Daily Precap - Wednesday 1st August 2018

 

Hey I’m Domm, it’s Wednesday 1st August 2018, and this is your daily precap of the latest and greatest technology, startups, and business news.

 

There is a theory about why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because its more expensive being poor.

Its called the toilet paper theory.  

The theory is that the poor buy toilet paper in smaller batches, say weekly, due to cash flow constraints.  But the rich, who have available cash reserves, buy in bulk and get volume discounts. Obviously this is true of most products and services not just toilet paper.  So, life is cheaper for the rich.

 

Well, thanks to an Aussie retail veteran Ido Leffler, and Tina Sharkey who founded San Francisco based company, Brandless, Toilet paper theory may be closer to being a thing of the past.

 

The company make hundreds of high-quality domestic goods, such as toilet paper, kitchen tongs, organic peanut butter, face creams, organic virgin cold-pressed coconut oil and much more; and most of the products sell for just $3.  

 

Virtually all of their products are lower than competitors, often more than 50% less, and their quality is meant to be top rate.

 

Their business is so inspiring, that Softbank, that huge Japanese Investment Conglomerate has just signed a $240M US cheque to the company, to fund a head to head battle with competitors like Amazon.  

 

The deal gave Softbank at 48% stake in the business, valuing the company at $500M.

 

Despite being founded by an Aussie, they don’t ship here yet, so us poor folk will have to wait a little longer.

 

Labor has announced it will spend $3M if elected on establishing a national centre of AI excellence.  While its promising to see government acknowledging the need to focus on emerging technologies, there is little detail so far to where that funding will go, and what the centre will do.

 

First of all it better not bloody go towards constructing a new building for the centre.  Just rent some space. Ideally, poor the money into AI focused startups, that will build jobs faster than any government run panel could do.

 

Lastly, $3M is really a token amount playing lip service to real change, which likely will have so little significance.  We need to double down as a nation on technology and innovation, we need to add zeros to our commitments to the sector to see real change.

 

Tic Toc, an  Adelaide-based digital Home loan lendging platform has raised $11.5 million bucks.  The service was launched by Bendigo and Adelaide bank execs, and has already processed $1.2Bn worth of home loan applications, actually fulfilling $170M of just over 10% of them.

 

According to Tic:Toc their tech can approve a loan in just 22 minutes thanks to a ‘digital decisioning engine’, with no input from a human.  

 

Although it seems strange to me that a digital system would take 22 minutes to perform a credit check, unless there is a human step in there?

 

Samsung, Apple, and Sony have all released their quarterly earnings, and all three are rolling in cash.  However, Sony is losing money from its smartphone division and fears that those losses will worsen.

 

Sounds like a cry for a buyout of that division, so can we expect a Google or Microsoft buyout perhaps, time will tell.

 

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That was your daily precap, I am Domm, thanks for listening