Le Studio Monthly - August
💻 News of the Month
No reason for this. It’s just cute.
🌠 Venture Capital, but make it for Space.
After a record-breaking 2021, venture investment in the space industry is falling back. Investment in space startups fell by 38% YoY, from $9.9 billion in Q2 2021 to $6.1 billion in Q2 2022, while the deal count dropped by 33%, from 141 to 93, according to Space Capital, an early-stage venture-capital firm. And between Q1 2022 and Q2 2022, investment fell by 18%, from $7.2 billion to $6.1 billion.
That’s a faster yearly decline than overall venture investment, which dropped 27% YoY from last year’s record-highs but smaller than the 26% pullback overall venture funding saw on a quarterly basis.
📦 Amazon’s not-so-green footprint
The company’s carbon emissions rose 18% YoY in 2021, according to its annual sustainability report. Overall, still, Amazon’s “carbon intensity” — or emissions per dollar of sales — decreased 1.9%.
📈 Inflation & Corporate profits
Inflation is at 9.1% — a 40-year high. Interestingly enough, corporate profits are up 25% YoY — a 50-year high. The correlation unfortunately comes from the fact that corporations use inflation as an excuse to raise prices. According to economist Rakeen Mabud, the practice relies on exploiting information asymmetry:
Consumers become accustomed to higher prices as a result of inflation (along with supply chain issues and the war in Ukraine, right now).
Corporations use the opportunity to increase prices and boost profits, even if their own costs haven’t changed.
Example: credit card companies. Retailers recently called out Visa and Mastercard for upping their transaction fees, even though their costs haven’t been impacted by supply chain issues or inflation.
Source: The Hustle
🎧 Tik Tok foray into the music business
If you’ve heard some of TikTok most recent viral songs (see our Tik Tok section below for the latest corn obsession), you might have also seen the top comments to the tracks being requests to “unrelease it.” However, like it or not, these songs are hits, and Tik Tok is laser-focused on music as its next frontier.
Right now, users listen to a song on Tik Tok and go to Spotify to have the full version. Tik Tok, as a tool, is all about discovery: 63% of users discover new music on TikTok before any other platform.
As a next step, it makes sense that Tik Tok would start hosting full length songs. In India, Brazil, and Indonesia, TikTok operates an app called Resso, which is like a more social Spotify. Stateside, Insider recently spotted a trademark filing for a “TikTok Music” app. TechCrunch reported similar filings in the UK, Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia, and Costa Rica. So Tik Tok music is definitely happening.
👨💻 Coworking is a hit
Well, even with WeCrashed and the pandemic*,* it seems that coworking is still a thing. WeWork said that it now has more members than before the pandemic, and occupancy rates in its coworking spaces rose to 72% last quarter, returning to levels from the end of 2019.
🏘️ Rents fly high
71% of renters had rent hikes in 2021-2022
The average increase was 14.6% (or $275/mo)
In certain hot spots (Miami, San Diego, Austin), average rent went up 25%+
4 out of every 10 renters spend more than 30% of their gross income on rent
More than half of all landlords cite market demand as the reason for rent hikes
✈️ Towards Green Aviation Industry?
IPCC stated that the global aviation industry is responsible for ~2% of all human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions annually. Well, US airlines aim to reduce their CO2 emissions by 50% in 2050 compared with 2005 levels. There are startups developing batteries for planes, but still, long flights will require a different solution. One solution is sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a biofuel that’s created from plants or waste materials and performs similarly to today’s petroleum-based jet fuel while producing 50%–80% fewer carbon emissions over its lifecycle. To reach the 2050 goal, global SAF production capacity would need to grow to at least 5x the size of the current pipeline by 2030. The production capacity would then need to increase even faster, by as much as 9x from 2030 to 2050, according to reports.
🧑🎓 Students debts
President Biden announced that the federal government would forgive $10,000 in student debt for borrowers making under $125,000 a year, and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. Biden also extended the moratorium on loan repayments through the end of 2022.
An independent study (Penn Wharton Budget Model) found that wiping out $10,000 for borrowers making <$125k would cost the government $300 billion. And that, at minimum, 69% of the debt forgiven would go to households in the top 60% of the income distribution.
ELON’s MONTHLY NEWS
Here is an analysis of Elon Musk’s business strategy across Tesla, SpaceX, and his other companies. (Harvard Business Review)
🔢 Data of the Month
Y Combinator reduced its summer 2022 cohort size by nearly 40% compared to winter 2022.
Amazon bought iRobot, the parent company of Roomba, for $1.7 billion. It’s the company’s fourth-largest acquisition.
57% of Americans vacationed in the past year, the highest rate since 2009, per data from Allianz Partners USA. But:
60% of US professionals are working more on vacations (Korn Ferry)
63% are taking shorter-than-usual vacations
37% are logging on multiple times per day during vacations, up from 19% in 2021
Flexibility and its downsides: people are saving nearly 6h weekly by commuting less. But they’re also spending half of that saved time doing more work.
Disney reached 221.1 million subscribers across its streaming platforms globally, putting it ahead of Netflix, which has 220.7 million.
Pew’s new survey offers insights on how teenagers spend their time on the internet:
About half of US teens aged 13–17 say they’re online “almost constantly,” up from 24% in 2015.
The most popular platform for teens isn’t TikTok but YouTube, which 95% of teens use. In 2015, the No. 1 platform was Facebook.
Speaking of Facebook, 71% of teens used it in 2015. Now, 32%.
Tik Tok reaching a peak? Last month, ~1.2k accounts hit the 1m-follower milestone, down 41% YoY. Similarly, 3.26k accounts passed 500k followers (down 34%), and 21.68k accounts crossed 100k followers (down 38%).
🔎 Finds of the Month
🌳 A [database](https://qz.com/how-sustainable-are-the-contents-of-your-shopping-cart-1849395743?) that shows you the sustainability of your grocery basket
🎯 If you like Wordle, here is a list of [400](https://likewordle.com/?)+ similar games
🕔 LONG-FORM Article
Read about how Silicon Valley is handling the current economic downturn.
Not an article, but a documentary recommendation: watch the Untold series on NFL player, Manti Te’o, who was catfished at the height of his career. He tells his version of the story and it’s mindblowing.
🔉 Podcast of the Month
Under the Hood, by Le Studio - where we chat about the true ins and outs of entrepreneurship, with real life innovators. Listen, share, comment!
💼 Jobs
Some of our companies are hiring! Check out their openings:
🙌🏼 Thanks for reading! See you next month!
⭐ We'd also love to hear more of your feedback. Tell us what you think and what you want to see in the future in this digest at m.plata@tamar.capital- cheers !