In this week’s BB, you’ll learn about…
📚 The Diaries of Young Zuck
🐀 A global slowdown in the Year of the Rat
👩⚕️ The best place to buy organs
🌍 Why the earth is flat
🍔 Becoming a millionaire by eating
🍇 Which presidential candidate is hitting up @GrapeJuiceBoys
🚌 Openings at Obvious Ventures, Lerer, Outschool, and Mercury
🔥 Tinder celebrities, HQ’s death, and what it takes to be in the 1%
🐟 Riddlers cast a line but come up empty
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ICMYI or are new to The Generalist, a few recent pieces:
🌪️ Tweet Storm is a recap of the month’s best social media discussions. In January’s edition, you’ll learn about Apple’s next products, Amazon’s moat, and the rush to fund climate change startups.
🤦♂️ The Miss asks great investors to talk about a deal they got wrong. Last month, James Beshara talked about Gusto, Mercury, and Mighty. We’ve got some great folks lined up for the months to come.
🍳Brunch Briefing covered TeslaCoin, the role of sugar daddies in the college debt crisis, and Casper’s IPO last week.
🐰 Overheard
(Quotes from clever people)
“The idea is to produce a log of a person's life but hopefully not in a creepy way…They shouldn’t be able to turn it off.”
Facebook was at a tipping point. In 2006, the social network was still a gated community, open only to college students. It was also yet to introduce core features like the “Newsfeed” that have come to define it in the years since. With that backdrop, Mark Zuckerberg, then 21 years old, would embark on a journalling spree, outlining his thoughts for the future of the company in a notebook he titled, “The Book of Change.” The quote above described a plan for a “mini-feed,” a log of an individual’s activity that would show up on their profile page.
Though Zuckerberg sought to destroy most of his scribblings in the years since over privacy concerns (lol), author Steven Levy has recovered 17 pages from the journal. While much of what was drafted in the book appears to have been practical in scope — wireframes and code architectures, photocopies of which would land on employees desks in the morning — Levy shared a few snippets that illustrate the plans of the young emperor. A few examples:
As with all great villains, Zuckerberg believed he was contributing to the greater good by allowing information to flow freely. One of his first Facebook profiles featured a quote from commissioner Pravin Lal, shown above, a character in the video game Alpha Centauri, “Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.” Ironically, in countering his fears, Zuckerberg may have created something just as bad.
🖼️ 1000 words
(Something to look at)
New Year, same issues. After an extended holiday celebrating the Year of the Rat, Chinese factories were supposed to reopen on February 10th. That is proving difficult for workers that returned to rural homes over the break; restricted travel and fear of contracting the coronavirus has meant that many facilities are yet to get back up and running. Foxconn, for example, projects to have only half their operations live by the end of the month.
Coupled with a sharp reduction in tourism — flights between China and the US are down 75% from last year — China’s centrality to the global supply chain is sparking fears of a global contraction this year. Capital Economics in London expects the economy to shrink this quarter, for the first time since 2009, while Aberdeen Standard Investments believes the virus will sink 2020. Whether those predictions come true or not, costs will be significant: previous pandemics like the H1N1 cost $50B, while more recent outbreaks like the Ebola and Zika virus topped $10B.
Perhaps prophetically, 2020 may live up to its name as the Year of the Rat for more reasons than one. The Wuhan market believed to be ground zero for the virus sold rats, wolf pups, porcupines, and other wild animals to eat which may have transmitted COVID-19 to humans. But just as critically, rats are likely to be a part of the solution: British researchers are currently testing vaccines on the animal, hoping to have a solution by the end of the year.
😱 Signs of the apocalypse
(Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!)
Organ failure. Twitter racked up $1.47B in profits in 2019, a record for the company. While Promoted Tweets are a critical part of the company’s revenue, they remain an under-built and often disturbing part of the platform, rife with scammers and unethical actors. The BBC previously revealed that advertisers were able to explicitly target neo-Nazis and homophones; a new piece from Gizmodo shows the problems are far from fixed with campaigns selling human organs running on the platform. For a compilation of the strangest Promoted Tweets, you can check out this account.
Flat earth. Carbon emissions held steady at 33 gigatons in 2019 despite economic expansion. That might sound like good news at first blush, with the US and EU’s shift towards wind and solar a positive step. The truth, however, is somewhat hazier: the coal consumption of developing countries grew, leading to an increase of 400MM tons of CO2 in those regions. And while emissions could have been worse, we are far away from making the radical cuts necessary to prevent climate disaster.
📡 Signal
(One exploding Google Trend)
Vicarious pleasures. A new type of streaming grew rapidly over the past 18 months, seeing a huge uptick in search traffic. A “mukbang” is a video in which a streamer eats a meal and is particularly popular in South Korea. Indeed, the word itself is a portmanteau of “eat” and “broadcast.” The trend began in 2010 on streaming sites like Afreeca, before making the jump to Twitch around 2016. While some mukbangs are informational in tone, reviewing items from the local 7-Eleven or rating an addition to the McDonald’s menu, others are designed to simulate the emotional connection of sharing a meal with a friend.
Pushing boundaries is also part of the entertainment. Many mukbang celebrities eat painfully spicy foods, allow viewers to choose what they eat, binge-eat, or create unusual concoctions like those of Yammoo. The YouTuber creates and ingests giant sticks of gum, lightbulbs made of candy, and enormous chips.
For those with the fame of Yammoo, real money can be made. Bethany Gaskill, a crab leg mukbanger, who refers to her career as “a ministry” says her efforts have made her a millionaire.
🇺🇸 State of the Race
(One tech-related story from the US presidential election)
Hello Shithead. Sometimes you must fight the enemy on their own terms. Former Mayor of NYC, Mike Bloomberg, was revealed to be doing precisely that this week, employing an organization called Meme 2020 in order to best Trump in the social media arena. The company is led by Mick Purzycki, an executive at Jerry Media.
Accounts that participated in the campaign included @GrapeJuiceBoys (2.7MM followers), Tank Sinatra (2.3MM), and several others. Though many were quick to voice a familiar criticism — that Bloomberg is using his wealth to buy unearned influence — it seems to be another savvy step from a team taking a different tack. As one Bloomberg aide noted, “Tweeting from @mikebloomberg is a very 2008 strategy.”
🔟 Jobs
(The jobs you need, and no more)
VC Analyst - Lerer Hippeau (NYC). The kings of consumer are bringing onboard someone that can grow with the firm. Undoubtedly a competitive position — would recommend moving fast and racking up some referrals.
VC Associate - FinTech Collective (NYC). The backers of MoneyLion, Embroker, and Flutterwave are adding someone to the investing team. They’re also looking for a summer intern.
VC Associate - Two Sigma (NYC). Seemingly on a hiring spree, Two Sigma is adding even more technical investing talent.
VC Associate - Founders Factory (NYC). Part studio, part accelerator, Founders Factory’s New York fund is anchored by Johnson & Johnson. Looks like a strong fit for someone making the transition from operating to investing, or for someone keen to straddle both worlds.
Head of Growth Marketing - Elysium (NYC). Would you like to live forever, or at least have the option? Elysium brings scientific advances to the mainstream. Their core product, BASIS, is supposed to extend your lifespan.
VC Growth Principal - Obvious Ventures (SF). Twitter co-founder Ev Williams’s venture vehicle is looking for new blood. Impact focused fund with a great track-record.
Business Development - Mercury (SF). The bank for startups has quite a cap table with investment from a16z, CRV, Naval Ravikant, Justin Kan, and James Beshara. You can read about his investment in The Miss.
Product Manager - Outschool (SF). This marketplace for virtual classes has been used by over 40K families. Join a team backed by USV, Collaborative Fund, and YC and ride the homeschooling trend.
Director of Growth Product - Confident Cannabis (SF). With nearly $20MM in funding this B2B marketplace is ready to step on the gas.
VC Analyst - M13 (LA). With $175MM closed for Fund II, M13 is hiring a lover of consumer-tech. Good geography to build your niche.
🐒 Long tail
(Best of the rest)
“We should have unionized.” HQ Trivia died as it lived, in a mind-bending tire fire that poked fun at the wildly hyped social app’s failure. Once valued at $100MM, HQ Trivia seemed to fall victim to both bad management and bad luck. Co-founder Colin Kroll passed away, a sobering interlude in a story that saw beloved host Scott Rogowsky fired, and staff attempt to oust CEO Rus Yusupov. The app’s final show aired Friday with Rogowsky’s successor Matt Richards swigging from a magnum of champagne and kvetching about the lack of an HQ labor movement.
Freedom, in chains. Before Ross Ulbricht was caught, Eric Eoin Marques was captured in Ireland. This week, Marques pled guilty in US court for running Freedom Hosting, a facilitator of some of the web’s most nefarious sites. At one point, Freedom was said to have hosted half of the dark web, including sites for money-launderers, drug dealers, and child pornographers. But while Marques himself has been unmasked, the methods the FBI and NSA used to find him remain shrouded in mystery. Strangely, that lack of disclosure may make the web less safe for the rest of us.
Lambda’s delta. The online bootcamp Lambda School has attracted attention in recent weeks with students complaining about the quality of education offered. Now, the company is under the microscope for potentially selling the debt of its students. Though CEO Austen Allred has previously said the company does not make money until students are hired, The Verge found evidence of a partnership between Lambda and Edly, an ISA financing platform. The inference is that Lambda sold a tranche of debt obligations to investors on Edly, reducing their financial reliance on student outcomes. As bootcamps chase growth, it will be interesting to see what new financial instruments do to the movement’s central narrative of aligned incentives.
Alex, 27. The pre-internet era may have its folktales and urban legends, but in the age of apps, we must settle for men like Alex. He is one of several men considered to be almost mythological because of their ubiquity on dating apps like Tinder and Bumble. Though women frequently swipe left on these profiles, they reappear with puzzling regularity. But rather than being a bot, Alex is a real person with a hack — he deletes and reinstalls the app every two weeks.
Life in the 1%. To be considered in the top percentile of earners in the UAE, you’ll have to pull in nearly $1MM a year. Meanwhile, a measly $489K will put you in that exclusive company in the US, with $107K sufficing in China. Bloomberg’s profile of the uber-wealthy shows that for the affluent, Monaco is the most expensive place to buy a home ($26.4MM), New York the costliest city for private education ($51K p.a.), and Los Angeles the dearest metro to hire an “experienced” live-in nanny ($70K p.a.).
🤑 Splashing Cash
(Intriguing raises and acquisitions)
Nova Credit, which translates credit scores from other countries to the US, raised $50MM from KPCB, General Catalyst, Susa Ventures, and others
Headspace brought in $93MM, both in equity and debt, to pursue clinical validation of mindfulness
Astranis raised $90MM to build out its low-orbit broadband network
Lover, a sex-coaching app, raised $5MM from Lerer, GFC and others
Purveyor of vegetarian burritos, Alpha Foods, pulled in $28MM
Range, a productivity and collaboration platform, raised $6MM from General Catalyst and First Round
An API for hotel management platforms, Impala, raised $20MM from Latitude and Lakestar
🧩 Puzzler
(A question, conundrum, or riddle to mull over)
Apparently, this riddle is called “Mario’s Telegram.” Of course, I had to use it.
“Mario is holidaying in a foreign country and wants to send a telegram to his son. Unfortunately, when he visits the front-desk, he is told that he is only allowed to use certain words to write his message. The words he is permitted to use are: fiasco, nephew, carrot, rabbit, sonata, spring, tailor, bureau, corona, legacy, soften, travel, object, happen, bikini.
“Mario ends up sending the the telegram shown above. What does it say?”
The flood of answers over recent weeks had me questioning myself. Had the riddles become too easy? It is with a certain impish glee that I can report last week’s brainteaser prompted no correct answers, the first time that has happened in several months. The correct answer was: a fish.
A slightly warmer day here in Brooklyn. Hoping all of you get a bit of sun or the right sort of rain for contemplation. 💙