Pumchanut's Profile

Thank you, Iryna for your post. This is very interesting. I did not realize that Tinder was trying to innovate through big data. I guess my question is that, in the end, what will the company optimize for? On the one hand, Tinder could strive for the long-term play of matching people to get married similar to eHarmony.com. On the other hand, the company could just optimize for the most number of matches which is closer to what the company stands for today. So far I think tinder has been focussing on the latter but it’ll be interesting to see what they will do in the long-term.

Thank you, Austin. This is remarkable that McDonald is using big data to innovate brick and mortar retail store. What was even more interesting was the shift in the company DNA. I find it very impressive that McDonald could leverage A/B testing to quickly leverage data gathered, experiment on it, and roll it out on a larger scale. I would love to hear more about how the company manage the people aspect in implementing this strategy.

Thank you very much for sharing Jesse. I wonder though how much Spotify could keep using this as a leverage to the music label. The way I see it is that each song has its own intrinsic value that would go viral if it gets the chance. If Spotify keeps customers away from good songs too much due to the lack of good terms then over time it will destroy its own value. I think it will be quite scary for Spotify if multiple of good music labels partner up to negotiate with them.

Thank you Lama this is a very interesting business model. I think the biggest challenge is that it’s a two-sided platform business and it will quickly run into a chicken and egg problem. My thoughts while I’m reading this is it would be great if there’s a partnership with existing school or even tutors. They will have an incentive to develop a reputation for being able to explain homework clearly. Then over time once the community is large enough then the need to partner will become insignificant.

Thank you very much for your post KZ. The Duolingo business model is fascinating. I think it’s very impressive that they were able to leverage language learners to translate bits and pieces of content from BuzzFeed and CNN as each learner will have the different context in mind while translating. I think this is part of the reason why your argument is valid. Duolingo will need to have a large enough pool of language learners to be able to effectively translate content. Furthermore, they will always need a pool of capable learner to be able to create a high-quality translation. But these high-quality learners are the people who will either leave the platform or demand payment.

Thank you Sean for the post. I really enjoy reading your thoughts especially on the topic of YouTube stepping away from the community system that makes it unique and the “Adpocalypse” incident.

On the first topic, I could see YouTube combining the standard YouTube model with the new YouTube Red and YouTube TV. I would imagine that overtime YouTube should allow the audience to rate, comment, and make recommendations to it’s paid services. It would be able to combine the feedbacks with the trend in viewer behavior extracted from the traditional YouTube to create an even more interesting content. I think it will be exciting to see how they leverage their data and translate them into content.

That being said, I think the “Adpocalypse” would make it more difficult for them to achieve their goal. I believe that many YouTubers were never able to get their income to the pre-adpocalyse level. If YouTube cannot prevent this from happening they will start to lose the content creators and dilute the value of the platform.

Thank you very much for the post. I did not realize that the league uses a yearly subscription at an extremely high price point. I think the fact that the company goal to differentiate itself through exclusivity limits its’ user base potential. As a result, to be profitable, it needed to charge a very high price point. This is a good thing for an alignment in branding. However, it is difficult to see them grow the premium users. There are so many competing dating apps with a significantly lower price point. I believe the best way is for them to compete directly with high-end offline dating services. The $200 per annum should not be an issue in that market. The question is how big is that market and how would the league increase its service offering to compete in that market.

Thank you Taka for the post. It is indeed very interesting to see Grabpay trying to be the Payment platform in SEA. In addition to the difficulty in acquiring the license from each country it tries to operates in, the company will certainly face intense competition in each market. For example, in Thailand, Grabpay will need to compete with Ascend group an Alipay partner which mother company owns the largest convenience store chain in the country.

Thank you for sharing. I never knew that OpenTable charges restaurants in so many different ways. It’s not surprising that they’re losing the hard to book restaurants in New York as you mentioned. The value proposition to the popular restaurant is limited. These restaurants are mostly booked and are already well-known. It actually makes more sense for OpenTable to even pay these restaurants to be on the platform and give them seats so that they could drive customers. My thinking is that soon OpenTable needs to segment their restaurant partners (if not already) top ones shouldn’t be paying them anything while less popular ones that benefit from OpenTable customer traffic pay more.

Thank you for sharing. I always find fin-tech very fascinating. I think it will be very interesting to see Venmo expand their service coverage even further. I believe Tencent pioneered this already with WeChat. In China people not only make payment and send money using WeChat. The application also allow people to save money and earn interest. Furthermore, there is also an option for people to invest their money through WeChat. However, given the nature of the customer I’m not sure if Venmo could move into that direction. It will be interesting to see them partner with someone and offer such service.

Thank you for your post. I completely agree that Amazon is definitely winning in many aspects of their business. It would be interesting to see how the shift from pure online to clicks and mortar work out fully for Amazon. Not only that they have Amazon Go they also have the Amazon books and Wholefoods. I’m unsure how the company will actually roll this out fully but it will definitely disrupt the retail industry even further. It will be interesting to see how a cash cow incumbent such as Walmart reacts to the situation.

Thank you for sharing Kat. It is very interesting to see a retail player winning the era of massive uncertainty within a retail industry. Everyone seems to be talking about an omnichannel strategy and/or offline to online strategy but few actually found the right recipe. I think Kevin Johnson did very well in adjusting the core value of Starbucks with the digital trend. The strategy is still center around the company core assets which is the store network. The digital part of it allows the company to improve customer in-store experience e.g., order online in advance could save you time. Furthermore, he leverages technology to improve the loyalty program. Overall, I think Starbucks is doing remarkably well. It seems like for now the company has found the recipe to stay even more competitive with the support of technology.