Happy Friday Jr. Welcome to The Chaos Coordinator! We are Brain Candy's snarky little sister, delivering carefully curated news happening across the industry (that you should probably care about) right to your inbox, with a hefty dose of irreverence.
In this issue, we dive into:
Natural Selection in VC
Millennials and Fintechs
The IPO Market Remains in its Flop Era
Elon, Twitter, and Crypto
Meta's Creator Week
What's happening in.....
PE/VC
VCs Aren't Done with Spooky Season
Quiet, structural changes in the VC landscape could be looking like a scene out of Scream 3. How festive.
While we and the rest of the city are still recuperating from our Halloweekend activities, VC firms are just beginning to get their spook on. As this never-ending economic downturn plays out, VC firms are exercising a 'survival of the fittest' mentality, quietly cutting costs while entering a "natural selection" cycle. Experts speculate that newer firms will likely merge together to survive, to avoid cutting already modestly-sized teams. Seasoned venture capitalists are feared to either leave the space all together, especially as more senior partners get closer to retirement. And of course, we can't forget about the quiet quitters, which makes this already confusing landscape even harder to read.
If Millennials had a dollar for every time a Boomer complained about their generation, they'd have enough money to buy more ClassPass credits in the market they ruined.
A new U.S. study from FIS found that Millennials are more likely to engage and adopt new, digitally oriented and embedded financial services experiences across emerging digital channels than other generational groups, including - wait for it - Gen Zs. Gasp. If you are in need of a refresher, embedded finance is non-financial companies offering financial products and services at the point of need, for example, memberships like ClassPass, in-app payments or Buy Now, Pay Later offerings. The report also shared that over half of Millennials and and Gen Zs are likely to use loyalty based mobile apps, just like I did this morning ordering my first Starbucks holiday drink of the season. $8 will come back to me, an Iced Sugar Cookie latte on a 70 degree November day in New York will not.
Read more on Millennials and their fintech adoption habits compared to their younger counterparts here.
CAPITAL MARKETS
Where Are the Unicorns?
Last year was the [SPAC] party, this year is the crippling hangover.
The 2022 IPO market has imploded this year. Only two companies went public last month, making it the slowest October for the IPO market since 2011 according to data from an IPO research firm. At a larger view, only 66 companies have gone public so far this year, down over 80% from a year ago. Yikes. A number of high profile unicorns - the nickname for multi-billion dollar startups looking to go public - have allegedly backtracked on plans to go public this year, choosing to wait until 2023 in the hopes that the broader market calms down. The number of companies going public via SPACs this year also unraveled, with only only 82 companies have gone public via a SPAC deal so far this year, according to SPAC Research - down from 613 companies in 2021.
If you are a fan of bell ringings, listing celebrations and traffic jams in the Financial District, don't fret. Check out possible 2023 IPOs on tap here.
CRYPTO/BLOCKCHAIN
The Elon Musk and Twitter Saga: v47382782
Will our most covered man let Twitter's crypto division live?
We've known for a long time that Mr. Musk is a ~complicated~ man, with many opinions, however his public waffling on crypto is starting to cause stress rashes among digital-asset enthusiasts and prolific Twitter crypto communities now that the bird app is finally in his hands. Under Jack Dorsey's leadership, Twitter dipped its toe into integrating Bitcoin, and has since added Ether tipping and NFT profile pictures for select users in a series of efforts supported by its large crypto-enthusiast user base. Can Musk can move beyond the memes and settle on what he wants Twitter's future involvement in crypto to be? Unclear. Musk's takeover has opened up the possibility for blockchain elements to be integrated into social media in a way we haven't seen before, and whichever path he chooses to take will certainly be closely followed (and most likely reported on by us).
Bloomberg explains what integrated blockchain and decentralization on Twitter could look like here.
MARKETING TRENDS
What Does the M Stand for in Meta?
Monetization. Should we call it Metanization? Don't let Zuck see this.
It’s Creator Week at Meta, and alongside various showcase events and panels, Meta announced some new features for creators, including expanded monetization opportunities, including subscriptions on Instagram, and new tools to facilitate creation and selling of NFTs. With subscriptions, creators (with over 10k followers) are able to charge a monthly fee – between $0.99 and $99.99 – which then gives paying members access to subscribers-only live-streams, subscribers-only posts and stories and badges in comment streams to help creators identify their supporters, explains Social Media Today. Instagram takes no cut from subscriber revenue at this stage, hoping to enable more creators to monetize their Instagram audience via direct, ongoing support from their communities. Meta also announced that creators will soon have ’an end-to-end toolkit’ to facilitate NFT trading, with collectors able to purchase digital assets directly within Instagram.
Check out more of Meta's announcements from Creator Week here.
Other Things You Should Care About
Forrester Research predicts the gift your marketing clients will want this holiday season is digital services. Agencies with digital-hungry clients should start prioritizing investments in Web3 and metaverse services to meet growing demand before well-wrapped services from Web3 savvy agencies prove too tempting to pass up. Read more here.
We're excited to share a great glossary for when you inevitably forget what a chart's name is. Check it out here.
PHRASE OF THE WEEK
(NO) BONES DAY
noun
A very old, and very cute, pug and prophet named Noodle (pictured to the left) predicts the outcome of each day on TikTok. If he stays sitting up when his owner (@jongraz) lifts him slightly, it means it’s a bones day, and if he falls over immediately, it’s a no bones day.
A bones day essentially means energetic and fruitful, while a no bones day, doesn't mean that you're going to have a bad day, but it does indicate a more slow, low-key day where you should take extra steps to be kind to yourself.