MailChimp has been acquired by Intuit for $12 billion. I am not necessarily sure where MailChimp fits  into the Intuit playbook, except maybe QuickBooks, which has a dose of small and medium scale businesses which can be juiced by what MailChimp has prepared.  Intuit has a history of picking winners when you look at Mint, Credit Karma and other recent properties. In short, I have a playbook after Intuit which I called Fish Bait Acquisition Construct by merely observing how the tax-filing giant picks companies.

Founded in 2001, Mailchimp’s landmark cloud service enables businesses to design and send promotional emails and newsletters to customers. The company have since expanded, launching a software that allows online sellers to include a link to their ecommerce stores, a development which some speculate has contributed to the firm’s high asking-price. The company are still owned by their founders, and – surprisingly – have never raised venture capital.

Yet, that Intuit is spending $12 billion (about 8% of its market cap) in cash and stock to swallow MailChimp is not the main story; the main thing is that MailChimp generates close to $1 billion annual revenue now (extrapolated), and has NEVER raised a single venture capital dime! Yes, $0.00 venture funds. 

There are many things to learn about this company – expect many case studies from business schools. Yes, a company never raised venture funds, grew revenue to $1 billion and exited at $12 billion. That is a great business mission, executed!

The acquisition press release below.

Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU), the global technology platform that makes TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, and Credit Karma, today announced that it has agreed to acquire Mailchimp, a world-class, global customer engagement and marketing platform for growing small and mid-market businesses. The planned acquisition of Mailchimp for approximately $12 billion in cash and stock advances Intuit’s mission of powering prosperity around the world, and its strategy to become an AI-driven expert platform. With the acquisition of Mailchimp, Intuit will accelerate two of its previously-shared strategic Big Bets: to become the center of small business growth; and to disrupt the small business mid-market.

Together, Intuit and Mailchimp will work to deliver on the vision of an innovative, end-to-end customer growth platform for small and mid-market businesses, allowing them to get their business online, market their business, manage customer relationships, benefit from insights and analytics, get paid, access capital, pay employees, optimize cash flow, be organized and stay compliant, with experts at their fingertips. Delivering on the promise to be the single source of truth, small and mid-market businesses will have the power to combine their customer data from Mailchimp and QuickBooks’ purchase data to get the actionable insights they need to grow and run their businesses with confidence.

The Fish Bait Acquisition Construct

Microsoft’s Teams supports an excess of 100 million students around the world. Today, we are learning that the software giant has acquired TakeLessons: “We’re so excited to announce that TakeLessons has been acquired by Microsoft. We believe this will further support TakeLessons’ mission: to empower people to learn, connect, grow, and live more meaningful lives through education.” 

TakeLessons is an aggregator, orchestrating students and tutors. Indeed, a “platform for students to connect with individual tutors in areas like music lessons, language learning, academic subjects and professional training or hobbies, and for tutors to book and organize the lessons they give, both online and in person.” By this acquisition, Microsoft is connecting atoms with bytes which is what most digital technology firms are doing these days.

Microsoft said in January this year that Teams, its online collaboration platform, was being used by over 100 million students — boosted in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic and many schools going partly or fully remote. Now, it’s made another acquisition to continue expanding its position in the education market. [..]

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but we are trying to find out. San Diego-based TakeLessons had raised at least $20 million from a range of VCs and individuals that included LightBank, Uncork Capital, Crosslink Capital and others. TakeLessons posted a short note in the form of a Q&A confirming the deal on its site. The note said that it will continue operating, business as usual, for the time being, with the intention of taking its platform to a wider global audience.

The message from this acquisition for Africa is simple: anything is an opportunity and some of these big technology giants will be looking for platforms and ecosystems with huge numbers as they expand into Africa at lower consumer levels.

 A credible ecosystem that makes it possible for parents to find tutors in Lagos, Kano, Owerri, etc may not be Microsoft’s interest but could be for  Flutterwave, Interswitch, etc as they need those pipelines for the future.

Simply, in summary, begin to build.

The gig business model being used by both ride-hailing and delivery services has continued to meet stiff opposition from labor unions and governments, and courts have been pandering to their yearning.

The bone of contention has been the classification of drivers as independent contractors instead of employees, which denies them minimum wage and workers’ benefits. Across markets, ride-hailing companies, mainly Uber and Lyft, are increasingly losing the fight to save the gig economy.

On Monday, a Dutch court ruled that Uber drivers are employees rather than independent contractors and are entitled to greater workers’ rights and in some cases are entitled to back pay.

The judgment follows a landmark ruling in London in February, classifying Uber drivers as employees and forcing the California-based taxi app operator to grant employment status to its drivers.

The Federation of Dutch Trade Unions had filed a complaint with the court arguing that drivers deserve the same benefits as other workers in the taxi sector. The Amsterdam District Court sided with union, upholding the labor law as it’s applicable to taxi transportation.

As it had responded in other places where the court had ruled in favor of drivers, Uber said it “has no plans to employ drivers in the Netherlands” and will appeal against the decision.

“We are disappointed with this decision because we know that the overwhelming majority of drivers wish to remain independent,” Maurits Schönfeld, Uber’s general manager for northern Europe said. “Drivers don’t want to give up their freedom to choose if, when and where to work.”

The ruling was based on the collective labor agreement for taxi transportation, which recognizes taxi drivers as employees, which the court found that Uber has flouted by giving them the self-employed status.

“The legal relationship between Uber and these drivers meets all the characteristics of an employment contract,” the ruling said.

The FNV hailed the ruling as “a huge victory for drivers” who it said will gain more pay and benefits.

“Due to the judge’s ruling, the Uber drivers are now automatically employed by Uber,” said Zakaria Boufangacha, FNV’s deputy chairman. “As a result, they will receive more wages and more rights in the event of dismissal or illness, for example.”

The judges also ordered Uber to pay a fine of 50,000 euros ($58,940) for failing to implement the terms of the labor agreement for taxi drivers.

Uber was forced by UK Supreme Court to accept drivers demand including the right to form a union, after it lost its bid to keep the classification of more than 70,000 drivers as independent contractors in February.

In March the ride-hailing giant, in an apparent effort to take the attention of the authorities off its business model, said it will improve workers’ rights, including the minimum wage in London, and allowed drivers to form a union for the first time. It also includes giving even more control over how they earn and providing new protections like free insurance in case of sickness or injury.

While the battle cuts across its markets, including Uber’s largest market California, where the government has enacted the AB5 law to force Uber to classify drivers as employees, Europe is swiftly kicking against the gig economy.

Last September, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that delivery drivers are employees not independent contractors, prompting the Spanish government to enact a law backing the ruling up early this year.

Join me at the headquarters of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, Gbagada, Lagos, as I keynote this year’s Young Professionals Forum Leadership Summit. My presentation is titled “The Search for Generational Leaders”. Who would be the Nehemiah of our generation? Nehemiah grew up, and rose to become one of the most important men in Persia (in modern Iran): a cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, king of Persia, and later, the king made him a governor of Persian Judea. 

He managed projects; he delivered results. But not just that, he knew what mattered: he asked the king for permission to use the timber from his forest. Because timbers from the king’s forest are never wasted. Yes, if I get that special timber, the project is as good as done! Across nations, we need leaders who can see the future to create it. Yes, men and women who can connect the dots, and understand the critical enablers for economic  growth and development., advancement, etc.

• Theme: The New Breed
• Date/Time:  9 am on the 18th, and 1 pm on the 19th of September 2021
• Venue: Deeper Life Bible Church Headquarters, Gbagada10 Ayodele Oke-Owo Street, Gbagada, Lagos, Nigeria
• Registration: http://ypfonline.org/lead

You will breed and breathe newness! May His Grace shine on you and His abundance unbounded.

As of September 7, Linda Jackson for ‘ourtopnews’ reported that TSMC has instituted huge hikes on processor prices which vary from 3% (Apple) to 20% in some cases.

Companies like MediaTek will be particularly hit hard. A Taiwanese peer headquartered in Hsinchu, MediaTek became the biggest smartphone chipset vendor with 31% market share in Q3 2020. It’s chips are strong performers in regions like China and India and many entry level and mid-priced smartphones carry their chips in the African markets.

Last week the ‘Gadgetstripe’ website announced TECNO will feature MediaTek’s Helio G96 chipset in its CAMON 18 series to launch in Nigeria next month.

For Bloomberg in March of this year, Debby Wu, Ian King and Alan Crawford reported that manufacturers with products ranging from automotive to games consoles have had to cut back on production due to semiconductor scarcity.

It is hard for customers like MediaTek to do anything except swallow this hike.

This raises the question could this be the right time for a Nigeria based manufacturer to enter the frey?

The price of semi or technically skilled labour in Taiwan has increased tenfold since 1979. Most of East Coast Asia and Asia Pacific countries (including China) have seen dramatic rises in labour costs and Taiwan’s labour costs have shown the most dramatic increases of the region.

TSMC is the undisputed king of making the lowest manufacturing die sizes at any point in time, and therefore the fastest performing chips.

The smaller the die size, the tighter the tolerance levels on ‘nano-measurements’ and therefore the higher level of precision required to avoid the incidence of faulty chips.

TSMC’s current 5nm is in its second year in the marketplace. It features a transistor density of around 170 million transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm2), making it the densest technology available today. By contrast, Samsung’s Foundry’s 5LPE can boast with about 125 MTr/mm2 ~130 MTr/mm2, whereas Intel’s 10 nm features an approximately 100 MTr/mm2 density – (Technosports.in)

They are on track to achieve 4nm and then 3nm technology at milestones next year, and 2nm by 2023.

In an attempt to reduce dependency on it’s administratively independent ‘protectorate’ Taiwan, China had been working on the Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Project, which was planned to house it’s first 7nm chip fabrication plant. After a catalogue of failures and unexpected outcomes and at a loss of RMB 128 billion (around $18.7 billion) in investment it was halted last year, with outstanding debts and unpaid wages.

Total salaries budget for similar operations to TSMC in Nigeria may indeed be cheaper. The two problematic cost areas facing a plant in Nigeria will be maintaining uninterrupted power to the right specification, and bearing the engagement costs of civil and statutory processes and activities.

One big question is could the 20% hike by TMSC offset that? Even if it could, the supply pressure in the marketplace may only be a temporary one. It was fuelled by two phenomenon that reached crisis point in 2020 – Trade stand offs between US and China, and of course, the pandemic. There is no guarantee these pressures will be sustained and TMSC may relax their terms later.

A second issue is which dynamic is native to Nigeria which could bring a PPP project like this to succeed where the Chinese ‘Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Project’ failed?
A final concern would be the ever sliding Naira – since even after the Capital Project is completed and the foundry is outfitted, ready to hit the ‘on’ switch;  exotic materials will continue to need to be sourced from overseas for a very long time to come.

The biggest nation in Africa by GDP, with the biggest population is entitled to have the biggest dreams. The question is which actors are capable of converting these dreams to reality.

References and Acknowledgements (not in the main text body) :

gadgetstripe.com/tecnos-camon-series-the-first-mediatek-helio-g96-smartphones/#ftoc-heading-2

ourtopnews.com/tsmc-increased-its-chip-rates-by-3for-apple-while-others-dealt-with-20increases/

tinyurl.com/china-chip-plant-fail

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaTek

www.fxempire.com/macro/taiwan/labour-costs

technosports.co.in/2021/04/29/tsmc-news-5nm-gaining-customers-4nm-3nm-on-track-for-next-year/

www.gizmochina.com/2021/09/13/exclusive-tecno-camon-18-camera-60x-zoom-helio-g96/