DesignCrowd Registers One Million Global Users
THIS
Creative design marketplace, DesignCrowd, has announced reaching the milestone of one million registered designers on its global platform. The Aussie crowdsourcing start-up currently has a 1,004,000-strong freelance designer network, which has grossed over $A62 million since the company’s 2008 launch. The network have completed over 26 million graphic, logo and web designs for both small businesses and international brands, including Virgin, Amnesty International, and Harvard Business School, across 195 countries. It has now grown to become one of the biggest crowdsourcing communities in the world, having raised over $A20 million in venture capital. According to a 2019 Mastercard and Kaiser Associated report, the global freelance economy is expected to surpass $US455 billion by 2023. The Australian gig economy also grew 32 percent in the year preceding the pandemic and skyrocketed further once lockdowns hit. DesignCrowd’s latest milestone is indicative of a shifting global economy, with ‘on-demand’ services bolstering the company’s growth. “We’re very proud to be working with a rapidly growing global community of talented and engaged creators that are helping people in Australia and around the world launch their dream business,” said DesignCrowd CEO, Alec Lynch (main photo). “The pandemic saw many businesses close their doors for good, but over the last year, we’ve seen a huge number of new small businesses and side hustles get launched with new logos from DesignCrowd or BrandCrowd [subsidiary DIY branding platform] which is great to see as new small businesses can help Australia and the world recover from the pandemic. “Growing our network of freelance designers to one million globally means we can support more businesses than ever before to launch their company with the most creative and cost-effective design available anywhere in the world.”

DesignCrowd Registers One Million Global Users

DesignCrowd is an online crowdsourcing platform for custom-made logos and other design services. Tech companies have cropped up from everywhere. Even traditionally non-digital enterprises like Nike and Starbucks have ridden the technological game, or else they vanish. But it’s the constant rise and expansion of digital solutions that make tech companies, especially startups, toil to rise up from the crowd. What can potentially forecast the success of a tech startup other than money and technology? We’ve seen it in Google and Apple, whose brands have successfully penetrated every inch of the globe. What could be so special about these companies other than fame and c-suite smarties? Turns out, well-established branding is the ke y. A brand is partly the tangible things and more about the experience. More than the logo, websites, and slogans, good branding is the reason behind people anticipating a product release year after year. Or despite major revamps in company policies, customers stick to using the service. Whatever that is, it's branding. Branding is an experience. Perhaps so vast and so huge that only big companies have the resources to comprehend. In fact, it might be the opposite, the reason they’re big and resource-laden is because they understanding deep-seated branding. Here are some of the best ways you jumpstart your branding as soon as you start your tech business: 
1. Ask the why’s
The most successful tech businesses like Apple and Google know the reason why they exist. For Apple, it’s evident in their mission statement: 
“Apple is dedicated to the empowerment of man—to making personal computing accessible to each and every individual so as to help change the way we think, work, learn, and communicate.”
For Google: “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Asking the “why,” according to Simone Sinek, the proponent of the “Start With Why” narrative,  enables whatever business to penetrate a saturated market. Businesses who know their whys often have very tone-accurate marketing and advertising strategies leading to better customer acquisition and retention. A smart and well-outlined core answers as to the existence of a business helps them target a specific pool of customers and stakeholders. Before you think through the tangible aspects of a brand such as the logo, websites, and typography, consider asking specific questions about the reason of the company’s founding. What do you seek to solve? Who do you wish to help? How do you wish to aid the problem? What will keep the company existing? Answers to these questions might change over time, but they are the foundation of a focused and sensible tech enterprise. After you form this foundation, that’s when it’s right to obsess over the brand name, and the logo design. It would be easier by then to create the shapes, the image, and the color that you want. Whether you run them through a logo maker or have your logo professionally designed , you will have created a wonderful visual identity that sits right at your branding core. 2. Research the industry gap
What differentiates you from the competition? The tech industry is just so varied, so big, that for whatever problems, google can point you to a solution. So, it’s vital that a tech business knows its edge. Research the industry. Know what lacks, what is loose, and what is the void that only you can provide. Industry research makes up the perspectives of the whole industry. There should be more analyst and stakeholder outlooks, industry trends, and brand differentiation. Apart from qualitative research, you must quantify data and industry projections. If a B2B brand, for instance, has researched about the client’s fear of spoilage and downtimes over incapacitated temperature monitoring solutions, you can strategically position your brand as something that not only acknowledges but also allay those fears. Say words like “downtimes cost a huge sum of money, even the loss of life. Hence, our services aim to eradicate those problems with high-precision and sustainable digital monitors.” 
Competitive industry research allows you to humanize your brand. When you know, through firsthand experience or network research, what bothers your potential customers and stakeholders, you can then create your brand identity posed as a solution and an ally. 3. Use a Brand Story
Tech businesses would often rely on product-focused branding. And that’s fine only if all people are rational, but they’re not. We’re all emotional beings . We love a good story. That’s what a budding tech business should capitalize on. And you might be wondering what kind of story does B2B or SaaS services can give? You see, the kind of stories that sell are those that are neither unique nor inspiring but vulnerable and honest. And I think all tech businesses have that. From the experience of the founder on miscalculated payslips to the wrong custom designs from a freelance agency,  stories are inherent and natural. As long as they touch all points of a narrative arc, it’s a good branding essential. The best thing about stories is that they penetrate even the most untrusting business stakeholder, ultimately leading to better investments. Also, it’s a wonderful touching point where employees can probably relate to — an excellent way to promote inter-agency branding. 4. Brand inspiration coming from employees
Employees are the first steward of your brand. Every successful branding strategy must sit right with those involved in the company’s operations . Especially for small businesses, it’s imperative to incorporate the branding image and persona in the employees’ everyday transactions. Like Googleyness, a term that the Google company derived from their employees being out of the box. Employees must live the brand. That means incorporating the brand in their creative process from the product creation to the development stage to client use. Imagine if your employees have a good sense of your brand core, image, and story, these will translate in their email messages, flyers, website copies, and customer services. Employees are your own brand ambassadors . Even freelancers or agencies can conceive better-suited marketing materials as your employees communicate the brand message well. If a tech business prioritizes market penetration, it will result in a good short-term bottom line. Yet a brand that pervades the business operations, market penetration will outlast intergenerational transfers. It’s no accident why some brands remain valuable after decades of changing executives and owners. While that might be a bit of a challenge for technology businesses due to incremental tech evolution, it still pays to build the foundations right so you reap a satisfying reward, something that sustains the brand for years to come. 5. Determine your brand voice 
Voice and tones are two different things. Brand voice is the kind of message or perspective you share with your customers. A B2B tech company, for instance, may choose to highlight how easy it is to use its services. Another one might constantly share how inexpensive their products are relative to their counterpart’s solutions. Your brand voice is the content of your message. Brand tone, on the other hand, is the way the company chooses to spread the message. It’s the “how” of disseminating information. The way you communicate with a senior high schooler is different from how you speak with a grandmother. Or that you will have to differentiate professional designers from coding experts so you craft an accurate tone. Still, you don’t want to bore the average consumers with high-brow jargon. Not only it excludes lay readers, but also shows pomposity to even the seasoned audience. 6. Innovation is the goal
Any tech business must always highlight a branding message of innovation. No one wants to work with companies that are stuck with tradition and specificity. As much as possible, you want to cover all existing problems of your clients, even if that means establishing newer products every quarter. Your customers and their problems are your concerns and not your products and services. Brands that are customer-centric tend to develop better and last longer. Part of a good branding message is showing that the company listens. The product evolves out of the plight of your customers and that constant innovation is underway. Innovation has to seep through the core, the “why”, of your business process. It has to project that the company is always open to changes if that’s for the betterment of your stakeholders. An innovative brand positioning is a good way to make marketing and advertising revamp easier. For example, if you wish to add customer experience stories in your newer campaigns or incorporate the essence of your business ventures along the way, It’s easier for people to see it as your company’s innovation tactics — one that is in line with your branding. This means they shouldn’t get surprised over little changes. If they’re tied to the inner branding mission and goals, stakeholders see them as something worthwhile and expected. To Wrap It Up
People every so often associate branding with marketing. And they’re right, it is associated. But to think they’re the same can breed potential problems that neither branding nor marketing can salvage. It pays to know that branding comes first and foremost before marketing. That marketing can only succeed when business owners establish the brand message, voice, and goals in the first place. Even small changes can unease customers when they are not rooted in the brand experience. It would be the opposite if they love your brand, whatever the changes might be, they’ll find themselves sticking to the solutions you give.

Essential Brand Identity Builders for Tech Businesses

DesignCrowd raises $10 million AUD to grow its DIY platform, BrandCrowd
01.02.2021, 15:01,
Odnoklassniki
DesignCrowd announced today it has raised $10 million AUD (about $7.6 billion USD) in pre-IPO funding. The capital will be used on hiring and product development, with the goal of accelerating the growth of BrandCrowd , its DIY platform. The new funding comes as DesignCrowd gets ready for a potential initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange. The round’s investors include Perennial Value Management, Alium Capital, Ellerston Capital, Regal Funds Managemetn and CVC, along with returning backers Starfish Ventures and AirTree Ventures. DesignCrowd has now raised more than $22 million AUD in total. Founded in 2007 and based in Sydney, Australia, DesignCrowd built its reputation as a design crowdsourcing platform, allowing users to get proposals from designers around the world. BrandCrowd was launched to complement DesignCrowd’s crowdsourcing/marketplace model, expanding its potential user base and differentiating it from other sites people use to find designers, like 99designs and Fiverr. See also:

DesignCrowd raises $10 million AUD to grow its DIY platform, BrandCrowd

Ex-Googler Turns Virtual Gifts Into a $61 Billion Business With Chinese Video App Kuaishou
Published
In China’s popular online-streaming industry, virtual gift-giving is big. You can send your favorite live performer anything from a rose for 5 yuan (80 cents) to a space rocket for 500 yuan. The present is just a symbol, but the money is real — and that’s what’s made Kuaishou Technology so successful. The ByteDance rival has become the biggest live-streaming platform for virtual gifts, with more paying monthly users than any other in the world. The firm, which takes a cut of the tips fans give to performers, raised $5.4 billion (roughly Rs. 39,409 crores) in Hong Kong in the biggest internet initial public offering since Uber Technologies in 2019, terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg show. That’s poised to create at least four billionaires with a combined fortune valued at $15 billion (roughly Rs. 1,09 lakh crores), based on the ownership disclosed in Kuaishou’s prospectus. Co-founders Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao will each be worth more than $5.5 billion (roughly Rs. 40,128 crores), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Kuaishou, which means “fast hand,” is one of China’s biggest internet success stories of the past decade, part of a generation of startups that thrived with backing from Tencent Holdings. Along with TikTok parent ByteDance, the outfit pioneered the live-streaming and bite-sized video format that’s since been adopted around the world by the likes of Facebook Inc.
“The key resource of the internet is attention,” Su wrote in Kuaishou’s official biography in 2019. “It can be focused on large numbers of people like the sunlight, rather than a spotlight just on a certain group of people. That’s the simple logic behind Kuaishou.”
Su, a native of China’s central Hunan province, studied computer programming at the prestigious Tsinghua University before joining Google in Beijing in 2006. There, he earned about $23,000 (roughly Rs. 16,77 lakh) annually, eight times the country’s average salary back then. While he said he was “extremely happy,” a stay in Silicon Valley inspired him to start his own business, according to Kuaishou’s biography. The 38-year-old quit Google during the global financial crisis to start his own video-advertising venture, which didn’t come to fruition. After a short stint with Baidu, he got acquainted with Cheng in 2011 and they soon decided to pair up. In 2013, the duo transformed the Kuaishou app from a GIF-maker to the social-video platform it is today, initially gaining popularity with its videos of life in rural China. With the rise of ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese twin app of TikTok, Kuaishou broadened its appeal, luring influencers backed by talent agencies and pop stars like Taiwan’s Jay Chou. Along the way, it sped up monetization by creating ad slots and in-app stores for brands and merchants. While virtual gift purchases are still its bread and butter — they make up almost two-thirds of its revenue — the company is delving deeper into higher-margin businesses like e-commerce and online gaming. Its sales rose almost 50 percent to CNY 40.7 billion (4,59 lakh crores) in the first nine months of last year, according to the IPO prospectus. Viewers spend an average of almost 90 minutes on Kuaishou every day, and about a quarter of monthly users churn out content as well. While that robust engagement differentiates Kuaishou from rival live-streaming platforms such as Joyy and Momo, the recent launch of a short-video feed by Tencent’s super-app WeChat has brought competition to another level. Kuaishou’s debut could also be overshadowed by the potential IPO of its far larger rival, ByteDance, whose 600 million Douyin daily users are more than double Kuaishou’s. Last valued at $180 billion (roughly Rs. 13,13 lakh crores), the world’s largest startup was said to be exploring a listing of some of its businesses in Hong Kong as the US last year attempted to ban TikTok and force a sale of the app on national-security concerns. “Kuaishou has overhauled its product and become more similar to Douyin,” said Citic Securities Co. analyst Wang Guanran in a January 26 note. “The two will face direct competition with each other in the future.”
Kuaishou isn’t immune to geo-political tensions either. While Su told investors on a January 25 call that non-Chinese markets have the potential to become a big earnings driver, its platforms including Kwai and Snack Video are banned in India along with hundreds of Chinese apps as New Delhi and Beijing clash over border disputes. In the US, its TikTok-style Zynn service has gained little traction since launching last May. The company will also have to deal with a recent crackdown on live-streaming. China said in November it would require performers and gift givers to register with their real names, banned minors from tipping and asked the platforms to limit the value of virtual presents. Still, investors have been rushing to get a piece of the first short-video platform that will start trading February 5. The IPO priced at the top end of its marketed range, and the retail portion was the most subscribed ever, according to IFR, as the city’s market for new listings has been on fire lately. The enthusiasm last year boosted the fortunes of top executives including those at Nongfu Spring’s Zhong Shanshan — now Asia’s richest person — and Blue Moon Group Holdings’ Pan Dong. The Kuaishou founder is cautious about the power he’s amassed. In the company’s biography, Su compared his platform’s ability to control internet attention and traffic with the One Ring from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “When you put on the ring, you’ll feel extremely powerful,” he wrote. “But in fact, it’s the ring and the power that are controlling you.”
–With assistance from Pei Yi Mak
© 2021 Bloomberg LP
Does WhatsApp’s new privacy policy spell the end for your privacy? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , or RSS , download the episode , or just hit the play button below. DesignCrowd announced today it has raised $10 million AUD (about $7.6 billion USD) in pre-IPO funding. The capital will be used on hiring and product development, with the goal of accelerating the growth of BrandCrowd , its DIY platform. The new funding comes as DesignCrowd gets ready for a potential initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange. The round’s investors include Perennial Value Management, Alium Capital, Ellerston Capital, Regal Funds Managemetn and CVC, along with returning backers Starfish Ventures and AirTree Ventures. DesignCrowd has now raised more than $22 million AUD in total. Founded in 2007 and based in Sydney, Australia, DesignCrowd built its reputation as a design crowdsourcing platform, allowing users to get proposals from designers around the world. BrandCrowd was launched to complement DesignCrowd’s crowdsourcing/marketplace model, expanding its potential user base and differentiating it from other sites people use to find designers, like 99designs and Fiverr. While there are other DIY logo makers aimed at entrepreneurs and small brands, including tools from Design Hill, Canva and Tailor Brands, BrandCrowd had an advantage from the start because it already has access to more than 800,000 designers through DesignCrowd, allowing the company to find the best logo designers from around the world for its library, said co-founder and chief executive officer Alec Lynch. BrandCrowd prefers to buy designs upfront before publishing them, since all logos are exclusive to the platform (users can pay an extra fee to remove logos from its library). BrandCrowd customers pay a one-off fee to download a logo and can sign up for monthly or annual subscriptions. Many use both platforms, Lynch said. “For example, if a small business wants to start by getting a custom logo design from a designer on DesignCrowd, we then allow them to use that logo in our DIY design tools on BrandCrowd to make everything else they might need, from business card designs to Instagram posts and email signature,” said Lynch. “They can even make modifications to their logo on BrandCrowd using our logo editor tool.”
DesignCrowd’s net revenues in 2020 grew 54% year-over-year, due primarily to BrandCrowd. The company says BrandCrowd saw over five million sign-ups over the past 12 months, with more than half of its revenue from the United States. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company experienced some headwinds in March and April 2020, Lynch said, but then global demand for online design rebounded and began increasing. “Our hypothesis is that the pandemic led to more people starting new businesses in the second half of 2020 and more people needing design for those businesses, which was helpful for us,” he added. “In addition to this small ‘boom’ in small businesses starting, we think the pandemic has probably accelerated an existing trend of businesses sourcing design online rather than offline.”
Betting against the crowd isn’t always smart. Hedge fund Melvin Capital reportedly lost $4.5 billion in assets value in January – a 53 percent drop – after its massive bet that GameStop’s stock price will fall turned sour, the Financial Times reported Sunday. And that’s after a $2.75 billion cash infusion from previous investors, who jumped in to save the fund from collapse. For an explainer of what happened, go here, but the short version is that Melvin, as well as some other funds, bet against GameStop by shorting massive amounts of its stock (shorting means selling the stock in the hope you’ll be able to rebuy cheaper later). Reddit traders that frequent the subreddit r/wallstreetbets noticed that GameStop’s stock was ridiculously (perhaps unfairly) over-shorted, and they responded by buying the stock en masse, driving the price up higher, forcing shorters to buy the stock to cover their losses (this is know as a short squeeze). This, in turn, put enormous pressure on Melvin and other shorters; eventually, Melvin said it exited its short position on GameStop, likely at a massive loss. According to FT, Melvin has since repositioned its portfolio to be a lot less risky; a source told the outlet that the company’s leverage ratio is at the lowest it has been since the firm was founded in 2014. Prior to the GameStop fiasco, Melvin was one of the best-performing hedge funds out there, with a 52 percent yearly gain. GameStop’s stock price is still sharply up compared to just weeks ago and is currently trading at about $344 in premarket trading. Traders at r/wallstreetbets have since turned their attention to other assets. One of them is silver, the price of which has surged to $29, a price the precious metal hasn’t seen in eight years. With #silversqueeze trending on Twitter, millions of small-timers seem ready to put their money (and, perhaps, gains from the GME trade) into silver, armed with the notion that banks have been suppressing the price of silver and pumping it is a way to hurt them. One thing is certain — funds and large investors, no matter how big, will now think twice before betting against them. The Supreme Court Monday sought responses from the Centre and others on a plea seeking framing of law to regulate social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and make them responsible for allegedly spreading fake news and hate speeches. A bench comprising Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notices to the Centre and others on the plea and tagged it with a pending petition which has sought setting up of a media tribunal to adjudicate on complaints against the media, channels and networks. The apex court was hearing a petition filed by advocate Vineet Jindal who has sought directions to the Centre to frame law for prosecuting those involved in spreading hate and fake news through social media platforms. The plea has sought directions to the authorities concerned for establishing a mechanism for automatic removal of fake news and hate speeches within a short timeframe. It said that freedom of speech and expression is a complex right as it may be subject to reasonable restrictions and it is not absolute and carries with it special duties and responsibilities. The plea, while saying that reach of social media is much wider than traditional media, has also referred to few communal violence incidents in the country where social media was misused. On January 25, the top court had sought responses from the Centre, Press Council of India (PCI) and News Broadcasters Association (NBA) on a separate public interest litigation (PIL) which has sought setting up of a media tribunal to adjudicate on complaints against media, channels and networks. The plea has said that media, particularly the electronic, has become like an unruly horse which needs to be tamed. It has also sought setting up of an independent committee headed by either a former Chief Justice of India or an apex court judge to review the entire legal framework related to media business regulations and suggest guidelines. Besides the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, PCI and NBA, the top court had also issued notices to News Broadcasters Federation (NBF) and News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) on the PIL filed jointly by film maker, Nilesh Navalakha and civil engineer Nitin Memane. The apex court had tagged the PIL with a pending plea on the issue. Does WhatsApp’s new privacy policy spell the end for your privacy? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , or RSS , download the episode , or just hit the play button below.

Ex-Googler Turns Virtual Gifts Into a $61 Billion Business With Chinese Video App Kuaishou

NewsAroundUs
Published
DesignCrowd announced today it has raised $10 million AUD (about $7.6 billion USD) in pre-IPO funding. The capital will be used on hiring and product development, with the goal of accelerating the growth of BrandCrowd , its DIY platform. The new funding comes as DesignCrowd gets ready for a potential initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange. The round’s investors include Perennial Value Management, Alium Capital, Ellerston Capital, Regal Funds Managemetn and CVC, along with returning backers Starfish Ventures and AirTree Ventures. DesignCrowd has now raised more than $22 million AUD in total. Founded in 2007 and based in Sydney, Australia, DesignCrowd built its reputation as a design crowdsourcing platform, allowing users to get proposals from designers around the world. BrandCrowd was launched to complement DesignCrowd’s crowdsourcing/marketplace model, expanding its potential user base and differentiating it from other sites people use to find designers, like 99designs and Fiverr. While there are other DIY logo makers aimed at entrepreneurs and small brands, including tools from Design Hill, Canva and Tailor Brands, BrandCrowd had an advantage from the start because it already has access to more than 800,000 designers through DesignCrowd, allowing the company to find the best logo designers from around the world for its library, said co-founder and chief executive officer Alec Lynch. BrandCrowd prefers to buy designs upfront before publishing them, since all logos are exclusive to the platform (users can pay an extra fee to remove logos from its library). BrandCrowd customers pay a one-off fee to download a logo and can sign up for monthly or annual subscriptions. Many use both platforms, Lynch said. “For example, if a small business wants to start by getting a custom logo design from a designer on DesignCrowd, we then allow them to use that logo in our DIY design tools on BrandCrowd to make everything else they might need, from business card designs to Instagram posts and email signature,” said Lynch. “They can even make modifications to their logo on BrandCrowd using our logo editor tool.”
DesignCrowd’s net revenues in 2020 grew 54% year-over-year, due primarily to BrandCrowd. The company says BrandCrowd saw over five million sign-ups over the past 12 months, with more than half of its revenue from the United States. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company experienced some headwinds in March and April 2020, Lynch said, but then global demand for online design rebounded and began increasing. “Our hypothesis is that the pandemic led to more people starting new businesses in the second half of 2020 and more people needing design for those businesses, which was helpful for us,” he added. “In addition to this small ‘boom’ in small businesses starting, we think the pandemic has probably accelerated an existing trend of businesses sourcing design online rather than offline.”
In China’s popular online-streaming industry, virtual gift-giving is big. You can send your favorite live performer anything from a rose for 5 yuan (80 cents) to a space rocket for 500 yuan. The present is just a symbol, but the money is real — and that’s what’s made Kuaishou Technology so successful. The ByteDance rival has become the biggest live-streaming platform for virtual gifts, with more paying monthly users than any other in the world. The firm, which takes a cut of the tips fans give to performers, raised $5.4 billion (roughly Rs. 39,409 crores) in Hong Kong in the biggest internet initial public offering since Uber Technologies in 2019, terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg show. That’s poised to create at least four billionaires with a combined fortune valued at $15 billion (roughly Rs. 1,09 lakh crores), based on the ownership disclosed in Kuaishou’s prospectus. Co-founders Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao will each be worth more than $5.5 billion (roughly Rs. 40,128 crores), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Kuaishou, which means “fast hand,” is one of China’s biggest internet success stories of the past decade, part of a generation of startups that thrived with backing from Tencent Holdings. Along with TikTok parent ByteDance, the outfit pioneered the live-streaming and bite-sized video format that’s since been adopted around the world by the likes of Facebook Inc.
“The key resource of the internet is attention,” Su wrote in Kuaishou’s official biography in 2019. “It can be focused on large numbers of people like the sunlight, rather than a spotlight just on a certain group of people. That’s the simple logic behind Kuaishou.”
Su, a native of China’s central Hunan province, studied computer programming at the prestigious Tsinghua University before joining Google in Beijing in 2006. There, he earned about $23,000 (roughly Rs. 16,77 lakh) annually, eight times the country’s average salary back then. While he said he was “extremely happy,” a stay in Silicon Valley inspired him to start his own business, according to Kuaishou’s biography. The 38-year-old quit Google during the global financial crisis to start his own video-advertising venture, which didn’t come to fruition. After a short stint with Baidu, he got acquainted with Cheng in 2011 and they soon decided to pair up. In 2013, the duo transformed the Kuaishou app from a GIF-maker to the social-video platform it is today, initially gaining popularity with its videos of life in rural China. With the rise of ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese twin app of TikTok, Kuaishou broadened its appeal, luring influencers backed by talent agencies and pop stars like Taiwan’s Jay Chou. Along the way, it sped up monetization by creating ad slots and in-app stores for brands and merchants. While virtual gift purchases are still its bread and butter — they make up almost two-thirds of its revenue — the company is delving deeper into higher-margin businesses like e-commerce and online gaming. Its sales rose almost 50 percent to CNY 40.7 billion (4,59 lakh crores) in the first nine months of last year, according to the IPO prospectus. Viewers spend an average of almost 90 minutes on Kuaishou every day, and about a quarter of monthly users churn out content as well. While that robust engagement differentiates Kuaishou from rival live-streaming platforms such as Joyy and Momo, the recent launch of a short-video feed by Tencent’s super-app WeChat has brought competition to another level. Kuaishou’s debut could also be overshadowed by the potential IPO of its far larger rival, ByteDance, whose 600 million Douyin daily users are more than double Kuaishou’s. Last valued at $180 billion (roughly Rs. 13,13 lakh crores), the world’s largest startup was said to be exploring a listing of some of its businesses in Hong Kong as the US last year attempted to ban TikTok and force a sale of the app on national-security concerns. “Kuaishou has overhauled its product and become more similar to Douyin,” said Citic Securities Co. analyst Wang Guanran in a January 26 note. “The two will face direct competition with each other in the future.”
Kuaishou isn’t immune to geo-political tensions either. While Su told investors on a January 25 call that non-Chinese markets have the potential to become a big earnings driver, its platforms including Kwai and Snack Video are banned in India along with hundreds of Chinese apps as New Delhi and Beijing clash over border disputes. In the US, its TikTok-style Zynn service has gained little traction since launching last May. The company will also have to deal with a recent crackdown on live-streaming. China said in November it would require performers and gift givers to register with their real names, banned minors from tipping and asked the platforms to limit the value of virtual presents. Still, investors have been rushing to get a piece of the first short-video platform that will start trading February 5. The IPO priced at the top end of its marketed range, and the retail portion was the most subscribed ever, according to IFR, as the city’s market for new listings has been on fire lately. The enthusiasm last year boosted the fortunes of top executives including those at Nongfu Spring’s Zhong Shanshan — now Asia’s richest person — and Blue Moon Group Holdings’ Pan Dong. The Kuaishou founder is cautious about the power he’s amassed. In the company’s biography, Su compared his platform’s ability to control internet attention and traffic with the One Ring from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “When you put on the ring, you’ll feel extremely powerful,” he wrote. “But in fact, it’s the ring and the power that are controlling you.”
–With assistance from Pei Yi Mak
© 2021 Bloomberg LP
Does WhatsApp’s new privacy policy spell the end for your privacy? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , or RSS , download the episode , or just hit the play button below. Betting against the crowd isn’t always smart. Hedge fund Melvin Capital reportedly lost $4.5 billion in assets value in January – a 53 percent drop – after its massive bet that GameStop’s stock price will fall turned sour, the Financial Times reported Sunday. And that’s after a $2.75 billion cash infusion from previous investors, who jumped in to save the fund from collapse. For an explainer of what happened, go here, but the short version is that Melvin, as well as some other funds, bet against GameStop by shorting massive amounts of its stock (shorting means selling the stock in the hope you’ll be able to rebuy cheaper later). Reddit traders that frequent the subreddit r/wallstreetbets noticed that GameStop’s stock was ridiculously (perhaps unfairly) over-shorted, and they responded by buying the stock en masse, driving the price up higher, forcing shorters to buy the stock to cover their losses (this is know as a short squeeze). This, in turn, put enormous pressure on Melvin and other shorters; eventually, Melvin said it exited its short position on GameStop, likely at a massive loss. According to FT, Melvin has since repositioned its portfolio to be a lot less risky; a source told the outlet that the company’s leverage ratio is at the lowest it has been since the firm was founded in 2014. Prior to the GameStop fiasco, Melvin was one of the best-performing hedge funds out there, with a 52 percent yearly gain. GameStop’s stock price is still sharply up compared to just weeks ago and is currently trading at about $344 in premarket trading. Traders at r/wallstreetbets have since turned their attention to other assets. One of them is silver, the price of which has surged to $29, a price the precious metal hasn’t seen in eight years. With #silversqueeze trending on Twitter, millions of small-timers seem ready to put their money (and, perhaps, gains from the GME trade) into silver, armed with the notion that banks have been suppressing the price of silver and pumping it is a way to hurt them. One thing is certain — funds and large investors, no matter how big, will now think twice before betting against them. The Supreme Court Monday sought responses from the Centre and others on a plea seeking framing of law to regulate social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and make them responsible for allegedly spreading fake news and hate speeches. A bench comprising Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notices to the Centre and others on the plea and tagged it with a pending petition which has sought setting up of a media tribunal to adjudicate on complaints against the media, channels and networks. The apex court was hearing a petition filed by advocate Vineet Jindal who has sought directions to the Centre to frame law for prosecuting those involved in spreading hate and fake news through social media platforms. The plea has sought directions to the authorities concerned for establishing a mechanism for automatic removal of fake news and hate speeches within a short timeframe. It said that freedom of speech and expression is a complex right as it may be subject to reasonable restrictions and it is not absolute and carries with it special duties and responsibilities. The plea, while saying that reach of social media is much wider than traditional media, has also referred to few communal violence incidents in the country where social media was misused. On January 25, the top court had sought responses from the Centre, Press Council of India (PCI) and News Broadcasters Association (NBA) on a separate public interest litigation (PIL) which has sought setting up of a media tribunal to adjudicate on complaints against media, channels and networks. The plea has said that media, particularly the electronic, has become like an unruly horse which needs to be tamed. It has also sought setting up of an independent committee headed by either a former Chief Justice of India or an apex court judge to review the entire legal framework related to media business regulations and suggest guidelines. Besides the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, PCI and NBA, the top court had also issued notices to News Broadcasters Federation (NBF) and News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) on the PIL filed jointly by film maker, Nilesh Navalakha and civil engineer Nitin Memane. The apex court had tagged the PIL with a pending plea on the issue. Does WhatsApp’s new privacy policy spell the end for your privacy? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , or RSS , download the episode , or just hit the play button below.

DesignCrowd raises $10 million AUD to grow its DIY platform, BrandCrowd – TechCrunch

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