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The New Olympian Social Media Playbook & Startup Accelerators

ilona maher is changing the game & a y-combinator closeup

Author

Sammi Cohen
August 03, 2024

Happy Saturday to my favorite readers in the world! Hello from Oxford (traveling for work, so this is coming to you from the road). For the rest of the year, I’m really going to try to double down on this newsletter and bring it to you consistently, so you can expect this in your inbox each Friday or Saturday as a recap of the week.

oxford was oxfording

And we’re back with another issue of Social Currency - giving you the latest news & insights across business, culture, social and startups. Enjoy it and feel free to send me articles throughout the week that you think should be featured :)

Biz & Culture: Articles of the Week

Blake Lively announced the launch of her new hair care line this week. The line is called Blake Brown Beauty and it’s going to be sold at Target starting tomorrow. The brand has only 2 categories right now: shampoos and masks. I know everyone is rolling their eyes at yet another celebrity beauty brand, but if there’s anything that the Blake & Ryan Reynolds duo is good at, it’s marketing a CPG product. My hot take on this is that I’m disappointed with the brand name - I wish that she hadn’t leaned into her name as much for this. I think most people are fatigued with celebrity beauty brands, and at least having some separation from the celebrity in the brand name is generally a good thing.

Ilona Maher is the US Women’s Rugby Olympian who has exploded in popularity on Tiktok and Instagram over the last few weeks. She’s known for her skits where she’s simultaneously hilarious & self-deprecating, while also giving a behind-the-scenes look at what Olympian life is like. On and off the field, she’s known for her signature red lip and she just co-launched a skincare brand called Medalist. I’m very excited to see her grow as a leader and figurehead for young female athletes (and non-athletes like myself).

The all-in luxury boom is now… over? Hermès captured the lion’s share of growth in luxury goods spending in the Q2, while everyone else lagged behind. France’s three most powerful luxury-goods companies reported very mixed second-quarter results last week: Louis Vuitton and Gucci reported disappointing results, however, Hermès saw a 13% increase in sales over the same period.

Publicis Groupe is acquiring Influential, a marketing company that brokers contracts between advertisers and online influencers, to expand the holding company’s influencer-marketing services. Adding Influential to their portfolio will give its clients access to a wider array of internet personalities, and help them develop more relevant influencer content for specific audiences by linking to consumer information.

17-year-old Demetra Dias is the teen to pay attention to on Tiktok. Her captivated tween and teen followers love her for her clothing hauls and as of today, she’s at 2.9 million followers on Tiktok (I expect this number to 1.5x by the end of the year). Although she hasn’t made it to mainstream fame yet, every teen on Tiktok seems to look to her page for recommendations. Expect to see her massive success with teen-centric brands, especially ahead of the back-to-school wave over the next month.

CapCut is the ByteDance-owned video editing software that has the potential to lure millions of users away from Adobe and Canva. Since launching outside China in 2020, CapCut has picked up over 300 million monthly mobile active users and commands 81% of the total active users for mobile video editing (!!!).

For the 2024 Paris Olympics, brands are coming up with more creative ways than ever to sponsor their brands’ products. For example, Figs, a direct-to-consumer scrubs brand, isn’t outfitting athletes, but rather members of the Team U.S.A. medical team. Pampers is opening the first-ever nursery in the Olympic Village for athlete parents to spend time with their babies. Any major brand can find a way to connect their brand to the Olympics, and this strategy will only continue in future Olympic seasons.

Startup Funding Closeups: Startup Accelerators & Y-Combinator

Startup accelerators are organizations dedicated to fostering the rapid growth of early-stage companies. Typically operated by investors, corporations, or independent entities, they offer structured programs that usually span 3-4 months, providing selected startups with a combination of mentorship, educational workshops, networking opportunities, and often a modest amount of capital and office space. In exchange for these resources, accelerators usually require a small percentage of equity in participating startups.

Some of the hottest names in the tech world came of age in accelerators, including Postmates, Airbnb, Coinbase, and Stripe. And accelerators are growing in popularity in the corporate world, with companies such as Target, Microsoft, and AB InBev all introducing branded programs.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) found that startups participating in an accelerator raised 50% to 170% more from investors and were more likely to be alive or acquired than similar startups that applied to the accelerators but were not accepted.

The most famous of all the startup accelerators is without a doubt Y-Combinator. YC invests $500,000 in every company on standard terms. The investment gives YC 7% of the company plus an incremental equity amount that will be fixed when founders raise money from other investors. The $500K investment is made on 2 separate safes:

  • They invest $125,000 on a post-money safe in return for 7% of your company (the “$125k safe”)

  • They invest $375,000 on an uncapped safe with a Most Favored Nation (“MFN”) provision (the “MFN safe”)

Y-Combinator is just one of hundreds of startup accelerators in the US, and there are countless accelerators that are catered to specific industries (ranging from software to CPG).

In the World of Tiering Subscribers, Premium Accounts Drive Profits

Chartr

Spotify increased its prices for the first time ever last summer, and then again earlier this year, but it looks like this didn’t scare off premium users. Despite having to cough up more for their music, Spotify’s subscriber numbers were up 12% year-on-year to a record 246 million. Revenue from premium users that was up 21%.

That’s of course carried over to the company’s bottom line too, where it’s also still all about music fans who are forking out a monthly fee: per calculations, Spotify’s premium users accounted for 95% of the company’s gross profit over the last 12 months.

So far, it seems like video watchers might be more price sensitive than music fans: Disney+ actually lost users after its price hike, while Spotify has continued to grow. I guess the question boils down to what is more annoying? An ad interruption during your nightly TV binge, or an ad that breaks up your favorite album? Read the full article here.

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P.S. - If you see any typos in this newsletter, just know that I did it on purpose in order to make you giggle.

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xx Sammi

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