Analyse Podcast

Matt Harty, senior vice president of Asia Pacific for The Trade Desk, joined us to discuss the footprint of the programmatic advertising company and the major trends on digital advertising across Asia Pacific. From the start, Matt introduces the concept of programmatic advertising and explains how The Trade Desk works with their customers and expands their business offerings across Asia Pacific. We dived deeper in the importance of brand safety in programmatic advertising, the key trends in digital advertising in Asia Pacific and whether humans or AI should decide what we want to advertise in the future.

Molly Shea, general manager of Asia Pacific from Western Union joined us to discuss the business and distribution footprint of the company across Asia Pacific. We begin the conversation with Molly's career story, and subsequently leading into the discussion on Western Union's focus on digital services and geographic expansion in Asia Pacific. Last but not least, Molly shared her perspectives and thoughts on the current trends in the fintech space, for example, the current super apps trends from China to Asia and how Western Union are experimenting with blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.  

Matthew Brennan, co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk, closes the Bytedance trilogy of Toutiao and Douyin with the Bytedance Group. We discuss the mission and vision of the Bytedance Group, an artificial intelligence technology company and where they are after raising US$3B from SoftBank recently. We discuss the product portfolio of Bytedance beyond Toutiao and Douyin, their business model of advertising which drives high profitability and why they are poised to take on Facebook in a global scale.

John Artman, editor in chief from Technode of host of China Tech Talk, joined us in a conversation to discuss three different and interesting stories from China entrepreneurial space and align them in the underlying theme of explaining what numbers and narratives can mean in China. We began with the bike rental startups collapse, followed by the Mafengwo scandal and finally the recent leaked financials from Luckin Coffee into the open. Through the lenses of these three stories, we discuss how we need to understand and adjust our expectations to the future of China's economic growth.

Parag Khanna, futurist, TED speaker and founder of Futuremap, joined us to discuss his book "The Future is Asian". We kick off the conversation on the main themes of the book, and taking the Asian perspective on how we should look at world history. We discuss the geopolitical landscape of Asia, and why China's Belt and Road Initiative will not led to a bi-polar world but will shift the rest of Asia towards independence and have the ability to assert their identity in the next century. Last but not least, Parag shared his advice for those out there who might want to come to Asia and why the future is truly Asian.

Charles Reed Anderson, founder of Charles Reed Anderson and associates joined us to discuss the state of proptech in Asia Pacific. Charles break down the real estate supply chain and discuss the key trends which are disrupting the real estate industry. We discuss how user experience and business model disruption are driving the current innovations in proptech such as Wework and how the traditional real estate players such as CBRE and Jones LaSalle are tackling these challenges ahead. Last but not least, Charles explained why the Asian counterparts in multi-national real estate companies are driving more innovation in proptech as compared to their US and European counterparts.

Matthew Brennan from China Channel joins us to discuss the coffee wars in China between the upstart, Luckin Coffee and Starbucks Cafe. We discuss the origins of the company and the strong management team led by Jenny Qian which brought the startup to its current stage. We discuss how Chinese consumers are now using Luckin Coffee and why they are different and poised to give Starbucks a ride of their lives in China. Last but not least, we discuss the coffee wars in China as part of the proxy war between Alibaba and Tencent and why it will likely to catapult Luckin Coffee outside China for regional expansion.

Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information, joins us to conclude the state of China and SoftBank in 2018 and offer his predictions in 2019. We discussed the five major events: one, ByteDance's success with Douyin (or Tik Tok) globally and the upcoming war with Facebook; two, the SoftBank Vision Fund and its impact to startups and venture capital globally; three, pending trade war between US and China with a short discussion on Google's Project Dragonfly; four, the large merger and acquisitions in China and last but not least, the bearish market happening now for China technology giants. We end with Shai's five predictions on China next year and what it will mean for the rest of the world.

Arnaud Bonzom, co-founder of Map of the Money joined us to review the state of Southeast Asia in 2018. We started with the conversation on the movers and shakers in the ecosystem with Grab's acquisition of Uber Southeast Asia and its quest to be the super app with Go-Jek standing in her way. We discussed how the startup ecosystems in Southeast Asia have evolved, with the venture capital firms raising their 2nd or 3rd rounds and family funds who are set to join in the fray. We discuss how the market in Southeast Asia is shifting in each country and the upcoming unicorns to watch in 2019.

Elliott Zaagman, co-host of China Tech Investor podcast, joined us to discuss how to understand Chinese technology companies as an investor. We discussed the theme and intended audience for his current podcast, and dived deep into how we can value the technology giants in China from Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent to the recent upstarts such as Pinduoduo and Xiaomi. Elliott laid out the deep misconceptions on Chinese technology companies and provided a different perspective to how they are vertically integrated companies with different products and services contrast to their western counterparts.