announces the launch of his new charitable foundation. The Pelé Foundation aims to empower children by covering topics of poverty and education. According to Business Wire, The foundation is partnering with Pencils of Promise and charity: water in its first year to fulfill that mission. After his international soccer stardom, Pele has the capital to use his firsthand experience of growing up in a neighborhood that lacked resources to give back. His charity has allocated funds to ensure the expansion of PoP’s innovative Teacher Support program to improve reading fluency and comprehension for hundreds of students in Guatemala. The foundation also looks to provide as many children as possible with access to clean water. In future years, the Pele Foundation will look at opportunities to create their own programs and expand their efforts to empower children, including issues regarding gender equality.

3. Vegas Golden Knights players walk the runway to support their local community. Amidst the middle of pre-season games, multiple players from the recent NHL expansion team took a break from their skates and threw on their finest threads for the first-ever Vegas Strong Charity Fashion Show. VIPs at the event were able to bid the suit jacket designs right off of the Vegas Golden Knights’ backs. According to the ABC Vegas affiliate, KTNV, the events’ proceeds went to Route 91 Strong, a non-profit that provides financial assistance to survivors of last year's mass shooting there. Participating Golden Knights players included Alex Tuch, Pierre Bellemare, Ryan Reaves, Oscar Lindberg, William Karlsson, Deryk Engelland, and Jonathan Marchessault. The Knights’ continued support has helped unify Las Vegas in the wake of great tragedy and helped the team grow a faithful fan base.

4. In the weeks after Colin Kaepernick’s historic endorsement deal with Nike, the ex-49ers quarterback has sold out of his custom jerseys to raise money for charity. The jerseys, which are not made by Nike, were announced with a limited quantity. According to CBS Sports, the NFL lookalike jerseys sold out on his website within hours of announcement. The jerseys are a simple, flat black and have Kaepernick's name and No. 7 on the back, with "#IMWITHKAP" inscribed on the front. Originally, Kaepernick said that 20% of proceeds would go to the Know Your Rights Camp, but after the rapid sellout, he instead announced that all proceeds would go to the campaign. With Kaepernick’s million dollar pledge to charity earlier in the year, his groundbreaking Nike deal, and his spotlight in American politics, it's been a year that seems to only keep growing for the Kaepernick name and brand. The ex-quarterback is changing the landscape of politics in sports and has built himself one of the most unforgettable reputations in recent sports history.

5. Manchester United's Juan Mata awarded the 2017 Nations Sports Award in Spain after raising almost $800,000 for charity. The 30-year-old Mata celebrated the first year of his launch of the Common Goal charity last month, which has raised nearly $800,000 since its inception. According to ESPN, the noble gesture of the Spanish midfielder’s charity is for himself and fellow footballers to donate 1% of their salaries throughout their careers to charities across the world. To date, more than 50 players and coaches including Giorgio Chiellini, Mats Hummels, Alex Morgan, and UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin have contributed to Mata's mission. Spain's Sports Council’s Nations Sports Award is given to sports personalities, organizations, and corporations that have stood out for their passion and promotion of sport. As Mata’s pledge to humanity continues to spread across the soccer world, it brings comfort to know that other charitable sports figures including tennis legend Rafael Nadal, professional golfer Jon Rahm, and Karate star Sandra Sanchez will also be awarded by the Council for their unmistakable dedication to philanthropy.

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nchyinotes · 6 years

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Fintech: the future of financial institutions — with Clifford Chance

November 30 2018

https://www.legalcheek.com/lc-careers-posts/event-fintech-the-future-of-financial-institutions-with-clifford-chance/

Below are the key themes around which the session will be structured:

Cryptocurrencies’ rocky journey towards the mainstream

ICOs: Where next?

The emerging fintech regulatory regime

Smart contracts and international law firms

The changing balance of power in the financial sector

Advice for aspiring fintech lawyers

Thoughts: When I attended this, I was over halfway through the online Fintech course I was taking and on the regulation section, so it was very well timed. Most of the background information about fintech I already knew from the course, but still found it interesting to hear what Peter and Andre chose to highlight. I thought they were very generous with the information they shared about both the business and legal issues, and the entire session was extremely well structured, so that made for easy (and good!) note taking haha.

Notes

Andre

TMT partner, 18 years

started career hoping to be a programmer, really interested in all things tech when younger (video games, programming on side), then reality struck

started law career when internet was about to take off

there’s always been change, but it’s the pace of change today that’s astounding, and it’s all driven by technology = challenges to firm + client

fast pace of change that allows a firm with all these resources to stay ahead of the curve + spot risks/opps before clients

what is fintech? means different things for different people

banks, insurance companies have over their whole lives relied heavily on tech

bank = stack of tech with product on top, reg all around, customers on side

signifies the rise of startups, challenges that historic institutions are now facing.

opp + sheer pace of change

operates in financial services space

significant (reg) barriers to entry: challengers

reg to comply with

capital requirements

broken down by accommodating regulator in UK that allows startups to try new things (sand box?)

what does the future hold?

exciting time, lots of opportunities, new ways to gain advantage with tech + repurpose what they already have

2 things equally interesting

rise of fintech startups, how they look at verticals, how they can be better/challenge institutions (new entrants,, new business models)

big institutional relationships = how it changes everything for them. new discussions, challenged fundamentally on what they provide + how they do that.

Peter

senior associate on reg team [more: https://www.legalcheek.com/lc-careers-posts/how-i-became-a-fintech-lawyer/]

how institutes are impacted

how reg provides framework for institutions to deal with tech challenge

there isn’t a specialist fintech lawyer, we are all fintech lawyers with specialisms (technology lawyer, regulatory lawyer, litigators, tax) = different angles

multi faceted aspect to any tech used by financial institutions (contractual arrangements for outsourcing, etc)

tackle from different directions

Perception that fintech means start up? more broad than that, it’s all pervading. it affects all verticals within financial services industry.

Data, P2P lending/crowdfunding, payments/FX, cryptocurrency, infrastructure, asset/wealth management, investment services, regtech, banking, e-conomy

what are the drivers from a financial institution perspective in engaging in this story?

keeping up, staying competitive

improvement to existing product/service - front end, drive new revenue (client coverage, experience, reduce costs)

more efficient operating model - balance sheet perspective, cost side (simplify regulatory compliance, reduce operational and compliance cost, increase resources for profitable business)

breaking new ground

new product/service (crowdfunding/P2P

main tech trends driving changes: 4 deployed in different ways + overlapping

1) p2p transactions: marketplace lending, crowdfunding = disintermediation of financial institutions in middle of transaction

one of the most mature

2) big data / AI: will become a great driver, determine who survives in this market - who can leverage + profit from the vast amounts of data in their books

3) mobile payments + cashless world:

cash transactions in UK actually went up this year, anomaly

usually decline year on year

internet banking - electrically using web browser

evolution of how it’s provided - not in person/branch, internet browser/computer, mobile phone

developed + distributed in that way

purely mobile only banks - continuing trend

4) blockchain + DLT

way of storing data in a decentralised way - lots of different people all hold the same/copy of database

lots of work in this space - institutions find that this tech can facilitate some financial services they are providing

main effects: don’t need a central body to tell you who owns a security/how much money, everybody on that network can see who owns what

so when you want to make those transactions, don’t need to instruct a body, can do it directly/P2P and everyone on that system will trust it is a genuine transaction

underpinning many different projects - settling securities transactions, payments, trading loans

ICO’s = tokenised crowd funding

lending P2P, buying securities P2P, tokenises this process

one big problem with crowdfunding is liquidity - you can enter in loan, fund company, but then you’re stuck with it and it’s difficult to transfer + get someone to buy it

ICO turns it into some kind of token = easier to transfer, sell

solved problem in p2p, marketplace lending

Questions

How do you regulate automated decision making?

Do you have a right to monetise the data you’re collecting?

is that your data or the bank’s?

If you partner with a start-up, who owns the new IP?

joint venture produces new things - startup, joint venture, bank - how to structure that

Will ML trigger material outsourcing requirements?

How many regulators will oversee a single Blockchain product?

How will this affect banks?

currently at bank, core service: deposit taking service (accept your money, use it to make loans/invest it)

specialist profitable services: allow you to make payments/securities, issue cards, FX, lending, research, look at assets

plug into the infrastructure/payments systems (central security depositories, central banks) - so expensive to have to maintain this

chipping into specific parts (unbundling) - don’t care about bank of england access, banks you can do that its the expensive part —> disintermediation

why banks will continue to provide those profitable services:

1) Capital

raise VC funding, rounds of funding to get it off the ground

banks are sitting on money, can deploy cash to do those services

2) Compliance

difficult hurdle - barrier to entry

regulators can see that potentially if that’s unaddressed —> stranglehold

EU: PSD2: allows fintech startups to get bank accounts, access to payment systems, TPPs - third party payment service providers (make no payments themselves, never touch your money, but are a set of payment things licensed to provide services across europe. have to let these guys into bank systems’ data, and initiate payments on your behalf, if bank consents - account infrastructure, deposit taking, data dragging out. can’t put in contract)

value competition

monopoly on initiating payments

UK: Bank of England (Blueprint for Access), HMT (Open banking standard), FCA (FS on regulatory barriers to innovation in digital/mobile solutions, regulatory sandbox)

this data doesn’t belong to banks, belongs to consumers

what a bank has to do to get regulated - report to regulators, liquid, hold on to certain capital, license

becoming a bank isn’t something you can do overnight. you can produce subsets of services, but deposit taking + consumer lending + payment services + trading + asset management = need to get properly regulated

what about big techs?

could go down that route of compliance, putting in place necessary regulatory framework

amazon = SME loans, moving into that space around the edges

3) Customers

startups start with 0, have to build over time

customer data (tailored knowledge?), loads of customers already

Andre

Work together in a seamless way

Meeting the challenge of a startup

do it themselves

acquire or invest in fintech

collaborate with - joint venture, white label, outsource

require different lawyers with different specialisms to come together

big challenges to big institutions

organic growth

speed to market: layers of approval to get something done, and thats two years later

fostering innovation culture throughout firm: separate teams

acquisition

what are you actually getting - you want what’s inside that company, not the shares

real battleground is for the customer - who gets the customer?

why do fintech companies want to collaborate = instant access to customer base

as soon as we get into negotiations and talking about who owns the customer, the shutters go up. (tech want to be the providers, not the plumbing at the back)

collaboration

most tricky

who owns the IP in what’s being developed? etc only true IP lawyers can make sense of this, need true expertise

contract lawyers, M&A

good understanding of risk

gone are the days we practiced law, excellent lawyer —> helping clients make decisions, giving commercial business advice

By and large, most banks say they’ll go all three, but mostly collaboration

from financial institution to tech powerhouse

back office considerations becoming key revenue generators

they’ve never thought of exploiting this data

how we take data/IP + commercialise it

blackrock have developed a tool to manage risk, advise traders about what decisions to make—> helps people make decisions. made available on commoditised basis to other asset managers. (black rock financial services ?) = commoditised platform, very successful

tech that can be used by other people in the industry —> software house

data, IP, tech licensing

1) AI: prediction, in next 5-8 years we will see a real change, real impact, really displacing jobs, helping people do jobs in a different/better way

lawyers get to understand tech when helping clients deal with it, but also apply knowledge of the law/risks/understanding of regulation

only if you understand financial reg is that as senior manager you have to understand how services are being run

2) Tech renewal

infrastructure - legacy systems, to outsource/not (contracts - how to transform existing environ to future + what happens when it goes wrong), sysc requirements, data flows, legal resourcing

3) Cybersecurity + GDPR

big data, big problems

EU’s GDPR + NIS directive

new changes: right to be forgotten, rights as owner of that data, obligations on those who act as agent/processor

Fines up to 4% of global turnover for a serious breach

significantly increased compliance burden

action required now

Q&A

contract: who owns vs who controls, ability to use it, control it, can exclude others from it??

products geared toward empowering customers + their control/owner over data

recognising value in data = letting us monetise it, giving better IR

enough data points —> analyse to acquire + target (potential) customers

upselling

how much value does some of your data really have? (google knows a lot about you —> more generically usable. while uber knows a few places you’ve been)

massive role to play for lawyers in cybersecurity (outsourcing)

not a question of if, but when, you will suffer a breach

lawyers drive cybersecurity plans within companies - need to come up with a product + plan

not in technical evaluation, but policy prevention

regulators don’t expect you to have impregnable walls, you need to have planned for it with, informed in the right time

GDPR impact on blockchain

classic problem

compatibility with right to be forgotten

you’ll just have to be told as a data subject, that though you have a right, if you’re on the blockchain there is no technical way to remove it

give customers as much info as you can about the fact that it’ll always be there

play with exceptions of GDPR?

pretty sure there will be a case that comes up

CME - making bitcoin tradeable —> become a commodity

thank god not a securities lawyer lol

underlying tech is there to stay

potential monopoly law around data because they have such a competitive advantage?

possibly, yes

if they affect customer outcomes

not sure if we’ll ever get to that stage

competition law - watch this space

EU regulators pretty receptive to fintech ATM

ICO phenomenon

AMF in France, consultation paper

forward thinking ideas on how to regulate

london has a very vibrant fintech space - banks, creatives, tech

currently are focusing on core financial services space

fintech with no single space in europe

very mobile community anyway

why haven’t banks launched something in the space of monzo, starling (apps)?

uh they have

esp with PSD2/open banking

#law #tech #clifford chance #fintech #2017 #digital society #event

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