I attended Recode’s Code Commerce conference in New York City and as expected from Kara Swisher, Jason Del Rey and the Recode team it was chock full of superstar talks from the world of RetailTech! 🛒

Very highly recommended if you are in the retail space. Get tickets for 2019 if you are into this space at all.

Hearing from Away, Warby Parker, Tuft and Needle, Framebridge, Glossier, Flipkart, Shopify, Square, Stripe and the old school like Macy’s and Crate and Barrel, and and then being able to go out and see their actually physical stores after was part of the experience.

A great 2-days full of talks about new retail, e-commerce, D2C, brand and marketing and social media people to attend. If you want to see all the stuff that went on on stage you can read them all here — my personal standouts were: 

So my key takeaway is that North American startups have one key skill that I haven’t seen in Asia: DESIGN! All the stuff I saw was “Made in China” but marketed by Americans in a way that if you saw it in China you wouldn’t touch it, but through the Instagram lens of an American it made me want to buy a $12 bar of deodorant or a $100 pillow. Very insightful when Scott Galloway and I had this exchange on Twitter.

Also in case you haven’t been to New York City: it truly is the best city ever!

Some things in my browser or on my home screen:

Hustle Fund - if you are a early stage startup, Hustle Fund just opened an office in Singapore and is looking to write you your first US$25K check with a $250K follow-up. Hit reply, with a deck link, for an intro.

Reap.hk - new startup helping you pay your rent and staff using your credit card. Think of all the travel miles you’ll get!

Even Circle K in Hong Kong is talking about innovation or dying!

2 new products I added to my arsenal: super minimalist and also holds my money cards/business cards from Bellroy and this new Timbuk2 design-your-own backpack is perfect for my gear and leaves a small footprint. Don’t let me inside another bag shop or site for the rest of the year please. 😂

I upgraded to both the iPhone XS Max and the Apple Watch 4 and feel like a new man! Great updates and I haven’t run into the myriad of problems the media have pointed out. It was easier to go Max from an X than from an iPhone 6 in terms of adjusting to the size in your hand and to note, the physical dual SIM card trays are only available on the Hong Kong edition and see them selling for more on eBay. 👨🏻‍💻

Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway have launched a new podcast together called Pivot and its a must listen. Not as charming as Lauren Goode but they have some good banter and its only 30 minutes of your time.

Last issue I did a shout out for the Techmeme Ride Home podcast and because of that, I got to meet host Brian McCullough when I was in New York City and well what happened he describes here in this episode (last 30 seconds) he also wrote this book about How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone. Great guy - definitely listen to him every weekday if you don’t already. 🎙

And in other podcast news, how amazing is this: China’s podcast market is $7+ BILLION while the US is only $314 MILLION - the hunger for knowledge outside of social media is at a fever pitch in China.

Because of New York Comic Con you get 3 this time and they all be superhero stuff:

I’m in Hong Kong for all of October and the next travel will be:

Thanks for reading, next issue my trip to Toronto!

Your friend,