Sometime in 2013, I restarted my dormant twitter account, treating it akin to a RSS reader, curating a mix of interesting people to follow and learn from. Some of these were writers, some politicians; others included philosophers, flaneurs and a few executives. Consistently I began to find that the most interesting tweets were from (Valley) VCs – Marc Andreessen, Benedict Evans, Paul Graham, Chris Sacca, Fred Wilson (NYC though) etc. …
Understanding LinkedIn / A Rebuttal to Monday Note
I love Monday Note. It is one of my favourite media + tech blogs (along with Benedict Evans and Stratechery). I like it so much that I even adopted the wordpress theme that they use, for this blog. Imagine my disappointment then, when I came across their recent article on Monday Note – lamenting LinkedIn’s failure to become a publishing major domo. The article clearly missed a few …
A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes – Part II
In a previous post A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes I laid out EdTech investment themes into three buckets
- Lifelong education
- Unbundling of the university
- Rethinking existing education business models in light of tech and mobile
In the post, I had shared that I would go into greater detail on bucket #3 in a future post, as to which of the various business models and processes could be rethought, and …
We Got Into IIT / IIM, But Our Kids Won’t.
Every once in a while, in parties, at coffee klatsches with friends, and in business meetings, I hear this line. It is typically said by those whose kids are in middle grade, all in premier schools, usually of the IB ilk. It is usually to the tune of “I got into IIT / IIM but my son / daughter is unlikely to”. Sometimes, it is followed up with a question, …
Thoughts on the Future of the Degree
I like to collect examples of college alternatives. I know this is unusual, given that most people like to collect coins, or matchbox labels, but I do think college alternatives are fascinating things.
College alternatives are educational programmes, typically a year or even two years long, which provide real-life learning through a mix of vocational classes and hands-on learning via internships, leading to a career pathway, almost always in tech. …
A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes
EdTech funding is hitting record levels, never seen before. A recent report by Ambient Research put edtech funding for H1’15 at $2.5b (in contrast to $2.4b funding for the whole of 2014).
In India we haven’t seen the kind of frenzy around edtech funding we have seen in China. 8 Chinese companies saw funding of $50m+ in the first half of 2015. These 8 companies raised more money than all …
What Should Pearson Buy?
An open letter to John Fallon, Chief Executive of Pearson Plc
Dear John
For the nth time, congratulations on the sale of FT to Nikkei for £825m ($1,288m).
Everybody says £844m, but you and I know that with FT Group’s £19m in the bank, the funds you have got from Japan are a tad lower at £825m. Still that is a bucketload of money. And with The Economist Group’s 50% …
Why Nikkei Paid $1.3b for FT
This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.
As you would all know by now, Pearson sold the FT Group yesterday to Nikkei for US$1.3b. The FT Group includes FT, some magazines such as Banker, Investor’s Chronicle, a 50% stake in Russian Biz Paper Vedomosti, an-EIU type co called Medley Global Advisors etc.
The valuation, at ~35X the adjusted operating income of $37m (on rev of $559m for 2014) is amongst …
The Race to Build the Web’s Annotation Layer
My recent post for INMA’s Tech Trends blog looks at attempts to build an annotation layer to the web, led by the likes of Genius, Declara, Hypothesis etc. Annotation services can be enormously useful to readers, in providing context and meaning around an article or even a phrase in the article. But there is also a risk that annotation services could strip out all that intelligence, gathered from multiple websites, …
Why the Hard Paywall Deserves a Closer Look
In my third post for INMA’s Tech Trends blog, I revisit my past skepticism around the hard paywall. My past assumptions around the superiority of the metered model, rested on its ability to extract subs rev from loyalists, while protecting page views and visits, thereby enabling monetization through ads. But in a world where news consumption is rapidly moving to mobile, typically much harder to monetize for news publishers, and …