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Cost cut your way to glory
Hi there,
So private equity firm Blackstone is taking control of the floundering Thomson Reuters in a $20B deal.
It's interesting to read stories about the deal and TR's issues. In almost all of them, there is a clear lack of ownership by TR for its challenges. (The below is from Reuters.)
Instead of blaming a lack of innovation in the product and business model, they blame it on customers. That's healthy.
Of course, the way to solve this innovation challenge is by really really really good cost cutting. This certainly looks promising for both TR and the company's customers.
When you need closure
It's tough out there for a startup. After analyzing over 100 startup failure post-mortems, we’ve learned there is rarely one reason for a single startup’s failure, so we broke down the top 20 reasons.
Awkward
A lot of innovations — like Amazon, blockchain, and bitcoin — were initially smack-talked and dismissed by big corporate execs. Open mouth, insert foot.
Thomson Reuters — bye bye platform
Thomson Reuters' new overlords at Blackstone have also indicated a shift away from the desktop platform Eikon in favor of data feeds.
It's probably a logical shift, albeit surprising to see the announcement right out of the gates given the investment TR has made in Eikon over the years in its continuous battle with Bloomberg. Feeds is also a highly competitive area.
Blackstone President Tony James made his view of the desktop biz pretty clear, stating:
If you are an Eikon customer or engineer working on the platform, this must not be very reassuring.
BTW, if you're an amazing engineer or data scientist who is working at TR on the Eikon product who doesn't want to be part of a legacy business, we're hiring engineers (lots of them) to join our amazing team. Data engineers, data scientists, full-stack, front-end — you name it.
Like a robocop
Cybersecurity attacks are rapidly evolving and increasingly severe. Check out CB Insights' new briefing for cybersecurity startups and trends to watch for in 2018.
From $0 to $2B
You might be surprised to find that Goldman Sachs is branching out to the consumer lending world by offering consumers personal loans, savings accounts, and home improvement loans.
In one year, Marcus by Goldman Sachs went $0 to $2B in debt consolidation loans.
Harit Talwar, the head of Marcus by Goldman Sachs, will join us at the Future of Fintech.
We’ll be curious to learn more about the company’s future plans for the consumer lending world and what it's learned from its first in $2B in loans.
Get your tickets today.
The Industry Standard
CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.
Wired. Tom Simonite (@tsimonite) writes about JPMorgan’s use of computers that process data with quantum mechanics and cites CB Insights data.
Insurance Journal. L.S. Howard reports that re-insurers are driving insurtech investments and references Willis Towers Watson and CB Insights’ Insurance Tech Report.
Freight Waves. John Paul Hampstead writes about Trillium’s car-hacking challenge and mentions CB Insights’ A-ha! conference and Demo Day.
Happy Monday.
I love you.
Anand
@asanwal
P.S. On February 13, we're discussing the rapidly evolving state of e-commerce. Register for the briefing here.
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