Episode 69: Starlink, Bitcoin, The Pros and Cons of Crowd Funding, Unicorn Deep Dive, and Adir the Celebrity
The guys go head to head on the benefits and costs of crowd funding, deep dive into the class of '21 (Canva, Culture Amp, Airwallex, Rokt), gold v. Bitcoin and the wonders of Starlink.
The Contrarians catchup
Adir was surprised that he was recognised by a stranger, who watches The Contrarians on YouTube every week, on the streets of Brighton.
Adam flew to the Maldives on Qatar Airways and was streaming content on his device at a faster rate than his NBN connection at home, thanks to Starlink - “I would pay $500 for this on a business class flight”.
Adam discusses the disconnect between positive consumer sentiment towards Waymo and positive investor sentiment towards Uber.
Adir quotes Ernest Hemingway in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ in terms of the takeover of autonomous vehicles: “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Adir on Bitcoin: “So previously my view on Bitcoin was it's overvalued fluff with no substance. And that is still my view. However, I think where I've shifted is I now see it as a bet on human psychology as opposed to a bit on underlying an underlying asset value. And it's more and more and more I'm buying into the argument that it's got similarities to gold in terms of the impact of psychology.”
Another good Adir Bitcoin quote: “The people that believe in gold believe in it in an economic sense. And the people that believe in Bitcoin believe in it in a religious fundamentalist sense.”
Adir spotted a truck driver texting while driving on a freeway over a bridge and the guys agree that the punishment for this today is too soft. Adir leans towards jail time, though - “Penalties in the Western world are not actions-based, they’re consequences-based. Because if you kill someone, the victim's family need some degree of retribution. But that's the only reason that the penalty is different. It's just retribution.”
Adir’s take on equity crowdfunding
Adir likes the people involved in crowdfunding, but he hates crowdfunding. Specifically, equity crowdfunding.
Adir: “I hate the idea that there is such a thing as a sophisticated investor test that effectively locks out regular people from investing in good assets, and they end up having to invest in whatever's being made available to them.”
Equitise, an Australian equity crowdfunding platform, recently entered administration after it was unable to secure fresh funding to continue operating.
Adir: “I don't like to say these businesses go out of business. I would have rather see them pivot to something that I thought was a better opportunity for investors. They could raise money for everything except their own continuation, unfortunately. It's like Greek tragedy.”
An update on COVID’s unicorns
Tess Bennett from the Australian Financial Review wrote an article looking at “Start-up stars: what’s happened to tech’s Class of 2021”.
A quick recap:
Canva’s latest valuation leapt to $48B and is Australia’s largest privately owned technology company. In 2021, recurring revenue was US $700M and is now US $2.5B.
Airwallex raised US $400M from Paul Bassat’s Square Peg, Chinese internet giant Tencent and superannuation giant Hostplus. Its most recent raising in October 2022 valued it at $US5.6 billion and ARR exceeded US $500M in mid-2024.
Rokt banked $US325M ($458M) at a $2.75B valuation, led by US investor Tiger Global in December 2021. It completed a secondary share sale 12 months later, which valued it at $US2.4B ($3.5B).
Go1 was founded by four former high school friends in 2015, it raised $278M in mid-2021, in a round led by Japanese investor Softbank, valuing it at $US1B.
Employment Hero has over 300,000 businesses using their platform to manage their HR processes for more than 2.5M employees. It has 1200 employees globally, compared with 325 employees in 2021.
Pet Circle held on to a $1B valuation reached during the pandemic, when it secured a $125M investment led by US-based Prysm Capital and Sydney-based TDM Growth Partners.
Culture Amp raised $US100M in July 2021, valuing the company at $US1.5B. Its investors include Blackbird Ventures, TDM Growth Partners, Hostplus, Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital.
Scalapay has become Italy’s version of Afterpay. It raised a combined total of $273M, led by US investor Tiger Global, in 2021 giving the three-year-old company a valuation of $950M.
Octopus Deploy was making $US20M in annual revenue when New York-based venture capital fund Insight Partners paid $221M to buy a slice in 2021.
Simpro took a $US350M investment in November 2021, valuing the company at $US600M.
Five other stories worth following:
Walmart became the biggest company so far to shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives following criticism from conservative activists, and Amazon and Target are being pressured to follow suit.
Kraken shut down NFT trading on its platform last week and said it planned to shutter its non-fungible-token marketplace in February, after which users will no longer be able to withdraw their NFTs.
Fortnite’s most recent in-game concert (Remix: The Finale) saw 14M+ concurrent players, making it the game’s biggest event yet. The event featured music from Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice, and the late Juice WRLD.
Meta reportedly plans to build a 24.9K-mile fibre-optic subsea internet cable that only it will use. Though an undertaking that could cost $10B+ and take years to complete, Meta alone accounts for 10% and 22% of all fixed and mobile traffic, respectively.
TikTok parent ByteDance is seeking $1.1M and a public apology from an ex-intern it alleges sabotaged an AI project by changing its code. ByteDance’s Doubao is China’s most popular chatbot.