Nov 29, 2019

StorySherpa: Shattered Vaporware

By Yury Molodtsov • Issue #67 • View online

Happy Thanksgiving!

How Juul Hooked a Generation on Nicotine

“We never wanted any non-nicotine user and certainly nobody underage to ever use Juul products,” James Monsees, a co-founder of the company, testified at a congressional hearing in July.

Just kidding.

The current younger American consumers were a generation with historically low smoking rates but Juul changed that. Although the original idea might be to fight the tobacco corporations and help smokers quit cigarettes (that are still much worse), it turned into a Big-Tobacco-owned corporation making teens addicted to nicotine.

Now, some people say that the very way the device was designed and operated drew teens to it. Although that might be part of the truth it’s hard to blame company for doing that, and a couple of my older friends definitely feel better after switching to Juul. But focusing your entire social media around the teenage audience is different.

www.nytimes.com • Share

Omni storage & rentals fails, shutters, sells engineers to Coinbase

Omni started as a company providing physical storage on-demand but later pivoted to rentals so users could borrow a tent, bike or power drill.

Despite raising $35M it wasn’t able to build a sustainable business with working unit economy and is now shutting down.

I’m afraid that’s the destiny of any transactional business in the retail space. The diminishing amount of money they’d make on any transaction is quickly eaten by their expenses on conducting that transaction and, most importantly, covering all the damage, lost items, etc. How much would you pay to rent a drill and how many people out there can break it, lose it or scratch it? Car rentals can justify it, most other businesses can’t.

techcrunch.com • Share

Reimagining Messaging

Daniel Gross on the future of messaging platforms. Cocoon launched just recently and we’re looking at a couple of projects in that area right now.

On first blush, WhatsApp seems like an incredibly durable business. Strong network effects. Incredible distribution. An unassailable giant. But WhatsApp wasn’t the first messaging app, nor will it be the last.

I don’t know about you, but my time is increasingly in messaging small groups, not Facebook. Small groups are the new social networks. The next counter-cycle to the giant island of Facebook and Twitter will be an archipelago of different groups, one for each niche and community. Mobile distribution has gotten quite good. Downloading an app is almost as easy as joining a WhatsApp group. If you made something good, it’d spread quite rapidly amongst a small group.

dcgross.com • Share

Banking on the Future: Why our most hated institutions will become our most beloved

Some thoughts on the rise of “and we also issue debit cards” from Andreessen Horowitz.

There are two banking systems in the world today: one for people with money (or good credit), and another for people without. But neither of these systems work well. People with money have gotten used to clunky user experiences and low expectations. For everyone else—that’s most Americans and billions worldwide—banks don’t serve them well, or sometimes, at all. Not only that, but the current system actually extracts from the very people who need financial services the most. The poorer you are, the fewer options you have and the more you will pay.

a16z.com • Share

Video

Ben Thompson explains the difference between platforms and aggregators.

Birdbox

Uber performed a very low-key launch of a new marketplace – a shift work marketplace. How many “Uber for X” where X is a specific vertical have you seen?

Andreas Klinger ✌️

@andreasklinger

Am i the only one who completely missed that @Uber launched a shift work marketplace last month? 🙀

https://t.co/mP5KlLUOAl

Turns out the true "Uber for X" was in Uber all along… https://t.co/V4TS8dsdwY

7:19 PM - 28 Nov 2019

Tesla has some extremely loyal fans but also is very “affectionate” to its “enemies”.

Ali Winston

@awinston

This is stunning stuff. TESLA tried to have a whistleblower SWATTED, arrested & placed on a mental health hold in retaliation for him going to journalists with safety violations. Bravo to this police officer for documenting the entire interaction in writing https://t.co/OOsBdBRN6s

8:46 AM - 23 Nov 2019

Bill is talking about recently funded Leavy.co, a travel app for millennials to help them travel more without getting into further debt. It helps travelers rent out their room or apartment when they are away to help fund their trip.

Bill Gurley

@bgurley

Using VC $$$s to fund negative cash conversion cycles is a popular trend. https://t.co/DcNtjpabng 3 warnings. 1 - you are assuming risk. 2- this is the opposite of leverage (scaling consumes cash). 3- businesses with low cash flow to earnings ratios have shitty public multiples.

6:45 AM - 26 Nov 2019

“Sure, I’m excited about your SQL-based open-source product, here’s the check”.