Nuggies: Oatmilk and Life Expectancy
Thursday, January 7th, 2020
Welcome to the thirty-first 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 Warren Buffet, “Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.”
This Week’s Articles:
Oatly: The New Coke, Divinations
Oatly, who pioneered the oatmilk space, is reported to be considering raising up to $1 billion in an IPO this year off the strength of their reported $200 million in revenue and a hot IPO market. If those numbers aren’t shocking enough to do a spit-take with your plant-based latte, Divinations has some shocking cynicism.
Their argument is that Oatly uses vague claims about healthiness and advertisement strategies similar to the tobacco industry and Coke. Doing so allows Oatly to hide its sugars and fats behind a trendy brand.
Read it here
Notes on technology in the 2020s, Eli Dourado
Eli Dourado rings in 2021 with optimism, outlining technology developments that could shape the next decade. Dourado frames his discussion around the economic relevance of technology: its impact on productivity and how new innovation could reverse recent stagnation in productivity growth.
Key themes include biotech & health, energy, transportation, space, and information technology.
Read it here
Instacart Is a Parasite and a Sham, The New Republic
This opinion piece looks at Instacart, the on-demand grocery delivery app, as a proxy for talking about the larger “gig economy” as a whole. It argues that if Instacart, which can’t consistently turn a profit during a pandemic while overcharging supermarkets and underpaying employees, they have no real business. Instead, they, like many other gig economy companies, coast on easy access to cheap labor and money from investors, hoping to make up for their losses in the hot IPO market. It certainly is opinionated, but it is definitely a well argued take.
Read it here
This Week’s Tweets:
This Week’s Wildcard (an extra, interesting nugget):
This week, we have an interesting data visualization of life expectancy v. per capita health spending. It looks like there’s an outlier.
This Week’s Question:
Is the gig economy a net benefit for society? If not, what needs to change?
What are we listening to this week?:
This week, we’re listening to Bloom by Beach House. If Tame Impala was a Chick Fil-a classic chicken sandwich, Beach House is a $14 chicken sandwich on a brioche bun with aioli and sprouts from the rooftop gastro pub downtown. Both taste great, one is just a little more exclusive. Definitely worth a listen.
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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