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#NFR 62 - Record Millionaires, Bored Apes & A $100 Million HQ

Record Millionaires, Bored Apes & A $100 Million HQ

September 28, 2022

Never Fully Read

Joining 1,000 readers from companies such as Klaviyo, Shopify, Recharge, Amazon, HubSpot, BrewDog, IBM and Canva.

Never Fully Read is the 5-minute marketing newsletter providing you latest events across eCommerce, NFTs, culture & more every Wednesday morning.

Newsletter In a flash:

I’m Jon from Fate v Future. This email is one of the most valuable messages you’ll get all week. Complement it with my 5 min. secret weapon.

It keeps readers totally up to date on business, culture, marketing, media, luxury, fashion, travel, tech, cars, and more.

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🤖 eCommerce news:

“Instagram is currently a mess and users — including Kim Kardashian — are unhappy about it. The company is trying to cram too many features like Reels, Remixes, an algorithmic feed and NFTs into the app. Ansh Nanda and Hardik Patil got so frustrated that they decided to make an app called The OG App that gives users an ad-free and suggestion-free Instagram feed.”

“YouTube Shorts continues to compete with TikTok by adding loads of new features that are popular on the other app. Today, the Google-owned platform is rolling out a narration voiceover feature on iOS, a tool that is already often used on TikTok. Creators use narration to add commentary on top of already-recorded videos. Such content might include cooking tutorials with instructional voiceovers, live reactions to funny videos, or narrative accompaniment to “day in the life” or “my morning routine”-style videos.”

“Meta is making it harder to find the Shop tab on Instagram with its latest test. In the new test, the Shop tab has been removed from the app’s Home Screen and is instead hidden underneath Settings. The Shop tab used to be on the bottom navigation bar. Some users first reported the change on Twitter, noting that the Notifications tab replaced the Shop tab. However, TechCrunch found that the Messages tab had taken its place instead, indicating there may be multiple tests underway.”

“Danielle Cohen-Shohet developed a tech platform to help spa, studio and salon industry owners manage their operations. She had seen firsthand the challenges of running a small business as a freelance makeup artist, one of her jobs while she was a student at Princeton. So she taught herself how to code, launched in 2016, raised $2.8 million in pre-seed funding from Techstars and angel investors, and bootstrapped her company, GlossGenius, for five years before closing a $16.4 million round last November.”

“Sexual wellness brand Cake this week is expanding its product placement in some major retailers, including new space in CVS stores, as it announces $8 million in new Series A funding. We last profiled Cake in April when its line of lubricants, condoms, toys and sexual hygiene products made its debut in Target and took in $2.5 million in bridge financing. The company now has five products in store locations as well as Amazon, Thrive Marketplace and UrbanOutfitters.com.”

“AmazeVR, a Los Angeles-based virtual concert platform, said Tuesday it has raised a $17 million funding round to create immersive music experiences through virtual reality (VR) concerts. Like other industries, the entertainment sector was affected by the coronavirus lockdown. Many music artists had to cancel or push back their live events during the pandemic. Some artists and music agencies have shifted to virtual or online concerts to compensate for those cancelled events. AmazeVR is betting that virtual shows, which have become popular among artists and fans since the pandemic, are going to take over the entertainment industry.”

“Amazon is holding a Prime Day-like shopping event this fall, marking the first time that the online retail giant will host two sales events exclusively for Prime members in the same year. The “Prime Early Access Sale” will take place on October 11 and 12. The exclusive deals for members will be available in 15 countries, including Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S.”

“The market is very fragmented with all of the sites,” Spitz told TechCrunch. “And once I would get on a site, it was really hard to find what I wanted, plus you only see a fraction of what is actually there. Oftentimes what I was looking for wouldn’t be available right away, in my specific size or in my target price. I just keep searching, searching, searching every week, spending hours doing it because I love to find the deals. That’s when he got the idea of joining all of those secondhand listings together under one umbrella. In March 2021, he joined with fellow Rice University graduate Kunal Rai to start Gently, formerly Wearloom, in what Spitz referred to as “Amazon for secondhand,” which enables users to shop across sites, including Poshmark, Depop and eBay, from one place. “

🚀 Top Trends:

Every year, The Financial Times (The FT) releases a list of Europe’s 1k fastest-growing companies.

To make the list in 2022, companies must meet the following criteria:

  • The company is independent

  • Revenue of €100k+ (~$101k+) generated in 2017

  • Revenue of €1.5m+ (~$1.52m+) generated in 2020

  • Revenue growth between 2017 and 2020 was primarily organic”

“One niche that has continued to bubble up… winemaking.

In the last year, the r/Winemaking subreddit has increased 77% from 75k to 133k subscribers.”

Highly recommend checking out Trends. co, an incredible Facebook group & well worth the investment.

“As many as 5.2 million people became millionaires last year, with nearly half in the United States alone, according to Credit Suisse’s latest annual wealth report.

“This is the largest increase in millionaire numbers recorded for any country in any year this century,” it said.

Worldwide, the total number of millionaires stood at 62.5 million at the end of 2021, Credit Suisse estimated.

The report, which was released Tuesday, found that aggregate global wealth totalled $463.6 trillion at the end of last year, jumping 9.8%.

Unsurprisingly, the top two economies — the United States and China — saw the biggest gains in household wealth, followed by Canada, India, and Australia.”

🙉 NFT download:

Snippet from the article:

“What is the Bored Ape Yacht Club?

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain. Each unique Bored Ape doubles as a membership card to the Yacht Club, making the club exclusive to Bored Apes’ holders.

When the NFT collection was launched on April 29, 2021, the sales were initially sluggish until May 1, when a notable NFT trader, Pranksy, purchased many Apes. He then informed his followers on Twitter, and his tweets led to selling out within twelve hours, making it to be available for sale afterwards on the marketplace where NFTs are publicly traded.

All Apes are unique, but some are rarer than others based on their attributes. Each Bored Ape is algorithmically created from over 170 potential attributes, including expression and wearables like clothing and accessories. For example, the collection has various furs, clothing, jewellery, facial expression, and others. Only 115 Bored Apes have a cross earring, 49 have daggers in their mouth, and 108 have cybernetic eyes as part of their unique traits.”

“The five-member comedy and sports YouTube creators — who have a massive following of more than 58 million subscribers on the platform — are planning a new Dude Perfect headquarters and “family-friendly” entertainment destination.

The new three-story HQ building will feature a 330-foot “trick-shot tower,” a Dude Perfect museum, mini golf, a merch store, restaurants and 2 acres of outdoor space. The facility could cost as much as $100 million to build, the group told the Dallas Morning News.”

This is the era of the creator.

I truly believe YouTube is just getting started and the numbers Mr Beast is getting right now will seem insignificant in years to come.

With an internet connection & a side order of bravery, you can inspire, entertain and educate people from all over the world from the comfort of your home.

In a world that seems so bleak at times, there are so many incredible communities being built online if you’re willing to take the time to find them.

I just love what’s going on in this space at the moment.

If you want to get an inside look into this world follow Jordan Schwarzenberger the manager of the biggest YouTube group in the UK Sidemen.

🐤 Twitter thread of the week:

🤝 Hot jobs: