Dear Reader,

The cusp of 2020 seems like the time to think about the speed of technological change and how it affects both our lives and businesses. There’s much to process - the constant innovation that makes daily life easier (and that may well prolong it) and in equal measure, the lack of a regulatory response to Big Tech, its relentless incursion into our daily lives, and the imminent threat that AI poses to millions of white-collar workers.

Sometimes looking backwards provides a glimpse of the future. As you head towards the holiday season, click here for a prescient reminder of what Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick saw in the future, some 50 years ago!

Wishing you happy holidays, from the team at North Ridge Partners.

Looking back at 2019

A record year for VC investments: In the first half of 2019 more than 4,900 companies raised over US$66bn in new VC investments.

The year started well, but then came a crop of stinker IPOs - a salient reminder that markets open and markets close - and that the right to take a company to market needs to be earned.

Was WeWork a con? Some think so. It was certainly 2019’s most spectacular fall from grace.

Softbank’s reality distortion field was shattered: SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund has created massive distortions and is now feeling the effects of gravity.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had a very bad year: Between congressional enquiries, electoral and human right scandals, the Libra crypto-currency project seemingly set to crash and burn, the Zuck had a shocker. 

Microsoft is a contender to win the cloud wars: Microsoft has announced huge wins with Salesforce and has snatched a $10-billion Pentagon contract from AWS.

It was meant to be the year of 5G - but it ended with a whimper. Watch this space, however – while 5G may only be for early adopters at present, it’s coming. 

Page and Brin resigned from Alphabet: Google CEO Sundar Pichai will now run everything. Is this a sign that the Alphabet “moonshot” strategy is coming undone? 

One leap forward, two leaps backwards? Magic Leap struggled to fulfil its promise. AR and VR are hugely promising, but no one has managed to crack the space yet.

Tales of hope and woe from your Online Travel Agent: Expedia is in a world of pain, sacking its CEO and CFO while AirBnB prepared for its IPO – but is it becoming just another OTA?

2020: a Tech Odyssey

Here they are, folks: 7 major predictions for 2020: from Predictive Medicine to AI-as-a-Service to Extended Reality, here are the predictions rewriting the rules of business!

Forbes says white collar workers have at least a 40% chance of losing their jobs to algorithms.

Stuff that emerged in 2019 that you should worry about in 2020: there’s plenty of it!

Asia news:

A Kingmaker’s fingerprints are all over this merger: Sigve Brekke’s team at Telenor built a 32% stake in Carousell which has agreed to merge with 701Search to form a unicorn that is set to conquer the Southeast Asian online classifieds market.

Uber could learn a thing or two from Meituan: Uber’s Q3 cash burn was US$1bn. It could learn from its Chinese counterpart’s playbook.  

Grab is diving deep into the digital payments industry: Southeast Asia's leading ride-sharing platform just launched Asia’s 1st numberless card, offering cashless convenience to hundreds of millions of consumers.

SoftBank’s next big crisis may be brewing in India: No one has a bigger exposure to India’s tech sector than Softbank. Will overfunding and bloated valuations destabilise the country’s startups?

Indonesia wants to tax foreign internet firms: Overseas companies with a significant presence in the booming Indonesian Internet economy are going to be localised and taxed.

Betting big on technification in Southeast Asia: There has never been a better time than now to be a tech investor in Southeast Asia.

Stuff we’ve been working on:

The North Ridge Partners Southeast Asia 2019 Internet Trends Report is featured in an article by Rebecca Fannin on Forbes. Read the article here.

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Build, fund and exit your technology company, with North Ridge Partners

North Ridge Partners works with technology companies across the Asia Pacific to achieve transformational outcomes through advice on strategic positioning, raising third party funding, M&A and direct investment. We’re experienced deal-makers who have built, run and sold numerous technology companies.

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