In China Nike, Adidas, Mercedes, DolceGabana, and Dior are losing ground in favor of national brands. These brands are the canary in the coal mine of two things I've been explaining since Trump's election in the U.S.: 1️⃣ The Chinese consumer is becoming increasingly proud
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I was discussing this morning the announcement of a new Amazon retail adventure: a physical apparel store. This is interesting on several levels: (1) Amazon keeps on pushing on the old economy, not only by making with its online store (and immense, semi-automated physical supply chain) but also by trying
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When considering foodtech you’re thinking lab-grown or plant-based meat alternatives and other food-related products. “Food” it’s in the name, right? In Singapore where reaching 30% food autarky in 2030 is a key national goal, by-products of the food industry are explored as the bricks of widely different products:
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With Airbnb, Uber is probably now the last surviving hyper-scale startup of the 2010s. But unlike Airbnb, Uber is not in good shape. On paper, Uber dominates ride-sharing worldwide with a massive footprint of over +100 million users and a dominant market share wherever it operates. Uber amounts to about
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Cracking the luxury market in China for western companies has always been an uphill battle. Hyundai Takes a Second Run at China With Luxury Genesis BrandHyundai Motor Co. is far from the top automobile brand of choice in China but its luxury-car division is seeking to change all that with
An article this morning on how the startup ecosystem in the Netherlands is starting to lag seriously. This is not entirely true; many sectors are quite leading, but the clumsy yet sacrosanct metric of money raised is subpar. Techleap: development of the Dutch tech sector is lagging behindThe Netherlands is
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This week Binance one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency and blockchain infrastructure providers invested $200m in the venerable Forbes (and I’m not dwelling too much on the financial details, but let’s point out that a SPAC is also involved — oh my!). Forbes Announces $200 Million Strategic Investment
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Google is politely killing its gaming business known as Stadia. This is only one venture among many that Google had to switch off or ‘demote’ as corporate lingo would say. Report: Google Quietly Ditching StadiaThe service has been demoted within Google and will instead power experiences for other companiesKotakuThe A.
Today I wanted to share this article from Ian Bogost [https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippe-icopilots/recent-activity/shares/#] published by The Atlantic about NFT and web3. I have been quite vocal myself about my unease (and sometimes plain nausea) about where many are trying to push the internet: > First
The U.S. Congress is only now begrudgingly considering what to do with self-driving cars. Don’t smile too much. Most of you are aware that deciding who is responsible in case of a fatal collision is not a piece of cake (lines of code won’t repay the families’
The untold story of the metaverse idea that Facebook (erm, “Meta”) seems to be so desperate to reboot is that, like Google, their revenues depend on ads quasi-exclusively. Facebook and Google’s Ad Addiction Can’t Last ForeverFacebook’s first-ever drop in users is an ominous sign for a business
I find it difficult to reconcile the recent explosion of European unicorns and how we dropped the ball on crucial technology infrastructure investments. We decided that engaging in a race to be the next Amazon web store or the next Facebook was key to the future of Europe as an