What shaped the Young Rich list? 3G out. Tesla & WiseTech roller coaster.

Welcome to Fox Bites. Short, bite-sized bits of news from the business, startup and finance worlds that catch my eye, along with some commentary from me occasionally. I hope you find it interesting. Please share it if you do.

— Marty Andrews

🏢 Business bites

The 3G networks will be switched off on October 28. I predict outrage from some small businesses caught unprepared.

Tesla put out an earnings report that beat expectations this week, along with a confident sales forecast. The combination pushed the share price up over 22% to almost exactly equivalent to its peak of the last 12 months. The stock I bought in December last year is now 5% above what I bought it at. A bit worse than the overall market. Meh.

WiseTech, one of the rockets on the ASX this year, took a 15% dive in it’s share price on Monday due to a brewing scandal around its founder & CEO. Then he quit on Thursday and the price rocketed all the way back up again before settling just slightly lower. The underlying business is the same, but the market is fickle in the short term.

🚀 Startup bites

DermR Health won the SXSW pitch competition this year, with a goal to prevent needless skin biopsies using modern microneedle tech and genomics instead. Cheaper and less painful.

The Startmate Summer’25 Accelerator is open for applications. If you’ve got a startup you’re working on, get involved! As a Fist Believer alumni, I get to assess some of the applications coming in. It’s a great program.

SunCable got conditional approval by the Singapore government on its plan to bring green energy to Singapore this week. This is a big positive bit of news for Mike Cannon-Brookes since he took control after a war with Andrew Forrest in May this year.

BuildPass caught my eye this week when it completed a $7.5m seed round fundraise. Australian startups have had success in both construction and safety, so combining those with AI seem like a natural target.

Savic Motorcycles, a Melbourne-based EV manufacturing business making electric motorcycles, looks to raise $12m in a Series A that will help deliver the beautiful looking C-Series bike to the market. I’m no motorbike rider, but I love this space. Hope they do well.

💰 Money bites

The AFR Young Rich List for 2024 is out. What’s the big trend? Technology and retail cover over half of the list. Sports people are the third biggest group on the list, covering 15 entries. Everything else pales in comparison to those three. Mining accounts for only one person.

🎧 Watch & listen

I’ve historically found Mark Zuckerberg pretty uninspiring, despite his having created such an enormous business. His interview with the Acquired (possibly my favourite podcast) was different though. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him speak with such long-term vision and clarity. Excellent stuff.