Monthly Archives: April 2022

Just days after its lucrative listing on the New York Stock Exchange, China ride-hailing giant Didi Global was hit with another round of sanctions by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). On July 4, the countrys Internet regulator ordered the removal of its mobile app from Chinese app stores. This came two days after the same regulator opened an investigation into the company, suspending it from adding new users. The app, alleged CAC, has serious violations of laws and regulations pertaining to the collection of personal information.

Didi is not the only company to face heightened scrutiny in recent months. Other Chinese Internet giants, including Meituan, Tencent, JD.com, Bytedance, and Alibaba have faced government regulatory investigations and even been slapped with hefty fines. Most notably, of course, Ant Financial saw its mega IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai halted by the Chinese government. These actions were often carried out by Chinas State Administration of Market Regulation, the anti-trust regulator. Its policy decisions on such major companies undoubtedly are driven by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership at the highest level.

Even smaller Internet companies are not immune. Most recently, CAC opened probes into Zhipin.com, an online recruiter, and truck-hailing apps Huochebang and Yunmanman, which merged to become Full Truck Alliance. Both Zhipin.coms owner, Kanzhun, and Full Truck Alliance went public last month in the U.S. Now, they are also under review to prevent national data security risks and safeguard national security.

Why is the Chinese government targeting its own tech companies in such a heavy-handed fashion, and why now? Over the last decades, as a technologist, entrepreneur, and legislator in Hong Kong, I have witnessed the evolution of Chinas regulatory regime, as it moved from the invisible to the visible, and from one that encouraged disruptive innovation to one that now favors complete state control. However, as a recent Global Times editorial put it, Chinas Internet enterprises must say goodbye to the phase of barbaric expansion, and building up the concept of compliance will become the essential strategy of their development.

To understand why, it is best to try to think from the perspectives of Chinas leaders. Their intended messages are aimed at different audiences: domestic Internet firms and the domestic public at large, as well as those outside of the country.

The latest series of actions taken against Didi and Full Truck Alliance are similar in that both companies had recently listed in the U.S. Its unlikely authorities were unaware of their listing exercises in the U.S., so perhaps the timing of CACs regulatory actions was intended to send a message. It must have been motivated by fears that the companies compliance with regulations in the U.S. would compromise their total control by the Chinese state, perhaps even requiring them to cede their data to a foreign government.

These fears might seem paranoid, especially to those who dont assume financial regulators will engage in political and economic hostage-taking tactics. But for a government that views Chinas private companies data almost as a state asset, the risks must seem stark.

There is some irony if one considers that only a year or so ago, at the height of American rhetoric about disengaging with China, there were talks of barring Chinese companies from listing in the U.S. in order to protect U.S. investors. But, despite such periodic hostility in the U.S., many Chinese companies are eager to list there. For the firms themselves, there are many reasons: more liquidity, greater access to capital, and greater visibility for the global market. For others, like Didi Global, listing in the U.S. just comes with the global nature of their business.

Chinas leaders, however, care only about maintaining control over these firms and all their data. This is reflected in the recent passage in June of a national data security law in China that dictates how data is collected and utilized. Laws like this one, along with probes and fines, should be understood first and foremost as a preemptive defense against not only the tech companies themselves but also the data they hold.

From the perspective of its leaders, China is not a victim of decoupling. It is the decoupler. Hence the increased emphasis on self-reliance in the Chinese Communist Partys messages throughout its 100th anniversary celebration.

So, the first message sent by the recent investigations should be understood as targeted toward an audience of Chinese global Internet firmsessentially making sure they know whos boss. (Something similar was afoot in the misfortunes of Alibaba founder Jack Ma when authorities nixed his Ant Groups IPO in Hong Kong.)

Despite the clear signs of Beijings desire to maintain control over Chinese companies, some foreign investors may still be in denial. International financial market players must be reminded again of Beijings goals, lest they want so much to profit from listing these Chinese firms that they end up putting investors at risk.

Other collateral messages that the current wave of regulatory actions are intended to send are targeted at a second audience: Chinese citizens. For them, the message echoes the one often referenced after the Ant Group IPO fiasco, namely that Deng Xiaopings era of let some people get rich first has come to an end.

To some extent, Chinas mega-rich, especially those from the tech sector, may have brought themselves unwanted official attention by flaunting a work-to-death ethos for their employees while the gap between the rich and the poor widened out of control. The choice for the Party at a time when it needs to consolidate the highest level of support for its rule is clear: feed the frenzy of populism against the rich. This is consistent with Xi Jinpings repeated emphasis on the need to struggle.

Finally, there is also a more indirect message intended for Western policymakers, especially American. Strict regulatory control over Chinas tech companies not only serves its own domestic agenda, but China also would not mind to be seen as an example for a playbook for the West, as the U.S. contemplates what to do about its own big tech.

Hoping that some in the U.S. may consider the Chinese model as quick and decisive, China would not mind to be viewed as the leader in anti-competitive regulation. If there is any chance for American tech giants to become hobbled by anti-trust regulations, China may see that as a chance to turn it into near-term benefits to its own tech dreams and pull ahead in its tech war with the U.S.

To China, there is little cost to its own tech industry and its innovation strategy, which was always controlled and manipulated by government policies. A heavier-handed approach to the U.S. tech industry could bring much bigger consequences and disruptions to innovation than those tactics do for Chinese firms.

While it may seem highly unlikely for such a regulatory model to be adopted in the U.S., given the very different systems in the two countries, it is still a possibility. While, for China, any such hope for collateral damage to the U.S. tech industry must still be secondary to its own agenda at this stage, the countrys leaders must be watching closely how the U.S. will conduct its own expected war on big tech, as any impact on U.S. innovation and competitiveness can tip the balance of the China-U.S. tech competition.

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Why China Is Going After Its Tech Giants | ChinaFile

When we think of tech giants, we tend to think of Silicon Valley.

And rightly so. California has given the world iconic digital brands like Facebook, Google and Uber.

The US leads the way both with listed tech giants and unicorns privately held companies valued at $1 billion or more.

More than half of the worlds unicorns are based in the US, according to research firm CB Insights.

However, the US is still only one part of the global tech story.

China is home to some of the worlds largest tech companies: ecommerce giant Alibaba, search engine Baidu, and ride-sharing platform Didi Chuxing.

And Europe is also proving increasingly fertile ground for tech entrepreneurs.

The chart below shows some of its largest tech companies both listed brands and unicorns:

Although the UK is home to the largest cumulative value of $1 billion-plus tech firms in Europe, the continents biggest companies are found in Scandinavia.

Spotify is by far Europes most highly valued tech company. The Swedish music streaming service is reportedly being valued at around $16 billion. This makes it the most valuable music streaming service on the planet.

It is also the continents biggest unicorn although it will lose that title if, as expected, it floats on the stock market with a valuation that some expect may reach $20 billion.

Spotify is one of three European tech companies to be valued at more than $10 billion by a report published in September called Europes Titans of Tech by investment firm GP Bullhound.

Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek is co-founder and CEO of Spotify, Europes most highly valued tech firm.

Image: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The exclusive $10 billion-plus club also includes German ecommerce firm Zalando, and Spotifys Scandinavian neighbour Supercell.

Finland-based mobile gaming company Supercell is famous for such games as Clash of Clans. Last year Chinese tech group Tencent bought an 84% stake in the company, valuing Supercell at $10.2 billion.

According to GP Bullhound, the UK is home is to nearly $50 billion-worth of $1 billion-plus tech companies, making it the epicentre of Europes digital revolution.

Its biggest listed tech company is online retailer ASOS, while CB Insights identifies the UKs top unicorns as data centre provider Global Switch and online food delivery service Deliveroo.

In the World Economic Forums Global Competitiveness Report 2017-18, the UK is ranked 8th overall, thanks to its technological readiness and the sophistication of its business sector.

However, the report warns that the UKs Brexit negotiations to leave the European Union could undermine its global competitiveness.

Freedom of movement for EU citizens forms a central part of the ongoing negotiations between the British government and the EU.

GP Bullhounds report claims much of the UKs tech success is due to Londons gravitational pull for entrepreneurs from across the continent.

This is backed up by the fact that of the 29% of tech founders in Europe who are expatriates, 60% chose the UK as the place to start up their business.

In total more than a third of European tech founders are based in the UK.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Meet Europes tech giants - World Economic Forum

Austin made headlines in 2021 for being the place for startup founders and venture capitalists alike to set up shop. Thats why TechCrunch has chosen to shine a spotlight on the city with a special episode of TechCrunch Live centered on the growing startup scene in Austin, Texas.

As Austins skyline expands, the city continues to solidify its standing as a tech hub. And the numbers are there to back it up.

VCs invested over $5.5 billion across 412 deals in 2021, more than double the amount of capital invested in 2020, according to PitchBook data. Rounds are getting larger, too, signaling a further maturing of the market: All of the top 10 deals for Austin in 2021 amounted to $100 million or more.

Today, Austin is more than just the capital of Texas. Its a city of unicorns and tech giants.

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Several companies surpassed a $1 billion valuation in 2021, including The Zebra, Firefly Aerospace, Abrigo, ZenBusiness and Iodine Software. SparkCognition achieved unicorn status earlier this year while ICON recently raised $185 million in a Tiger Global-led round that valued it at nearly $2 billion. In 2020, Tesla settled into the so-called Silicon Hills district and Oracle moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley. Austin is also home to secondary offices of many of the largest tech companies in the world, including Google, Apple, Oracle, Amazon, Facebook and SpaceX.

Venture capitalists from both coasts are also increasingly drawn to the city. A number of investors now call Austin home after relocating from the Bay Area and New York City. They include Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, who said last year he was moving his venture capital firm, 8VC, from Silicon Valley to the city, and Geoff Lewis, founder and managing partner of Bedrock Capital.

Austin wasnt an overnight success. For years it was known primarily for its software scene in addition to being the live music capital of the world. But today, new growing sectors include crypto/web3, real estate tech, CPG and insurance technology. As in other maturing markets, companies that have seen success in the past are now spawning a new generation of entrepreneurs as well as attracting others from various locales.

Drawn to the laid-back lifestyle and lower cost of living relatively speaking nearly 185 people are moving to Austin on a daily basis. Many of those people work in the tech industry, and many are moving from California.

Bullish investors have more money than ever to deploy. In 2022 alone, so far, two Austin-based venture firms have announced significant raises in the city the most recent being Next Coast Ventures. That firm, founded in 2016, announced on March 29, 2022 that it closed $310 million in capital across three funds. Earlier in the month, S3 Ventures raised $250 million for its Fund VII, touting itself as the largest venture capital fund focused on Texas-based startups. S3 Ventures founder and managing director Brian Smith notes that when he started the firm in 2005, venture capital in Texas was finally starting to recover from the dot.com bust. At that time, most VC activity was dominated by the now-defunct Austin Ventures and Sevin Rosen Funds.

Fast forward a few more years, and both AV and SRF had started to wind down. A small crop of mostly sub-$100 million funds appeared, several founded by former AV GPs, Smith recalls. Jump to today and those new Texas-focused firms, including ours, have raised multiple funds with the latest ones well over $200 million. Additionally, we have seen several national firms move their HQs or a regional team here. While they are not primarily focused on Texas, they are starting to invest locally, as well.

This means, he adds, that founders have a broader set of choices for capital partners.

Notably, S3s investment thesis is focused on Texas. As such, the vast majority of the investments will be in companies headquartered, or with a sizable presence, in the state. It makes initial investments in companies at the seed, Series A and Series B stage and can invest $20 million-plus over the life of a company.

Chris Shonk, co-founder and managing director of ATX Ventures, said his firm is unique in that everyone there is both technical and has operating experience.

ATX will be the first midcontinent VC to have top decile performance two funds in a row, he told TechCrunch. It is a true reflection of the vibrancy in the Texas ecosystem and having an operator approach at early-stage VC.

Shonk has also witnessed the change in the dynamics in the citys startup scene as it has matured over the years.

Historically Austin over-indexed on founder and C-suite talent but under-indexed on experienced junior talent who had worked at large tech companies and venture-backed unicorns, he said. That has now changed and Austin has an ample market of CXO-executive, VP and junior talent who have VC-backed experience.

Mike Smerklo moved to Austin from Silicon Valley in 2016 to start Next Coast Ventures with Tom Ball.

I had spent over 17 years working in the Valley as an entrepreneur and loved every minute of it. However, I felt that a lot but not all of what made the Valley so amazing was replicable, he told TechCrunch. What really convinced me to move here and start Next Coast was the evidence of several key factors that make a great startup ecosystem a strong entrepreneurial culture, great university systems, successful technology companies and an amazing place to live exist in Austin. All that was needed was more capital to support it.

Morgan Flager, managing partner of Silverton Partners one of the states most active investors believes that Austin has finally gotten respect as a legitimate top tech ecosystem.

Sixteen years ago, he said, people questioned his move from Silicon Valley to Austin to join Silverton Partners.

LPs asked me if we, or anyone else, could build a top-tier VC firm here and doubted if Austin could produce billion-dollar companies with any regularity. Entrepreneurs wondered if there was enough capital and talent in Austin, and later-stage investors questioned how much time they should spend in Texas, Flager recalls. Now, those questions have largely been answered and been replaced by different, larger questions like will Austin ever surpass Silicon Valley? In short, weve gone from aspiring to be a market that matters to being the hottest tech city in the country.

Krishna Srinivasan of LiveOak Partners, which closed on a $210 million fund last year, said the fact his firm was able to raise the fund in less than four months, was indicative of the strong LP interest in the local opportunity set and the returns we have put up at LiveOak in the past decade.

Last years IPO of Disco, in which LiveOak was a founding investor, at a market cap of over $2 billion, points to the notion that Texas is relevant again as a legitimate software powerhouse, he added. The quality of companies and talent is better than ever before, which augurs for a great entrepreneurial run in the years to come.

Meanwhile, the area has long had a strong base of angel investors funding companies at the very early stage. The Central Texas Angel Network boasts over 110 members, and its website says that its members have pumped $120 million into nearly 200 startups since its 2006 inception.

Marc Nathan, who publishes the weekly Texas-Squared Startup Newsletter, points to a robust angel community that includes serial entrepreneur and data.world CEO and co-founder Brett Hurt, Andrea Kalmans of Lontra Ventures and Justin Siegel, among many others.

Says Shonk:

The angel scene in Austin has always been vibrant. It has recently been amplified by the number of newly established family offices largely from the real estate, energy and financial services boom looking to test their skills at making direct investments. Also a number of coastal funds have deployed scouts to help address Bay Area talent flight to Texas so they now have lines in the water as well.

Speaking of Silicon Valley, nearly everyone working in tech in Austin is growing weary of hearing about comparisons to it. The overarching belief is that Austin is its own, unique market and that it will not, and should not, be a carbon copy of Silicon Valley.

Having said that, there are also many commonalities between the two culturally and aesthetically. Both have lots of green and rolling hills. Both boast outdoor lifestyles and a physically active population. And, of course, both are home to innovation, from universities, startups and Big Tech alike.

Like Silicon Valley, Austin is seeing reinvestments from successful founders. Brett Hurt is an example of a successful founder who continues to help the citys startup scene flourish by also acting as an active angel investor.

With four exits and over 120 angel investments under his belt, Hurt is vocal about his passion for angel investing, telling TechCrunch: It was not all that long ago that entrepreneurs in Austin often had to strongly consider picking up and moving to Silicon Valley to successfully court venture capital and angel investors but a lot has changed in the past few years. In fact, in many cases, were even seeing the opposite happen. Today, Austins angel investing space is incredibly robust.

In fact, Hurts family office, Hurt Family Investments, was one of the first investors in 77 Austin-based startups, including several unicorns such as Everly Health and ZenBusiness.

We are always looking for new opportunities, especially in SaaS, to help continue the momentum in our exciting local ecosystem, he added.

Former Bay Area resident Smerklo believes that Silicon Valley will remain the center of technological innovation for a long time.

I dont try to compare Silicon Valley with any other region Austin included, he said. Doing so is a bit like trying to compare New York City with Hong Kong. They are different and that is okay. I think the better view is that the global nature of technology supports several great geographic pockets where innovation and entrepreneurship can flourish.

Flager grew up in Silicon Valley and acknowledges that the two have some similarities.

The growth and energy in Austin feels like Silicon Valley in the 90s, he said. The diversity of talented people moving here is also reminiscent of the Valley.

But, in his view, the two have notable differences. For one, state and local governments in Texas are focused on pro-business policies, Flager said, while California has been criticized for not being a business-friendly environment. Indeed, the lack of state income tax in Texas and a willingness on the part of government officials to offer generous incentives have been a draw for many companies.

Culturally, Flager believes that overall, attitudes differ as well. Austin is often described as a tech community where founders support each other rather than compete. Techstars Austin Managing Director Amos Schwartzfarb agrees. I think one of our biggest strengths is what a wonderfully collaborative city Austin is, he told TechCrunch. Its very unique in how everyone really wants and helps everyone around them be successful.

In Austin, for example, you will still see cheers and enthusiasm for funding rounds that would not elicit more than a yawn in Silicon Valley.

Its a political climate where freedom of thought is rewarded and everyone can feel welcome, Flager added. We have to remember what got us to this point and thats humility and kindness, not pretense Somewhere along the way, Silicon Valley seemed to let some of these things slip away. Perhaps some people there thought it was too big and important to stumble or regress I guess well see. I hope Austin never forgets what got us here.

Schwartzfarb also tires of the comparisons, noting that people outside the city are constantly comparing Austin to Silicon Valley. But here in the city? Not so much.

As a city, community and ecosystem, we do not make that comparison. We are uniquely our own thing on our own path and I think when others make that comparison it creates an incorrect mental image of what Austin is, he told TechCrunch. The valley is unique and nothing like it has or will ever exist again. And similarly, in a very different way, Austin is unique, nothing is like us and nothing has or will ever exist again quite like us.

The massive growth Austin has seen has brought some significant challenges as well.The citys infrastructure has struggled to accommodate the influx of people and that is evidenced by the widespread traffic jams.Also, folks moving to town and buying up houses in cash have driven median housing prices up by over 40% in 2021 alone.

This means that many people and families are being priced out of the city and having to move out to surrounding areas, such as Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, San Marcos and Buda. The lack of affordable housing has also contributed to the dramatic increase in homelessness.

Still, the median price of a home in the Austin metro area of just under $500,000 remains significantly lower than the current $1.4 million median home price in San Jose, California, for example.

While Next Coasts Smerklo raves about many things about Austin, from its engineering talent to angel networks to music and breakfast tacos, he also acknowledges that there are weaknesses around growth management and infrastructure.

The infrastructure is the real challenge as the city has historically not supported investments to match the growth, he said. There are several projects underway that will help, but we need to do more to make this an affordable, enjoyable and easy urban environment that works for everyone.

Other situations that have come up also mirror those that plague San Francisco. Decades ago, Austin was known more for its laid-back vibe and charm that inspired the Keep Austin Weird slogan. These days, many of the small businesses that gave us that charm have had to shut down due to rising property taxes or rents and are being replaced by shinier, often upscale and cookie-cutter establishments.

But perhaps the biggest, and most enduring, challenge the city faces is its lack of diversity. Austin is known as the most progressive city in Texas, but some argue that progressiveness is not always consistent and depending on the issue, it can be as backward as some other parts of the state. The city may claim to be welcoming, yet the percentage of Black residents, for example, has steadily decreased over time to an estimated 7% in 2020. Many of Austins neighborhoods resemble those seen in Silicon Valley with largely white and Asian residents and far fewer Hispanic and Black people.

S3 Ventures Eric Engineer believes that Austins greatest strength lies in that it is a place people of all types want to live. And many of those people, he says, are drawn to the citys welcoming, meritocratic and free-thinking culture. As mentioned above, still others are attracted to the business-friendly environment and attractive tech jobs.

At the same time, Austin has real, but surmountable, challenges related to cost of living, transportation, homelessness and diversity, he told TechCrunch, which have the attention of our leaders and voters with several key investments already underway.

For example, while nearby Houston has a bad rep for being an unattractive, sprawling city with heavy traffic, it boasts the most ethnically diverse population in the nation and has for several years.

Engineer grew up in Houston and then lived four years in Dallas before spending the last decade in Austin.

From my perspective, Austin appears less diverse and more segregated than the other two though that is visibly changing, he said.

So what does one do if theyre trying to boost diversity in a city that is not known for its diversity?

For Preston James, it was to help start DivInc a nonprofit that aims to bridge the gap between underrepresented entrepreneurs and the resources they need to build profitable, high-growth companies in 2016.

Today, he notes, Austin is home to an insane talent pool and several new emerging funds exclusively focused on Black, Latinx and women founders, including BEAM, The Fund, New Type Ventures, Agave Fund, Silicon Hills Capital and True Wealth Ventures (which was considered the first of its kind in the city).

While James is excited about all the venture activity taking place, he wonders how much is going to underrepresented founders and women.

We have to be proud enough in our achievements to also acknowledge where were still falling short too, especially for underestimated founders, James said.

Still, he believes that while Austin still has a long way to go in improving diversity, there are rarely quick fixes to historically systemic racial and gender equity issues in our society.

Some ways to help move things along, in James view, are for existing funds to be willing to fund a lot more diverse founders early often and equitably at the pre-seed and Series A stages.

He also thinks the city needs to be home to more emerging funds focused on investing in underestimated founders.

This will help build the pipeline of unicorn companies with diverse founders. In addition, these emerging funds will also create a pipeline of potential diverse VC partners for traditional VC firms, James said.

He also believes all the Big Tech companies could be doing more with their environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, such as making more grant investments with a special focus on supporting underrepresented founded companies and organizations like DivInc that provide strong programming and support systems for them.

Sam Haytham, founder of Austin startup Kiro Action, says he is painfully aware of the lack of brown and Black diversity in the startup scene. Haytham is not currently seeking venture money but when he does, he expects it to be a more difficult process than that of many of his counterparts.

I think the opportunities for diverse founders are very limited, he told TechCrunch. When you look at VC groups, theyre very male and very white. And if you want to get funded, and are white and male, you can get funded even before you have an idea.

Meanwhile, diverse founders are literally sitting there scratching to get every little bit to push their product to market. Its even more difficult for minority and women founders with the funding systems in place, he added.

For now, Kiro Action a recent SXSW pitch winner is self-funded and focused on addressing two of the biggest problems that Austin faces: homelessness and affordable housing.

Our true business is social good, where the housing can be used for general/veteran homelessness, sheltering refugees and migrant farm worker housing, Haytham said. The same product can be used to fill multiple social good and consumer needs, including crisis response housing for insurance companies, pop-up hotels and backyard flex space for consumers.

Maria Miller, co-founder and COO of venture-backed Spot, moved to Austin after commuting between New York and Dallas.

I found Austin to be a great balance of art, entrepreneurship and people, she said. Miller co-founded Spot Insurance, a health insurance tech startup, in 2017. The startup offers injury insurance to protect against unexpected medical expenses, has raised over $23 million in venture funding and is on track for 500% growth this year, according to Miller.

To Miller, the lack of diversity that may exist in Austin is not exclusive to the city and has not taken away from the support she has received as a founder.

I believe there is a lack of minority and women founders everywhere, she told TechCrunch. Our founder community in Austin is incredibly supportive, everyone always willing to make an introduction to talent or investors, sharing the ups and downs and allowing a level of vulnerability I havent experienced elsewhere.

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Austin emerges as a city of unicorns and tech giants - TechCrunch

Someday, a tech giant may hold a major event in person again. But this years Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) wont be it.

Now officially on the schedule for June 6-10, the venerable event will stream live for free, as it did in 2020 and 2021. In a small nod to the virtue of in-person gatherings, Apple will invite selected coders and students to its Apple Park HQ on WWDCs first day to watch the keynote and state of the union session. However, even that will be a video watch party, not a return to live onstage presentations.

Apples announcement came soon after Googleand Microsoft said that their own big developer conferences would be virtual (at least for most of us: Certain Googlers and Google partners will be able to attend the I/O conference in person). A new Meta conference, Conversations, will also be online.

If COVID-19 seems to be on the wane as the fall approaches, we might see some tech company opt to hold a flesh-and-blood confab of the sort that were the default until March 2020. But after two years of virtual conferences, it feels entirely possible thatby and largethe industry will decide that it likes holding streaming-first events and has no desire to return to the old way.

This is not a remarkable insight on my part. My colleague Mark Sullivan said something similar way back in June 2020, after Apple held its first virtual WWDC keynote. I wasnt immediately convinced, in part because I have a conflict of interest: As a member of the press, I have attended hundredsthousands?of live tech events in person. There was a time when such events often werent livestreamed at all, giving us journalists in the room the happy opportunity to relay the news in real time to folks who desperately wanted to get it as quickly as possible. (Apple appeared to have mixed feelings about that arrangement: In the early years of live-blogging, it didnt provide Wi-Fi and was not thrilled with reporters snapping photographs from their seats.)

By prerecording everything, its possible to polish it up in a way that isnt possible with a conventional stage performance.

Developer conferences are different.The fact that in-person WWDC used to sell out in minutes might have been tangible proof of the Apple ecosystems vibrant good health, but it was also a problem for the company. The whole point of educating developers is to encourage the building of as many great apps as possible, thereby strengthening a platform; by limiting attendance to the capacity of the San Jose Convention Center, Apple was cutting off the vast majority of its developer base.

And since developer conferences skew heavily toward matters of software rather than hardware, remote attendance is less of an issue. When Apple unveils a new iPhone or Mac, its still nice to see it in person if you have the chancebut upgrades to iOS and MacOS can be demonstrated adequately via a video stream.

Apple in particular has been reveling in another benefit of virtual presentations: By prerecording everything, its possible to polish it up in a way that isnt possible with a conventional stage performance. Like all of the companys pandemic-era events, last years WWDC keynote had a Hollywood-like sheen, with fancy camera shots, background music, digital transitions, and other touches that made it feel more like a high-end infomercial than a press conference. And if any of the presenters flubbed their lines, retakes eliminated the evidence.

Again, my interests here are not the same as those of Apple, Google, or Microsoft. Ive witnessed some memorably odd unplanned scenes at tech events, from Steve Jobs pleading with bloggers to turn off their Wi-Fi hot spots to director Michael Bay abandoning a Samsung CES launch in progress. When Google cofounder Larry Page took questions at one I/O, he mused about technologists needing safe spaces where they could test their inventions impact on society without consequence. The single most famous moment in any Bill Gates presentation might have been a scanner crashing Windows 98.

I love this sort of stuffnot because I take pleasure in other peoples pain but because its a reminder that humans are unpredictable and technology is oh-so-very fallible. But if I were one of the folks responsible for planning tech events, Id probably seize on every opportunity to eliminate surprises of any kind. Kudos, then, to Google, who will be broadcasting I/O live from Mountain Views Shoreline Amphitheatre. These days, that counts as working without a net.

If the tech industry never does bring back splashy in-person gatherings in great volume, I wont brood. Instead, Ill remind myself that the vast majority I ever attended werent all that scintillating. (There was only one Steve Jobs, after all.) And even those of us who are used to being one of the privileged few should acknowledge the democratizing effect of making events available to everybody who wants to experience them, in exactly the same form. Ultimately, its a positive development for the technology world.

See youmetaphorically, at leastat WWDC.

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Apple's WWDC will be a free stream. RIP, in-person events? - Fast Company

In an interesting bit of equivalence, UK-based insolvency specialist Real Business Rescue has compared the market value of the world's richest companies to countries' GDPs to show how big these businesses have become compared to the rest of the world.

As the table below shows, Apple -- which became the first trillion dollar company in 2018 -- would rank eighth in the world, just behind France, while Microsoft is ranked ninth and worth more than Italy.

Amazon's market value of $1.71 trillion makes it worth more than Canada, while Alphabet, worth $1.54 trillion, would rank 15th in the world. Indeed the five tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Alphabet have the highest market capitalisation and GDP worth of more than 90 percent of the countries in the world.

Shaun Barton, national online business operations director at Real Business Rescue says:

Over the last few decades, companies that have become household names have seen eye-watering growth on a global scale, to the point where their market capitalization overshadows the GDPs of entire nations. Although market cap and GDP represent different things, the comparison helps to visualize the wealth and power held by these businesses.

Our data shows that if Apple, Microsoft and Amazon were countries, they would rank in the top ten richest nations in the world -- highlighting how as the world becomes increasingly connected, the sky is the limit when it comes to growth for global companies. Not only can businesses end up wealthier than the countries they were founded in, but they can become wealthier than more than 97 percent of countries' GDP -- with more growth predicted in the future.

Other companies at the upper end of the league table include oil giant Saudi Aramco, with a market value higher than the GDP of 97 percent of countries in the world, Samsung Electronics, worth more than 87 percent of worldwide GDPs, Johnson & Johnson, at 86 percent, Walmart (84 percent), LVMH (84 percent) Bank of America (80 percent) and Nestl (80 percent).

You can see more on the Real Business Rescue site and the graphic below shows Apple's worth in comparison to a number of countries.

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E-commerce giant JD.com's founder Richard Liu is the latest Chinese tech CEO to quit his public leadership role.

These exits come as Beijing is cracking down on the sector, and as a slower economy crimps margins.

China's class of billionaire founder-CEOs are feeling the heat.

China's class of billionaire of founder-CEOs are feeling the pressure of government scrutiny.

Ultra-wealthy Liu Qiangdong, also known as Richard Liu, is stepping back from his role as chief executive of JD.com, China's Amazon-like e-commerce giant.

JD.com said on Thursday that Liu has left his role as CEO, but that he remains chairman of the company's board.

Liu founded JD.com in 1998 four years after Jeff Bezos founded Amazon and has a net worth of $13.3 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

He joins a growing procession of founder-CEOs quitting public leadership roles amid a sweeping crackdown by China's government on its burgeoning technology sector.

In 2020, Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok-owner ByteDance, stepped down as CEO and subsequently from his chairman role. In 2021, Su Hua, founder of TikTok's main rival Kuaishou; and Colin Huang, founder of popular e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, all gave up their roles as CEO.

In 2019, Jack Ma stepped down as chairman of JD.com's main rival Alibaba.

All rank among the richest people on the planet, per Bloomberg, but even their wealth has not staved off scrutiny by Beijing. None of the departing founders have publicly cited government pressure as reasons for leaving or changing roles, but their departures all coincide with increasingly aggressive regulation and threats of breakups.

"These founders may say that they're leaving for personal reasons, but it's too much of a coincidence," said Naubahar Sharif, professor at the Hong Kong University of Technology and Science who researches on China's technology policies. "The predominant driver is politics, and now these old guards need to make way for their successors."

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The central government has taken aim at labor and consumer rights issues, launched antitrust probes against tech companies, and increased oversight on data security.

The uncertainty has dented investor confidence and hurt company earnings. Last month, Alibaba and social-media giant Tencent both reported their slowest revenue growth on record. JD.com also posted its first annual loss in three years.

JD.com and others are also firing thousands of workers.

Liu has generally stayed out of the public eye since he was accused by a student of rape in 2018. US prosecutors dropped charges against him, citing insufficient evidence. The student, Liu Jingyao, subsequently filed a civil claim in the US against Richard Liu in 2019, seeking damages.

Alibaba's Jack Ma has remained quiet since sparring with regulators in late 2020 over a potential public listing of one of Alibaba's subsidiaries.

Pressure from Beijing means the founders may be making the only calculation available to them, said Sharif. "Maybe their time in the sun is over? Maybe they should let someone else take the role that Beijing can work with?" he said.

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