We’re down to the last quarter of the year. I usher in October under a thick blanket of smoke, a hazy gift from Indonesia.
Air quality around Kuala Lumpur has breached 200. Even the more shielded places, like Ipoh, are turning orange and red.
Are we really that helpless? I don’t think so. But I’ll leave that bitter discussion for another day.
Part of today’s round-up is just me being grateful to everyone who has plugged in and renewed their subscriptions.
Yes, even the fiendish ones who circulate my newsletter across WhatsApp groups and whatnot.
Entrepreneurial life, especially of the bootstrap kind, means there’s no such thing as certainty.
Even when things look to have levelled off, something, somewhere will break, and I’m back at plugging the leak.
But steering my own ship means living with the uncomfortable, or at least making peace with it.
There are always episodes in life where you take a chance without knowing how it will turn out.
It’s just that in some arenas, such as entrepreneurship and sports, the stakes are amplified.
And with the sorry state of the media, where almost everyone is a sellsword, I’m glad to host an independent space.
I’ll never get to drive a Porsche. But that’s okay.
Always thankful for the present, and looking to close the year on a slightly better note.
And, as always, here are September’s best-ofs.
These are articles that drew around 3,000 views and converted at least 10 paid subscribers (monthly/annual/founding) each:
Tracing public money in 500. EPF, Khazanah, KWAP and Mavcap all put money into the US venture firm 500. This traces how much of it actually came back.
Is Tony Fernandes short on runway? Under the hood of AirAsia’s finances, as the government weighs a contingency plan for the budget carrier.
The testing of TS Wong. A rumour quickly led to margin calls. Inside the squeeze on the MyEG/Zetrix founder.
AirAsia’s chief showman says all’s fine. Really? Tony Fernandes insists there’s no crisis and no government help. The numbers, and the history, say otherwise.
What did this Khazanah venture bet buy? A decade on, a fund backed by Mavcap returned less than 1x on investment, resting almost entirely on one unlisted company.
In Anwar’s Malaysia, biometrics are big business. From MyKad to migrant workers, how identity became one of Corporate Malaysia’s hottest concessions.