It’s that time of year again, so it’s only fitting that we play Two Truths and a Lie, Silicon Valley Startup Edition, for the back-to-schoolers.
Out of the following three startups, which is the fake one? One that finances college with income-share agreements? One that makes backpacks that turn into desks? Or one that installs micro-schools in airports?(Scroll to the bottom for the answers.)
Know of some ridiculous stuff happening in September? Shoot me a message to include it in next month’s edition.
The $200 Million Ice Cream
Welcome to the picture-perfect pink world of the influencer, where everything looks just so. And with this Photoshopped life comes some seriously unvarnished purchasing power. All hail the influencer generation — bow to them on the candy-colored floor tiles, and rest your head in supplication in the pool of sprinkles. This month, the Museum of Ice Cream, everyone’s favorite flash-in-the-pan pop-up, has proven its staying power by raising a $40 million series A with a valuation of $200 million. It’s not actually a museum, mind you—according to its website, it’s a “place to unite and inspire the world through imagination.”
This pastel playground reflects the growing desires of Gen Zers and millennials, who ape that Insta life and flock to a space consciously designed to capture perfectly filtered photos and provide them with a week’s worth of social media content. And they’ll pay for this privilege; since opening in 2016, over 1.5 million people have attended, shelling out around $38 a ticket. In most fad life cycles, there’s a peak at which the popularity wanes and the fad vanishes almost as quickly as it appeared. (When’s the last time you heard “Gangnam Style?”) But this investment disproves the fad premise and shows that this filtered world will endure for years to come. Big picture: the Museum of Ice Cream is here to stay, and so is social media stardom.
The Future Has Self-Driving Scooters
The biggest pain point about the surge of electric scooters in cities is how they clutter the streets. Companies have tried to address the problem by installing locks and insisting that users post parking pictures “or be fined,” but still the complaints come in. Protesters have gone so far as to vandalize said scooters and film themselves throwing them off bridges. But they’re such an economical, environmentally friendly — and fun! — way to get around town, and I’d be very sad to see them go.
According to Reuters, it looks like Segway Ninebot, which supplies scooters to most U.S. companies, may have solved this problem. The company just announced the Segway T60, a self-driving scooter that can neatly pick itself up and head to a charging dock every night. The image of a silent scooting army heading through San Francisco is a little uncanny — an AI overlord playing pied piper to an army of electric vehicles — but it does fix the problem. The company has tinkered with the basic scooter design—three wheels now, instead of two. Road tests start in September, with a rollout date in early 2020.
Disrupting the Ceiling
For the last few years, Bumblebee Spaces, a San Francisco startup, has been puzzling over the problem of the ceiling. With affordable housing being such a rarity in the Bay Area, the blank empty space that is most ceilings seemed like such a waste. It’s the latest frontier in the world of micro-apartments, reported 1843 Magazine, and for this startup, the answer is a sleek suspension system that hoists up the bed with a tap of a tablet. Yes, a modern take on the Murphy bed of yore. It could be a win-win, however. Renters now have space aplenty for yoga stretches or to set up a table and host friends.
Of course, even with the ceiling conquered, minimalism is still key to micro-living — the Bumblebee units are around 130 square foot, so space is still a premium for residents. But they did poach a designer from Apple, so at least the cramped confines look cool, right? Price-wise, a studio rents for around $2,500, which is basically what a studio that hadn’t been Ant Man’d would go for. But then you wouldn’t have the whole “your bed might accidentally brain you to death” appeal.
Amazon’s Army of Twitter Shills
The idea of loving your job so much that all you want to do is broadcast it to the world is awesome, and in an ideal world, you’d have time to blast that on social media and do your work at the same time. It gets onto shaky ground, however, when your enthusiastic tweets are prewritten on-brand messages supplied by said employer, and your online presence starts to resemble real-life Stockholm Syndrome—the 3.0 version.
Vice recently examined the phenomenon of Amazon’s PR army on Twitter, one that works to counteract all that bad press on what warehouse workers have to do to get packages out for that sweet two-day shipping. Take this exchange between a former Amazon warehouse employee and one of the PR army:
That’s fucked up on so many levels, not least because victim-blaming — “it was my fault” — is not the way to handle your stress.
The aforementioned Hannah is an Amazon shill, officially. She’s a paid fulfillment-center ambassador (her profile states this publicly), and she’s paid by the company to defend its reputation online.
A year ago, only four shills existed, but today, there are more than 60 on Twitter. Amazon says that the accounts are run by real staffers, but it’s hard to say if that’s true or if they’re all run by a PR team.
Facebook’s Underground Meat Market
Many people have used Facebook to sell nefarious things over the years — and I don’t just mean horrific wedding favors. The company has struggled to combat firearm and drug trading in private groups. And now, according to MEL Magazine, there’s a new kid on the block. No weapons involved, but it does get bloody.
Enter the meat markets, invite-only groups where people who want their Wagyu or Japanese Kobe beef cut with a side of secretiveness. But it gets more complicated than that. Once you’ve identified the bite you’d like, you have to bid a bunch of dollars for a 10% chance to win, and you’re assigned a number from one to nine. Then, you wait for the lottery.
Most meat markets use a real-life lottery to pick their winners — the Illinois Pick 3 Plus Fireball Lottery is a popular one. When the fireball is drawn, if the number matches yours, then boom, the meat will be mailed to you. To be clear, the meat you’re buying is legal — no sides of elephant or slices of a lion for sale — but there are concerns about whether you’re getting what you pay for and how well something so perishable can be transported. But hey, if you’re a meathead, these are your people.
Silicon Valley’s First Cat Convention
It seems fitting that the place that’s responsible for most of the cat memes on the web should host a convention honoring their stars. Grumpy Cat is sadly no more (RIP to that feline’s frowny face) but Silicat, the inaugural Silicon Valley cat convention, had more than enough Insta fluffballs to make up for her loss. Stars at Silicat included Sunglass Cat — beloved for her blinged-up shades, which are necessary, as she was born without eyelids — who boasts 810,000 Instagram fans, and wide-eyed cute cat Lil Bub, with 2.3 million Instagram followers.
The two-day affair catered to all things feline, with puns aplenty, including the keynote kitty, the cat rapper, and catman bingo, to name a few. The schedule read like an Onion article, with sessions on cannabis and cats, a Body Pawsitive cat yoga class, and a workshop on cat photography. Sometimes life is just purrrfect.
Answers to Two Truths and a Lie: The micro-schools for airports is a lie; the start-up Prosoc makes the desk/backpack hybrids; and Blair uses income-share agreements to fund college education.
