117 - What I'm Reading: Week of October 20th.
Goop is going mass, Kao's new eczema brand re/cover, teens & antiaging, The Better Collective calls out greenwashing in the coolest way, long COVID and serotonin, next-gen tattoos, and much more...
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⭐️ = What excites me most this week.
🗞 NEWS & PRODUCTS
The Atlantic: Google Isn’t grad school.
rest of world: 40 companies that are beating the west.
Seeking Alpha: Oddity Tech — Transforming the beauty industry through data-driven growth.
Just for fun:
A new startup developed a way to give ultra-precise tattoos - it is quite pricey.
🌌 The Conversation: Why is space so dark even though the universe is filled with stars?
AP: Amazon will start testing drones that will drop prescriptions on your doorstep, literally.
Wired: Amazon let its drivers’ urine be sold as an energy drink..well that’s just great.
🧴 Skin / Personal Care:
Longwknd - a personal care brand deodorant, face balm, and a ‘body wash’ bar [Instagram].
Of Other Worlds - Clinically conscious skincare [Instagram].
⭐️ Kao is launching a new brand, re/cover, targeted at eczema relief, including a targeted moisture patch [WWD].
⭐️ Multi launched a new patch for pimples with lactobacillus ferment and peppermint [Instagram].
TWYG a new skincare brand powered by Totara - a tree native to New Zealand, known for its high antioxidant properties [Instagram; Dieline].
BoF: Goop launches mass market beauty and wellness brand called good. clean. goop (launching October 22nd in at Target & Amazon).
🍅 Flamingo Estate launched a personal care collection dedicated to tomatoes [Instagram].
Eyes are the Story - an eye focused wellness/ skin and makeup line offering products with sensitivity in mind [Instagram].
The Good Patch, best known for their transdermal vitamin patches, launches into skincare [Instagram].
The Cut: ‘They always say the younger you start, the better’ — For some teens, the fight against aging skin is already underway. What are they fighting for?
🇮🇳 YS Life: Vineeta Singh sheds light into the philosophy behind Kareena Kappoor backed Quench Botanics.
👩🦱 Haircare:
BoF: Boots Launches Premium Hair Care Range —The retailer adds a mix of professional and cult labels to its beauty portfolio.
🦷 Oral Care:
AlleyWatch: Flaus raises $2M for its electric flosser that will keep your teeth and gums cleaner than ever before.
👃 Fragrance:
The Atlantic: Computers are learning to smell — AI could revolutionize our understanding of one of the most mysterious human senses.
💊 Supplements:
👩🔬 Femtech:
⭐️ MIT Technology Review: This biotech CEO decided to take her own (fertility) medicine.
🇮🇱 Tulipon merges the disposable menstrual cup that is inserted the same way as a tampon but also measures blood quantity and pH.
🇬🇧 Beauty Independent: VC-backed Daye, the British femtech startup out to “use tampons as a broader drug delivery platform,” Launches In the US.
🇨🇳 The China Project: End tax on menstrual products, Chinese women say.
Sifted: Even in femtech, it still pays to be a male founder — 70% of femtech startups are founded by women, yet male-founded startups raise much more capital
Unprude a Sex Therapy app for Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, the U.S., and Canada is designed to challenge taboos.
TechCrunch: Allara, a telehealth platform for women with chronic hormonal conditions, raises $10M Series A.
🛍 Retail: DTC, Brick + Mortar, Social Commerce, and more...
🇬🇧 BeautyMatter: Sensitive-skin specific aisles hit UK supermarkets.
Vogue Business: TikTok ushered in dupe culture. Now it’s grappling with fakes.
Bloomberg: Brands dangle freebies at Walmart as online ads lose appeal.
🩺 Digital Health: Wearables, Smart Devices, and more...
Healthcare Brew: Digital health VC dollars hit multiyear low — The third quarter of 2023 was the second-lowest funding quarter for startups since 2019.
⭐️ Bloomberg: Embryo mix-ups, flooded clinics — Kindbody and the risky business of IVF.
Android Authority: Google may have brought its AR glasses project back from the dead
🧠 MIT Technology: Scientists just drafted an incredibly detailed map of the human brain — A massive suite of papers offers a high-res view of the human and non-human primate brain.
🦾 Gizmodo: Woman's experimental bionic hand passes major test with flying colors.
Vox: Elon Musk wants to merge humans with AI. How many brains will be damaged along the way?
⭐️ 💊 MIT Technology Review: This microbe-filled pill could track inflammation in the gut —The bacteria light up in the presence of common by-products of inflammatory bowel disease.
🗣 Social Media: News about TikTok, Meta, BeReal, Snapchat, X...
🇵🇰 Alizila: Daraz nurtures the next generation of Pakistani livestreamers.
Bloomberg: Ad-Free versions of Facebook and Instagram have one audience in mind — regulators.
BoF: On TikTok Shop, any beauty product can be a viral star.
♻️ Sustainability: Sustainable Design⭐️ The Better Collective is the result of a group of sustainability minded creatives getting together to create cool products to elevate awareness about greenwashing [Dieline].
⭐️ The Verge: Vapes, chargers, and other ‘invisible’ e-waste are a 9-million-ton problem.
MIT Technology Review: Plastic is a climate change problem. There are ways to fix it. The common material is a growing source of emissions, but a combination of technology and policy could help clean it up.
⭐️ Axios: Recycling is about to get much easier.
🇳🇱 Financial Times: Meet Daisy — she wants your waste tech —The Amsterdam robot providing life after iPhone.
🇪🇺 The Guardian: EU to crack down further on microplastics after glitter ban —
The European Commission aims to cut plastic pellet pollution by 74% by the end of the decade.
Bloomberg: Don’t trust plastic snack wrappers with recycling instructions.
💸 M&A, IPOs, SPACs, Bankruptcies, Closings...
BoF: Farfetch to Sell Violet Grey — The luxury marketplace acquired the cult beauty retailer less than two years ago, but is now exiting the category
Drugstore News: Rite Aid files for bankruptcy, names Jeffrey Stein as new CEO.
BoF: P&G to weigh $1 Billion sale of VS Sassoon’s China business.
🔬RESEARCH
🪱 Caecilians eat their mother’s skin, receiving the benefits of their mother’s microbiome [NYT].
Nature: Anti-ageing molecule boosts fertility in ageing mice — ‘Undeniably groundbreaking’ work shows that declining egg quality in older mice can be reversed with a dietary supplement.
⭐️ New findings strongly link long-COVID to reduced serotonin levels, leading to cognitive impairment (brain-fog) neurological issues as a result of inflammation in the gut. SSRIs, commonly used to treat depression are being studied as a viable solution [Cell; National Geographic].
🧐 REPORTS
GWI X SEEHER: Hear her roar! Attitudes of girls around the world.
🌏 Bain & Co.: Bold Moves — Leading Southeast Asia’s Next Wave of Consumer Growth - A SYNC Southeast Asia Report [Full Report].
⭐️ GWI: Inclusivity and accessibility — unboxing the US beauty industry.
💡 Enjoy,
-Anne