Sleep during Covid, Tech IPOs and Sweeny
Three pieces/interview that stood out for me last week:
If you follow this newsletter then you know that I am a big fan of Matt Walker, since I read his book ‘Why We Sleep’. Here is my review of the book. In this podcast he is in a conversation with Peter Attia and they talk about how our sleep has been impacted during Covid-19. To be clear, he is not talking about sleep in patients impacted by Covid. Rather he focuses on how sleep has changed in the general population as a result of the lockdown. Brief summary is that unsurprisingly we are sleeping longer, which also translates into catching more REM sleep than we usually do, as most of us most likely are not waking up early in the morning. The podcast does not focus only on Covid implications but goes beyond it. I always end up learning something new from Walker’s talks, and it helps that he is an eloquent talker. For instance, my biggest takeaway this time was how checking the phone first thing in the morning actually could potentially reduce the quality of late REM sleep, which we get in the early hours. Hypothesis is that the anxiety of checking phone may interfere with this late cycle. My remedy to this: not checking the phone for the first 45 mins of the day. I have done it only for three days and it’s a new habit that I am trying to build, so let’s see how that goes.
This piece in The Economist on how some of the tech firms are readying themselves for IPO makes for a useful read for more reasons than one. Firstly, because after the initial hypothesis that in the current pandemic technology firms will shy away from IPOs, some of the technology players, such as AirBnB and Palantair, are going for it. What that means is that tech shares worth billions would soon be available for trading publicly. Many of these plans were put on hold not only because of the pandemic but also following the debacle of WeWork (that I wrote about here). However, these tech players going public may choose a different route than the current process of going public (which is pricey, and 4-7% of the proceeds are eaten up in the process by the handlers). For instance, some may go for ‘direct listing’, which results in fairer prices for the shares but does not allow to raise new capital and hence is only an option for cash rich players. Another option is using special purpose acquisition company, which works on the principle of reverse engineering. In any case, it’ll be an interesting space to watch out in the coming months.
And finally, guess you may have already come across this battle of a tech and a gaming giant. Epic Games, makers of Fornite, took Apple to the court to end its arguably unfair policy of charging 30% commission on all digital sales through its app store. Epic Games is worth more than $5bn, and is comparatively a tiny player wrt Apple. Sweeny, Epic’s founder is an interesting character with a rather combative style, and this profile in FT makes for a good read to learn more about him.
A quote that I came across last week:
Get the strategy right, then implement small changes, repeated with persistence and generosity
— Seth Godin (full post here)
