🍳 Brunch Briefing | Addiction
Disney+, virtual smoking, and brain dishwashers
In this week’s BB, you’ll learn about…
🐭 Fearing the mouse
💊 The modern playbook for kicking addiction
📺 Layaway’s return
👨🎤 Life on the edge
💰 Investing roles at a $1B fund, and well-connected insurgent
💪 The FlexOffenders registry
🔪 Unmasking a killer
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🕰️ If you’re new to The Generalist, you can check out our recent breakdowns of Longevity, Synthetic Meat, and Prison.
💓 If you’ve been digging the Briefing and would like to help, the #1 thing you can do is share this email with someone brainy and fun to be around.
🐰 Overheard
(Quotes from clever people)
This is Bob Iger’s day. This is the day where all of us who believed in Iger’s leadership and Disney’s amazing brands made out like bandits…Not long ago, Iger told me ‘we’re just getting started,’ and I say ‘it’s still not too late to join him on his ride of a lifetime’.
Technical issues couldn’t slow a fast start for Disney+, with the Mouse House’s new streaming service registering 10MM subscribers on Day 1. That's a considerable improvement on the company’s previous effort ESPN+, which attracted a mere 2.4MM over the first year. Netflix, for context, has 158MM subscribers worldwide.
Despite a 24.5% increase in stock price over the past year, and a 5.8% pop over the past 5 days, “Mad Money’s” frenzied oracle, Jim Kramer, thinks there’s value in the stock yet.
💊 Monitoring: Addiction
(One space worth keeping an eye on)
The problem: addiction is a vigilant jailer. Roughly 240MM people worldwide are dependent on alcohol, with an estimated 1B tobacco smokers. Though accurate data on narcotic use is harder to find, as many as 15MM use injectable drugs like heroin. Even in developed countries, treatment is rare: of the 21MM Americans living with addiction, only 10% get help.
The solution: pave new roads to recovery. Technology is allowing treatment modalities to scale, in addition to providing totally novel solutions. Adding a refreshed, modern brand can also help. The companies below are intervening.
Nicotine. Lucy, created by one of Soylent’s founders, is going after a stalwart of the no-smoking space: Nicorette. The company raised $5MM from YC and Greycroft to scale its sleek, millennial-friendly brand, and direct-to-consumer (D2C) distribution. Zero from Ro offers a similar product, bundling in Bupropion, a medication to curb cravings. More holistic approaches include Pivot by Carrot, a platform that provides an educational app, digital coaching, and a carbon monoxide breath sensor to monitor smoking levels. QuitGenius, which intends to offer vaping-specific treatment in the future, has a similar offering. The most technically adventurous solution comes from Chrono, which has raised a cumulative $82.5MM in funding to build a transdermal patch that delivers nicotine when an individual is most jonesing for a smoke.
Alcohol. ‘Sober is the new black’, according to online community, Tempest. The company recently announced a $10MM Series A from Slow Ventures and Alleycorp to power the expansion of it’s eight-week online class. They’re one of the few dedicated-alcohol offerings in the space: WeRecover helps alcoholics and other addicts find the right recovery center, while Workit Health’s appears to be launching an alcohol-focused telemedicine service soon. For a discussion of an indirect solution — beverage brands offering alternatives to old-fashioned hooch — check out this previous discussion of Modern Moonshine.
Opioids. Of overdose deaths, opioids were responsible for two of three, with ~130 Americans dying from the drug every day. Biobot is tracking the scale of the problem by analyzing opioid levels in the sewers. By testing urine, they’re able to determine which communities are most in need of intervention. Focused on the patients themselves, Boulder raised $3.7MM from First Round to offer a telemedicine platform for addicts that combines coaching, medication, community, and at-home testing. They’re joined by Groups, a suboxone provider and facilitator of weekly in-person meetings. Taking a different tack is Pear, which gives health practitioners ‘digital therapeutics’ to prescribe to their patients. The company’s product is regulated by the FDA and has attracted $134MM in funding.
Where next? Alcohol addiction appears to be relatively under-competed, especially compared to smoking. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a well-branded naltrexone product appear in the next 12-24 months, targeted towards that customer. As with ED or hair loss pills, the discretion D2C provides is a virtue that could grow the market.
There are wilder opportunities. We alighted on brain implants as a form of opioid treatment last week, and unsurprisingly, some are hoping that virtual reality may play a role; Mindcotine provides immersive meditative experiences, along with a smoking simulation. Perhaps most interesting is the notion of ‘pain replacement’ which could remove the need for opioid administration altogether. One example is Iovera, which has raised $109.6MM to hone their technique of using cold-therapy to temporarily block nerves that carry pain signals.
🖼️ 1000 words
(Something to look at)
Doom and gloom. While a recession has been predicted for the past 5 years, a surge in private debt suggests the end may really be nigh. The unsecured loan market rose to $138B in 2018, a 17% increase YoY. Per Richard Vague, an investor and author of A Brief History of Doom, such increases usually foreshadow a downturn.
Much of this run up, has been powered by technology. Giants like Apple are offering credit cards — Google is starting with checking accounts — while startups like Klarna, Afterpay, Quadpay, and Affirm have supercharged the layaway model, attracting a younger customer base by offering low-friction credit plans at trendy retailers. While these companies have attracted significant venture money during a bull run, and have grown rapidly, loose lending may catch-up with them when the economy tightens. As John Hempton of Bronte Capital notes in analyzing Afterpay, these companies often lend to customers already in debt, meaning they’re last to be repaid.
😱 Signs of the apocalypse
(Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!)
OK Google, when will I have a heart attack? Thanks is due to the whistleblower that revealed the disturbing practices of the company’s Nightingale initiative. In conjunction with Ascension, a healthcare provider, Google intended to help predict health issues and offer treatment. In the process, they ingested the personal data of 50MM patients without anonymizing it, and stored it such that it was accessible to Google employees. While the company may have had good intentions, it is rather chilling to imagine the advertising dollars that could be unlocked by targeting individuals based on intimate health details.
The joys of autumn. The sadists up at MIT’s Biomimetics Robotics Lab have released another video of their ‘virtually indestructible’ quadrupeds. Here, five “Mini Cheetahs” backflip out of a pile of leaves. The banal wholesomeness of the scene stands in stark contrast to the project’s martial funding.*
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*A previous version of this article stated that the “Mini Cheetah” was a Boston Dynamics product.
📡 Signal
(One exploding Google Trend)
Living on the edge. While cloud computing has dominated the last decade, the future may see more processing done on-device or ‘at the edge’. The rise of powerful IoT devices have made this increasingly plausible and desirable. It’s easy to imagine how something like Amazon’s Alexa could be improved through edge computing: when you ask for the weather, there’d be no need to go to the cloud to produce an accurate response, reducing latency and saving on server costs.
It’s unsurprising then that the company is developing its own AI chips to be deployed on the device. They’re joined by an explosion of startups working on similar products.
📈 Jobs for interesting people
(Openings at companies and funds building something cool)
VC Analyst or Associate - 2048 (NY). Founded by a former Techstars MD this year, 2048 has gotten backing from the founders of Github, MongoDB, Seamless, and others.
VC Analyst - Anthos Capital (Santa Monica). Though they keep a “purposefully low profile,” Anthos is in the three-comma-club. They’ve used their $1B to back student favorite, GoPuff, among others.
Director of Investments - Kapor Capital (Oakland). Help a killer VC figure out which other VCs to invest in.
VC Principal - Hewlett Packard (San Jose). Join SV’s OG. Fun fact: a 12 year old Steve Jobs cold-called Bill Hewlett in an attempt to get parts for a frequency counter. Hewlett gave him a summer job instead.
Business Development - Grin (Sacramento). We are living in the era of the influencer. Owning the infrastructure that enables companies to leverage that channel effectively sounds valuable.
BD Associate - Techstars (Chicago). Power the next generation of Midwest behemoths.
Founder Residency - Company (NY). In need of free office-space? Company.co has it. No equity required.
Operations Associate - CoVenture (NY). The venture and crypto investor is looking for someone to help keep the wheels turning.
Managing Partner - Alumni Ventures (NY). Incredibly fast-growing, decentralized fund.
Associate - SIP (NY). The Sidewalk Labs spinout is looking for someone to help find new opportunities in the urban development space. I think this looks like a fascinating gig.
Manager of People Strategy - Andela (NY). Hard to imagine a cooler company to work for.
🐒 Long tail
(Best of the rest)
Will he or won’t he? Earlier this week, reports suggested that John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, was being lined up to take over at WeWork. His ebullient style, and track record of outlandish statements, often directed at rivals, didn’t seem particularly well-suited to steadying a sinking ship. In the last 48 hours, the narrative seems to have changed; Legere apparently wants to see out T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint.
‘The dishwasher of the brain’. That’s how one scientist described sleep. Not getting enough shut-eye is increasingly linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Oyo’s bait-and-switch. Sunil Solankey was convinced to rebrand his 20-room hotel to an Oyo property, after the company promised consistent payments, regardless of occupancy. After spending $8,400 to rejuvenate the space, Oyo stopped paying. Solankey’s story is part of a pattern of Softbank portfolio companies mistreating the contractors on which they rely.
0% THC. Sales of CBD are expected to increase 706% in 2019, encouraging a wave of farmers to begin growing hemp. But with a legal limit of 0.3% THC for hemp and limited research into the crop, many farmers end up with a more potent product they cannot use. Breeding low-THC varietals may be necessary.
Competing against yourself. Not content with owning Whole Foods, Amazon plans to open another grocery store. Intriguingly, the new concept line will not leverage Amazon Go’s checkout-less technology.
China is stepping in to save the ‘Rooftop of the World’. The Tibetean plateau is being devoured by train lines and skyscrapers. China is setting limits as part of a push to create a national park system.
No need for Noah. The University of Maine succeeded in 3D printing a 25 foot boat. It took a mere 72 hours to make. With further refinement, this could drastically reduce the cost and time of building a seaworthy vessel.
A FlexOffenders Registry. Instagram account @BallerBusters digs through legal filings and crowdsourced screenshots to out poseurs that flaunt supposed wealth in order to sell books, courses, and mentorship programs.
Earthquakes are notoriously difficult to predict. The absence of detailed, reliable information has spawned a class of conspiracy theorists that believe they’re able to spot coming quakes before the experts.
The world in 2029. Predictions include the decline of make-up, a seawall ringing New York, and the primacy of Chinese pop-culture.
🧩 Puzzler
(A question, conundrum, or riddle to mull over)
What three letters should be added to complete the code below?
O T T F F S S _ _ _
Charlie L. was first to crack last week’s case, correctly identifying the murderer: Jason, AKA the Calendar Killer. Jason was identified by his rather cavalier decision to leave his own name at the crime scene, in code. Specifically, ‘6 4 9 10 11’ can be translated as ‘June August September October November’. Oh, Jason.
Hot on his trial was Geoff C., who also made the step up to detective this week. NMT was not far behind, narrowing it down to two suspects before throwing in the towel. So close. I can only assume he’ll come back to this case in twenty years for one last try.
A final offer: I signed up for a seminar with NYU Professor and famous WeWork bear, Scott Galloway, for this Monday evening. He’ll be presenting a case study of the coworking company’s meltdown. Unfortunately, I can no longer attend. If you’d be interested in nabbing my ticket, for free, let me know. First one gets the secret password.
Thank you all for reading, and wishing you a gentle, restful Sunday. 💙