no. 49: consumer tech galore and peak bro-marketing.

this week i talk about what is on my radar right now.

hi all! happy day-before-halloween. there has been a lot of exciting news lately that i covered in this edition. another exciting update is that i am soo incredibly close to 1k subscribers! writing has been such a treat and proof of what happens when you consistently talk about the things you love and form your own opinions on what inspires you. not to get sappy... anyways!

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mini news round-up 🗞️

• chatgpt launched its own browser - not sure this needs more introduction because you likely knew this.

• two days after openai’s atlas, microsoft relaunched a nearly identical ai browser - from techcrunch, “given the high stakes of the ai race and the tense state of play between the two companies, it seems significant that we got both of these browsers in the same week.”

• magic, a ai-powered loyalty startup, raised a $10 million seed round - i saw their mission and i am really obsessed with this idea and making this possible: “magic’s infrastructure can transform any business where personalization matters. hotels that make you feel at home. retail stores that know your style. wellness centers that remember your goals. the digital world already knows us intimately. it’s time for the physical world to catch up.” and it also reminds me a bit of amazon go’s just walk out technology. by the way does anyone know what happened to that?

• aritzia launched an app - they are combining tiktok style reels with their catalog. it’s honestly a very built out and advanced app experience for a fashion brand. i notoriously love the zara app so i am excited about this.

  

  via fashionnetwork.

• eight sleep’s cloud crashed - on eight sleep, a customer can add a $999 pillow cover, which the company says “slips onto any pillow, turning it cool all night.” - but they experienced an outage during the aws debocle. they claimed they “did not realize that their beds had to connect to a cloud computing service to work properly”

• fandom is really in right now in consumer it seems - and this makes sense to me because niche communities need more spaces on the internet — see lore and ykb as some recent examples of company launches

• ghia launched a cookbook - and, of course, it looks stunning.

• caroline dell’s new startup, goodword, a networking copilot that’s built to strengthen human connection, launched today (shoutout GMC!)

• pinterest is courting gen z with ‘safer’ social media - will pinterest remain relevant as it is for gen z? “the company has recorded double-digit growth in sales and users in recent quarters” and more than 1/2 of their user base is within gen z alone.

• ganni and vestaire collective collabed - i am personally getting very overwhelmed with the resale market. there has an explosion in options to choose from of resell sites and and second-hand fashion startups recently. no one has been able to crack all of the use cases yet, but pickle and vestaire are two of my go-to’s whenever i do want to buy resell or rent. i feel like this move made vesatire more memorable and is on-brand for ganni.

• mancereal - the worl’d first creatine high protein keto zero sugar ceral - launched a few days ago and it’s eerily similar to the david protein bar vibe, just much more bro-coded. i personally do not want creatine in my cereal, but for those who do, look no further.

man cereal’s cereal.

• shopmy reached a 1.5 billion dollar evaluation - from one of my two friends at shopmy:

“this valuation just speaks to how shopmy is not another creator marketplace, it’s building the creator commerce infrastructure. whether you’re a brand, creator, or shopper, shopmy is building the tools to power consumerism via trust, not algorithims. and, as a consumer, it’s a toolkit you never knew you needed, but once you step foot inside, you can’t live without it!”

as always, let me know what was interesting to you. and share this if you liked it :)

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and some earlier posts to check out: