Plus: Young developers are making serious money on Roblox.
August 18, 2020
TOGETHER WITH
Quarantine has warped my brain enough that I’m jealous of rats. They roam the sidewalks, not a care in the world, while we languish inside.
But rodent life just got even more appealing. In Sweden, hipster mice are growing out their beards, suiting up in sweaters, and going to… the record store. Read on for more.
—Michael Waters, staff writer
The Big Idea
Dining, design, and construction: Mushrooms are taking over startupland
Do your peeps keep telling you they “know a guy” who’s growing mushrooms in quarantine?
Hold your side-eye. They might be buying from Smallhold , an organic farm that pivoted to delivering grow-your-own shroom kits when the pandemic hit.
There’s no magic here — but it’s just one example of how mushroom-inspired businesses are sprouting up everywhere.
The fleshy foodstuff is a hot commodity
Especially when it comes to sustainability:
One biomatter business, Ecovative, is using material from mushroom roots — called mycelium — to build dining chairs and desk lamps .
Ecovative makes mycelium packaging that looks and feels a bit like Styrofoam — but it decomposes in 30 days, compared to Styrofoam’s 500+ years .
Vogue thinks products like mushroom-based makeup sponges could fix fashion’s plastic-waste problem.
Chicken of the woods is about to be the chicken of your fridge
Ecovative is turning the specialty shroom variety into a replacement for bacon .
According to the company, on a structural level, chicken of the woods actually looks a bit… beefy.
Another rival, Meati Foods, is grilling shroomy steaks — perhaps hoping they’re juicy enough to topple the likes of Impossible Foods.
No industry is safe from the mushroom madness
All these new, hypermodernist buildings are starting to look trippy. Maybe that’s because the construction biz is totally high on mycelium-based cement as an environmentally friendly alternative to concrete.
An architecture firm called The Living built a circular “organic mycelium tower” for New York’s Museum of Modern Art a few years back, and more buildings might be on the way.
Plus, you can say goodbye to smoke alarms: Flats fashioned from fungi are fire-resistant .
Snippets
Chasing paper
Who knew cardboard would become the hottest heist?
All around the world, cardboard rustlers are ripping off recycling bins .
Turns out a paper-stealing posse can pull a neat profit selling old cardboard in China, where it’s pulped and made into shipping boxes.
The bad guys make bank while governments get screwed
In Madrid, thieves take almost half the cardboard that gets put into recycling. After 42 of its members got popped, one gang was accused of stealing 67k+ tons of paper waste/year, worth $11.8m/year.
You might not care where your castoffs go, but municipalities are missing the cut they take from recycling revenues. Madrid lost ~$19m.
From dumpster divers to criminal masterminds
The recycled cardboard and paper market is expected to hit $5.4B in 2024 — up from $4.3B in 2017. It’s “beige gold,” as the BBC put it.
Meanwhile, Europol says cardboard poaching has become more than just theft — some players have organized international money laundering rings.
It’s some weird high-stakes drama for a bunch of empty Amazon boxes. But I guess one man’s recycling is another man’s… mountain of cash.
SPONSORED
Meet Flippy, the AI assistant chef cooking up food for $3/hour
Talk about the best of both worlds.
Flippy solves the current quick-service quandary of balancing quality and speed. It’s tough to have both — but with Flippy , you get perfect food prep done fast , all for just $3/hr.
Maybe that’s why hot spots like Dodgers Stadium and Caliburger are taking it for a test run to gauge performance.
Innovate, automate, and elevate the commercial kitchen
Thanks to thermal vision (along with 12 different pending patents), this AI assistant chef is helping to address the challenges facing quick-service restaurants and cloud kitchens:
Economical: Flippy’s low hourly cost can give quick-service restaurants a 300% lift in margins
Scalable: Flippy has cooked 60K+ lbs of fried food and 12K+ burgers, and counting!
Responsible: Flippy makes for a safer work environment by keeping human workers away from dirty and dangerous kitchen tasks
The cooking chops of this skillful little chef are paying off for his creators, too — Miso Robotics is now in prime position to be one of the main players in automating the up-and-coming cloud kitchen market .
So, here’s your opportunity: Get in on their SeedInvest fundraising round while it’s still open (and before Flippy starts making the rounds on Kimmel), and see where this investment takes you.
Hey, the sky’s the limit.
Invest here →
THE BIG NUMBER
That’s how much the booze behemoth Diageo could be shelling out for Davos Brands, best known for actor Ryan Reynolds’ Aviation Gin.
Reynolds apparently knows how to pick ’em: He bought a stake in the company in 2018, and Aviation’s volume grew 100%+ last year.
(Source: Forbes )
Cha-Ching
Young entrepreneurs are turning Roblox games into huge moneymakers
Hope your self-esteem is high today, because it’s time to learn about some teens who are richer than you.
Roblox , a site that hosts millions of user-created video games, skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic. Players spent 3B hours on the site in July, 2x the amount they spent in February.
And its independent developers (mainly young adults) are in for a major payday.
They’re working hard and playing harder
Roblox says it has 2m+ developers, ~345k of whom are making money. It splits the profits (generated from in-game purchases) with game-makers 50/50.
Three years ago, 17-year-old Alex Balfanz dropped his cops-and-robbers game Jailbreak . It’s been played 4B+ times, and bagged Balfanz a seven-figure income .
Anne Shoemaker has made $500k from Roblox, mostly on the success of 2 games, Mermaid Life and My Droplets. She started her own gaming enterprise, Fullflower Studio , which now employs 14 contractors.
“People used to tell my mom, ‘Stop letting her play this video game; it’s not going to get her anywhere,’” Shoemaker told The New York Times . “And it’s getting me somewhere.”
This Day In Business History
(Via Henry Ford Museum)
On August 18, 1926 , Charles Francis Jenkins transmitted a weather map through a portable receiver he built.
The map he sent to Navy ships was a precursor to today’s TV meteorology — 56 years before The Weather Channel hit the airwaves.
Say Cheese
The record store is dead… unless you’re a rodent
Rats are having the time of their lives in quarantine. They’re taking over city blocks . They’re growing as big as rabbits .
In Sweden, they’re getting their own Main Street.
An art collective called AnonyMouse just debuted Ricotta Records, a hole-in-the-wall shop selling rodent-sized CDs and posters in the city of Lund.
Stop in for chart-topping LPs from Lady Gouda, Destiny’s Cheese, Tailor Swiss , Rats Against the Machine, and Johnny Cashew.
We might be cooped up at home, but the rat economy is booming
Last month, AnonyMouse created Cicada Pharmacy — part of a string of mousy ’marts, including a French deli and an Italian restaurant.
The group, presumably made up of humans, formed in 2016 with a simple question: Where are rats supposed to shop?
But its recent store openings seem well timed to the pandemic’s rat renaissance.
AnonyMouse wrote on Instagram : “We would like to thank the municipality of Lund for inviting us and encouraging really small business owners.”
JOBS
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Today’s email was brought to you by Michael Waters, Caroline Dohack, Belle Long, and Bobby Durben. Editing by: Nick “Dumpster Diver” DeSantis, Hannah Twomey (Mechanic’s Assistant).
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