Well, this just happened
Together with Dwarves Ventures
Welcome to our pilot issue. Our newsletter is called Obvs. (short for Make it obvious). And we intend to do just that: we break down what blooming startups around the globe do exceptionally well, templatize and share them, so you could execute those strategies yourself.
INVESTMENT
by Nikki, partner at Dwarves Ventures
Clubhouse is getting too big for a one-year old.
The hype around Clubhouse started out with FOMO (remember that "Invite Only" we see on their tagline?), followed by the biggest name dropping we have seen in the tech marketing scene: Andreessen Horowitz as the major investor, Tesla's Elon Musk, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes ...
- Founded by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, the "casual audio drop-in" social network celebrates its first year in April. First with introducing Clubhouse Payments, a feature allowing creators to send and receive money.
- Sweeter than sweet 16 though, the company is in talks to raise funding at a valuation of $4B. That's x10 times their $100M back in January.
- Twitter is reported to participate in this round, a move we will need to watch because the price is shockingly high for for an audio app doing what Twitter is planning to do with Twitter Spaces.
- Not just Twitter, other big names in the field can't afford to be left behind. Facebook is about to roll out Hotline (a Q&A product that by their words, a mashup of Clubhouse and Instagram Live), LinkedIn and Slack are also working on their own things.
Lesson learned?
Exclusivity as a marketing strategy. "It is a natural tendency for most people to be attracted to any event which is exclusive because it symbolises status and elitism. Apart from that, people just love to receive special attention at exclusive events." - Dr. Kong Cheen Lau
BUSINESS & FINANCE
by Nikki, partner at Dwarves Ventures
Keep your CV updated.
Because hiring is about to bloom. This one is on us, it's one of our predictions with where the future is going. But we have got facts to back it up, don't worry too much.
COVID was responsible for > 20 millions people to lose their jobs in 2020. With the vaccine rolling out, the promise of border opening and every effort for economic recovery, the hiring market is going to soar. In the US alone, last month's hiring accelerated to 916K, bringing the unemployment rate down from 14.8% (January) to 6.0%.
What does this mean?
- With the hiring demand sky-rockets, we might see an increase in salaries to acquire high-quality employees.
- Work from home will still be the future. We have already gotten the hang of virtually collaboration, and getting back to the office will take a long time.
- Digital transformation will continue. 2020 made us all realize the importance of bringing businesses to the cloud. Jobs in technology will keep increasing.
- The interview process will be longer, as it mostly will happen over the internet. Other legal factors also need to be considered, such as Visa offers for vaccinated employees.
- HR departments will have a year of blood, sweat and tears with the tremendous workload. Referral programs will become a popular approach, as well as external staffing solutions like TuringAlley.
TECH SPACE
by Duy, writer at Dwarves Foundation & WeBuild
Google vs. Oracle
A landmark battle on developer's patent. The overly exhausting multibillion-dollar lawsuit finally come to an end last week. Long (a decade long) story short:
- Google was claimed to utilize a Java API that was supposed to be used for Oracle's Android product. When implementing the Android OS, Google wrote its own version of Java. But to allow developers to write their own programs for Android, Google's implementation used the same names, organization, and functionality as the Java APIs.
- API stands for the application programming interface. To sum up, it helps programs to communicate with each other. FB to IG, Twitter to Gmail. Everything needs APIs.
- Google won, as Supreme Court announced: "Prewritten programs should be allowed as shortcuts for developers".
- In coincidence to the event, Google is already in action to migrate its financial software to SAP within the next feel weeks.
- Oracle shares dipped slightly on the news, while SAP shares rose, closing up 4.8%.
We’re in for a debate.
This official breakup between Google and Oracle raised an opinion wave in the tech community: Should this be considered as a legal exculpation for open-sourced, or proof of patent violation?
DESIGN SPACE
by Minh, product designer at Dwarves Foundation
This week’s design picks
If you’re bootstrapping a business, we don’t have to guess to know you’ve had your share with designing a web page. If it isn’t something as complex as a digital product, you just need to find the right articles that help you get that aesthetics DIY.
- Font size is useless; let’s fix that
- The world’s first design system workbooks for Figma
- Brick Constructor
EVENTS
To raise or not to raise?
It's the one question that on a founder's mind constantly. Especially if you're bootstrapping a startup.
- Hosted by StationF, with Carole Juge-Llewellyn (Founder & CEO at Joone) and Guillaume Moubèche (Cofounder & CEO at lemlist), you might find some pointers to help with that ultimate question.
- Interestingly, Guillaume himself just declined a $20M funding last month.