My Two Mins Worth #22

7 February 2021 - The other Chinese video sharing app, owning sports teams, dark kitchens and an expensive Super Bowl show.

💻 There was a massive IPO in tech last week, Kuaishou reached a valuation of $160 billion and yet, until recently, I'd never heard of them. Kuaishou is an app that lets users view and create short-form videos. Sound familiar? It's been called Tiktok's arch-nemesis. So how's there space for two seemingly identical apps with eye-staggering valuations? The reasons point to how Chinese tech's differs from Silicon Valley. First off, while Tiktok and its Chinese version Douyin have glamorous user experiences made for urban yuppies, Kuaishou is built for the average person living in a lower-tiered city. In a country of 1.4 billion people, you don't need to target everyone to get millions of users. Secondly, unlike Tiktok which makes most its money through adverts, Kuaishou leverages the tipping revenue model. The app allows users to tip creators who's videos they enjoy and Kuaishou take a cut. This is something we're beginning to see in western apps but spending is largely separate from social media - that's not the case in China. Interestingly, Tiktok recently announced plans to change that. We'll have to see whether they can succeed where Facebook has mostly failed or if this will be another case of different cultures needing different products.

⚽️ The Glazers own the best team in the world and I'm not talking about Manchester United but Super Bowl champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They're not the only people to own teams in multiple sports though. Liverpool and the Red Sox share owners, San Francisco's 49ers have a share in Leeds United and Patrice Motsepe holds stakes in the Blue Bulls and Mamelodi Sundowns. In some senses it makes sense, sport is sport. The analysts are using the same maths to work out optimal game strategies and sponsorship deals follow the same financial principles but as mentioned before, the player recruitment and contract structures can be vastly different and depending on the sport, fans expect different things from the owners - just ask the Glazers.

🍽 When you open any food delivery app you're probably greeted with a list of restaurants you've never seen in real life - some with almost identical menus. They're all instances of food's latest trend: delivery only restaurants known as dark kitchens. Although they're actually not new (your favourite childhood pizza was probably from a dark kitchen), their gain in popularity is flipping the food industry on its head: cheaper rents and spread-out demand provide a completely new financial model that could rival traditional restaurants even with delivery costs. My dish of the week is Dahlia on Regent's Short Rib Noodles - one of the meals of the year.

🎵 I really enjoyed The Weeknd's halftime show at the Super Bowl. It's instantly one of my favourites ever - no surprise though considering he personally spent $7 million on it. This week I've listened to Black Coffee's star-studded new album, "Subconsciously". I also really enjoyed Chet Faker's new song, "Get High". My song of the week is Bombay Bicycle Club's cover of "Love You To Love Me" by Selena Gomez.

💡 Some links I enjoyed this week: Obama had a podcast years before it was cool. Using machine learning to group Europe's best football teams. Someone got Jordan Belfort to recreate that Wolf of Wall Street speech - with a Robinhood twist.