In this week’s BB, you’ll learn about…
⚡ Supercharging a speculative currency, Musk-style
💖 Tips to up your Tinder game
☠️ Which tech giant is more dangerous to work at than prison
🙅♂️ The app of choice for incels and Neo-Nazis
🐊 How some University of Florida students are paying for college
🚀 VC and CoS openings for astronauts, rapid-responders, and others
🌬️ Juul up in smoke, crypto’s surge, and an unbreakable code gets a clue
🌳 Our band of riddlers find two right answers
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🌪️ A new feature dropped this Friday. ICYMI, “Tweet Storm” recaps the month’s tweets with added commentary. The hope is that you’ll get the best of tech and VC twitter, without getting sucked into the social media morass.
🐰 Overheard
(Quotes from clever people)
“In the next 2-5 years, Tesla launches a coin. If you look at the people who are attracted to Tesla stock, it’s the same crypto weirdos, it’s the same demographic…[It] will become this crazy speculative currency…it could go after the monopoly that is Bitcoin.”
In a week in which US tech was absorbed by a grim meltdown in Iowa, NYU Professor Scott Galloway’s flight of fancy stood out.
Over a few minutes at the end of the Pivot podcast, co-hosted with Kara Swisher, Galloway sketched an outline of what a Tesla Coin might entail. Unlikely to serve as a proxy for ownership, given the SEC’s position that such coins are a security and regulated as such, Galloway argues that it might serve as a sort of early access chit, giving HODL’ers the chance to slap down their credit card before the rest of us.
Though other companies might contemplate creating a currency of their own — Amazon is mentioned but dismissed as too conservative — Galloway argues that Tesla is uniquely positioned to bring something this experimental to market. In Elon Musk, the car-maker has a flamethrower-toting genius with unilateral control, and the rare ability to distort public perception in his favor.
For stock that ran up 42% this week, then dropped 22%, the rollercoaster may only be beginning.
🖼️ 1000 words
(Something to look at)
Full disclosure desired. According to a new study by Pew Research, women want more information than men when browsing the online profiles of potential mates, with a higher percentage considering the above information ‘very important’.
Interestingly, the priority of desired information was relatively uniform across genders, with both men and women finding pictures to be most important, followed by type of relationship wanted, and whether the individual had children. The largest discrepancies between male and female interest were relationship type (19%), occupation (19%), religious beliefs (14%), and height (14%).
The importance of political affiliation was low for both, surprising given the current state of polarization in the American electorate. A recent report indicated that 45% of Americans have stopped talking to someone about politics because of a disagreement on the subject, illustrating its manifestation on interpersonal relationships. Liberal democrats were far and away most likely to cut someone off, with 60% issuing excommunication edicts. Only 45% of conservative republicans, the next most likely group, did the same. Perhaps when it comes to matters of the heart, we’re all a bit more flexible.
😱 Signs of the apocalypse
(Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!)
Severance, packages. Working at one Amazon warehouse is statistically more dangerous than earning a paycheck at a US prison. A new exposé reveals that the company’s Haslet, Texas facility — a million sqft space — has seen a remarkably high number of workplace injuries. In 2019, the facility reached a 9.59 incident rate, meaning that roughly 1 in 10 employees reported an affliction over the year. That put the warehouse far above the 4.4 industry average and topped the risk of working in more traditionally perilous environments such as a psychiatric hospital (7.4), aluminum foundry (8.5), and prison (7.3). Among the incidents: electric shock, crushed hands, concussions, and a severed toe.
The Manosphere. A team of researchers studied the behavioral patterns of a number of misogynist online groups, referred to as the ‘Manosphere.’ What they found was concerning; while less extreme communities such as 'men’s rights activists’ and ‘men going their own way’ declined in popularity, pick up artists and incels have grown sharply. Each year since 2015, roughly 8% of members from moderate groups (relatively speaking) migrated to radical communities. Thwarting these groups is difficult; they use acronyms to skim under moderators’ radars — ‘smv’ is apparently short-hand for ‘sexual market value’ — and even when forums are shutdown, others inevitably pop up. When Reddit closed r/Incel in November 2017, many simply moved to neo-Nazi safe-haven Gab.
📡 Signal
(One exploding Google Trend)
College debt is leading to desperate measures. When you visit the SeekingArrangement website, different things might grab your attention. A slick-haired man with an unsettling smirk, a dead-eyed blonde woman, a gold rolex, a link in the footer to a page titled ‘Hypergamy’ that defines the term as ‘the action of marrying a person of superior class or caste.’ Browsing a layer deeper you may come across a few profiles and if you click on them, on the picture of a ‘sugar baby’ — male or female — you will see two words at the bottom of each: ‘Spoil Me!’
The reality of the ‘no-strings attached’ dating platform that specializes in matching the beautiful with the wealthy is rather less glamorous: much of the platform is composed of students looking for ways to pay for their education. As many as 4MM students are registered, with 62% of those located in the US. A recent report from the company indicates that Southern schools are growing fastest with Georgia State, University of Central Florida, University of Alabama, and University of Florida driving the most new members in 2019.
The company is at pains to note that this is not sex work, protesting that there are “no contracts” on the platform (I imagine few brothels whip out Docusign), though it is unnervingly adjacent. I believe adults should be free to come to their own understandings, within legal limits, but the cost of a public education has increased 386% on an inflation adjusted basis since 1964, while private education has increased 285%. We are leaving many with little, or constrained, choice.
🔟 Jobs
(The jobs you need, and no more)
VC Analyst - Space Angels (NYC). The new space race is afoot. If you’d like to help humanity vault into the celestial, a position at this angel syndicate sounds like a good way to build a sense for the sector.
Director of Strategic Partnerships - Rapid SOS (NYC). This company monitors and dispatches IoT data to save lives. Think: a connected car that’s crashed, or a smart home on fire. Summer internships are also open.
Chief of Staff, Caper (NYC). With $13MM in funding, Caper is looking to take on Amazon in the battle of the smart store, starting with shopping carts. If CoS gigs are your jam, check out openings at Wonder, and Laika, too.
Strategic Partnerships Associate - Codecademy (NYC). Help bridge the skills gap by extending the reach of arguably the most comprehensive coding school on the planet.
🌟VC Associate - Schematic Ventures (SF). A special opportunity. If you believe that opportunity abounds in supply chain, manufacturing, transportation, and industrial industries (🙋♂️I do), this is a chance to join one of my favorite teams in venture.
VC Associate - TransLink Capital (SF). The bridge between the US and Asia, Translink has helped companies like Carbonite and Wildfire build relationships in new markets.
VC Operations - Samsung NEXT (SF). Reporting to the Silicon Valley GM, this person is tasked with keeping the investment team ticking. Sounds like a good spot to learn the nitty-gritty of venture.
VC Summer Fellow - Bloomberg Beta (SF). Though not a path to a full-time job (the disclosure is appreciated), Future of Work aficionados are likely to find a stint under the tutelage of Minn Kim and Roy Bahat fruitful.
Strategy Analyst - Tala (LA). Expanding financial access for the 3B individuals underserved around the world. Join an international team with over $200MM in funding.
VC Intern - Great North Labs (Minneapolis). More and more venture funds are getting wise to opportunities in the middle of the country. While some firms might dip their toes into the Great Lakes, GNL is all in. Building expertise in an up-and-coming geography sounds like a good use of time.
🔮 Nostradamus List Update
(Checking in on 2020’s predictions)
A painted egg with glossy shell,
Cherished item, object belle.
But eggs can crack, and color grows gray,
The stumbling Ghost, be gone, Away.
Casper made it out. In my calls for the year, I predicted a tough time for the mattress-maker, expecting them to forgo the public markets and negotiate a sale, likely to Target. Though they proved me wrong by the letter this Thursday, the company’s subsequent reception suggests I may have been right in spirit.
Two and a half years ago, Target considered buying the company for $1B, before investing. This week, Casper priced themselves at $12 a share, less than half that valuation. Though the first day of trading saw the stock rise 13%, it ended Friday at $11.05. That implied a market cap of $345MM, roughly $5MM more than the total VC cash the company has raised. To put it another way, the company has increased the value of capital invested by 1.7% over seven years.
Worse days could be ahead, with strong competition in the industry and few barriers to entry. Indeed, if you wanted to start a mattress-in-a-box company today, you’d need to do little more than visit FXI, a manufacturer, packager, and shipper of Casper facsimiles.
🐒 Long tail
(Best of the rest)
Crypto and Corona. The virus’s outbreak has had a mixed effect on the cryptocurrency sector. This week saw NiTROn2020 and Token2049 postpone their conferences, while mining pool BTC.top had a server farm shutdown by Chinese authorities in relation to the pandemic. Broadly speaking, however, the sector seems to have been buoyed by the spread of the virus: an index of cryptocurrencies has jumped 60% since December, bolstering the case for BTC et al. as a financial haven.
Flawed Juul. What constitutes a monopoly? In December of 2018, Juul held 75% of the vaping market, contributing to a price tag of $38B. A report from Buzzfeed exposes a very different company today, with browbeaten staff, unresolved sexual harassment claims, and a valuation of $12B. Those that remain are focused on a singular goal: submitting a convincing application to the FDA by May 12 in the hopes their products will remain legal. Though Juul is far from innocent — predatory advertising targeted teens — it’s hard not to feel a little sorry for a company that sought to provide a healthier alternative to cigarette smoking, before being bludgeoned by an imprecise moral panic. The lung injuries that earned public outcry were linked to marijuana extracts, not the company’s nicotine pods.
The final clue. In the heart of American intelligence, one code remains uncracked. In 1990, sculptor Jim Sanborn revealed his work, “Kryptos,” an 8-ft sculpture situated on the CIA’s Langley campus. The copper scroll — which you can find at the top of this email — is marked with a complex cryptograph that has stumped professional and amateur cryptographers to this day. In particular, the fourth and final paragraph has yielded nothing, prompting Sanborn to release clues in 2010 and 2014, and now again in 2020. For some, the secret behind Sanborn’s genius is his unique vantage. One obsessed sleuth noted,
“He probably came up with an encryption technique that he thought would be relatively obvious, but he was thinking like an artist…To all the cryptographers that think…from the rigid formal approach, they are gonna go: ‘you did what!?’”
Post-Woke? Though the time for predictions is mostly past, these speculations from Johns Hopkins academic Yascha Mounk are worth reading. Whether the next ten years will see the demise of social media, a pullback on identity politics, or increased diversity in conservative parties as predicted, Mounk’s focus on where our era fits in the larger arc of history is grounding.
🧩 Puzzler
(A question, conundrum, or riddle to mull over)
I have been sent to find you. But if you eat me, my sender will eat you. What am I?
Riddles are a measure of mental fluidity. In that respect at least, MWF was first to provide a viable answer to last week’s head-scratcher: the king, in a game of chess. Though another answer was perhaps more formally correct, credit is due for finding a new, thoroughly reasonable solution.
Meanwhile, Adriana V made it 3-in-a-row, bringing the unequivocal answer forward: a tree. Quite a roll going. She was joined by Steven V and Mike M. Well played to all.
Wishing you all a Sunday in which you have time to read, or walk, or do nothing at all. 💙