If you’re a recent subscriber to The Independent Investor’s newsletter, you may have missed some of our past stories in the social media deluge that comes every election year. As other newsrooms do the essential work of documenting these historic proceedings, our role as a publication is to focus on a sector that often gets drowned out in the mainstream. By highlighting the hidden faces, firms, and forces of the early-stage business sector, we help ensure these important stories aren’t lost to the feeds.
Part of that coverage are our stories on the trends shaping and re-shaping global industries. Firms like Tesla have quickly become the de facto leaders of autonomous vehicles, a global market expected to pull in roughly $37 billion in investments next year. But, as it turns out, Filipino freelancers are actually the ones behind the wheel. In an almost inverse trend, copywriting, a human-driven creative industry popular among freelance entrepreneurs, is very quickly being transformed by the introduction of increasingly eloquent artificial intelligence writers.
As a rule, we aren’t necessarily in the business of breaking news. We opt instead to take a longer view with the entrepreneurs we feature, building out our stories with more meaningful context. But every now and then we manage to do both—as was the case with our coverage of AcadArena’s impressive $3.5 million seed round. Founded in 2019, the campus gaming startup quietly amassed a community of well over 150,000 gamers. Beyond the fundraise and shiny backers, however, our story lays out their road ahead, and how the founders see cryptocurrencies fundamentally transforming the way we engage as communities.
Similarly, DyipPay has been making waves with their own transformative technology, an app-based service digitizing public transportation. We featured them just as they were launching their pilot program, onboarding 25,000 jeepney drivers to their system. While super-app services like Grab and Angkas continue to be the top-of-mind disruptors in transportation, it may just be niche players like DyipPay that stand to service the daily commutes of most Filipinos.
Finally, we kicked off 2022 still reeling from the devastation of Typhoon Odette. As soon as the storm made landfall, images of flooded towns, collapsed bridges, and displaced people began circulating online (early estimates placed direct damages from the storm at well over P350 million, not to mention loss of life). But where did these images come from? The answer, as has been the case in nearly every disaster over the past eight years, is very likely the Bike Scouts. Founded in 2013, Bike Scouts is a non-profit social network bridging a nationwide community of cycling clubs to serve as boots-on-the-ground for disaster relief efforts. Our feature is a deep dive into their story, and a great example of the type of fascinating hidden gems we aim to highlight as a newsroom.
Whether celebratory or critical (depending on which side of the algorithm you sit), it seems the prevailing mood this year is one of anticipation. The nation and the world-at-large are waiting to see what’s next for this upcoming administration. The Philippines’ early-stage entrepreneurs stand at a similar crossroads, with global forces and economic conditions making this a make-or-break year for our innovators. What’s next is anyone’s guess. But rest assured, we’ll be at the frontlines documenting it.
This article is a sample of the exclusive takes we send out through our newsletter every week. If you don’t want to miss any of our exemplary stories, you can subscribe to the newsletter here. It takes less than 30 seconds (and it’s free!).