Hi,
Saket here.
It’s 2020, and e-mail openings have changed from
“Hope you’re keeping well” to
“Hope you’re staying positive and testing negative.”
And in case you noticed today’s date, it only gives me one thought.
Announcements
Two announcements were made yesterday. Read about it in details here.
ASCI & Whitehat Jr.
Social media has been abuzz with the way ed-tech startups are cracking down on criticism against their product and advertising practices.
Is this new?
Why does this happen?
Well, a lot of industries exist where both the ‘consumer’ and the ‘customer’ is different.
Whenever this happens, you see information asymmetry. This either creates disproportionate pricing power or irrational trust. Here are a few examples -
So what happened with the ASCI and WhiteHat Jr.?
WhiteHat Jr. - a platform that makes your kids learn about coding, had been advertising about kids having the potential to earn in crores by learning coding from a very young age.
This did not go down well with a lot of people. Here’s the article talking about this.
Why is this a big deal and why am I writing about this?
Well, I was once exposed to a potential financial fraud being conducted by a real estate company.
It was when I discovered the advertisement for the same company in a different city, I went up to ASCI for a complaint.
What did I get? - A response that I have exceeded the time limit to file a complaint since the advertisement is dated.
Investing 101
Chamath talks about the basics of Investing in a detailed Twitter thread. Read about it here. An absolute gem of a piece to begin with!
How does the Brain Work?
How are we talking about Biology all of a sudden? Well, there are 4 chemicals that control the brain. Read about it here.
Mistakes in the Markets
I talk about a few mistakes that I made in my investing journey here. What has been your most expensive mistake? Let me know here.
Song of the Week
Book of the Week
Almost a year back I came across this book - “How I almost blew it”
More often than not, we read about stories of startup founders raising millions, earning billions and impacting trillions.
Well, what about failures?
Don’t worry, this book is not about gloom and doom.
Rather, this book is about folks who were almost at the verge of ‘blowing it’ and came back stronger.
Let me give you some interesting anecdote from this interesting read.
It was a conversation between Sanjeev Bikhchandani (SB), the founder of Info Edge (Naukri, 99 Acres, JeevanSathi et all) and Rahul Yadav, the erstwhile CEO of Housing.com
This is what SB had to say for 99 Acres.
Housing called us for a merger and said,
“You have the business, we have the product – let’s merge.”
I said,
“If you have the product, how come we have the business?”
Read this and a lot of other interesting stories here.