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- NFR 32 -Amazon, Jay-Z, Robotics & Mental Health
NFR 32 -Amazon, Jay-Z, Robotics & Mental Health
Amazon, Jay-Z, Robotics & Mental Health
☕️ Morning Inspiration:
"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
Robert Louis Stevenson
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🤖 eCommerce News:
“Amazon is one of the most ravenous warehouse buyers on Earth. The e-commerce giant has been on a warehouse buying spree during the pandemic, alongside a few private equity firms like Blackstone. Over the past two years, the company has more than doubled its warehouse holdings from 192 million square feet at the end of 2019 to more than 410 million square feet today.”
“Quick pop quiz: Is it better to recycle your cardboard boxes, or use a sturdier packaging bag that can be used again and again until it meets its maker again? Returnity‘s bet is the latter, and the company just raised $3.1 million from Brand Foundry Ventures, with additional investments from XRC Labs and others, to continue the work the company has been doing with Estée Lauder, New Balance, Rent the Runway, Walmart and others — and to further expand its operations.”
“Imagine staying at an Airbnb and becoming so attached to a particular chair or tea set that you want to buy it. Instead of asking the property owner where it’s from and tracking it down, Minoan Experience lets you order the product by scanning a QR code. Then it’s delivered to your home in a few days. The “native retail” startup announced today that it has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Accel.”
“Sustainability-focused lifestyle brand Allbirds plans to double the lifetime of its footwear products with the launch of a shoe resale program in partnership with recommerce platform Trove. The program, called Allbirds ReRun, will launch initially at three Allbirds stores in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, eventually expanding to other U.S. retail locations. Customers can bring in their preloved Allbirds shoes for $20 in store credit. The used shoes will then be resold online on the ReRun platform at reduced price points, starting at $59.”
“Alloy applies its automation technology — a method of linking apps together to allow companies to create automated workflows — to the e-commerce market, its focus on the sector stemming from early customer demand. Today, the startup pitches itself as a control panel — or operating system for e-commerce coordination — across applications.”
“Minded, a psychiatry-focused telehealth company specializing in managing mental health medication for consumers, has raised $25 million in seed funding. Launched in 2021 in New York, Minded provides consumers with access to online psychiatry. Minded is currently available in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Illinois and California. The company says the new funding will be used to expand nationwide and introduce innovative psychiatric offerings.”
“The global chat commerce’s total addressable market is worth an estimated $80 billion and is seen as the third big wave of digital commerce after e-commerce and app commerce markets. As the largest digital platform in the world, with more users than the internet’s 4.7 billion users, it only makes sense for businesses to communicate and transact with consumers through chat channels.”
“Today, that pilot involves just one Walmart store located on Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community lands near Scottsdale. The autonomous vehicles all have human safety operators behind the wheel. The company plans to expand to as many as eight Walmart stores in 2022, Carter Stern, Cruise’s senior government affairs manager, said during an Arizona Senate Transportation Committee meeting held earlier this month.”
“Throwback sports jerseys have been a staple in Hip Hop for some time now, with Philadelphia-based company Mitchell & Ness suiting up rappers and fans alike with the illest vintage jerseys. Now, they’re getting a major boost to their brand. On Friday (February 18), Philadelphia 76ers owner Michael Rubin’s Fanatics company purchased Mitchell & Ness along with JAY-Z, Meek Mill, Lil Baby and others for an estimated $250 million, according to Complex.”
“Online language learning continues to be a huge opportunity for startups, with the most engaging experiences meeting a surge of interest from consumers looking for more productivity out of the hours that they spend on their smartphones. In one of the more recent developments, a language learning app called EWA — which has built a media-based approach to language acquisition, with excerpts from films and TV, and books, to familiarize learners with vocabulary and speaking — has passed 51 million downloads and picked up 3.5 million monthly active users, and now it has raised $2.7 million in its first outside funding.”
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📈 Trends Of The Week:
“Those Super Bowl ad spots paid off for a number of tech companies not just in terms of exposure, but also app installs, a new report indicates. But Coinbase’s viral ad — which just bounced a QR code around on a black screen like the old DVD screensaver — outperformed the group, with installs jumping 309% week-over-week after the ad’s airing Super Bowl Sunday, February 13, and it continued to climb by another 286% the following day.”
“The American Gaming Association, the gambling industry’s national trade group, released year-end figures showing that in-person gambling continues to be the main source of revenue for the gambling industry, even as internet and sports betting continue to grow in the U.S. The $53 billion won by casinos is more than 21% higher than the previous best year, which came in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit.”
Factories and Farming Go Micro
Source: Sea Intelligence
“The Signal: An August 2020 survey of global analysts found that ~75% of companies intend to accelerate plans to bring factories closer to customers.
Agriculture is moving closer, too, with urban vertical farms that shorten the farm-to-table journey and massively lower the risk of your strawberries getting held up in a canal.”
The Global Supply Chain Pressure Index indicates shocks to global trade where zero represents the average value. Source: Liberty Street Economics
Micro Factories & Robotics
The industrial robotics market was valued at $24B in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14% to be worth $52B by 2026. Source: Mordor Intelligence
Home Theaters Hit the Big Time
Source: Subreddit Stats
“The r/HomeTheater subreddit has ballooned to 600k+ subscribers since it took off in August 2020. Interest is climbing on Amazon, too, where “home theater system” gets 40k+ searches every month, according to Jungle Scout.
You could join the sellers on Amazon making bank on related products such as:
Home theater seating: This seller is making ~$720k/mo., per Jungle Scout
Skylight projectors for ambience: ~$650k/mo.
TV box with flange for home theater installation: ~$530k/mo.
Blackout curtains: ~$390k/mo.”
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🛍 My Marketing Highlight:
Logan + Prime + WWE
“Say what you like about Logan Paul, he understands the power of influencer marketing 👏Yesterday, he made an appearance on WWE... walking out with a bottle of his and KSI's new venture, PRIME. And the stunt didn't go unnoticed:👀 1.3M+ people watched the stunt live🔎 740 “Prime Logan Paul” searches PER HOUR💥 “Logan Paul” trending on TwitterProduct + Influencer = Success”
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❓Quotes that make you think:
“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” Robin Williams .
“You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.” Robin Williams .
“You must strive to find your own voice because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.” Robin Williams .
“Language can become a screen which stands between the thinker and reality. This is the reason why true creativity often starts where language ends.” Arthur Koestler.
“People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.” Chuck Palahniuk.
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Herbert Simon.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman
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⛓ Mental Model Of The Week:
“The Theory of Constraints is a methodology for identifying the most important limiting factor (i.e., constraint) that stands in the way of achieving a goal and then systematically improving that constraint until it is no longer the limiting factor. In manufacturing, the constraint is often referred to as a bottleneck.”
“The Five Focusing Steps: The Theory of Constraints provides a specific methodology for identifying and eliminating constraints, referred to as the Five Focusing Steps. As shown in the following diagram, it is a cyclical process.”
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📚 Book I’m Reading
“In the mid-70s, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away".”
