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Notes from a Messy Desk
I’m back in London after a two-week lap around the Western Hemisphere: London > Big Sur > NYC > Brazil. I didn’t get into why I was in Brazil in last week’s newsletter, but the TLDR is that it was a completely unplanned, unhinged (of me) third Hinge date with a 24-year-old pro kite surfer who persuaded me to join him by sharing the blazing fast WiFi speed and sending me photos of the proper coworking space just adjacent to the pool.
While I may have some nice tan lines right now, this trip doesn’t qualify as a vacation because I kind of started another business – the one you’re reading right now. If you missed it, this newsletter is now on Substack, under my own name (no hiding behind a brand!), and comes with lots of new bells and whistles for paid subscribers.
PS: if you’ve got any leads on a sick rental in London, HMU. I’m in the market :)
-Sophia
Last week, I went live with Plot founder Megan Duong and we talked about…
How she raised a $3M seed round from me and Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian
What a LinkedIn DM hoe is, how to become one, and the magic that results from becoming one
How she infiltrated the tech world as a non-technical founder
Her journey to find Co-founder and CTO
The beauty of not belonging
Paid subscribers can replay the video above. They will also get to peep the pitch deck she used to raise her seed round. Check it out below today’s links.
Google Docs is making it much easier to organize information. “You can now use tabs to draft and build content in a way that makes it possible for you to find what you’re looking for quickly and stay on task,” Google announced. “Plus, readers can navigate through your document with ease and focus on sections that matter most to them.”
Struggling luxury retailer Net-A-Porter has been acquired by Mytheresa. On paper, it’s a win-win scenario for both companies. The deal, once it closes, will instantly turn Mytheresa into a $3 billion company. Mytheresa will also be taking on none of YNAP’s debt and inheriting over $600 million in cash from YNAP. Richemont, on the other hand, can finally write off YNAP, which has been a drag on its earnings for several years now.
Net-a-Porter cost more than it made for Richemont. In the first half of 2023, it lost $137 million — bonkers.
Nutter Butter’s social strategy is conjuring an audible “what the fuck” when you click play on their videos. It’s working. Ten videos the brand posted in September racked up more than 87 million views, and it’s all thanks to truly unhinged content. Yes, the social team is 27.
When asked “Which social platform is best for branding?” 69% of the respondents chose Instagram, while TikTok came in second with 15%. Instagram was also top for driving sales, with 42% of respondents listing it as the best platform for conversions.
Younger people (and their wallets) aren’t spending as much time on Facebook, which is why the platform is getting a Gen Z redesign.
I asked a very online 26-year-old what she thought about Facebook’s attempt to seduce the youths.
“I can vouch that Facebook is definitely more ‘aged’ than the other apps,” she said. She uses it mainly to look for rooms for rent or to post the rare life event or photo so that her older, distant family members will see it.
She says the attempt to make Facebook more entertaining like Instagram and TikTok is “just cornyyyyy 😂😂😂”
My friend and CEO of The Female Quotient, Shelley Zalis, launched The Representation Index. It aims to give brands scores to reflect how inclusive their ads are—or aren’t—looking at age, body type, skin tone, gender expression and accessibility to create a score between zero and 100.
Google Shopping unveiled a new logo for no reason at all. They changed the price tag to a shopping bag. It inspires a feeling of, “...okay?”
TechCrunch unveiled their list of New York’s top VCs under 30 including my bud Em Herrera at Slow Ventures.
Ben Horowitz, the second half of Andreessen Horowitz, Trust Fund investor, and author of one of my favorite books announced he’d be backing Kamala.
When I was in Brazil, X wouldn’t work. I thought it was some kinda ban, but they apparently sent their payment for a $5M fine to the wrong bank.
What’s up, world travelers.
Last week, I spun up a collaborative, worldwide Google Map for subscribers to contribute to and share their favorite places. So far, we’re at 100 destinations and counting.
A few of my favorite places in London: Found and Vision vintage, Swanky Portobello spa, The Pelican, and Mazi. You’ll have to join the chat to find out the rest.
It turns out that 80% of shoppers consider climate risk when making a purchase, so Zillow is rolling out a new feature that shows a property’s essential data on flood, wildfire, heat, wind and air quality risks.
Clinique is trying to bring stinky body mist back. The brand just revived its 1997 scent, Happy, in a fragrance collection that they hope will be a hit with Gen Z.
Make your screenshots prettier with this new tool. Savvyshot is sick: You can add backgrounds, annotate, and automatically redact sensitive info like emails or phone numbers.
The only bad thing about my time in Europe right now is this new bottle cap situation, and I’m not alone. In July, Europe redesigned plastic water bottles so that the tops don’t come off. To prevent littering. A noble act that has American tourists everywhere posting rage TikToks.
An entire plane of passengers were forced to watch "40 minutes of penis and boobs," aboard a Qantas flight. The scandal even made it into the movie’s Critical Response section on Wikipedia.
Rahul Vohra, founder of SuperHuman, says this is the best AI product he’s used since ChatGPT. Flowvoice AI is a voice-powered dictation tool that helps you write 3x faster across all your apps. You can peak naturally, and it transforms your voice into perfectly formatted text with real-time auto-edits, learns your tone, identifies and spells people’s names correctly, and improves its prompts over time.
A new chatbot will remember that person at work you don’t vibe with. I wouldn’t recommend telling a chatbot which coworker you don’t get along with, but I would recommend changing your Otter.ai settings so that it doesn’t send meeting notes to people you’ve shit-talked
