👋 Good morning. If you drove to work safely in the rain this morning, send some thanks to Mary Anderson. The Alabama businesswoman came up with the idea for windshield wipers on a snowy New York City trolley ride in 1902. She patented a lever-operated rubber blade to clear windshields in 1903, and was told her invention would have no commercial value. Her patent expired in 1920 and, unfortunately for Anderson, we know the rest.
STARTING UP
This startup turns used cooking oil into biodegradable plastic
❌ The problem: We all know by now that plastic pollution is a huge problem, but many sustainable alternative materials can’t compete with traditional plastic’s economics and adoption.
💡 The pitch: London-based Shellworks has an idea six years in the making. Its plastic alternative, Vivomer, is made by fermenting feedstocks like used cooking oil with microbes. The material is designed to perform like plastic but fully biodegrade after disposal, and the company says it is now cost-competitive with materials like glass and aluminum. The new material is also microplastic-free, devoid of BPA and PFAS, and home-compostable.
🚀 The outlook: The company has produced ~5m units of Vivomer so far, and it’s already being used by brands such as Wild and Sonsie Skin, and sold through retailers like Tesco and Whole Foods.
NEWS FLASH
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Finally: Google settled its dispute with “Fortnite” maker Epic Games. It will drop Play Store commissions to 20% on in-app purchases and will make it easier for users to download alternative app stores. As part of the settlement, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney can’t talk crap about Google’s app store policies until 2032.
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If you’ve been using a burner account to troll your enemies, maybe chill. A recent study tasked AI with matching anonymous posts to those from known users. It was able to identify up to 68% of accounts with 90% precision using clues such as writing quirks and post timing.
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Like a D&D dungeon master is how Dong-jae Lee, chief product officer of wrtn, described the AI storytelling platform to Fortune. Users can act as characters in AI-generated worlds. As they make choices, the narrative shifts, creating an experience that’s a mix between playing a game and reading a story. The South Korean startup has 5m+ monthly active users and hopes to enter the US market this year.
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Up next: Oura Health is acquiring Doublepoint Technologies, a Helsinki startup that makes gesture-recognition technology. Oura CEO Tom Hale said the deal will guide future iterations of Oura’s smart ring, which could include hand gesture and voice control.
PROBLEMS NO MORE
7 ways to surface problems worth solving
There’s no happy accident about the way folks find the next big thing.
You don’t need a sixth sense (or business crystal ball)... Investigate your life with seven proven problem-hunting methods:
- Consider problems you experienced today
- Consider blockers faced at work this week
- Scroll through recent texts
- Skim the ol’ email inbox
- Locate conflicts on your calendar
- Snoop through your browser history…
- … And last, your dreaded bank statements.
Think up three for each. You’ll be rolling in a pretty list.
THE BIG IDEA
Murder mystery events are making a killing
A weekend full of “death” and “deception” is, understandably, not how people usually envision spending their downtime — but that’s quickly changing.
Murder mystery experiences, which combine elements of immersive theater and escape rooms, are on the rise, per Bloomberg, and just about everyone is dying to play.
Murder on our minds?
Blame it on popular media like “White Lotus,” “Traitors,” and Knives Out, which McKinsey & Co.’s Alex Gersovitz told Bloomberg have inspired younger, experience-driven travelers.
But these macabre games, which offer a phone-free way to play and connect, have been a hit across demographics.
- “Ms. Maxwell Presents: The Murder Game” — a 90-minute affair by Brooklyn-based theater troupe What May Come Immersive, which is taking its show on the road with an expanded West Coast tour this year — has lured NYC urbanites.
- Mohonk Mountain House in upstate New York, which is credited with pioneering the genre, has kept up its weekend charade since the ‘70s. Today, it charges hotel guests, including boomers, hipsters, and kids alike, ~$30 a head to participate.
- In China, “jubensha” (translation: “scripted murder”) events generated an estimated $2B+ in 2021 revenue.
Destinations for dead serious fun
Over the past year, travel companies have gotten in on the fun, capitalizing on the popularity of whodunnit events with elaborate setups around the world catered to deep-pocketed sleuths.
And they’re charging terrifying sums for it.
- Last year, Capital One had Neil Patrick Harris host a murder mystery weekend in the Florida Keys for Venture X cardholders. The cost: $10k for two tickets.
- Luxury travel brand Black Tomato told Bloomberg it’s arranged several “White Lotus”-inspired experiences for private clients. Depending on the complexity and location (think: Scottish castles or St. Barts), the cost could land anywhere from a couple $100k… up to $1m.
That price point alone could send us to our graves — no travel or mystery required.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
These tips aren’t in the books: Copy these three mindset shifts lifted straight from the brains of billionaires.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Price of tuition for MasterClass Executive, a new 12-week alternative MBA program “for the age of AI” by MasterClass, OpenAI, and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Lessons will be held over Zoom, taught by industry heavyweights like Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Issa Rae.
Interested? Start working on your pitch — the program begins this summer and is eyeing a ~10% acceptance rate with an initial cohort of less than 1k students, per Inc — and pray it goes better than NC State’s $17.5k, nine-month cybersecurity bootcamp (also designed in collaboration with a third-party company), which, according to The Verge, left students “confused and broke.”
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1997, Queen Elizabeth launched the first royal website, featuring 150 pages of history and trivia.
🗺️ That’s cool: Several maps of undersea cables over the years.
🎧 Listen up: Compound Interest features trailblazers behind the world’s most consequential companies.
🧩 Game: A word puzzle where letters are stacked on top of each other.
🐕 Aww: New BFFs.
SHOWER THOUGHT
It’s a shame we didn’t get real pictures of UFOs before AI pictures and videos are going to make it harder to tell the truth. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Prime suspect" Friedman.
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