Newsletter #96 - Your First Home Robot, the Success of Chinese Startups and Data Lakes

In this issue, you will find out where you can get your own robot personal assistant, how to compete with Chinese startups, what causes the deaths of many Silicon Valley startups, and how India’s market is resisting Netflix.

1 Million Lines of Code, 5,000 Tickets in Jira and 3 Years in Development. Meet temi, an 'Alexa on Wheels', and More!

What does home robotics have to do with unmanned ground vehicles? More than you’d think, as it turns out. Temi, a sister-company of Roboteam, joined forces with Netguru to create a product that could be your very first home assistant robot. I mean, we’ve all been waiting for this, right? Read more

The Secret Behind How Chinese Startups are Winning

“China has 120 homegrown unicorns. That’s over 50 percent of 234 unicorns globally. Huawei is one of the world’s top three providers of smartphones without any footing in the US. Shenzhen’s DJI is the best drone maker in the world.” This is a bit of a reality check. Phones, buses, ecommerce, drones – where does it end? Read more

Apple Music, Netflix, and Amazon Struggle in India’s Streaming Market

India seems like a perfect source of new users –just look at the population numbers, it’s a no-brainer. But what about communicating well with people whose lives and culture are different from ours? Check out what companies are doing well. Read more

The Tech Company Boneyard

“The tech industry in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, is a boneyard for failed companies,” writes Ray Zinn in this curiously titled article. He sheds some light on what kills young companies and what almost killed IBM. An example cause of death could be not developing a follow-up product after a big success. Read more

7 Characteristics of Startups Built to Weather Any Storm

The right co-founder, a good relationship with the team, being ready to pivot – these and four other characteristics can help any startup founder find their way out of a difficult situation. These are things startups can work with to shore up their defences. Read more

How to Leverage Data Lakes for New Business Opportunities

Data lakes. What are they, and why should you care? As it turns out, they are “several types of data may be channeled into extremely large data repositories, in an ad-hoc manner, which still allows for correlations to be established under a pre-defined ‘schema’ where from to extract meaningful information”. Read more

The 11 Things You Need to Know From Mary Meeker's Internet Trends Report

The information in the article ranges from the importance of immigrants to car buying habits. Find out how online education is becoming more important, people are less frugal when looking at tiered subscription plans, and what’s happening on the voice-enabled technology market. Read more

We’ve touched upon quite a few interesting concepts this time. Share your thoughts on what companies might find the most use in leveraging data lakes, and which findings from Mary Meeker’s report surprised you the most :)

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