(#19) EU's role in the business world; The premiumization of brands; Building a Silicon Valley in China...not
Zara's owner thinks she is doing the 'right' thing, Social Media is a "zero-sum" game and the SEC is continue the crypto investigations
He has Risen!
The Easter celebration is now over, and #onStrategy is in your inbox…one day later than the usual Thursday.
Onto the update:
Strategy
EU and its future
Macron was in China last week and returned with some kinky ideas: “EU should aim to be a third power, after the USA and China”. LINK
Now, I have some comments on this:
1/ Probably, it will be the fourth economy: after India
2/ Europe had a large competition for cars (with internal combustion engines). Not anymore: there is a new ground for competition when it comes to EVs: scale, design, distribution, and a new skillset (around software):
3/ So, where is Europe’s current competitive advantage? Artisanship (ie. luxury products) and top-notch machinery for the chips industry (e.g. ASML):
Social Media 2.0
I wrote last week about the transformation of Substack into a Social Platform (like Twitter). I predicted that Artifact, an AI news aggregator, would move in this direction. It took less than 24 hours for the company to make this announcement.
Now, there are 3 main takeaways:
1/ People survive by communicating. This new wave of communication apps results from years of being blocked on different platforms, mainly due to (leftist/woke) politics.
2/ Each platform has advantages and disadvantages, but it offers something unique…for the moment. I guess most of us got bored waiting for these upgrades to come from Twitter
3/ Social communication is not a zero-sum game. I use multiple communication platforms for different reasons: Whatsapp, Discord, Signal, Telegram, Wavelength, Twitter, Substack, etc.
Of course, not all players will survive, but the winner will be the end consumer.
📸 TechCrunch
Shanghai’s Silicon Valley went wrong
Three years after its launch, the project looks like a total failure. Reasons:
1/ Deglobalization and the rise of protectionism
2/ Only one international (notable) name: Tesla
3/ Low quality of life and work, which makes it extremely harder to attract talent
4/ Overall lack of living infrastructure. LINK
AI for running your business
What if you had an AI running your business and telling to people what to do? Well, with AGI (Artificial general intelligence) this will be possible and we see feedback from people working with it:
“DeepMind's CEO said there's a chance that AI could become self-aware in the future” - LINK
“A Google AI model developed a skill it wasn't expected to have” - Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO - LINK
“We must slow down the race to God-like AI” - Ian Hogarth, founder and angel investor - LINK
BeReal might have some problems
Social Media is a zero-sum game. You are either the number one or you become a ghost town. The latter may be the case for BeReal. LINK
Zara and the future of fast-fashion
Eventually, this trend of launching dozens of collections per year will end. Consumers will understand that a premium product holds much more value than a dozen of low-quality brands. This is a great interview with the Zara woman - Marta Ortega Pérez.
Artificial Intelligence
60 years of Artificial Intelligence at Stanford. LINK
Ultra GPT
Anthropic’s $5B, 4-year plan to take on OpenAI. The company claims that they have the key to the “next-gen algorithm for AI self-teaching”. Potential customers the following industries:
Legal document summary and analysis
Medical patient records and analysis
Customer service emails and chat
Coding models for consumers and B2B
Productivity-related search, document editing and content generation
Chatbot for public Q&A and advice
Search employing natural language responses
HR tasks like job descriptions and interview analysis
Therapy and coaching
Virtual assistants
Education at all levels
AI generated news presenter debuts in Kuwait media. LINK
Source: Artificial intelligence anchor Fedha appears on the Twitter account of Kuwait News service Photograph: Yasser Al-Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images
Training never stops
Chat GPT gets better with the more data you feed into it. This was recently discovered by Samsung engineers who pasted proprietary code in the app. LINK
AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China:
“Freelance illustrator Amber Yu used to make $430 to $1,000 for every video game poster she drew.[...] But since February, these job opportunities have vanished, Yu told Rest of World. Gaming companies, equipped with AI image generators, can create a similar illustration in seconds.” LINK
Knowledge Partner: EY Romania
2022 was a historic year for the global economy driven by geopolitical and economic uncertainty. While the Global M&A market experienced a 36% decrease, the Romanian one recorded a 10% increase. Read the full report now.
Data
The 2023 Gartner Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar shows product leaders where to capitalize on market opportunities. LINK
on economic liberty
The +Liberdade Institute (Portugal) compares the evolution of PIB per capita of Portugal and Romania vs. EU’s average.
Now, there should not be any surprises, but also some key takeaways:
1/ Low taxation (e.g. microenterprises, individual entrepreneurs etc)
2/ Subsidizing key areas (e.g. IT)
3/ How easy is it to enter and leave the market (Romania ranks much higher than Portugal)
The PIB per capita “catch-up” will continue. LINK
Nearly 50% of young people were found to be investing in the funds in 2022 (i.e. ETFs), mainly due to influencers. LINK
Crypto winter
The only investments VC makes are in projects with proven real traction and growth. LINK
The Economist’s banana index
A different way to measure the climate impact of food
Americans see China as a foe. LINK
A16z’s 2023 State of Crypto Report. LINK
Outside Interest
The future site of the Las Vegas strip, 1955. LINK
Most Europeans (including myself) don't realize how big Manhattan really is. LINK
The favorite drink of rising Asia is a milky tea with tapioca balls LINK
The SEC has unleashed a purge against a series of crypto companies. LINK
Why are Italian football stadiums so bad? Answer(s): socialism, bureaucracy, corruption, mafia. LINK
The Digitalisation of the Desk:
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