AR had an iPhone Moment

Plus: Why Entrepreneurs are Choosing “Short-Lived Businesses

Author

Cash Nut
June 05, 2023

In Today’s Edition

  • Brazilian Crypto Exchange Mercado Bitcoin Licensed as Payment Provider

  • How Much More Efficient Should a SaaS Startup Be When Using AI?

  • Why Entrepreneurs are Choosing “Short-Lived Businesses” Over “Forever Businesses”

  • GM to invest more than $1 billion to produce new heavy-duty pickups

  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ opens to $120.5 million, second-highest debut of 2023

  • Augmented reality needs an iPhone moment

  • Everything you want to know about the Pixel 8's processor leaked

🚀Startups Nuts

Mercado Bitcoin, a Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange, has received a payment provider license from the country's central bank. The license allows the exchange to launch MB Pay, a fintech solution that provides digital banking products using crypto assets, including digital fixed-income investments, staking, a crypto debit card, and more. This development enhances Mercado Bitcoin's standing, following similar licensing for Crypto.com, Bitso, and Latam Gateway. The licensing comes on the back of strong demand for crypto services in Brazil that continues to attract major crypto firms such as Binance and Coinbase.

Tomasz Tunguz's latest experiment looks at AI initiatives for a SaaS company. His findings indicate that they expect a minimum improvement of 1.5% from sales and 5% from content marketing. The greatest productivity gain can be expected from engineering, estimated to make a 10% increase.

While many entrepreneurs dream of building generational businesses, the reality of the digital world is that businesses often come and go quickly. Stair-stepping, or incrementally building businesses, is the best way to minimize risk and gain experience.

🏭Business Nuts

General Motors plans to invest more than $1 billion in two Michigan plants for production of next-generation heavy-duty trucks, the company said Monday. Despite GM’s commitment to exclusively offer all-electric vehicles by 2035, the company continues to invest in traditional vehicles such as the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra heavy-duty pickups. The notably profitable trucks are in high demand, and sales are needed to assist in funding the automaker’s investments in EVs.

Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” opened to $120.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend. It was the second-biggest opening of 2023, just behind Universal’s “Super Mario Bros. Movie.” The film also marks the third-best opening weekend for any Spider-Man film, animated or live-action.

📱Tech Nuts

Apple's highly anticipated AR/VR headset could push the technology to the mainstream. The AR industry will benefit from Apple's 'it just works' philosophy. While the exact uses for the headset are not known yet, Tim Cook has said before that AR is for communication and connection, and other reports say that the device will offer access to iPad apps, games, entertainment, and a version of Apple Fitness Plus. Apple is expecting to sell under a million units a year. Its release may result in a gold rush of app designers trying to replicate the success of early iPhone developers.

The Tensor chip has allowed Google to leverage its AI expertise and build experiences on the Pixel that would have otherwise been impossible. The Tensor G3, which will power the upcoming Pixel 8 series, will have 9 ARMv9 cores and new security technologies. The Pixel 8 will ship exclusively with 64-bit binaries. It will have a GPU with ray-tracing capabilities. Many more details about the new processor are available in the article.

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🎁Miscellaneous

Scientists have repurposed human stomach cells into tissues that release insulin in response to rising blood sugar levels. The treatment showed long-lasting effects on diabetes in mice. The breakthrough could help people more naturally manage conditions such as type 1 diabetes. The process for creating the tissues isn't particularly complicated, and the tissues can last for many months after being transplanted. There are several differences between human and mouse stomach tissue that need to be addressed in future studies, but initial signs are promising.

Retaining key staff is often overlooked but is more important than ever in the SaaS industry. Jason Lemkin explains why it is important to pay market or above wages and provide a growth path for the great staff, as well as advice on how to interact with the team quarterly to understand their needs.

💡What else are we reading and seeing?

😎Fun Fact

The world's first stock market crash occurred in 1720 and was known as the "South Sea Bubble" in England, where speculation in the South Sea Company's stock led to a dramatic collapse.

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