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- NFR 33 - Uber, Live Shopping, Drones & Red Queens
NFR 33 - Uber, Live Shopping, Drones & Red Queens
Uber, Insta, Drones & Red Queens
☕️ Morning Inspiration:
“Is there anything ever under our total control? Yes, two things are: your actions and your attitude. Your”
Mo Gawdat, Former Chief Business Officer for Google X and author of the book Solve for Happy.
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🤖 eCommerce News:
“U.K.-based music platform Uppbeat has been developing a service that makes it easier for content creators to find quality free music to use in their videos published to platforms like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and others. Now with more than 500,000 users on board, the startup is announcing the close of its £4.6 million GBP ($6.15 million USD) Series A funding round to help further grow its business.”
““We’ve built Uber Explore to take our customers beyond the ride,” Adib Roumani, product lead for Uber Explore, told TechCrunch. “People have always come to the Uber app for the point A to point B piece of the journey — so we’re thrilled to expand and help inspire the destination, too. Through a variety of personalized offers and experiences, customers will be able to see trending locations near them and also browse for activities and events in their area.””
“Instagram is introducing auto-generated captions for videos on its app, the company announced on Tuesday. Up until now, creators had to manually add captions to their videos. Instagram says the addition of captions will make Instagram more accessible for users who are in the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. The new feature will also be useful for users who would prefer to watch videos without sound. The launch comes as TikTok rolled out auto captions in April 2021.”
“The 10% revenue growth is the slowest quarterly year-on-year growth rate for the company since its 2014 U.S. listing. Alibaba has been facing macroeconomic headwinds and increased competition in China, which have weighed on the company’s business. Alibaba shares closed 0.7% lower on Thursday.”
“The deal is interesting on two levels. First, it’s a signal of LinkedIn continuing to invest in its marketing and advertising services, an area that is growing at a fast clip for the company. Chief product officer Tomer Cohen noted in the blog post today that marketing services revenues have grown 43% year-over-year. But with some 57 million businesses “building their brands on Pages” and over 24,000 virtual events being created weekly on LinkedIn, there is clearly lot more growth that can be tapped here if those businesses are given more functionality, and tools to realize that.”
“Coming off of a year where monthly active users grew 150% year over year, multicultural e-grocer Weee! secured $425 million in Series E funding toward its goal to be “the primary source for food at home,” Larry Liu, Weee!’s founder and CEO, told me.”
“Crypto exchange FTX is launching a new team focused on driving cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (or NFT) adoption in the gaming world, according to a Bloomberg report.The initial offering from the new gaming unit will reportedly be a “crypto as a service” platform through which game publishers can launch tokens and provide support for in-game NFTs.”
“"Kimberly-Clark invented the 'femcare' category 100 years ago and Thinx invented the 'femtech' category nine years ago," Thinx CEO Maria Molland said in a statement. "It's fitting that we will be working more closely with a like-minded organization to realize our mission and vision, and to enable Thinx underwear to more quickly become a mainstream product for period and bladder leak needs.”
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📈 Trends Of The Week:
“Alphabet’s drone service Wing this morning announced another milestone, as it hit 200,000 commercial deliveries. The number, which the firm says excludes test flights, comes half-a-year after it hit 100,000. Australia, which has been the primary market for testing and commercial deployment, comprises 30,000 of those deliveries in the first two months of this year. The big round number arrives as it announces a commercial partnership with Coles, one of Australia’s leading supermarket chains. The deal finds Wing delivering 250 different items, from food stuffs to healthcare products and toiletries, in Australia’s capital, Canberra.”
“Talkshoplive, the most adoptable streaming, social buying and selling platform for anyone anywhere, announces today its regularly scheduled content with Walmart. This month Walmart launches eight talkshoplive shopping experiences and regular programming scheduled through March. This partnership serves as an example of how the strategic use of social shopping, as a medium for retailers, unlocks a new level of growth for brands and marketers.”
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✍️ Article of the week:
Physical-to-digital: Retailers are pulling back from third-party retailers
Digital-to-physical: DNVBs are opening owned shopping experiences
Changes in advertising: Apple’s privacy update will have lasting effects
CAC continues to rise, content partnerships become more critical for properties
Growth in proximity payments precede eCom adoption in the U.S.
Air freight, container ships, and owned chains
Malls will facilitate eCom returns to drive foot traffic
Web3 and DTC, retail on the blockchain
A few teasers…
Nike will be 70+% direct-to-consumer by 2027
QR codes will emerge as one of the top forms of top of funnel first-party data capture
Apple will be third in the digital advertising space after Facebook and Google by 2027
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❓Quotes that make you think:
“I need ammunition, not a ride” Zelensky.
"The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible battles inside all of us—that's where it's at." Jesse Owens.
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Confucius.
“I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.” G.K. Chesterton.
“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Will Rodgers.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.” Helen Keller
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⛓ Mental Model Of The Week:
“The “Red Queen” effect: do nothing and fall behind, or run hard to stay where you are. Survival in a competitive environment usually requires adaptation and velocity, so doing nothing often means being left behind.”
“Organisations are often in competition with one another, each working hard to gain a competitive edge over the other. They keep improving their coffers in a bid to gain the advantage over their rivals so they aren’t overtaken or left behind.
This competitive spiral is called the Red Queen Effect. The Red Queen can be seen as a contest in which each firm’s performance depends on the firm’s matching or exceeding the actions of rivals. Each firm is forced by the others in an industry to participate in continuous and escalating actions and development such that all the firms end up racing as fast as they can just to stand still relative to competitors. Rival firms are trapped, therefore, in a spiral of increasingly rapid responses.”
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📚 Book I’m Still 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".”
