Pundit hot air
Hi there,
The weathermen sure did nail the blizzard predictions for snowfall. </sarcasm>
2014 Tech exit activity up big
Global private tech company M&A and IPO activity was up 58% vs 2013. We tracked 2886 deals last year and the # of unicorn exits was up big vs 2013 as well. Grab the free report below. Also, check out the analysis of $100M exits across the US, Europe and Asia. Some surprises in there as well.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day
Robert Cringely recently guessed that IBM would be laying off 110k employees. IBM responded with one of the better press releases by a giant corporation:
IBM does not comment on rumors or speculation. However, we'll make an exception when the speculation is stupid.
What's most interesting about this is that Cringely made similar predictions in May 2007 and April 2012. He'd predicted 150k layoffs in 2007 and a 78% reduction in 2012.
In any case, all of this got me wondering if anyone has ever bothered to reality check pundit-based forecasts and predictions? You know - the cloud blah blah blah market will be $18 trillion by 2023 or predictions about layoffs like above.
Would love to know if anyone out there actually sanity checks the pundits. Drop me a line.
Best,
Anand
@asanwal |
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The Blurb
A curated mix of articles on tech, media, what's next and recent news.
Hungry yet? Chinese food delivery company Ele.me has raised $350M in funding from investors including Tencent, JD.com and Sequoia Capital. That would've registered as one of the five largest Chinese tech rounds of 2014.
TechCrunch, CB Insights
'Uber for X' adds Roadie. Ride share delivery service Roadie bulked up with $10M from investors including the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, its first deal of 2015.
Forbes
Tiger Global gets busy in India. Tiger Global, which raised a fresh $2.5B at the end of 2014, has announced two separate eCommerce deals in India in the past week - marketplace ShopClues and jewelry portal CaratLane.
TechCrunch, Economic Times, CB Insights
The fight to save Japan's young shut-ins. In Japan, hikikomori has been a household word since the 1990s but the causes and treatments of the condition remain poorly understood.
WSJ
Should we be worried about mobile games? "When we released Draw Something, Instagram was half as big, Vine was barely alive, and there was no Yik Yak, or Snapchat." Dan Porter on why social fun is eating game fun.
Medium
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