Trump impacts US tech. Not in a good way.

If you’d like to know more about the Chinese market, more will be shared on the 15^th May:
Register for our report here
Sign up for our webinar here

Also, if you’d like to chat about how a trip to China might help accelerate your business, I’m always up for a chat.

Chicago, home of global domination
Now 11-months into being a ‘dad’, I’ve still got that crazy conflict of wanting more time at work with wanting more time at home. The trade – a 2-hour meeting in Chicago followed by a week with the family in my favourite city.

The meeting was to explore a partnership that will accelerate the roll out of Sønr into every insurance and reinsurance company across the world. Seriously exciting.

San Francisco, where profit doesn’t mean too much
A few months ago we were approached by the CEO and CFO of a large, new European new corporate insurance innovation business, the brief to evaluate opportunities for growth in the US. As part of that, we lined up a week of meetings with the founders of the most successful scale-ups.

As part of the post-trip feedback session, the CFO talked about how, in each meeting, he presented their annual EBITDA as part of the introducing the business. The response? Unanimously it was ‘So what?!’. For the founders of these scale-ups it’s all about long-term business value over short-term profit.

I love that. More though, I love the impact it’s had on the mindset of our client, who now recognise the need to consider the business of tomorrow, today. And all this without a single change management or transformation consultant involved. Who’d have thought?!

—

Now, time for some market news.
I thought I’d write this up a little differently to the normal buy/partner/build and dive into the goings on within a couple of different sectors. Appreciate there’s a tonne more stuff to share with you but hey, that’s part the joy of signing up to Sønr.

Health – consolidation, tech lay-offs and Chinese divestment
Last week were a couple of interesting US headlines. The first was the market consolidation with Centene Corporation acquiring WellCare for a mere $17.3 billion. What it’s created is an even stronger business with a combined 22 million members and expected revenues of circa $100 billion with an EBITDA of $5 billion.

We also saw the much-invested Clover Health lay off a quarter of its workforce. Having raised close to $1bn since 2012, with half of that landing earlier this year, they’re cutting back their tech team to make room for people with health-care expertise. It’s a super interesting move which can be read a number of ways. What is blindingly obvious is the need to blend tech with industry expertise, especially when playing in such a complex space. Let’s see if other players like Bright Health and Devoted will do the same.

Above all this though, one US-related news article jumped out. And that is the Trump administration forcing iCarbonX to divest its stake in US startup PatientsLikeMe. There’s so much to go into here – the obvious is the hurt restricting Chinese investment into the US will have on the local startup market. On the flipside, it might just open new opportunities for European startups to tap into the unprecedented levels investment normally savoured by their counterparts East and West of them.

On the investment front one that jumped out is the Isreali firm, Ibex, raising a Series A of $11m. These guys are developing an AI-driven pathology cancer diagnosis system. Having just read and listened to the Theranos implosion, it’s reassuring to see a healthtech delivering genuine, positive impact on the world.

Earlier this week we caught up with Joseph Mossel, Ibex’s CEO. You can read the interview here.

Auto – autonomous vehicles and mobility-as-a-service
Let’s start this bit with the term lidar (apologies for all those who are in this space). Lidar is a surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor.

It’s considered a key piece of tech in the self-driving industry which is why there’s so much buzz around the recent $132m Series C round for Innoviz, an Israeli startup that develops lidar sensors and perception software.

Closer to home, it’s great to see our friends at FiveAI starting their driverless car trials in London this week.

Final thing that caught my eye this week was the ‘mobility-as-a-service’ app Zipster (created by mobilityX).

Having spent a fair chunk of time chatting ‘super apps’ in China, it’s really interesting to see the shift towards consolidated services. Zipster in Singapore, launched earlier this week, provides a single point of access to multiple transport options including MRT, buses, private-hire vehicles, e-scooters, bikes and car-sharing services.