In 2009, Brian Acton and Jan Koum founded WhatsApp to ride the wave of mobile apps kicked off by the launch of the iPhone. The original purpose of WhatsApp was to put a status notification next to your name, to let people know “what’s up”. But the small team noticed three important things that would launch their […]
Take-Away 1: Hello bike-sharing is a marginally profitable, small services business. Its recent shift to ebikes (and subscriptions) is increasing its revenue and making it more defendable. But it is also changing the economics. Take-Away 2: Hello is trying to build a platform business model on its large user base. A marketplace for mobility (like […]
In this class, we discuss Didi, Luckin and Mobike and how to predict if they will be profitable. Exercise for this class: For Mobike, Luckin or Didi, think about the following two aspects. Consumer view: What do they care about? What is their journey for buying and using? Competitor: Could a well-funded, well-run competitor […]
This is one of the daily updates for my Asia Tech class. It builds off podcast / lecture 2 about what Starbucks China should have done about Luckin Coffee (located here). Two main points for today: Luckin Coffee traded defensibility for scalability Are WeWork and Luckin blitzscaling? Or are they just in money wars? 1. […]