I’ve been thinking about Luckin Coffee, which was a big story a few years ago in China. It was a digital upstart taking on giant Starbucks. It was Jack Ma’s “new retail” applied to retail coffee. It was a digital innovator. Blah, blah, blah. It was mostly a lot of hype. And the company crashed […]
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, I talk about my interview with Huawei about their 2019 financial results. And a bit about the disclosure of fraud at Luckin Coffee. You can listen here or at iTunes, Google Podcasts and Himalaya. This is part of Learning Goals: Level 3, with a focus on: #6 Basics of Huawei #10 […]
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 the third episode for my Asia tech class. It asks how Starbucks China should have responded to the rapid entrance of Luckin Coffee in 2018. You can listen here or at iTunes and Himalaya. You can vote here or below). Write a 3 Minute Pitch for the CEO Please take 10-15 minutes and […]