Yun Yu's Profile

Thanks Jing. I haven’t been able to find any firm estimates. However I expect it would follow a similar trend to other consumer electronics.

Thanks Boris. The leading competitor is AMD’s LiquidVR, which is a similar platform play to Nvidia VRWorks. At the moment it seems like VR headset companies like Oculus and Valve are partnering with both, while VRWorks has more game and content developers working with them (at least in terms of what is publicly reported).

I’m glad someone wrote a post about this! I’m not going to lie, I spent a lot of my summer wandering around looking for rare Pokemon. There have been a lot of discussions about why Pokemon GO was so successful and, reflecting on my other childhood, I can’t help but wonder if it was more a reflection of the strength of the Pokemon IP or the interactive AR component of the game. Regardless, while the initially virality has faded, Pokemon GO was a great demonstration of the potential of VR/AR gaming coming into the mainstream.

Another super interesting post, Yuval! This seems like a no-brainer acquisition for Google or Facebook. As we move away from consuming content on monitors to VR, this is a logical extension of their core advertising businesses. There is an interesting subliminal element to consuming ads this way as well, as opposed to having to click on a link.

Great post Boris. Interesting that companies are already thinking about using VR to address real world health issues when there is a lack of compelling entry level media/gaming content.

Really interesting post. I didn’t realize the extent to which they were doing this, though it makes a lot of sense given the amount they have had tho hire and the number of applications they receive for job openings. Hopefully it is something that catches on at other large companies, at least in the tech sector, given that the HR function often isn’t viewed in the best light.

Great post, James. Palantir certainly seems to have capitalized on an “institutional void” in the government so far. Your post seems to suggest that it might be time for them to diversify beyond government related work. Given geographic expansion could be challenging, I wonder if focus more on US financial markets might be more be fruitful (though also much more competitive).

Super interesting, thanks for sharing! I knew that Netflix leveraged a lot of data in their recommendations engines but didn’t appreciate the extent to which they used it to license content from other studios and commit new original content. Amazing how they could commit to two seasons for House of Cards without even having a pilot. I agreed that they have a huge advantage over traditional TV however I do wonder how the market will shape up between Netflix, Amazon Video (which is also incredibly strong in consumer data and analytics, and a reputation for burning cash) and, to a lesser extent, Hulu.

Thanks Alex. I’ve had a look around and unfortunately can’t find any reports of their annual revenue. However, Warburg Pincus invested in them in 2012 (http://www.warburgpincus.com/investments/slickdeals/), so I think it’s safe to assume that have meaningful & growing revenue.

They do allow users to set up notifications/deal alerts for when certain products go on sale.

There are many, many diaper and baby related product sales on Slickdeals 🙂

I’m sad to report that all the hats I own are related to sports and/or colleges. My sense of fashion is fairly limited though, so perhaps I’m not the right target customer

Great idea, Alex! I would be all over this. I spent so much time looking for the ideal hat on Lids.com last year and just could not one that had all the elements I was looking for. A Threadless-style community voting system would be great for sourcing unique designs. My only concern, which you touched on in your post, is that it would be more geared towards unique designs, as opposed to colleges, sports, brands etc. (which would have prohibitively expensive licensing costs). It would be interesting to see how the general hat buying market is segment between purchases of hats that “rep” a brand or sports team vs. just plain/artist hats.

Interesting post, James. Could be one step closer towards truly efficient markets. I wonder if the recommendations are truly unbiased though because wouldn’t retail investors who own an underlying stock be incentivized submit very high price targets to encourage more buying? Sort of reminds me of an Australian online forum called hotcopper, where people go to rave about the hottest stocks (which they often already own)

Love that you wrote about Glassdoor. It is a website that I’ve used extensively for during my job search. It is actually quite similar to the Blind app, which lets colleagues chat anonymously with each other about how bad (or good) their company is. Overall, while Glassdoor is a very valuable resource, it is interesting to see how it is valued at so much less than LinkedIn (presumably because of the anonymity).

Thanks for the comment! Interesting thought about leveraging Steam in the business world. While I do think there is a lot of potential for gamification to make workplaces more fun and engaging, I’m not sure that Steam is the right platform for it, just because it is so entertainment/gaming centric.

I definitely do think that, with the advent of VR and AR, there will be an increasing push into interactive entertainment. Many gaming companies are already starting to blend the borders between gaming, movies/TV, music. Blizzard for example as extremely strong lore and IP, which has enabled them to sell merchandise, books/comics, figurines and most recently a movie. Blizzard’s latest blockbuster, Overwatch, was also clearly, at least in my opinion, designed with the intention of expanding into TV/movies. Square Enix is also very good at this its Final Fantasy franchise.

Great write up, thanks! I knew about Flex but didn’t know exactly how it worked. I also didn’t realize that Flex could pay so well, I imagine there must be an algorithm that prices it to be comparable to the average Uber earnings. Quite impressive that the Flex app also provides specific GPS directions for where to go, for reason I (naively) thought it the delivery driver would have to plan this out themselves.

I haven’t really heard much about Unreal since my days playing Unreal Tournament. I didn’t know that they had gone down this path. I knew they had effectively “open-sourced” the game engine, but I didn’t know they had built an easy to use interface to make it accessible to the masses… (YY drops out of HBS…)

Completely agree with this. If UPS (and Fedex) don’t take matters into their own hands soon, it will only be a matter of time before Amazon “in houses” a big chunk of their business. A couple of weeks ago, Fedex actually announced a platform called “Fedex Fulfillment”, that is exactly what you describe in your post.

For sure one of the greatest apps I have on my phone! My only complaint with the crowd-sourced data and machine learning aspects of the app are that were it predicts journey times it uses current data for the entire leg of the journey. For example, if I’m going from Boston to NYC, the ETA is calculated using traffic along the entire route at the present. However it is a 4 hour journey and so the traffic at the halfway point will be very different when I get there compared to when I set off initially. Ideally Google Maps should better use its crowd-sourced data and machine learning to “predict” the traffic along the entire length of the journey.

Interesting. It seems that though Amazon has made a strong push into China, it is likely to struggle against incumbents like JD and Alibaba. Besides Chinese locals having more familiarity and trust of JD and Alibaba, it seems like JD’s partnership with WeChat is a very strong advantage (particularly given how widespread and successful WeChat is). Additionally, given that JD owns all of its own fulfillment infrastructure (like Amazon) and offers similar delivery speeds and reliability, it is difficult to see how Amazon (or any other international entrant) could differentiate itself and compete.

Super impressive. Can’t believe I haven’t heard of them before. The returns charting is especially impressive given it is net of fees and Medallion has fees that are twice as high as the industry average. Their out performance in 2008 is also pretty amazing. I wonder how sustainable the returns would be if many more similar “quant” funds entered the market though. Even though their algorithms would be different, presumably they would all reach similar conclusions about attractive and unattractive investments. Would returns continue to be sustainable at these levels?