1. MUD\WTR’s new retail location + Adaptogens
I’ve been thinking about adaptogens for over 4 years now. Check out my adaptogen market map from 2020 🙃 MUD\WTR, one of the leading functional adaptogenic brands (and also former Slope client!) known for their mushroom-based coffee alternative, recently opened their first Santa Monica brick + mortar location.
My tweet went viral - a mix of CPG folks excited about the aesthetics of the brand brought to life, as well as the idea of a “third place” offering breathwork/meditation classes tied with a co-working cafe that serves MUD\WTR drinks.
Hybrid retail / activation concepts aren’t new to Ocean Park in Santa Monica. Other popular brands like Aviator Nation with their cycling classes/store, Bulletproof Coffee’s former cafe, and Juneshine’s hard kombucha brewery are other examples. I’m excited to see what kind of space it becomes - will be curious to see if it becomes more of a place to support MUD\WTR’s own programming, or if it really does become more of a "third place.”
2. Netflix’s Engagement Report
Netflix published their new bi-annual What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report analyzing 18,000 titles in a downloadable spreadsheet with total hours watched Among the thousands of titles, Korean entertainment was a major standout! With #3: "The Glory" at 622,800,000 hours watched and #15: "Physical 100" at 235,000,000 watched. Explains why Netflix has committed to investing $2.5B in Korean content over the next four years!
Korea IP resonates globally + represents a HUGE OPP. Previous post about this here
3. Klara and the Sun + Humanoids
I recently finished the book “Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro and can’t stop thinking about how perfectly it touches on relevant q’s around AI agents + physical humanoids. What does it mean to be “believably human”? Truly, how do you measure success here? (Thinking about interactive simulation AI town here too). What if everyone grew up with an AF (artificial friend) like Klara - how would that impact relationships, loneliness, and society? What are the ethics of being “lifted”? Feels like a relevant read that will continue to be referenced in conversations about humanoids and robots today.
4. AI generated Music
I advised a separate audio AI startup called WavTool this summer, focused on producers. Here is the recent launch tweet for Suno AI, a new Audio AI startup that lets you make a song from text input in ~20 seconds, targeted for truebeginners. This. Is. Awesome! I tried it on songs about breakfast and dogs, in the style of kpop and pop top 40. Try it out yourself.
The world of AI generation for images, video, voice cloning, code, music, friends, and more…what a fascinating field of new tools to use and take advantage of!! Obviously a whole mix of responses, but can definitely see marketers and creators having so much fun with this. Will be curious to see how licensing / IP rights work here.
5. Outfit Anyone + Animate Anyone - Alibaba’s New Fashion Tech
AI can now Outfit AND Animate Anyone from a single image. This is game changing for the fashion industry...virtual try-on, showcasing multiple sizes for customers, "testing" new styles, etc. *We just invested in a new B2B company applying similar technology to fashion brands!
Fun fact - I spent 3 years in fashion. I first started building a virtual sizing tool we sold to fashion e-commerce stores (which is the idea we got into YC with!), then built And Comfort (plus-size fashion e-commerce), then spent some time at Verishop.
Research from Alibaba Group's Institute for Intelligent Computing - https://humanaigc.github.io/outfit-anyone/