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- NFR 28 - Drunk Texts, Microchips & Food Delivery
NFR 28 - Drunk Texts, Microchips & Food Delivery
Drunk Texts, Microchips & Food Delivery
☕️ Morning Inspiration:
“I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.”
Larry King
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🤖 eCommerce News:
“TikTok is building a number of new features, including Bitmoji-like avatars, keyword filtering for the For You Page, group chats, audio-only livestreams, screen sharing on livestreams and Twitch-like subscription features, which would allow creators to make subscriber-only emotes and subscriber-only comment sections. These potential features-in-progress were spotted by social media analyst Matt Navarra.”
“Alongside the dramatic growth in e-commerce, in part fueled by the pandemic, there’s also increased demand for services that can help merchants more easily participate online. A startup called Soona, now backed by an additional $35 million in Series B funding, has been tapping into this market with its platform that allows brands to create content for their e-commerce websites and marketing through “virtual” photo and video shoots. That is, instead of having merchants ship off their items for a remote photo shoot, then wait for the results, Soona’s technology allows the brands to participate in the photo shoot process, both remotely and in real time.”
“Mark Cuban’s announcement over the weekend of an online pharmacy selling over a hundred generic drugs at near cost was totally unexpected but will likely be welcomed by millions who struggle to afford medication. The billionaire told TechCrunch that the business model is refreshingly simple: “Lower pricing reduces patient stress, and that will lead to more customers.””
“As we have started to see the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, food delivery has shaped up to continue to be a major business. In England, for example, some 76% of people order at least one takeaway a week, whereas it was 60% pre-pandemic. Now, a startup called Deliverect that has built a platform to integrate the many moving parts that go into ordering and delivery for the average restaurant is announcing a big round of funding to pursue the opportunity.”
“Our goal is to make Swiggy the platform that 100 million consumers can use 15 times a month. We will continue to invest in our people, products, and partners to create a positive impact on the ecosystem and accelerate the digital transformation in food and grocery delivery and other on-demand services,” Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and chief executive of Swiggy
“Athletic Greens, which created AG1, a powdered beverage designed to provide daily nutrition, raised $115 million in new funding that boosts its pre-money valuation to $1.2 billion. The New York-based company got its start in 2010 by founder and CEO Chris Ashenden and is the result of his journey to find out why he continued to feel bad.”
“Once installed, users take the system through a standard mowing path once to train it. From there, the system relies on a variety of on-board sensors, including lidar, cameras and GPS, to navigate and avoid collisions. Dexter is now available to landscapers through a RaaS (robotics as a system) model — effectively letting them rent it, rather than paying for it outright.”
“We live in what’s called the SQL lakehouse world,” explained Dremio CEO Billy Bosworth, who joined the company almost exactly two years ago, after eight years as DataStax’s CEO. “What we do is provide technology that allows end-users to access their data in their data lakes directly via SQL — and they can do this in a way that delivers mission-critical BI. What that means is [we’re] giving you the performance that you need to run things like mission-critical dashboards that have sub-second response time capabilities.”
“Taing founded Bokksu in 2015 and launched a Japanese snack subscription service in 2016. After delivering over one million subscription boxes of Japanese snacks to customers in more than 100 countries, Bokksu launched a digital marketplace for premium Japanese lifestyle products, Bokksu Market, in 2018. It also opened an online grocery store, Bokksu Grocery, in 2021, making it easier for everyone to discover and buy authentic Asian food products. “
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📈 Trends Of The Week:
The Big Business of Breakups
Source: Subreddit Stats
“The Signal:Breaking up is big business. People spending big bucks to mend the shattered pieces of their broken hearts — the average person spends ~$1.5k after a breakup.
Expenses include new clothes, nights out, weekends away, comfort food, beauty treatments, moving out, and even learning to drive.”
“Before you shoot the messenger, we’re not advocating that you profit off the misfortunes of the heartbroken. But there are opportunities to help plenty of newly single lovers — including angsty teens on TikTok, who have viewed videos with the #breakup hashtag an eye-watering ~17B times — who are increasingly searching for solutions online.”
Marketing collaborations and sponsorships
“You don’t have to have a breakup product or service to get in on the trend.
Follow in the footsteps of companies like Babe Wine, which collaborated with Bumble in 2020 to provide Instagrammers the chance to have their breakup costs (up to $700 for furniture removal and Babe wine) covered by the companies.”
Other ideas for services include:
Post-breakup counseling and financial planning
Co-living spaces for people who need temporary living arrangements on short notice
Legal documents (e.g., cohabitation agreements) for unmarried cohabitating partners seeking legal protection in the event of a breakup
Breakup insurance
Online emotional support platforms (like Circles, which recently raised $8m)
Chip Manufacturers Face a Hiring Crunch
“According to the Wall Street Journal, the US needs to add 70k-90k skilled semiconductor workers over the next 3 years just to keep up with existing demand. That figure could rise to 300k+ as the country attempts to wean itself off foreign-made chips.” Source
“The picture is the same elsewhere:
The stakes are high, with microchips playing an increasingly important role in everything from health care to (various countries’) national defense.
This points to 2 clear opportunities:
Recruiting
Training”
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🛍 My Marketing Highlight:
Musician Stacey Ryan uses Tik Tok to create viral hit song that generates millions of streams in opening week…
Tik Tok continues to amaze me each week with its creativity.
Timeline of events:
Stacey Ryan releases song “Don’t Text Me When You’re Drunk” on a Tik Tok Post
User @_Im_yaboy comments on this post
“I would love to write a verse for this” shown in the photo below
Stacey then uses Tik Tok’s duet feature to open up the opportunity for the community on Tik Tok to write a verse for her song. Creating a…
Definition: Duets allow you to build on another user's video on TikTok by recording your own video alongside the original as it plays…Over 34.2k duets were created
The original post has over 11m views
& the winning entry has with user @Zai1k has 19.9 Million
The result?
Don’t Text Me When You’re Drunk has had 2.2 Million streams in just over week
(Stacey Ryan, Za1k)
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❓Quotes that make you think:
“It is my belief that the next 1,000 unicorns—companies that have a market valuation over a billion dollars—won’t be a search engine, won’t be a media company, they’ll be businesses developing green hydrogen, green agriculture, green steel, and green cement.”— Larry Fink, CEO and chairman of BlackRock. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with ~$9.46 trillion USD in assets under management.
“Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”- E. O. Wilson
“MDMA is the reason my son has a father instead of a folded flag.”— US Army SGT (R) Jon Lubecky (@jonlubecky)
“Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.”- Salvador Dalí
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⛓ Mental Model Of The Week:
Availability Heuristic:
“The availability heuristic describes our tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future.”
“The availability heuristic can lead to bad decision-making because memories that are easily recalled are frequently insufficient for figuring out how likely things are to happen again in the future. Ultimately, this leaves the decision-maker with low-quality information to form the basis of their decision.”
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📚 Book I'm Reading:
