Running in the right direction is more important than your speed, and you must learn that, as you work to fix market frictions. Yes, fixing the right business friction is more important than your speed of execution. Please watch this short video here also.
The setting was a primary school – kids were running athletics relay race. One child runs and passes the baton to the next person. One team was clearly winning – until the baton was handed over to the last kid in the team. Then problem started.
Instead of the kid continuing to run to the finish line [by maintaining the direction of the race], he ran the other way. In other words, he practically erased the progress made by the earlier runners.
As you watch the video, you will see the coach shouting at the kid to turn around, and run in the appropriate direction. Unfortunately, the kid did not hear him well. By then, the previously losing team had overtaken his team.
Have you communicated your vision to your entire team or are you the only one that knows it?
Since Facebook announced the “privacy pivot”, to deepen user privacy by mining and monetizing lesser of user data, it is evident that its trajectory will go through payments and ecommerce. As that happens, fintechs will meet a super-competitor in the space especially in the developing world. Everyone is already aware that WhatsApp will be monetized via payment – WhatsApp on payment will be amazingly appealing to merchants and users even as fintech and financial institutions may experience dislocations. Also, as this pivot happens, local logistics companies may benefit: Facebook will need them to thrive in any ecommerce operation since logistics involves physical domains.
Facebook Inc.’s latest shift toward private messaging, payments and e-commerce echoes the footsteps of WeChat, China’s social networking super app that many Chinese find indispensable.
After Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post that the social media powerhouse that encourages public sharing sees its future in encrypted messaging, payments and other services, the similarities were striking to many Chinese.
Using the smiling curve, most banks may become dumb terminals for WhatsApp payment if they remain at the center. They must learn to find ways to compete by moving to the edges of the curve. Today, Facebook is transitioning into a post-invasive-data-mining business, and that means payments and marketplace ecommerce must compensate for the revenue losses in advertising. Local businesses will benefit but regional and national payments may struggle in most markets.
When Geopoll noted that Facebook has become the second largest ecommerce platform in Africa, after Jumia, many were surprised. But in reality, it should not be that hard to see: Facebook is a planet and any ecommerce company can only get a subset of that planet. In other words, most ecommerce players are only going to lure a small segment of the Facebook users to its platform. And that would require a lot of work. So, if Facebook makes it easier for people to buy and sell, it would dominate the category without a lot of efforts.
That explains why the news that WhatsApp has added payment in its services in India should concern many fintech players (and banks) in Nigeria. India is always a test ecosystem for the developing market. Once perfected, in India, I expect WhatsApp to launch the product in other places including Africa.
PwC has a new report on food security and agriculture, and in that report it mentioned our agtech business – Zenvus –as one of the major agricultural innovations in Africa. Zenvus is a precision agriculture business. You need to read this report as it provides a snapshot of the state of the sector.
Agricultural Innovations in Africa
Over $19 million has been invested in agriculture technology since 2016 till date. There are 82 agri-tech startups operating across Africa as at January 2018, 52% of which were established between 2016 and 2018. E-commerce agri-focused platforms accounted for 32.9% of startups. Kenya and Nigeria both lead the agri-tech markets, followed by Ghana. The three markets collectively account for over 60% of active startups in the sector.
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Zenvus is one of the smart farming technologies in Nigeria. The technology uses proprietary smart devices which have electronic sensors to collect soil data (such as moisture, nutrients, pH), sends the data to a cloud server via GSM, satellite or Wifi.
Map your future by mastering the differences between the boundless time and the limited seconds in a clock.
Question on LinkedIn: Any chance I get a little further explanation on this one, Prof? Thanks.
My Response: Greetings -. Time appears boundless but seconds in clocks are not. You have deadlines to turn in projects, prepare for exams etc even though time seems to be boundless. If you do not manage the clock which tracks the boundless time, you will have challenges.
The deal is this: we tend to think we have unlimited time. Sure, but in reality we do not have unlimited seconds (lol). The day you register a course in a school, there is an exam date. Largely, that unlimited time has been bounded by the clock that tracks it. Most will pass exams they failed if they have an extra week. Simply, they lost seconds that captured a week time in their studies. They got trapped in the illusion of unlimited time, forgetting the limited seconds. This link offers more clarity.
Just made it back into U.S. – the beautiful America where a village boy with no uncle or anyone has found favor simply based on grace, decency, and hardwork. And checking, I got a surprise: a Silicon Valley company we have been working for upgraded me to a Board Member with equity award.
This firm makes Biomorphic AI microprocessors – a special type of microprocessors which emulate human biology to make better microprocessors which can do AI processing better. The idea is that by mimicking the event-driven asynchronous parallelism inherent in the central nervous system of man, we can engineer the spiking communication in neurons-synapses to replace the digital protocols of today’s computing.
This was my PhD specialty; in the industry I added a flavor with ultra low power front-end designs of inertial sensors where power budgets are in nano-Amps [do not get me going!].
Also, this firm also doubled our compensation. Simply, we serve as technical mentors to the young people in VC-funded startups. It was in CMU that I signed the first deal on this practice in 2012 when a big VC hired me to help a startup. Since then, clients have abounded.
