Start Ups – Pablo F. Alonso Caprile

China-trap

iCare Benefits currently has operations in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and hopefully soon in Myanmar. Through iCare, we have had the chance to meet local Ministers, Secretaries of State and other Government officials who have confidentially discussed their countries potential over-reliance on China. These officials were quick to highlight that the Belt-and-Road initiative is a double-edgedContinue reading “China-trap”

Option Impact

One of the first media reports on Option Impact: “Unlike popular self-reported salary sites like Glassdoor or Stack Overflow, Option Impact is reserved for elite users—VCs and the executives at the startups they back (plus legal and consulting firms). And while salary surveys are routine across industries, Option Impact is unique in its specificity andContinue reading “Option Impact”

Modern Apothecary

Following Amazon’s purchase of PillPack, it feels like a good time to dust off a company profile by MIT’s Tech Review back in August 2017. “Since Cohen and Parker founded PillPack, in 2013, the company has grown to more than 500 employees, delivering hundreds of thousands of prescriptions a month to tens of thousands ofContinue reading “Modern Apothecary”

Cash-Burner

Excellent take on Tesla’s business model, its penchant for over-promising and how 2018 could be the year of reckoning for the company and its all-too-busy CEO: Bloomberg’s Tesla Doesn’t Burn Fuel, It Burns Cash

Blockchain Add-ons

Very interesting long-reads from CB Insights on how blockchain technologies and the corresponding smart contracts can and will affect well-established enterprises like social media (Facebook, Google) and the finance sector: Social Media: Could Blockchain Technology Help Avoid Another Cambridge Analytica? Finance industry: How Blockchain Could Disrupt Banking

The Swapy Network

Blockchain technologies are obviously going to affect financial services companies. The wide availability of credit globally combined with a de-centralised platform to move funds around combine for an obvious outcome: C-to-C fundraising for personal credit. And it was only a matter of time before someone came up with such a platform. The Swapy Network isContinue reading “The Swapy Network”

Financials in the Digital World

Really interesting take by HBR on how financial statements in the digital era are becoming redundant and new metrics have to be used to quantitatively harness the value present in digital companies. Examples such as WhatsApp’s $19bn sale to Facebook whilst having no revenues and Twitter’s lack a profit since inception only go to proveContinue reading “Financials in the Digital World”

Gig Economy

Fascinating interview of Paul Oyer and his research on the gig economy: Stanford’s What an Economist Is Learning by Driving for Uber

Disrupting

iCare Benefits gets often termed as unfair competition and a disrupter to the traditional retail sector. Competitors complain that our model is not sustainable long-term and that the damage it creates short-term might be irreversible. We obviously disagree. Not only have we proved we are a sustainable business, we have shown that it is possibleContinue reading “Disrupting”

Fail

Start-up failure. Common and explainable in most cases. According to CB Insights, over 40% of start-ups fail because of no market need and almost 30% fail because of lack of capital. In the context of iCare Benefits, lack of capital is always a major concern as we are a company that frontloads all of ourContinue reading “Fail”