Just like in the movies: Terry Martin, a 76-year-old ex-mobster, will not serve prison time for stealing Judy Garland’s ruby red slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Martin, who is in hospice care, claims he stole the shoes from a Minnesota museum in 2005 for “one last score.” Even more surprising, Martin also said he’s never seen The Wizard of Oz.
In today’s email:
Basic income: The results of Austin, Texas’ $1k/month experiment.
Lost luggage: What happens to your bag after it disappears.
Back for seconds: Could minute-long soap operas catch on?
Around the web: A database of crabs, weird biz ideas, and more.
👇 Listen: How ReelShort’s minute-long, minidramas can dodge Quibi’s fate.
The Big Idea
It turns out people spend free money on rent
Austin, Texas, gave 135 households $1k/month to spend as they pleased. Most of it went to housing.
2024-01-31T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
Bring up the idea of giving people money for nothing, and it’s difficult for some to shake the idea that they work hard while others spend government cheese on caviar bumps.
But increasingly, pilot programs across the US and elsewhere have found that recipients — even without limitations — will spend their funds on housing and basic needs.
First, some vocab
Universal basic income (UBI) gives every citizen the same stipend, regardless of employment or income status.
Guaranteed basic income (GBI) gives money only to certain groups, such as low-income families.
Many pilot programs today involve GBI, targeting low-income households.
Like in Austin, Texas…
… where 135 low-income households receive $1k in GBI each month for one year, ending in August 2023.
A new analysis from the Urban Institute found that recipients spent over half of the money on rent or housing costs, while the rest went to basic needs, bills, investing, and giving to others.
And they didn’t spend that time slacking off:
Seven percent worked more, using the funds to cut their commutes.
Nine percent worked less, using the extra time to learn new skills or to take on more caretaking duties.
Food insecurity decreased and mental health largely improved — though participants became anxious toward the end of the pilot.
Sounds promising, but what now?
Similar programs have had similar results, including in Baltimore, Denver, and Stockton, California, but adoption has been slow as opinions remain mixed.
In 2020, the Pew Research Center found 54% of Americans were opposed to a federal UBI of ~$1k/month per adult citizen, regardless of employment status.
A similar program in Harris County, Texas, is facing pushback from a senator who claims it’s unconstitutional.
But there is one thing that might accelerate these conversations: AI.
Economist Karl Widerquist toldThe Guardian that if AI begins taking away jobs, white-collar workers will move into the gig economy and lower-wage jobs. With less work all around, UBI could be a solution.
Free Resource
For building the business of your dreams
Time to climb into the ol’ mind palace and dig up that genius thing you thought up last summer… Or was it the summer before that? (Just keep poking around, it’s in there somewhere.)
Once you remember: use these nine nimble templates to test your next big idea and expound on the pitch.
Nine startup-friendly templates for:
Assessing feasibility
Brainstorming names
Pitching and presenting
Building your tech stack
Estimating expenses
Planning profit channels
Fill out all of these and you’ll have the bones of a business plan, swank-lookin’ slides, and foundational docs for your first co-workers.
Bummer: Jeffrey’s Toys in San Francisco — the shop that inspired Pixar’s Toy Story — is closing after 86 years, citing rising rent, inflation, and crime, and a decline in consumer spending.
SNIPPETS
After Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain science startup, implanted its device into a human for the first time, it teased more details on its product: called Telepathy, it’ll enable people to control “almost any device, just by thinking.”
Zoom will be among the apps launching with Apple’s Vision Pro headset on Friday. Users will appear in Zoom meetings as avatars, with mirrored facial expressions and hand movements.
New York’s Attorney General is suing Citibank over allegations that the bank didn’t protect its customers from online scams or reimburse fraud victims appropriately.
Finally: Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will stop requiring businesses to submit info via floppy disc, a format Sony stopped making in 2011, as part of a modernization effort.
Universalrevealed its new Epic Universe theme park in Orlando, Florida, will contain themed areas including Super Mario, Harry Potter, How to Train Your Dragon, and the Dark Universe (i.e., Dracula, Frankenstein, etc.) when it opens in 2025.
Toyota was the world’s bestselling automaker in 2023, its fourth straight year atop Car Mountain. It sold a record 11.2m vehicles, topping second-place Volkswagen’s 9.24m cars sold.
Norway is loaded: The nation’s sovereign wealth fund made a record $213B profit in 2023, credited largely to its tech stock holdings.
Happy, a just-launched coffee company co-founded by Robert Downey Jr., will differentiate itself with two QR codes on its packaging: one to trace the source of its coffee beans, and one that links to mental health resources.
Don't miss this...
Nearly 60% of this continent’s population is under 25 years old. Find out which it is and what opportunities await in this week’s Trends.
Suitcase Sales
The company that sells your lost airplane luggage
Imagine this: an airline loses your checked bag. After an extensive search, customer support comes up empty-handed. They compensate you and life goes on.
But life goes on for your suitcase, too. Written off as “unclaimed,” it sits in a musty collection depot for three months. Eventually, the airline sells it — along with hundreds of other lost suitcases and cargo shipments — to a private company, sight unseen.
The new owner cracks the lock, sifts through your former possessions, and marks them for sale.
A few days later, a retired mechanic named Charlie buys your grandfather’s watch for $150. A 19-year-old line cook acquires your Beats headphones. A nurse from Florida becomes the proud new owner of the scarf your mom knitted you for Christmas.
This is the bizarre secondary market for lost luggage.
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today’s billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: Founded in 1899 under the name Retail Credit Co., this company rebranded in 1975 in hopes of shaking American consumers’ hatred and distrust.
Clue 2: Hatred and distrust found the company again in 2017 after it was struck by an infamous data breach that revealed 147m customers’ sensitive data. In the end, as part of a settlement, some affected customers got a whopping ~$7.
Clue 3: As one of a critical industry’s “Big Three,” you’ve almost certainly had to interact with this company, which initially handled business in the southern and eastern US, but now handles business nationwide.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Soap’s hope
All of the drama, none of the attention span: Bite-sized soap operas are getting big
Apps like ReelShort are bringing minidramas to our phones.
2024-01-31T00:00:00Z
Sara Friedman
Any good soap opera is filled with twists: a long-lost sibling, a hard slap across the face, and hospitals so good that waking from a coma is commonplace.
What they also often have, though, are hourlong episodes with seasons spanning decades.
And speaking of “The Young and the Restless,” today’s youths, raised on social media and apps, don’t have the attention spans for lengthy shows.
To remedy this, apps like ReelShort are creating minute-long, minidramas that are part TikTok video, part soap opera, perThe New York Times.
ReelShort — owned by California-based Crazy Maple Studio and backed by Beijing-based digital content company COL Group — launched in 2022. And its format, which is already popular in parts of Asia, is taking off in the US:
ReelShort saw 1m downloads last month through Apple’s App Store and 3m through the Google Play Store, earning $5m and $3m, respectively.
In 2023, 7m+ people downloaded ReelShort in the US, while worldwide downloads surpassed 24m.
In December, the company reported having already hit $22m in revenue.
While viewers can access many free ReelShort episodes across platforms, including YouTube and TikTok, they’ll eventually have to pay or watch ads to unlock remaining episodes (most shows have 60-90 episodes). Some users pay as much as $10-$20.
Stay tuned
In 2020, short-form video streamer Quibi went under. Now, ReelShort is trying to pick up where it left off.
It’s not, however, trying to be Netflix — its business model is notably different from traditional streaming services.
It has a different target audience: 75% of its viewers are women.
The company is able to crank out content, with 100 new titles planned for 2024.
It’s also cheaper: the average show has a small crew of recent film graduates and costs ~$300k to make.
But it’s hardly alone: a slew of other apps — Sereal+, ShortTV, DramaBox, and FlexTV — are all vying for our short attention spans using the same recipe.
Anyway, if you binge “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” on company time, it’s technically free — right?
AROUND THE WEB
📺 On this day: In 1949, the first daytime soap opera, “These Are My Children,” debuted on NBC. Soaps are so called because they were often sponsored by companies that made soap, including Procter & Gamble.
🎧 My First Million: Shaan, Sam, and Morning Brew co-founder Austin Rief discuss weird business ideas like Gen Z bingo, binge-eating bars, and meat influencers.
🦀 That’s cool: Wish you knew more about all the types of crabs in the world? Here’s a database.
🦁 Aww: Honestly wish someone would carry us around like this.
HOT TAKES
Yesterday, we asked you if locked-up products change the way you shop.
The resounding answer: Yes. The majority (38.2%) said they shop online to avoid the hassle altogether, while 32.5% reported choosing stores based on their anti-theft policies.
Then there’s the 24.9% who don’t do anything differently but still find it frustrating as hell. Most said they’ll leave empty-handed if the item they need is locked up, instead buying it online or at another store.
Of the poor souls who wait it out, many wrote that it’s annoying, inconvenient, and, at times, downright embarrassing. (Not every purchase is one you want to chat about, OK?!)
As one reader said: “I will almost never ask. I have social anxiety and having to go find an employee may as well be standing on stage — I just won’t do it.”
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