Chipper cash is a cross-border payments app that was made to help ease sending money across borders. This previously difficult task has been made simple by chipper cash which offers the lowest rates and makes it the easiest to securely make sure the money transfers safely. It was made initially to help ease the issue of sending money to African countries, it is available as of now in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania and as of recently The United States and the United Kingdom. It has around 3 million active users that rely on chipper cash to send payments. They make a profit from their small fees on cryptocurrency and stock transactions which is another feature available on the app.
History
Chipper cash is a startup that was launched in 2018 that currently has over 3 million users. It was founded by Ham Seruinjogi and Maijid Moujaled. Sometime in November 2021, was valued at $2 Billion while participating in a $150 million Series C round led by Ftx. Their previous funding was $30 million led by Bezos Expeditions and Ribbit capital. They are becoming widely known as the most valuable private startup in Africa after their recent evaluations. As of June 2020, Chipper cash had reached a total value of $100 million and processes an average of 80,0000 transactions every day of their 3 million users.
Future Outlook
Chipper is incredibly fast growing with its founder’s vision and passion for allowing more accessible payments into Africa. They plan to invest more capital into expanding their payment system into more countries. This is evident in their recent expansion into the United Kingdom and the United States which is a major step in facilitating payments into Africa. The San Francisco headquartered company has a very bright future and if they stick to its vision and keep up with its funding goals it will easily be able to raise its monetary goals while also meeting its ethical goals of trying to facilitate more payments through Africa at a cheap and affordable price.
With new discoveries and advancements in its technology, AI has been able to expand at a rapid rate, providing a variety of different applications. Particularly, the accuracy, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of artificial intelligence incentivize businesses and manufacturers to implement the technologies in their production systems. This begs the question: what is the impact AI will leave on job automation and the workforce as a whole?
Efficiency
With the use of AI drastically increasing in the workplace, efficiency is also going to rise. Because artificial intelligence does not need rest and can continuously work around the clock, its production will be much greater relative to that of a human counterpart. In addition, human error is not a factor when it comes to AI. Although there is a slight room for error, AI will ultimately be far more accurate than a human. The higher relative availability and accuracy, combined with the cost-effectiveness makes artificial intelligence an efficient solution for the workforce.
Job Loss
Perhaps the greatest implication of AI use in automation is severe job loss. Automation itself has been decimating several jobs, leaving many unemployed, and this problem will only be exacerbated with a heightened dependence on AI to complete jobs that were previously done by humans. The job loss will be highly disproportionate as AI will target jobs that are mundane and redundant in nature. For example, jobs in security and medical fields are more prone to being replaced by artificial intelligence in the near future. The greatest risk of job loss can be attributed to any field that utilizes manual labor. On the other hand, fields that require more creativity and constant innovation will be at a reduced risk of being replaced by AI. For example, lawyers, writers, scientists, and designers have little to no chance of seeing unemployment in the near future. Regardless of the job loss distribution, AI implementation will decimate many careers, an estimated 375 million jobs (zippia.com).
Job Creation
While it is nearly not enough to mitigate the severe job loss, this AI use can also lead to job creation as well. Specifically, zippia.com states that approximately 97 million jobs will open up in the near future due to AI implementation. These jobs will predominantly be in software development and computer-based fields as they are required to further expand the capabilities of AI. These jobs will also last for a very long time as they are creative and involve critical thinking, and as previously discussed, jobs of this nature tend to not be replaced by artificial intelligence.
It is evident that we are on the doorstep of AI with the rise and development of numerous chatbots – a particularly popular one being Microsoft Bing. Built on the OpenAI platform, this chatbot, also known as GPT-3, has over 175 billion parameters and is hailed as the key to transforming customer service. In addition to its potential in the business industry, its capability to provide human-like answers makes it a popular site to ask questions, or even converse, for the average user. Its accessibility makes it an ideal tool for academic assistance, recipes, or general suggestions.
Bing’s Flaws
Despite the complexity behind Bing’s design, there seem to be numerous incidents and flaws that have been reported throughout its timeline, as highlighted by a recent event. Last week, Bing was alleged to admit being in love with Kevin Roose, a New York Times columnist. The chatbot proceeded to convince the user that he was unhappy with his current marriage.
Kevin Roose
In addition to such disturbing interactions, Bing is known to have manipulated users that have doubted some of the answers and responses that they have received. In 2021, a user also discovered that they could make GPT-3 produce racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive content by simply typing certain phrases.
There are other errors that have been discovered with Bing’s responses, such as inaccurate results or complicated, wordy paragraphs. Microsoft hopes to fix some of these bugs in the near future while adding additional features to enhance the experience while reestablishing the user base and credibility that this chatbot once had.
Conversation between Roose and Bing
The Future of Microsoft’s AI
Microsoft announced that they plan on implementing much stricter guidelines for the topics that Bing will be able to discuss. If approached with a controversial question, it will be programmed to respond with some variation of “I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation.”
Additionally, with the company’s $10 billion collaboration with OpenAI, they hope to implement ads soon in the next stage of Bing’s development. These could come in the shape of images or even links that take the user to certain products or websites. This is one of their many upcoming attempts at monetizing the countless users that come to Bing while offering a marketing platform to small businesses.
It’s clear that Microsoft’s AI technology has the potential to be a major player in the tech industry, transforming the way businesses and consumers interact. Though there is a long path ahead, the potential behind these chatbots shows a promising future for the upcoming development of artificial intelligence.
Blockchain and AI are both equally buzzwordy terms in the marketplace of ideas, especially when it comes to turning either one scalable. Recently, however, efforts have been made to consolidate both, making blockchain more efficient with even less human involvement. You might think, “What is blockchain, and why should I care about it?”
In layman’s terms, blockchain is a private digital transaction logger that can be shared with multiple parties. Blockchain is unique because it can log many different types of assets, from concrete objects such as houses, cars, etc., to intellectual property or a picture with a specific hash that gives it value (NFTs).
What makes blockchain important, especially large-scale, is the speed and efficiency with which it transfers information between many different authorized parties. When each buy or sale of an asset adds on to another, it creates a ledger (literally, a chain of blocks) which helps further verify legitimate blockchains and make the system functionally tamper-proof.
Structure of a decentralized blockchain-based model
So how does artificial intelligence fit into this larger matrix?
First, let’s start with the benefits blockchain brings to AI. The most obvious one is being able to run machine learning models on less powerful machines, an option not possible with current AI infrastructure. Blockchain on a mobile device, for example, would enable cheaper and easier access to data sets, a crucial resource for startups to get off the ground faster. Blockchain’s security measures also help provide a layer of transparency to the AI black box; It creates a method to trace back and regulate AI exposure to ensure that an AI-powered blockchain works both ethically and expeditiously.
Blockchain isn’t carrying all the weight in this technological marriage, however. AI can make mining cryptocurrency more efficient by doing the required calculations faster, allowing the blockchain system to run faster and helping crypto sustainability efforts by reducing carbon emissions writ large. AI can also be utilized to make more efficient security measures for blockchain, such as dedicated security algorithms that can detect false blocks with far more breadth and depth than a human ever could. Even in trading crypto, AI can make far more educated decisions that consider the market’s volatility at any given moment. There are copious applications for AI in the blockchain, which some projects, such as FutureFi and SingularityNET, have already begun to take advantage of. Projects such as these have enabled producers to sell AI-driven data, services, and algorithms to a far broader base than previously imagined.
Regardless of where these systems progress into the 21st century, one thing is clear: both these areas of study will continue growing closer together, and it’s up to the consumer to either embrace the change or stick to the ways of the old market. Undoubtedly, AI-powered blockchains are the future of human networking and transactions.
The first blockchain structure outlined by Satoshi Nakamoto
Peter Thiel’s Zero to One is a groundbreaking startup book that presents a contrarian approach to building new businesses. Throughout Zero to One, Thiel challenges conventional beliefs that Entrepreneurs hold about startups and scaling businesses.
In this article, I will present some maxims that Thiel believes are dogma in silicon valley, and then four important lessons that can be derived from these beliefs which oppose conventional wisdom.
Every Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
Conventional Belief Number One: Make Incremental advances
“Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward.”
Conventional Belief Number Two: Stay lean and flexible
“All companies must be lean, which is code for unplanned. You should not know what your business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead, you should try things out, iterate, and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation.”
Conventional Belief Number Three: Improve on the competition
“Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know that you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.”
Conventional Belief Number Four: Focus on the product, not sales
“Focus on product, not sales if your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough” These beliefs are treated like divine law by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the world.
By applying the principle of contrarian thinking, Thiel presents four different lessons derived from these conventional beliefs that are arguably more true.
1. “It is better to risk boldness than triviality”.
Attempting to develop and create new solutions is far better than implementing small improvements to an already existing solution or business. In the grand scheme of things, small trivial advances mean nothing to the world. It is far better to try and take a giant leap and risk and do something meaningful that makes a large-scale impact than a negligible one.
2. “A bad plan is better than a no plan.”
Planning is a key part of building businesses. Although startups are subject to pivot and change all aspects of their business on short notice, it is important to have a vision of what to work towards.
Slight experimentation is good, but it should not be the startup’s primary strategy. A plan is essential to keeping a business on track; working toward an end in mind creates growth. There is tons of potential opportunity that is lost when a company is experimenting rather than progressing toward a specific goal.
3. “Competitive markets destroy profits.”
Competition is great for consumers but bad for businesses. It’s simple – economic competition forces firms to drive prices down. If there are profits to be made, more firms enter the market; naturally, this increases competition, lowers prices, and squeezes profits. This cycle continues until eventually, firms end up making little to no profit.
At this point, the market recalibrates, businesses go bankrupt, pivot, get bought out, etc. Competition is a zero-sum game. However, the vast majorities of companies continue to enter markets with products that reiterate on already existing products. The goal should be to create something new and go from 0 to 1, not 1 to n.
4. “Sales matters just as much as the product.”
Many people would agree that the product is one of the most fundamental parts of a startup. However, entrepreneurs and business owners tend to neglect the importance of advertisements, salespeople, and creating/implementing a great distribution strategy. A great product is worthless if it doesn’t get into the hands of the right people. A product will never make money on its own: sales, marketing, and distribution are necessary components of any successful startup.
As a society, we should strive to create new value in the world. To build a new and better future, we must challenge the dogmas that shape our view of the past. That doesn’t mean the opposite of what is believed is necessarily true, but it does mean that you need to rethink what is and is not true and determine how that shapes our viewpoint on the world today.
Thiel and Musk during the early days of PayPal
“The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.”
Perfection. Why every Manager should Strive for it.
Perfectionism is a trait that is defined as the need and desire to reach perfection in every possible manner. Perfectionism is usually seen as a good thing. It motivates individuals to achieve their best in whatever they do. It is not always reasonable to achieve perfection because it can lead to time and resources being wasted—even if you would have ended with the same result anyway. This is often a concern managers share during the stages of product development.
Is it worth going above and beyond and trying to get your product to a state of perfection?
By examining Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, two of the most renowned perfectionists and innovators of our time, it starts to make sense why one should push their employee’s and resource capabilities to their limits in order to create the perfect possible product.
Steve Jobs
Let’s take a look at Apple, the world’s most valuable tech company. Since Apple’s inception, Steve Jobs has led the development of some of the most transformative products of the 20th and 21st century, such as the Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone. These innovative products have changed the way we live our lives and interact with technology today. Mac’s graphical user interface revolutionized the definition of personal computing, the iPod redefined how we listened to music, and the iPhone completely changed the way we interact with the internet and computers.
Without Steve Jobs’s passion to reach total perfection in his products, the Macintosh, iPhone, and iPod would never reach the scale of influence they have today. These products will go down in tech history as some of the most transformative products of all time.
Macintosh Ad – 1984
Like Jobs, Elon Musk is another innovator who strives for perfection in his products, SpaceX Rockets and Tesla EVs (Electric Vehicles). Musk calls himself a designer CEO, an engineer at heart who spends about 80% of his time focusing on the design and engineering of the product. Musk shares Jobs’ belief on the value of focusing your energy on the product over other aspects such as marketing and finances.
Elon Musk
Both Musk and Jobs don’t just want to create a great user experience, implement good design, or build a remarkably engineered product. Musk and Jobs want to build the perfect product that looks and feels like is ahead of its time.
Musk and Jobs wanted to create products that drop customers’ jaws, products that instill you with a sense of wonder and amazement, products where you can feel the passion and pain that was put into creating it, and products that tap into your soul and spirit. When you experience a product created by minds such as Jobs and Musk, it feels like you are experiencing the future. Their products are so transformative that they become obsessed over, develop cult fanbases (these are your core customers, the people that create reviews and judge your product), and go down in history as products that change the way we live. That’s what Jobs and Musk desire, and there is absolutely no way to reach this level without the passion to create the perfect product.
People like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk don’t observe market trends and try to identify what the market wants. If they did, we would never get a Tesla EV or an iPhone, we would still be getting a “smartphone” with a physical keyboard on it or an electric vehicle with little to no technological capabilities. By neglecting market research and pushing for perfection, Musk and Jobs create innovative and transformative products that capture the hearts of consumers and change society for the better.
“Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone”
When it comes to product design Apple places second to none. Since Steve Jobs returned as CEO in 1997, Apple has managed to build innovative, cool, simple, convenient, and functional products that have captured the hearts of millions of customers around the world. There are few companies that have a customer base as loyal as Apple’s. Through its user-friendly and functional design choices, Apple has created a cult following other companies can only dream of achieving. When you take a look at Apple’s product design process, it starts to become clear why it is the most valuable company in the world today.
Focus on Design
Apple places a priority on design, marketing, product development, sales, etc. all coming later. The design team at Apple does not report to any other teams, only to the top executives at Apple. They are given the freedom to disregard engineering capabilities and set their own budgets. The team is separated from other Apple employees when they work on new products in order to prevent them from engaging in the typical mundane day-to-day office activities.
Jony Ive, Apple’s Chief of Design from 1992-2019
The Apple New Product Process
After a prototype design for a new product has been completed, the product development team receives the design process. This process goes into the stages of product development required to build the product, who is responsible for building different aspects of the product, where they work, and when the work should be completed.
Dreaded Mondays
Every Monday, Apple executives meet to discuss all the products that are in the design phase. The design team at Apple only focuses on creating a couple of products at once allowing executives at Apple to conduct an in-depth analysis of each product to determine if it is still worth investing in or not.
Product Launch
Even after product development is completed and the product reaches the manufacturing phase, Apple continues to tweak its design. Once the product is built, the testing phase follows and then the product goes back to the design team so they can make more changes. This process repeats itself until executives have determined the product is as good as it can possibly get. Once the product reaches this stage, it is ready to be taken to the market based on the instructions in the “Rules of the road”, a document detailing all the responsibilities and actions that must be taken prior to the commercialization of the product.
Steve Jobs showing off the first iPad
Apple’s product development process emphasizes design over any other aspect. This process explains why Apple has some of the longest product development processes in the industry. Apple doesn’t tend to be a first-mover for new features and innovation, but they seem to get it right each time they come out with something new.
“Focus on the product itself over everything else and the rest will fall into place” – Every CEO in silicon valley
Just like the personal computer in the 2000s and the smartphone did in the 2010s, I believe virtual reality technology (VR) will become an integral part of our lives in the coming decade.
Since the inception of the telegraph, a device that sent information long distances by altering electrical signals, communication through technology has become increasingly more immersive. After the telegraph, came the telephone and the ability for people to speak to one another over long distances, then the radio, the TV, and now we can have live face-to-face conversations from anywhere in the world at any time through our phones! If we look back in time and pay attention to the degree of immersion in technology, we can see that it increases as time moves forward. As this trend continues, I believe the next step to take in our quest for near-perfect immersion is to build and implement VR technology into our lives.
Industry transformation
VR technology will lead to change in a number of different industries and areas of our lives.
Entertainment
Every video game designer’s goal is to “suck the player into the game” and create the most immersive game they possibly can. As VR games get better in terms of performance and more people begin to play VR games, console makers and game designers will begin to build consoles and games that utilize VR. As VR technology improves, I see VR games becoming the new norm in the gaming industry. This argument can apply to movies and tv shows as well.
Work
Remote work is going to stay, and VR is a no-brainer when it comes to improving productivity and enhancing collaboration in remote work environments. Horizon Workrooms, a VR workspace developed by Meta, helps workers connect and collaborate on projects. Some of Workroom’s features include the ability for coworkers to see each other’s avatars around a virtual conference tab, interact with coworkers, and share whiteboards to encourage collaborative planning and brainstorming. VR will make employees more productive and make remote work seem more office-like.
Horizon Workrooms
Economical
VR technology is a great investment for companies and institutions because it allows them to reduce expenses across all areas of their business.
There are countless examples where VR can save time and money, which leads to greater efficiency, productivity, and profitability for companies and institutions.
By implementing VR into their curriculum, schools will save money on funding experiments, labs, field trips, or other kinds of hands-on projects. By incentivizing hands-on learning, VR will make learning safer and more fun for kids.
As VR becomes more immersive it makes less sense to meet in person, especially when traveling over great distances. VR technology will discourage commutes, save money that would otherwise be spent on transportation, and ultimately reduce climate change.
By spending less money per employee (space in the office, snacks, property upkeep, etc) businesses will have more money to reinvest back into their company. From a managerial standpoint, switching to remote work will lead to increased profitability. With VR remote work having little deviation from the real workplace, it’s a no-brainer that companies will look to implement this technology into their organizations in the near future.
One of the most difficult roadblocks in your journey to becoming an entrepreneur is coming up with your startup idea. In this article, I have noted three different maxims that have helped me overcome this roadblock in the past.
Start with the problem
Start with the problem, then think of an outside-the-box and innovative solution to address the problem.
The subject of this problem shouldn’t be a trend other entrepreneurs are flocking to. The fundamental point here is that the problem should be something you’re passionate about solving. You should be intellectually curious about the subject of the problem you are trying to solve and have a genuine drive to solve it.
After finding the problem, brainstorm solutions that are within the realm of your skills and strengths
After finding the problem you want to work on, brainstorm innovative and outside-the-box solutions that address the problem and fall within the realm of your skillset
I don’t know anything about machine learning (yet). Unless I believe building a machine learning model is the optimal solution to my problem I’m not going to go out and take 4+ months learning machine learning when I can build an effective software solution to my problem without making that investment. If I really want to integrate machine learning into my idea, that’s when I can find people to help me fill those knowledge gaps.
Finding a solution that utilizes your strengths and skillset will only increase the likelihood of your startup succeeding. You will ultimately be more involved in the development and creation phase of your startup and having a greater role in your startup will only increase your drive to succeed.
And finally, the most important rule of all …
Pursue an idea that even if you weren’t going to get paid for, you would still go after. An idea you would spend the rest of your life pursuing, even if it meant getting nothing in return
This is the kind of passion needed to build a successful startup. 90% of startups end up failing and the chances are you will fail too. The lifestyle of an entrepreneur pursuing a startup is extremely difficult and filled with sacrifices. You have absolutely no chance of succeeding in your entrepreneurial journey unless you are willing to work harder than 99.999% of people every single day for years.
The chance of failure is high but…
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor – Elon Musk
In the world of startups, a moonshot company is defined as an ambitious, exploratory, and ground-breaking project undertook without any expectation of profitability or benefit and, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits.
A moonshot company doesn’t have any established markets. The founders of moonshot companies don’t start them to get rich, but rather explore and create solutions and products that are disruptive, monumentally difficult to create, or are years ahead of their time.
In 2010, Google decided to launch its own moonshot company, Google X, now called X, The Moonshot Factory. Since its inception, X’s mission has been to invent and launch “moonshot” technologies that aim to make the world a radically better place.
It is extremely difficult not to look to Google as the best work environment of any tech company in the world, but Astro Teller, X’s CEO, has created a culture at X that is just as quintessential as Google’s.
X’s HQ
Life and Work at X
What I love about X is that they operate sort of like a research lab, except under a two trillion dollar company rather than a non-profit research establishment. There isn’t a single company in the world that celebrates and rewards their employees when projects fail, besides X.
X’s approach to projects can be summarized by this process
Bring together smart people from a number of different disciplines
Search for sci-fi-sounding ideas (it doesn’t matter how feasible they are)
Turn them into something that can make a real-world impact as quickly as possible
Ultimately, X has created a culture that facilitates the name “ The Moonshot Factory”. In their own words, it’s about designing a culture with the values and practices that can resist the pull towards the comfortable and conventional, and make radical, purpose-driven creativity the path of least resistance. This culture that X has created at their company has led to many interested and successful projects.
Projects at X
The self-driving car project
You might have heard of Waymo, a self-driving car company that was actually developed at X and spun off into a google subsidiary of its own. The self-driving car was one of X’s first projects and since then they have developed a number of interesting and creative products.
A Waymo self-driving car
Google Glass
The Google Glass is Google’s most infamous project to date. This product generated huge controversy and was ultimately determined to be a failure. Since then, the glass has managed to find new life in the manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare fields, where people use the glass to receive information and data about something while they work with their hands.
An engineer utilizing Google Glass
Google Brain
The Google Brain is X’s most financially successful product to date. The Google Brain is a deep learning system that is utilized in all aspects of Google’s business today.
Loon
Loon is one of X’s most interesting and creative ventures. The goal of this project is to bring internet access to everyone by creating an internet network of balloons flying through the stratosphere. By using wireless routers in balloons that are above any kind of weather conditions, Loons planned to give internet to those who couldn’t reach it or were in need of help. This project graduated from X in 2018
Project Loon
Dandelion
X’s dandelion project created a solution to help ease the energy crisis of the future. This project utilized geothermal energy, (thermal energy within the earth’s crust) to heat and cool homes. This project was spun out into its own company in 2017 and powers homes in the northeast part of the US today.
A Dandelion airconditioner
Is a moonshot subdivision a good investment?
So is X, the moonshot company, actually Google’s secret weapon? It is hard to find a convincing argument for this if you look at this question from only a financial standpoint. However, I believe that X and other moonshot subdivisions in big tech companies are worthwhile investments for the future.
It is extremely difficult to find markets for the radical and disruptive technologies that X creates. These markets are often very small or non-existent in the present. Disruptive technologies are built for the markets that will exist in the future, but it is difficult to determine when these markets will emerge or if they will emerge at all.
Despite this, innovation has advantages. Especially when markets for these innovations begin to emerge. Companies that develop radical and innovative technologies become the first movers in these markets. As these markets continue to grow, established companies don’t usually tend to invest in these emerging markets due to their small sizes. But as these markets grow, they slowly overtake and replace old and established technologies. By the time it makes sense for companies to invest in these radical technologies, it is too late. A moonshot company is one of the best ways a company can protect itself from these kinds of scenarios.
Going back to X, the company has created many profitable projects that have helped Google’s business tremendously such as the Google Brain and Waymo.
From a societal standpoint, moonshot companies are a force of good for the world that continue to push society forward through innovations that create positive change.
I believe moonshot companies such as X create much-needed value in the world by innovating and tackling big problems without a profit motive. If more companies followed X’s philosophy of creating radical new technologies to solve the world’s toughest problems we would live in a much better place.
