Good morning, world, and happy Tuesday!
Amidst April Fool’s jokes, last week saw a boatload of great news and changes and this week will be even better. We welcome Mark to the Skyscanner Sofia Office and our B2B team will be speaking (twice!) at MobCon Europe this weekend. Anyhow, diving into messaging and Model 3s.
Non-Travel Starters
Tesla unveiled the Model 3, the four-part trilogy of moving to sustainable vehicles globally, as described by Elon Musk. The higher margin vehicles subsidize the smallest model, which comes at $35 000 base, with all safety features, two trunks, 6s acceleration from 0 to 60, and enough leg room for 5 people to sit comfortably. Delivery is expected at the end of 2017 and Elon’s goal is to hit 500,000 sales per year by 2020.
Well — he might have just beaten this — 276,000 pre-orders of Model 3 already show amazing interest and at $1000 to reserve your car, Tesla just made more than a quarter of a billion, or more than $10Bn in total value. Now, that’s how you future finance your projects. Link.
Messaging is hotter than ever. Bits and pieces (or pretzels)
- Facebook gave a sneak peak of KLM’s integration with Messenger and it looks good. Link.
- Line is opening its platform for payments and businesses. Link.
- Microsoft is focusing on the future of bots, with Bing now availabe in Skype (300M MAUs), more to come in the future. Link.
- And to top it off, Slack just raised $200M at $3.8Bn valuation, bringing in Thrive Capital (the guys who made tons of cash from Instagram). As it stands, Slack has now raised $540M, has $64M in revenue as of last year, and at 450 people in the company, it has 3M users. Link.
WeWork’s shared living spaces WeLive opened doors in New York, prices starting at $2000. Link.
Snacks
Consolidatoin in travel continues and that is a recurring theme as of late. Here are the notables.
Alaska Air is buying Virgin America for $2.6Bn, a 47% premium on closing price of the carrier. The combined carrier will create the 5th largest airline in the US, solidifying positions for the Seattle-based Alaska in LA and San Francisco. The company will have the youngest fleet — 8.5 years on average and with Virgin’s focus on experience, it might be a contender to the big ones. Link.
Back-end tech is something we need to keep an eye on. Travelsky is the rumored purchaser of OpenJaw, the back-end aviation company, who was bought for $41M by GuestLogix in 2014. GuestLogix became insolvent, so OpenJaw switched hands, probably at quite a discount from the listed 2014 price. That’s a sign Travelsky is thinking about going international. Link.
Warburg Pincus’ Mercator just bought Revenue Management Systems (RMS), a rev management solution working with 70 airlines. CEO Cormac Whelan is building an alternative to the GDSs, one piece at a time. Link.
Not to miss on the hotels front and the saga around Starwood, Accor just bought OneFineStay for $170M. The luxury apartment operator is in 4 cities, but plans to go to 14 in the next couple of years. As Expedia focused on HomeAway last year and AirBnB getting traction, there will be more buyouts from the big boys to handle alternative and/or sharing economy accommodation. Congrats to the team. Link.
Dessert (or Stats)
7.2M: App downloads for the top 25 airports in the world. They handle 1.3Bn passengers annually, so imagine download rate. Oh, yeah, that’s not even activation and usage rate. Airports — don’t invest in an app. Link.
1.7: Apple devices per Apple user, given that Credit Suisse calculated 588M Apple aficionados. I guess I pull the average up with 9 Apple devices at my home (I know, don’t tell me). Link.
This is the chart that explains Facebook’s power (above….).
Some Cool Reading (Watching)
Dan Lyons gives a short account of his entry into the start-up world. The article, serving as a sneak preview to his book Disrupted shows HubSpot in an unfavorable light and explains the struggles of a vet writer in joining a tech company. (5 min). Link.
Adam Grant, the author of Originals, gives a mesmerizing TED talk, capturing the things that makes originals… well, originals. Here they are: A) Originals are late to the party (not first comers); B)Originals feel doubt and fear; and C) Originals have lots of bad ideas. (15 min). Link.
Tesla’s 24 min intro of Model 3. Elon — you are outstanding. Link.
April Fool’s jokes around the web, captured in a single article. Link.
//Expressed views and opinions are my own.
Photo Credit: National Geographic is amazing. Please share and give credit to their photographs and photographers. Here’s the link for your daily inspiration: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/
