The annual summary of the Technode content team is coming strongly, and the soul is nine questions and nine answers, every week.
2. Update on time on Thursday!Text: Author of Movepoint Technology: Li Penghui, Typesetting: Guo Jinwen: This article is expected to take 8 minutes to read.
First, a little preface. I'm going to focus on the technology trends in Southeast Asia, so some of the companies or developments mentioned in the following content may be unfamiliar to some readers who don't pay attention to this direction. But then again, despite my limited personal perspective, looking back on the past year, there are still many things that have happened outside of Southeast Asia that have left a deep impression on me, and even influenced some of my perception of the region. And these things may happen domestically, or they may be some international hot spots that we are familiar with. So in other words, or to put it simply, in my opinion, Southeast Asia is not just me and the region 2023 is all about.
What is the company that shocked you the most this year?
OpenAI, there is no one. Whether from the perspective of a netizen or a content worker, the generative AI boom triggered by ChatGPT in a year has appeared too frequently in my daily life, and I have gradually accepted and begun to actively use such tools to help me improve my work efficiency (first note, there are currently only 2 pieces of content generated through AIGC, and they are all marked). In the future, I am very much looking forward to more surprises from this kind of technology.
What surprised you the most was the company?
Vinfast (Vietnam new energy vehicle company). The surprise point is that it actually handed over the car. Here is also a little more mention of the previous events of this company. In the second half of '22 (the company was founded in '17 and didn't announce its transition from gasoline vehicles to electric vehicles until '21), I would often see news or related developments about its upcoming delivery (first orders) by Christmas of that year. But after delay, its deliveries continued unfollowed until the beginning of '23, when the first 45 cars began to be delivered in March – not much, but they were delivered, and more were delivered.
Before that, I had always had doubts about it, after all, I had seen enough news about the car, and it was difficult for this young car company to believe whether it could actually be handed over. You must know that its price is aimed at Tesla, and the primary target market is also North America. Coupled with the fact that the industry has always had the title of "Tesla Vietnam", it is hard not to feel that the successive dynamics before Vinfast's delivery resembles the script of the "return to China next week" when these halos and repeated delays are added. But Vinfast finally handed it over, and that's another story.
Which industry insiders entrepreneur entrepreneur
What impressed you the most this year?
sam altman。Nothing else, before this year's ChatGPT and OpenAI palace fighting craze, because I would pay a little attention to tokusatsu dramas, "Ultraman" will refer to Tsuburaya's Ultraman series of tokusatsu dramas. But then, Altman's various Chinese translations - Ultraman, Altman, Altman, and Altman, every time I see this name appear in some news headlines, I have some ...... that I am not calmLet's hope he can have an exact Chinese translation, right?
What impressed you the most about the overseas event?
TikTok's Indonesian e-commerce business turmoil (you may refer to me for the specific experience.)this oneArticle?）。The profound point is that as a company, TikTok can clearly influence beyond what we know about a regular company. But on the other hand, from the perspective of enterprises going overseas or developing in foreign countries as an overseas company, compared with the previous simple bringing products and services to overseas markets, there are some things that have undergone profound changes.
What I'm saying here may be too abstract. However, in my opinion, if a startup company continues to fade from this title and gradually becomes an existence that can be concerned by the industry and even affect the development of the industry, sometimes, some of the things it presents and carries will gradually go beyond the existing outside observation angle, making some observers seem much smaller. At this point, it becomes more complicated to interpret these things purely from the perspective of right or wrong, good or bad. From a content practitioner's point of view, this makes me feel an invisible pressure ("stress" would be a neutral word here).
If you want to recommend one thing to everyone
This year's heavyweight industry trends, what will you choose?
Cross-border payment interconnection between Southeast Asian countries, Southeast Asia and other regions (including China, especially payment platforms represented by UnionPay). More specifically, this movement is made up of a series of specific events over the course of 23 years (here is a brief explanation of the main scenarios for this connectivity: cross-border payments and cross-border remittances).
Before the pandemic, there were a large number of people traveling and traveling between Southeast Asian countries every year. And as the impact of the epidemic gradually faded, these trends began to recover again. If from this point of view, this convenience in payment will further promote the transaction activities in these cross-border behaviors, after all, almost every Southeast Asian country will have its own *** payment platform, if an account and a mobile phone can be scanned, I believe that more people will initiate this kind of transaction behavior (cross-border remittance will mainly target overseas workers in Southeast Asia, so there is no need to repeat it here).
However, continuing to look at it from my own perspective, what I recommend you to focus on is the impact of this more integrated process. When we mention Southeast Asia, it is not difficult to find that this region is also composed of many countries, and their development trajectories and development processes have their own characteristics. In the face of 70% of underbanking in Southeast Asia, this more borderless cross-border payment will undoubtedly promote the improvement and development of the financial sector in the region. At this time, when people participate in this kind of activity, they should also think more of this scattered and fragmented area as a relative whole, right?
What are the buzzwords you've been exposed to the most this year?
Financing winter. Intuitively, enthusiastic readers may find that I've written a lot less fundraising coverage in the past year than I have in the previous two years (my hands are less tired).
Which word and which sentence best sums it up
What are your thoughts on the areas you are focusing on this year?
"Return to a reasonable range" is aimed at the field of technology venture capital in Southeast Asia.
That's the phrase I've heard the most from Southeast Asia-focused investors over the past year. The big background is the record-breaking boom experienced by the Southeast Asian venture capital community in the first half of '21 and '22. The other half of the comparison is the "financing winter" that Southeast Asia is currently experiencing that I mentioned in my previous question – and this has been the case since the second half of '22. I don't think that's a patchwork. Despite this being an "underrated region", the performance of previous years does not look like a long-term one. And in Southeast Asia", ".The Digital DecadeIt was only about a third of the way through.
What are you most looking forward to next year in the enterprise technology industry?
Electric vehicles EV industry (including two-wheeled and four-wheeled).
On the one hand, it comes from Southeast Asia's ambition to become a regional center for electric vehicles. On the other hand, this region is also carrying a boom in the export of EVs (manufacturing plants and automobile exports) in Japan. So next year should be a more two-way year.
Do you think AI can threaten humanity itself?