BC BUSINESS
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

1) Let's talk about how Alibaba has achieved the holy grail of big data - a holistic view of the consumer - through a plethora of product offerings and investment.

This is their overarching moat. And Amazon's got nothing on them.

 2) To the outsider, Alibaba's product range is confusing af. It's all over the place and there seems to be no core competency they are focusing on.

A few divisions - Taobao (B2C marketplace), Tmall (High-end B2C marketplace), Alibaba (B2B marketplace, Cainiu(logistics)..
3) ...Elema (Food delivery), Autonavi (maps), Youku (streaming) and Feizhu(travel booking)

Also the promotional strategy is weird, In the lead-up to singles day, half the time they were promoting some cat rearing in-app mini game.

Wtf?
4) When we view Alibaba's strategy as working to create a full view of a consumer's life, including their preferences, social network and spending capacity (and ability). Then everything starts to make sense.
4) Whether a consumer buys on Tmall or Taobao tells Ali about their preferences and budget, delivery address for packages and food lets Ali know where they live and where they work (also cross-referenced with property data to infer wealth level + occupation).
5) Maps and travel lets them know where the consumer frequents, how they travel (whether they have a car or take the subway), whether they buy discounted economy tickets to Hefei or first class seat to Bali.

The meta-data from all of this is staggering, but they aren't done yet
6) The last step is to know your social circle. Which they can infer from who you live with (via same delivery address), but cut off the WeChat social maps (see my Meituan thread about Ali versus Tencent beef), they need to figure out something better.

Enter the mini-games.
7) By playing the mini-games, players can unlock coupons for Singles day. But the biggest savings are when you invite your friends to play with you, all cats co-ordinating as a single team.

There was never a quicker way to find out who loves you enough to be cats with you
8) So no they know your preferences and social network, are we done? Of course not.

Enter two more important players in game - Ant and Weibo.

Former subsidary Ant offering payment, credit, insurance and asset management, but the payment data is the real gold.
9) One the payment data is augmented with Alibaba's (Ant has a data-sharing agreement with Alibaba for 50 years), Alibaba can see example the flow of transactions for a consumer's every day life, from salary to utilities payment.
10) This allows Alibaba and Ant to suggest relevant products to users that traditional algorithms would overlook. Take a university student, typically not the customer for credit loans since they are living on a budget.
11) But this particular one has made a series of high ticket purchases in Tmall, book frequent plane tickets to exotic locations and spends very little time comparing when making purchases.
12) Their payment linked to a family credit card and looking closr you can see substantial asset management products brought by the mum. This is some rich kid of instagram right here.

Ideal customer to offer high price items and credit products to.
13) Weibo (Chinese Twitter), who Alibaba holds 18% stake in, also shares data with Alibaba. This is galaxy brain level of data. Now Alibaba not only has historical traction but also future intent for the consumer. They now know what's hot and trending and then push relevant items
14) All in all, this makes Alibaba's recommendation engine for all products incredible powerful and on point. To a level that I find Amazon would struggle to compete with.

Or maybe I'm only saying that since I've developed a major Taobao habit.
15) It's interesting what the regulation on Ant will do. I'm very curious about the incoming data privacy regulations and how that will impact Alibaba's data moat. If you're interested on Ant, here's something I wrote a while back with @mariodgabriele https://t.co/VokvCT7sTN
I'll be doing threads like this for the rest of Jan, follow me to get these spams on your TL.

Let me know what you think!

More from Lillian Li

Lillian Li
Lillian Li
@lillianmli
"By creating the concept that data is a factor of production, China Inc. has formalised and legislated the stance that data itself is valuable rather than the algorithms it helps train.

The Chinese leadership has subtly but deftly implied that data's value to a nation is underpriced and currently subjected to market distortions."

I think China's making money moves in the area of data. Read about it
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Lillian Li
Lillian Li
@lillianmli
1) Let's talk about Tesla's China strategy. There's a few questions here - why did the Chinese government actively encourage them to set up in Shanghai? What's in it for Tesla? Why is Tesla continously discounting their cars?

Spoiler alert: $TSLA go brrr

2) Our story starts all the way back in 2013, when smog was so bad Beijing didn't see any blue sky for months. Policy pivots were in order, and new energy bills with specific support for electric vehicles (EV) were introduced.

3) Over the next few years subsidies from the government were handed out to any car companies that said they were going electric. A single EV could get up to $22k worth of subsidies (provided they could drive for 250 km).

Sales increased and the EV market steady grew

4) However at the end of 2017, there was no standout Chinese EV company. Far too much of the subsidies went to fraudsters and the Chinese EV market was lagging behind the EU market.

Chinese government hardened their resolve.

Similar to Baidu, complacency was a killer.

5) The aim was to have a thriving worldclass EV market in the long term.

Similar to how introducing Apple and Samsung brought up Xiaomi, One Plus and Oppo, they decided to introduce foreign competition from the best EV brand there was - Tesla.
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Lillian Li
Lillian Li
@lillianmli
1) Let's talk about the question of 'how should we think about Chinese tech'

What do we talk about when we talk about Chinese tech? Who is 'we' here? How do you pronounce Elema?

I've hit 10k in followers and it's time to earn my stripes as a thinkboi.

2) Chinese tech is a loaded term. The very fact that we have to say 'Chinese' tech rather than tech demotes its otherness.

So what does a place of origin signify? The different market conditions, political context and imo most importantly, the development stage of the country.

3) I think @benedictevans and @ToniCowanBrown's podcast on 'How to think about Chinese tech when you know fa about China' (my title, not theirs), lays some of the groundwork here.

China's different market conditions and political context often means a parallel tech world

4) This means a fundamental rethinking of first principals that's hard to stomach for most Western tech folks
- Copy is not wrong, in fact, it shows you've picked a de-risked business model
- There are no unscalable resources, esp when labour is

5) But I think the most important factor that gets overlooked is that China tech demotes something very particular. It is coming from a developing country. The life stage of a country is different from its cultural context.

What happens when a developing country is innovating?
TECH
Lillian Li
Lillian Li
@lillianmli
1) Let's talk about my favourite video platform Bilibili. What is it, what it isn't and and how it makes money. It's been called the Chinese YouTube that that framing lacks imaginary.

The $bili stock also 5x in 2020 - who knew weebs could be so lucrative

2) Grossly simplified, it's the Chinese equivalent of Youtube. Except it's not. It's like if Youtube, Twitch, Steam, Patreon, TokyoPop and Netflix had a CRISPR-baby, and that baby was a weeb, but that weeb is also super down with Chinese Gen Z

3) Bilibili was founded in 2010 by avid Anime, Gaming and Comics (AGC) fan Yi Xu from a frustration that the mainstay Chinese anime platform kept crashing with no consistent access to his beloved vocaloid Miku

4) Serial entrepreneur Rui Chen went from an angel investor to CEO, having obtained Yi Xu's trust by correctly identified the origin of Bilibili as from the anime "A Certain Scientific Railgun". Anime knowledge is life.

5) Currently it's the biggest mainstream portal for the Chinese Gen Z with user-generated video sharing, live streaming, mobile gaming, online comics and event ticketing. It’s also diversified its content coverage with coverage on beauty, e-sports, pop culture and many others.
TRADING
Lillian Li
Lillian Li
@lillianmli
1) Let's talk about a key part of the Chinese creator economy. The creator management and incubator agencies known as Multi-Channel Networks (MCN). We''ll summerise key lessons for the western creator economy.

And know how Li Ziqi got her 12m YouTube subscribers

2) MCNs are modern-day talent agencies (but more) who target influencers and creators as their clients. It originated in the US but has proliferated in China, with industry estimates of 5k-7k Chinese MCN operating as of 2020.

3) Typically, as creators gain enough following, they find it difficult to be an-all-in-one content creator, editor, customer support rep, accountant, lawyer, and marketing guru that the job demands.

Enter the MCNs who offers the creator the following:

4) Audience and traffic growth, PR management, monetisation through ads & e-commerce and support with retail fulfillment.

Their services are more holistic than western MCNs, who's offerings are more domain-specific.

5) Agreements between Chinese MCNs and creators can get into guarantees of the number of followers provided, copyrights, subtitling and distribution help, as well as providing analytical feedback on their content.
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Karm Sumal
Karm Sumal
@KarmSumal
1. A thread on Downtown #Vancouver's office construction boom. When it's all said and done there will be roughly 10 million SQ FT of space will be added to just the core.

Here's a brief rundown on what is already approved and under construction...

2. We'll start with what is dubbed as Amazon's unofficial HQ2, or at the very least it's Canadian HQ. At 1.1 million SQ FT this is the largest office development in the city and will help shift DT east as it will house 7500 jobs once occupied.


3. The Amazon building is also significant because it will animate that stretch of West Georgia, Homer, Hamilton and Dunsmuir. It will no longer be a black hole for pedestrian activity. There will be approx. 185,000 square feet of retail and food hall space.

4. Next up is the Stack Tower to be anchored by EY. It's at the western edge of the Central Business District (CBD) and will become #Vancouver's tallest office building when complete. It clocks in at roughly 540,000 SQ FT and 530 feet in height.

5. Recently approved Steam Plant tower has a unique design and large floor plates. With nearly 600,000 SQ FT of office space, this is the second largest office tower that we could see. My bet is that this tower will start to take shape in a year or
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The Tycoon Mindset
The Tycoon Mindset
@tycoonmindset05
How Amazon makes money?

[ Amazon's business model decoded😃]

@dmuthuk @unseenvalue @FI_InvestIndia @Vivek_Investor @drprashantmish6 @caniravkaria

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1/ A person named Jeffery earns 100 dollars per month and has an expenditure of 120 dollars monthly. He has a very good reputation in the society. So, he takes a loan of 1k dollars for a month and this 1k cash is invested in new business ventures.

2/ For the next month, he pays his liability back by taking a loan from another person for 1.5k dollars. The loan of 1k is paid back and the remaining 500 dollars are invested in another business venture.

3/ By the end of the month, he earns 150 dollars through his old and new business ventures but has a total expenditure of 200 dollars. He again is in a deficit of 50 dollars. To pay back his 1.5k dollar loan, he takes a loan for 2k dollars

4/ This cycle goes on and on. Jeffery keeps on taking bigger loans to repay the previous loan and the leftover extra loan is invested in bigger ventures which produce more expense than income.
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Anurag Singh
Anurag Singh
@anuragsingh_as
#PolicybazaarIPO Long thread: There is monetary printing by RBI, there is lending by banks & finally there is the Indian IPO. “Foreign owned” company with ~1 Bn investment is selling “Indian” unicorn to “savvy” Indians for $ 6.2 Bn. Want to know how this printing works? Let’s go-

The basics: Rs 6017 Cr being raised by new shares (Rs 3750) & re-selling (Rs 2267). Face value Rs 2 offered at Rs ~1000 per share is one of a kind. Who decides the price? Examine the valuation ladder below.
With ~$ 150 Mn invested till 2017, we see $ 525 Mn rushes in after 2018


So, a company valued $1 Bn in 2018 & $ 1.5 Bn in 2019 by key investors like Tencent, suddenly “needs money” in March 2021. Falcon Edge “invests” all of $ 75 Mn in March at valuation of $ 2.65 Bn.
Enter IPO bankers a couple of months later & they value the company at $ 6.2 Bn

Why does PolicyBazaar need $ 75 Mn just 6 months before IPO & give away 2.5 times in returns? And it doesn’t even use that money as the B/S reflects appx Rs 1000 Cr in cash lying around.
What kind of a favor is that? Why do they need US investment bank for this just before IPO?

Notice 50% rise in shareholding of promotors here & a 1: 500 bonus share issue. After all, how do you print money & still keep share price at “reasonable” Rs 1000?
Without bonus issue in June 2021, each share would have costed Rs 50,000. Heard of circular valuation?
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Andrew John Rainnie \U0001f3f4\U000e0067\U000e0062\U000e0073\U000e0063\U000e0074\U000e007f #amwriting
Andrew John Rainnie 🏴󠁧...
@AndrewRainnie
Over the last week, I've been blocked by various people, including an MSP, for allegedly being a conspiracy theorist, trying to sow division within @theSNP and #indy ranks.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I want independence for Scotland, plain and simple.

But I still have the right to challenge people if I think something is wrong, legally or morally, as recent events within the SNP seem to be.

But anyway, I'm not talking about that. Today I'm looking at the @NowScotlandNow logo.

I'm not a fan. Just to be clear, I want Scottish Independence. But the logo for the new organisation, unfortunately, doesn't work as well as the previous YES ones. It's a mix of the colour and the font used, which presumably is referencing Charlies Rennie Mackintosh.


The italics and thin font means it doesn't stand out. Plus, I associate Mackintosh more with Glasgow than Scotland as a whole. So I took some of the elements of the last two and looked at alternative fonts (that are all free BTW)

This font is called ChuckFive. It's big, bold and brash and you can read it a mile off.
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Ky Nguyen
Ky Nguyen
@keywinhomes
@ReformedTrader That is a long post, but well written. Real estate is a claim on the future prosperity or ruin of a geographical location. Real estate intrinsic values is its ability to generate cash or similar costs to rent in that area. Intrinsic value is above zero in most cases.

Ironically enough, the location that benefits most from property ownership are places where rising living costs expand faster than rising middle income wages. Deflationary areas are hostile to property ownership as price is falling make collateral and borrowing difficult.

Homes are bought using leverage with agencies loan subsidies by the governments. As long as you have fixed rates, the costs of living expenses for your housing is set for 30 or 15 years which allow family to budget. Wealth can be accumulate over time as asset and income risen.

Time passed, real estate become detach from intrinsic values. Monthly mortgage rocket pass incomes and growth in the area. Quick money into real estate turn into a landmine. The 2007 fiasco could have been better or worst, but the free market is effectively dead as an ideology.

At the time, investors attack the institutional that vulnerable to the MBS and structured derivatives linked to real estate bubble risks. Since many financial institution owned the agencies MBS, defaulting on these security means downward spiral for M1 and M2 in developed nations
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Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel was previously CEO of bioMerieux in France from 07-10.

Alain Merieux, who owns bioMerieux, was instrumental in the creation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology P4 Lab.

The same people who helped create the virus, also helped to create the vaccines...


Moderna partnered with French Pasteur Institute in 2015 to develop mRNA vaccine technology.

Pasteur Institute partnered with the Wuhan P4 Laboratory in 2017 along with the Merieux Foundation to study emerging viruses...
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Montagnier did extensive work with the Pasteur Institute in France which was partnered with the Wuhan P4.

Merieux Foundation & the Chinese government have worked together since 1965, and partnered to study emerging pathogens in Africa in 2015.

Their research included "PATHOGENS CARRIED BY BATS" that provoke respiratory diseases.

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1. If you are a fast writer (i.e., if you compose first drafts very quickly) then you absolutely must become a slow editor. Much of what I call “writing” is really, for me, editing.

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2.1 I sometimes say that I feel like writing without reading is like trying to run a marathan on a cracker. And sadly I see many students struggling to write when they have simply never read enough to fuel that demand of the task at hand.

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