Thursday, July 9th, 2020
Welcome to the tenth edition of Nuggies, an email newsletter that aggregates articles and commentary on business, economics, startups, and more, in bite-sized nuggets sent right to your email weekly. Created by and for college students.
Our quote of the week comes from Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
This Week’s Articles:
BMW is going all-in on in-car microtransactions, The Verge
This article provides a run down of BMW’s next move, which gives some insights into the broader direction of the auto industry. BMW is equipping their cars to be fully equipped with features at the time of purchase, which can then be unlocked later through payments. Features like heated seats, adaptive cruise control, and drive assist can be purchased and unlocked, possibly on a subscription basis. This is something that Tesla has done for years, and just shows that everyone is trying to get into the Software as a Service (SaaS) space.
Read it here
Palantir Technologies Files to Go Public, The New York Times
Palantir, the colossal Silicon Valley data firm, has filed for an initial public offering (IPO), which would make it the largest Silicon Valley offering since Uber. Palantir has been around since 2003 and works with governments and security contractors to aggregate and analyze their data, among other things. It is an interesting move considering the state of the markets and the COVID pandemic, on top of the secretive nature of their work, but an indicator that tech companies may be feeling more comfortable.
Read it here
Is Anyone Watching Quibi?, Vulture
If you have 30 minutes to kill, this article is a great way to do it. It tells the story of Quibi, the “groundbreaking” streaming platform from media giant Jeffery Katzenberg (DreamWorks founder) and tech titan Meg Whitman (HP CEO). With hundreds of millions in investment, Quibi, which provides mobile-only films and TV shows in short, digestible segments, was supposed to be the next Netflix. When it launched on April 6th and reached 3rd most popular app in the app store, it looked like it would be. In mid-June, however, it sat at an aggressively underwhelming 284th on that list. This article tells the full story of its development and ultimate flop, providing insights into the media industry, tech industry, and current state of the content consumer.
Read it here
This Week’s Tweets:
^maybe it’s time for MAGA masks?
This Week’s Wildcard (an extra, interesting nugget):
This is a comparison of profit rates between whaling and venture capital. The Y axis is the percentage of voyages (whaling) or funds (VC) with X percent returns. It’s interesting to see how the two industries seem to track each other pretty well when looking at profit rates. When taking into account that in America, one of the earliest forms of VC was to invest in whaling excursions, this relationship makes a little more sense.
This Week’s Question:
What are some creative/outside-of-the-box indicators for lockdowns easing? For instance, the price of an inflatable hot tub on Amazon has been sliding down from its peak in April.
What are we listening to this week?:
Jury is still out on this one. Released last week, Shoot for the Starts Aim for the Moon is the posthumous album for New York rapper Pop Smoke. Executive produced by 50 Cent, in our initial listens, we can hear the ‘Fiddy influences. The album seems like a fitting mashup of old school and new rap sound from one of the hottest rappers of late.
Thank you for reading! Nuggies is created by Thomas Pero and Spencer Koehl, two undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame.
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