5 things you should know about tech today

Startup founders at CEBIT

Happy Halloween!

If you’re looking to scare investors, apparently an Adam Neumann costume is Silicon Valley’s go to for 2019.

1. A social media watershed moment? 

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952

Twitter’s boss, Jack Dorsey, just errr, trumped Mark Zuckerberg.  More on that here.

2.  North Korean hackers put malware on a PC linked to an Indian nuclear power plant

India Today reports that the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) confirmed the incident at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu in the country’s south, just a day after the site denied it. The infection was discovered in early September on a PC used for administration, with officials saying the “malware attack was isolated from the critical internal network”.

Claims about the infection emerged on social media earlier this week, with some identifying it as DTrack – a virus used by a North Korea-based hacker group Lazarus to attack financial and research centres in India. Others are not convinced. Lazarus, state-sponsored hackers, were behind 2017’s WannaCry ransom worm attacks. More here.

3. Uber’s share price heading to another cliff?

Startup Daily’s a bit of a fan of Prof Scott Galloway, who picked WeWork’s demise (incidentally, Pershing Square Capital founder Bill Ackman thinks the co-working venture’s heading to a zero valuation), recently pulled apart the Afterpay business model and generally goes yeah/nah on tech stocks, thinks Uber’s share price will fall up to 40% next week when the post-float lockup expires on November 6.

The company should probably work more on self-driving stock than cars.

https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1189711995395817473

4. Keep an eye on healthtech startup Medinet.

Startup Daily watched 10 impressive ventures pitches at Cebit Australia yesterday.

Right Click Capital’s Benjamin Chong, Wholesale Investor’s Steve Torso and Microsoft for Startups MD Emily Rich were the judges and picked Medinet, an app-based telehealth venture offering GP consultations 24/7, along with prescription delivery, and a bunch of other online facilities, from pathology results to medical certificates and specialist referrals, take out the top prize, following CEO Tess van der Rijt’s pitch.

Medinet now has more than 600 doctors on its books with plans to roll out nationally.

5. Rokt rocks $70 million

Rokt, the US-based, Sydney-born e-commerce marketing startup founded in 2012 by former Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan, has raised US$48 million (AU$70m) in series C, led by local investment firm TDM Growth Partners. More here.

BONUS ITEM: Killing terrorists – Obama v Trump.

We mashed up @BarackObama’s Bin Laden speech with @RealDonaldTrump’s al-Baghdadi speech, and the results are amazing pic.twitter.com/Z8yfxSYWLd

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) October 29, 2019