Golden Goose Billions & Live Nation Woes

$740 'dirty' shoes and it's antitrust season

May 30, 2024

Legend of the Week: Melinda French Gates

Melinda French Gates gave us a big reason to smile after our Memorial Day Weekend - on Tuesday, she announced that she will be donating $1 billion to organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world. With the recent rollback of abortion rights throughout the US, there’s more urgency than ever to fight for the women’s rights and family rights around the world.

Articles of the Week

Golden Goose, the brand famous for their $740 shoes, is said to be eyeing an IPO this week in Milan. They’re aiming for a $3.3 billion valuation. Last year, they did $637 million in revenue and they opened up 21 stores. At a time when most consumers seem to be slowing down their spending on luxury goods, Golden Goose stands out as one of the few winners.

Accused of violating antitrust laws, Live Nation Entertainment faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry. The Justice Department sued Live Nation, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims that it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.

After some trying years during which Mark Zuckerberg could do little right, many developers and technologists have embraced the Meta chief as their champion of “open-source” artificial intelligence.

Grocery costs have increased about 25 percent since 2021. Grocery retailers are listening to customers and releasing statements that they plan on cutting costs of goods. Target plans to cut costs on 5k items, while Aldi said that they’re cutting costs on 250 items.

Gen Z is turning toward social media (TikTok/YouTube) as their primary search engines, seeking quick, relatable answers amid dissatisfaction with Google's results. Young internet users' behavior marks a clear departure from that of millennials, who came of age in a golden era of online search and take pride in their ability to find the answers that they were looking for on Google.

New research from Stanford University, Northwestern University and the Mastercard Economics Institute, the payments company’s research arm, finds the pandemic prompted a rise in online shopping that’s persisted. Last year, for example, we spent $375 billion more than we would have otherwise, the report estimates.

The Future of News IS Social Media

You can see from this graphic that last year, a whopping 43% of TikTok users regularly get their news from TikTok. The companies making the steepest declines here are X (Twitter) and Facebook. My guess is that this year, the percentage of TikTok users who regularly get their news from TikTok will be even higher, potentially over 50%.

Biz Deep Dive: Notion

Notion was founded in 2013 and now has over 30 million users around the world. These millions of users flock to Notion to help them organize their to-do lists, docs and projects due to its simplistic, intuitive design. Notion calls themselves a “connected workspace” and it’s widely used by many organizations (Slack, Netflix) as a workspace organizational tool and by individuals for their personal use. The company is now worth $10 billion.

When Notion was just starting out, they focused on building a loyal fan base of early adopters. These early adopters loved the product and shared it with others. Notion also leveraged social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Product Hunt to spread the word and get feedback from their users. They built a strong community of enthusiasts who created tutorials, templates, and use cases for Notion. Flash forward, in 2021, Notion blew up on Tiktok and became Gen Z’s favorite organizational tool. There are currently 1.3 billion hashtags for “notion” and 13.4 million hashtags for “notion girl” on Tiktok.

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