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Day: April 13, 2022

Visualizing the Distribution of Household Wealth, By Country

by Carmen Ang
This post is by Carmen Ang from Visual Capitalist

Visualizing the Distribution of Household Wealth, By Country

A majority of the world’s wealth is concentrated in just a few countries. In fact, almost a third of household wealth is held by Americans, while China’s population accounts for nearly a fifth.

Using data from Credit Suisse, this graphic by Eleonora Nazander shows the distribution of household wealth worldwide, highlighting the wealth gap that exists across regions.

Top 10 Wealthiest Countries

To help simplify things, this graphic shows how much household wealth each country would have if the world only had $100.

As the graphic illustrates, the top 10 wealthiest countries would hold an estimated $77, or 77% of global household wealth. Here’s a breakdown of what their cut of $100 would be:

CountryTotal Wealth ($B)Share of $100
?? United States$105,990$29.40
?? China$63,827$17.71
?? Japan$24,992$6.93
?? Germany$14,660$4.07
?? United Kingdom$14,341$3.98
?? France$13,729$3.81
?? India$12,614$3.50
?? Italy$11,358$3.15
?? Canada$8,573$2.38
?? Spain$7,772$2.16
Total$278 Trillion$77.09

The U.S. comes in first place, holding $29.40, or almost a third of total wealth, while China comes in second, accounting for $17.71.

This makes sense considering the high concentration of ultra-wealthy individuals in both countries—China and the U.S. are home to more than half of the world’s billionaires, and eight of the 10 richest people on the planet are Americans, including the world’s richest, Elon Musk.

Japan ranks third on the list, accounting for $6.93. Like the U.S. (Read more...)

The Founder and Investor Trust Problem: It’s not what you think.

by Charlie O'Donnell

Whenever I submit a term sheet, I always caveat it by saying the following:

“This is the one time we’re completely misaligned. I’m incentivized to buy up as much of the company at as low a price as possible and you’re incentivized to sell as little of the company as possible by raising the price.”

Founders seem to get that. The price negotiation process is pretty straightforward, and once a deal has been agreed upon we move on.

That doesn’t mean we trust each other. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t mean trust in the sense that VCs think founders are just going to get a fake passport and move to Fiji, or that investors are secretly plotting to take over the company.

I mean trusting what each one brings to the table—and being honest about the process of earning that trust and what it means to having a productive relationship.

For example, if you’re a sales oriented founder that gets backed pre-launch, then an investor isn’t going to assume that founder has any product design skills. They may not trust that the direction that they’re giving the team doing the UX and the build comes from a place of expertise—and frankly, rightfully so. In this case, a VC would have every right, having seen lots of products get built and succeed or fail, to want to observe and discuss that process.

What happens sometimes is that we don’t have an honest conversation about that. Founders suffer enough from imposter syndrome (Read more...)

GoTrade – the app that lets international users buy fractions of US stocks, raises $15.5M Series A

by Howard Lindzon
This post is by Howard Lindzon from Howard Lindzon

I’m excited to announce the $15.5M Series A raise by Social Leverage (Fund III) portfolio company Gotrade. The Gotrade app, which allows users in over 170 countries to invest in fractional shares of US equities, was founded in 2019 by Rohit Mulani, Norman Wanto and David Grant. The company announced its adding Andrew Haryono, owner of Valbury Group, as a co-founder.

Tom, Gary and I met Rohit up in San Francisco before his Y Combinator demo day and pre COVID in 2019. Rohit and team have been quietly building a great product set and working with regulators in Indonesia the last few years to be compliant. If you think the old guard financial institutions have an edge in the USA, you have not tried to work with regulators in Southeast Asia.

Most importantly, the product is fantastic.

This round, led by Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures, with participation from Social Leverage, BeeNext, Kibo Ventures, Picus Capital, LocalGlobe, and Raptor, follows a $7 million funding in June. The additional funding will be used to create local market versions of the app throughout all markets in Southeast Asia.

You can read the full coverage on TechCrunch.

Self-organizing fraud (or plain old fraud)?

by Unknown

Russ Mitchell writing for the LA Times:
Whether Twitter bots are being deliberately programmed to manipulate stock trading is among the questions that Kirsch and his research assistant, Moshen Chowdhury, are trying to answer.
...
A Twitter bot is a fake account, programmed to scour the social media site for specific posts or news content — Musk’s posts, for example — and respond with relevant, preprogrammed tweets: “Tremendous long term growth prospects” or “Why Tesla stock is rallying today” or “Tesla’s Delivery Miss Was ‘Meaningless.’” The bots can also be programmed to send nasty or threatening messages to company critics.

Kirsch and Chowdhury collected and reviewed Tesla-related tweets from 2010, when the company went public, to the end of 2020.

Over that period, Tesla lost an accumulated $5.7 billion, even as its stock soared and Musk became one of the richest humans on the planet; his net worth is estimated at $275 billion. Operational results can’t justify anything close to the company’s $1-trillion market value, based on any kind of traditional stock-pricing metric.

...

Using a software program called Botometer that social media researchers use to distinguish bot accounts from human accounts, the (Read more...)

Rethinking categories of media

by Seth Godin
This post is by Seth Godin from Seth's Blog

It is found or it arrives.

It is hosted many places or it has a single home.

It earns and delivers on permission, or it’s spam.

It changes over time or it’s static.

It’s the work of an individual or the production of a community.

It’s valuable because of network effects, or in spite of them.

It produces energy and momentum, or it absorbs it.

It’s scarce or it’s widely available.

It thrives on the long tail or only works if it’s a hit.

It dances with the early adopters or soothes the feelings of the late majority.

It’s truly live, or it benefits from time shifting.

It launches itself or it waits to be pressed.

It enhances productivity, or it reduces it.

It is a catalyst for cultural change, or it feeds on cultural change.

It energizes and inspires, or it trolls with snark and irony.

People share it because it benefits them, or someone has to hustle to make it spread.

It goes stale very quickly, or it becomes more relevant over time.

It’s worth talking about, or it’s not.