This week in everything from the ASX to Silicon Valley

WEEK STARTING AUGUST 27

Do yourself a favour and read about the startup of the week - it's fascinating. This week has been too: 
 
AUSTRALIAN FINTECH

CBA's blockchain-based bond 'Bond-i' raises $110m from the World Bank. This is the first bond to be created, allocated, transferred and managed by distributed ledger technology. Huge step for CBA and Australian finance!

Sydney-based HR Start-up 'Flare HR' raises $21m Series B

BrickX releases an automated investment platform called 'Smart Invest'. It allows voluntary contributions per month to help users buy a 'brick', or part of a property (through fractional investing). Essentially BrickX purchases the property, turns it into a trust and then splits the trust into 10,000 units, or 'bricks', democratising access to the property market

Business bank 'Tyro' is partnering with AliPay

GAFA

Google's DeepMind AI now manages all of their data centre cooling operations, using machine learning to realise an energy saving of 40%

Apple's new iPhone was just leaked

Facebook releases 'Facebook Watch' an on-demand video service

BIG TECH

SurveyMonkey is going to IPO. On a scale of 1-10, how much do you rate this?

Fun fact: They included a SurveyMonkey link in their IPO filing

Toyota invests $500m into Uber to advance self-driving cars. Oh what a dealing!

POTPOURRI

Fashion startup 'Shoes of Prey' is shutting down. Interesting analysis here

Long read: Why 'uber-for-x' startups fail. Analysis on why an 'Uber for Tradies' or 'Uber for Massages' etc struggle to work. Long story short: supply side economics

COOL STARTUP OF THE WEEK

What3Words - a geocoding system for communication of locations within 3 metres. The startup split the earth up into 57 trillion 3x3 metre grids and then assigned them three words e.g. a 3x3 square on the Sydney Harbour Bridge is 'funded.bunk.needed' (try it yourself here). It intends to replace the conventional address system and standardise location, especially in places where addresses are incredibly difficult to find or difficult to reach. It relies on a fixed algorithm (the 3 words don't change), can be used with limited internet connectivity and storage. Read more in this incredible analysis by Bloomberg here - it does it far more justice than I did. Fascinating.

TRIVIA
(answers @ bottom of the email)

(a) What was Google's top search term in 2009?

(b) What are the 9 countries that border the Baltic Sea? (Naming over 6 is impressive)

(c) Which Asian capital city is the coldest in the world?

(d) Which quid pro quo economic expression once meant smuggling?

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