What I wrote last week
Business
DTC brands are slowly warming up to Amazon. The ability to tell stories and appear authentic to shoppers on Amazon is hugely important. The commission may cut deep into margin, but Amazon commands the kind of online traffic that few others can rival. Some retailers now use Amazon as an acquisition tool. Sell part of the catalogue on the site, lure shoppers to their own native page and hopefully convince them to buy what is not on Amazon. It’s not as straightforward as it should be, but if you can’t win every battle, you may as well pick the ones that can help you win the war
Amazon Will Close Six Whole Foods Stores in Four States. I look forward to seeing how Amazon’s physical store strategy unfolds. Will it transition all Whole Foods to the cashierless version that Amazon Go pioneers? Will it keep both brands at the same time? Or will it designate Amazon Go as the flagship store brand moving forward?
Snapchat’s flying camera Pixy. Kudos to Snapchat for making a portable, small and allegedly easy-to-use drone. There is certainly a niche market for Pixy: consumers who want to film drone footage but can’t afford a drone or do not want to carry a heavy one around. I am certain that Snapchat will iterate furiously to improve Pixy: longer lasting batteries, higher quality cameras, better integration into the Memories section and more AR effects. Snapchat is already great at software. Hardware is hard, but if it can be great at it too, it’ll be formidable (ask Apple).
Formula One Finally Found a Way to Get Americans to Care. Cracking the America code is fantastic for Formula 1 as a sport and a business. A long-time fan of Formula 1, I noticed the difference after Liberty took over. Prior to the take-over, clips in which experts explain aerodynamics, rear wings or floor of F1 cars didn’t exist. Beautiful charts that discuss where one driver is slower than another in a lap were the stuff of imagination. For a global sport such as F1, it was unfathomable to think that it didn’t even have a subscription app to watch races. The Americanization of the sport is not perfect. I am not a fan of how much Drive To Survive excessively dramatizes F1. Just ask Max Verstappen or a few other drivers about it. Having more than one race in the US is…nice, but the final verdict should wait till we get a feel of how the new tracks are. Austin is a great spectacle that provides awesome racing. Miami and Vegas should offer a gigantic boost in popularity, but I am not sure about the racing. We’ll see. For now, I am happy for the sport that I have loved for the past 17 years.
Mercedes-Benz Says Self-Driving Option Ready to Roll. Mercedes is the first car manufacturer that achieves an internationally valid certification for self-driving level 3. This looks a big progress in this space. From the technology perspective, I am excited about self-driving cars. From a practical perspective, I still don’t grasp the actual benefits of driving a driverless vehicle on busy urban streets. Accidents happen all the time. Reliance on computers just makes careless drivers more careless. Plus, if you are in a car and don’t have to drive it, what could you do in the meantime? It’s not like you can go to the back seat and have a nap…
TikTok’s Work Culture: Anxiety, Secrecy and Relentless Pressure. The older I am, the more put off I become of a workplace like TikTok. Imagine needing marriage therapy because you spend your dinner time with your husband on the phone discussing work.
American Consumers Are Shopping, Traveling and Working Out Like It’s 2019. Among a slew of bad news such as high inflation, supply chain constraints and stock market crashes, this is probably the best silver lining for companies. The question is: how long can this strong consumer spending last?
Other stuff I found interesting
103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known. A lot of goof stuff that I wish I had known 10 years earlier
The Arc of the Practical Creator. “A Practical Creator doesn’t view a boring job as a dead-end endeavor, but as an active patron of their creativity. When you’re in this first stage, you must rigorously work on your creative endeavors after your day job responsibilities. This is an absolute must “. I love this website.
Stats
Zenly, a subsidiary of Snapschat that is very popular in Russia, has 35 million monthly active users
Internet companies in China raised $3.51 billion in Q1 2022, down from $15 billion in Q1 2021
The average price for ground beef in America grocery stores has jumped 18% from a year ago
Dr Strange 2 minted $36 million in preview performance, the 8th largest of all time. For comparison, Avenger’s Infinity War notched $39 million and Spiderman: No Way Home did $50 million
US reaches 1 million Covid deaths
Minh Quang Duong 