Happy Friday. 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:
Generative AI
Fintech's Brutal End to 2022
IPOs in 2023
SBF Pleads Not Guilty
Equinox's Bold Approach to OOH Marketing
What's happening in.....
PE/VC
Venture Capital's New It Girl
Is Generative AI the Alix Earle of seed deals?
The once niche and typically ignored field of generative AI is getting a lot more trendy in the eyes of venture capitalists following DALL-E-2, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Stable Diffusion's success in demonstrating that AI was indeed ready for commercial applications. From advertising, to law, to writing software code, the language models that power most tools in the field have become shockingly skilled at creating content with a human like touch over the last 18 months - so much so, that in 2022, investors bet as much on AI as they have in the past 5 years combined, setting this crop of seed funding apart from the general 2022 slump. If you feel as if you haven't heard much around this space despite the growth surrounding it, that's because you haven't - "I think the [current] market conditions are overriding the typical hype behavior now," said SignalFire partner, Oana Olteanu. "I believe many other VC firms, not only us, are very careful and diligent in analyzing the opportunities."
Fintech stocks did worse than fin and tech last year. Is that what the industry gets for its unoriginal naming methodology?
Another newsletter, another report on fintech struggling. Ah, how we miss the sweet highs of yesteryear. Between higher federal interest rates, the decline of pandemic boosts in business, and the somewhat delusional 'growth-at-all-costs' mindset, fintechs proved to be consistently unprofitable, underperforming both financial stocks and tech stocks in 2022. After mistaking the periodic boosts they enjoyed during the pandemic as permanent shifts, a number of firms wrongly bet on the high volumes of business to remain as life returned back to normal. As we have seen over the past year, that has proved to be the opposite as layoff news and slashed expenses took permanent residence in every day headlines. These conditions have added up to the inevitable conclusion: investors no longer have the patience for high-flying 'fintech f*ckery' with lofty business goals and unprofitable models contributing nothing other than to the loss of money. However, while fintech has fallen a long way from the highs of 2021, and 2022 favored the reset of the funding environment, 2023 has a huge opportunity to be a year of recalibration for fintech companies.
We've said it once and we've said it again: as long as it's not low rise jeans, we are HERE for it.
In 2021, IPO market activity was the highest since the dot-com boom. Then came 2022 and the market came to a virtual standstill. TechCrunch's Natalia Holgado Sanchez looked at five market downturns over the past 20 years and analyzed how they affected private stock, and most importantly, how long it took the IPO market to reopen.
To err is human, to blame it on someone else shows management potential.
Our New Year's resolution was to never talk about Sam Bankman-Fried again, but you know what they say - resolutions are meant to be broken! The disgraced crypto exec is back in the headlines after pleading not guilty on all counts to federal criminal charges in Manhattan on Tuesday. SBF has been charged with eight counts of fraud and conspiracy. Federal prosecutors have alleged Bankman-Fried orchestrated one of the "biggest financial frauds in American history" by steering billions in FTX customer and investor money and funneling it to his privately controlled hedge fund Alameda Research. To put it in perspective, the number of victims of the FTX fraud could exceed 1 million, a prosecutor said during Tuesday's hearing.
Equinox’s bizarre new campaign causes outrage online.
In our second-ever released newsletter in August, we provided our take on SoulCycle's unhinged "F*ck It, Let's Ride" campaign and it appears that questionable marketing stunts from fitness brands are back by unpopular demand in 2023. Luxury fitness club Equinox launched their largest ever OOH campaign on January 1st, labeled ‘We don’t speak January.' The club really hammered the message home by forbidding new members from joining on New Year's Day. "January is a language we don't understand," the club said on social media. A now deleted TikTok posted by Equinox had some fun at the expense of those unable to sign up on Jan. 1, showing an empty gym and one member happily working out alone, with text reading, “When it’s Jan. 1, but you remember Equinox isn’t letting new members join today.” “Take your resolutions somewhere else,” the caption read. The campaign has caused quite a stir online, with some saying it "shames" people trying to start new habits while others praised the company for sticking to its brand values. Like we said, questionable.
To those who observe, we are five days into Dry January and Tito’s enlisted the help of Martha Stewart help you make use of your vodka, besides drinking it. The campaign showcases how “Dry January” can easily become “DIY January,” as Stewart makes use of Tito’s in various comedic, but innovative, ways. Watch the video here.
2023's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicked off this week in Vegas and we have all the news from the year’s biggest tech trade show here.
PHRASE OF THE WEEK
MANIFEST
Manifesting is the practice of thinking aspirational thoughts with the purpose of making them real.
While making New Year resolutions is one of the biggest topics of discussion ATM, motivational speaker Gabrielle Bernstein suggests manifesting your goals instead. She explains that making New Year resolutions implies that something needs to be fixed. Manifesting, on the other hand, is to set intentions and attract what you want. It's a shift in energy and is more positive.
