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- Never Fully Read #21 - eCom weekly
Never Fully Read #21 - eCom weekly
You Tube, eBay, China, David Goggins, Will Smith & more
☕️ Morning Inspiration:
“Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.”
→ David Goggins
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🤖 eCommerce News:
“Deliverr, which provides fulfillment services to e-commerce merchants on marketplace platforms, like Shopify, Walmart, Amazon, eBay and Target, uses predictive analytics to anticipate demand for products based on variables, including demographics and geography, and then preposition items close to demand.
The global e-commerce fulfillment services market is expected to be valued at $86.4 billion by the end of the year and is poised to nearly double to $168.7 billion by 2028”
“YouTube’s famed content creators, the ‘Sidemen’, announce the launch of their most exciting project to date. Sides, the collective’s new, virtual fried chicken concept, will launch in the UK and UAE on 28th November in exclusive partnership with REEF – the world’s largest operator of virtual restaurants and delivery kitchens.”
“It is data that is going to improve predictions to personalise inventory and reduce waste while also helping with supply chain management. The goal is to create website data visibility that would benefit all of the other merchants other than Amazon.
Personalisation of the internet is a critical frontier for e-commerce retailers, and in a world of growing online shopping options and diminishing consumer attention spans, delivering an experience that meets individual consumers’ needs is absolutely critical.”
“Online marketplace eBay is further investing in its sneaker business with today’s news that it’s acquiring Sneaker Con Digital’s authentication business, which verifies the authenticity of high-value footwear. The business has operations in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and Germany, and had been previously working with eBay to vet the sneakers being bought and sold on its platform.”
“Klaviyo, a leading customer data and marketing automation platform, today announced a partnership with leading virtual behavioural healthcare company Talkspace. The initiative, aimed to support entrepreneurs during the busiest time of their year, enables Klaviyo customers to access flexible online, unlimited digital therapy via text, video, and audio.”
“For London-based Dent Reality, one opportunity is in creating specific small-scale experiences that showcase the powers of the technology — and a hyper localised mapping — starting in venues like grocery stores. In the case of a grocery store, the team’s augmented reality platform can provides shoppers with a small-scale layout of the store’s aisles, while integrating with the store’s database to provide shelf-specific data on where to find particular items. AR capabilities allow users to hold their phone up to chart a path to the object of their desire.”
“The startup, which was formally launched last month, is expanding in the U.A.E cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai by setting up an additional 100 dark stores to offer 15-minute delivery services. Dark stores are order fulfilment centers for online retail outlets. These stores are inaccessible to customers but serve the important role of rapid order fulfilment. YallaMarket has two dark stores that are currently operational with plans to open two more in the next two weeks.”
“Fancy Plant Meat” is its pithier pitch for a product that aims to provide a vegan alternative to eating a filet mignon steak or other “prime” cuts of (animal) flesh. The Ljubljana-based startup is announcing a $4.5 million seed raise to get its first hunk of prime plant protein to market — starting with the aforementioned (vegan) filet mignon, which is slated for a Q1 2022 launch.”
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📈 Trends Of The Week:
“No country makes more solar panel cells than China. More than two-thirds of solar panel cells come from China, compared to 1% from the U.S.”
Fractional Ownership and the Tao of DAOs
“Signal: The number of active DAOs has increased by ~132% since September last year, and their combined assets under management have ballooned from $290m to $14B+ today.”
Source: Cointelegraph and DeepDAO
“DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) organisations governed by computer-encoded rules and controlled by members, rather than a central government -- have evolved out of blockchain technology, and are quickly growing.
A group of crypto investors recently established a DAO to crowdfund enough money to buy one of the last surviving 1st-edition copies of the US Constitution, which went on auction last week.
While the DAO lost the auction, it raised $40m+ from 17k contributors in less than a week.”
⏫ The Big Picture: Startups that facilitate fractionalized ownership of assets are receiving record funding.
Particularly in real estate where companies like Pacaso, which offers “a modern way to own a second home” through co-ownership, recently raised $75m at a $1B valuation.”
🚨 Opportunities:
Real Estate e.g. Timeshares
Transportation e.g. Net Jets
Other collectibles and the culture economy
“Companies like Masterworks and Otis are already enabling consumers to buy shares in fine art and other unique collectibles like comics, baseball cards, and sneakers.”
Adjacent opportunities:
Lease to own model
Insurance
Employee incentives
Psychedelics for Weight Loss
“The ~$54B+ global mushroom market, which is poised to grow as more and more research reveals the clinical benefits of psilocybin in treating anxiety, addiction, and other mental health issues. But what about weight loss?”
“NeonMind, is studying the use of psychedelics for mitigating obesity.
An estimated ~2.8m people die each year from obesity-related illness, and 2016 data showed 1.9B adults worldwide were clinically obese, costing global health care systems 100s of billions of dollars.
Psilocybin (the key compound found in magic mushrooms) activates serotonin receptors that can curb cravings and suppress appetite.
It’s still extremely early, but given the size of the weight loss industry (~$192B in 2019) and the explosion of funding in the psychedelic space, there may be room.”
Source: NeonMind’s Pitch Deck
Some quick fire Amazon FBA opportunities:
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🛍 My marketing highlight:
“Sports label Gymshark launched a fake birthday campaign to garner shoppers' attention ahead of Black Friday, compiling video recordings of eight celebrities, including Carol Baskin of Netflix's Tiger King and Harry Potter's Tom Felton, wishing the imaginary "Jim Shark" a happy birthday”
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❓Quotes that make you think:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Kurt Vonnegut
“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?” Friedrich Nietzsche
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward .”Søren Kierkegaard
“Liberty consists in doing what one desires.”John Stuart Mill
“Sometimes people are put on this earth to show you what is possible” Salehe Bembury
“What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.” Carl Jung
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⛓ Mental Model Of The Week:
Type 1 & 2 Decisions Jeff Bezos
Make fast, frequent decisions but pause for one-way doors
“Jeff Bezos provides the best explanation of the best model for decision making (as judged by Bezos’s success) in a shareholders letter:
“Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions.
But most decisions aren’t like that — they are changeable, reversible — they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a sub-optimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.”
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📚 Book I'm Reading:
One of my favourite books of all time so far 👏
'The best memoir I ever read' Oprah Winfrey