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- *Insert Click Bait* 🕶 NFR #11
*Insert Click Bait* 🕶 NFR #11
WARNING DANGER OF LEARNING SOMETHING
Never Fully Read will now be released every Monday at 7am.
Please send this to anyone you think would enjoy reading NFR:
🤖Tech News:
“At-home tech fitness company Peloton on Thursday announced the launch of a private label clothing brand, Peloton Apparel, according to a company press release.
Peloton Apparel will have signature styles that repeat from season to season, but with new colorways and design elements.”
“Australian graphic design business Canva has become one of the world's biggest privately-owned companies after being valued at $40bn (£29bn).
The online design platform said it had grown during the pandemic as more customers worked from home.
It has revealed a fresh $200m round of private equity investment - more than doubling the company's value in five months.”
“Japan is the third largest e-commerce market in the world, and so this is a significant move by PayPal to gain more market share both in the country and the region, specifically in the area of providing deferred payment services as an alternative to credit cards.”
“Psychedelics companies are all the rage right now. Compass Pathways is working with the magic mushroom compound psilocybin to treat depression. It’s has raised $290 million in total. Atai Life Sciences — backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel — brought in $258 million from its IPO. In the tech space, this has not gone unnoticed and the same business models that have been used in other platforms for health and wellness startups are coming to psychedelics.”
“At first blush, the $12 billion Intuit-Mailchimp deal might not make a heck of a lot of sense. But people tend to pigeonhole companies, and in this case they might see Intuit as purely a financial software company and Mailchimp as an email marketing firm and nothing more. If that’s as far as your perspective goes, the deal is confusing. From a wider lens, however, there’s more to both companies than you might think.”
“So what’s a Whatnot? The app captures a trend that had been growing popular on platforms like Instagram in the U.S. (and was already hugely popular in China): live shopping. Verified sellers can go on the air at any time, hosting on-the-fly video auctions for their goods. Sometimes buyers know exactly what they’re getting. Other times it’s more of a mystery bag; with the popular “card break” concept, for example, users buy assigned portions of an unopened (and often itself rare) box of Pokémon or sports cards and watch its contents revealed live.”
“E-commerce these days is now a major part of every retailer’s strategy, so technology builders and platforms that are helping them compete better on digital screens are seeing a huge boost in business. In the latest turn, Commercetools — a provider of e-commerce APIs that larger retailers can use to build customized payment, check-out, social commerce, marketplace and other services — has closed $140 million in funding, a Series C that CEO Dirk Hoerig has confirmed to me values the company at $1.9 billion.”
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📈 Trends Of The Week:
👶 Niche Opportunities in post-partum support:
“The Signal: Online communities for new parents are blowing up. The r/NewParents subreddit has exploded ~200% from 49k subscribers a year ago to 140k today. Related parenting subreddits have seen similarly high growth over the same period:
R/AskParents (+325%): 38k → 162k subscribers
R/Mommit (+111%): 127k → 268k
R/BeyondTheBump (+77%): 137k → 243k
Social networking apps for new parents like Oath Care and Peanut have recently raised $2m and ~$22m, respectively.
Opportunities to help:
Infant nutrition
Sleep training & night nannies
Postpartum depression and anxiety”
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🚡 Opportunities on the Rise in the Elevator Business:
“One path into this industry is via elevator service contracts, which are both expensive and long term.
Rob Wurth, the founder of Lift AI, told us that contracts are typically 3+ years, and Forbes regularly places elevator technicians among the highest-paid blue-collar workers.”
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🗼TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK
“Social media consumers in the UK and US are spending more time on TikTok than YouTube, a new report suggests, and the entertainment industry seems to be paying attenion. Take Addison Rae, a TikTok dancer who stars in the Netflix trending hit "He's All That" or the newly released "D'Amelio Show," on Hulu, based on "TikTok's First Family." Across entertainment genres, TikTok influencers are finding new success.
App monitoring firm App Annie gathered social media data and found that average time per user spent on apps is higher for TikTok and described the app as "upended the streaming and social landscape."“
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🧠 Quotes that make you think:
“You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.” Naval Ravikant
“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” Stephen King
“I now tried a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be.” Michelle Obama
“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price, than a fair company at a wonderful price.” Warren Buffet
“He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because he fears.” Michel De Montaigne
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” -Viktor Frankl, 5 camp holocaust survivor
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” Helen Keller
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⛓ Mental Model Of The Week:
“No yes. Either HELL YEAH! or no.
Use this rule if you’re often over-committed or too scattered.
If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say no.
When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say no.
When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say “HELL YEAH!”
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🎤 Podcasts I listened to:
Four Actionable Takeaways:
Ask your customer how they build business cases instead of just sending over your ROI sheet.
Give an intentionally large range when asked about pricing to gauge where they stand.
Get as many referrals as you can, from as many teammates as you can - “Shark Week”
After the pricing “give”, you should always ask for the budgeting process as a “get”
Naval Ravikant (@naval) is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. He previously co-founded Epinions, which went public as part of Shopping.com, and Vast.com. He is an active angel investor and has invested in more than 100 companies, including more than a few “unicorn” mega-successes. BUT, even if you have zero interest in startups or investing, this episode is well worth your time. This is really about the habits and beliefs of a highly successful (and happy) person. Naval has refined his way of living in very unique ways, and you can borrow what he’s learned, read the books that have changed him, and experiment with the habits he has developed through trial and error.
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📚 Book I'm Reading:
“This is the world of ‘pre-suasion’, where subtle turns of phrase, seemingly insignificant visual cues, and apparently unimportant details of location can prime people to say ‘yes’ even before they are asked. It’s a world where the cautious blurt out personal information if asked a particular initial question, where on-line purchases are influenced by unrelated background images, and where exam results are affected by the layout of the classroom. And as Cialdini reveals, it’s a world you can master. If you understand the tools of pre-suasion, you will better placed to win a debate, get support for an idea or cause, promote a campaign - even persuade yourself to do something you find difficult.”
Up next week is - The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant
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⏰ Timeless Insight:
“Any bad tenant that rents space in your mind can be evicted without a notice period” - Steven Bartlett
Happy Existing