Pelago treats addiction and Goodbill reduces hospital bills. Palmsy has fake users and MowPod has fake followers. Golf is the new tennis.

Hey there, everyone. I've tried this newsletter thing before and I made it way too hard. Let's try to keep it simple. My flight from Austin to NYC is delayed and this is what I'm doing with my time. Let's talk about recent health-tech raises, the social media app that will let you post to fake followers, and how golf is the new tennis. All grammar mistakes are intentional.

 
RAISES

•  Pelago, a YC–backed virtual clinic for addiction treatment, raised a $58M Series C. They use cognitive behavioral therapy to help treat tobacco, alcohol and opioid addictions.

• Goodbill, focused on reducing errors in hospital bills, raised $2M. Unrelated to Goodbill, but did you guys know that back in May, Fat Joe went to lobby Congress to call for transparency in hospital billing? Very cool of him.

• Vizcom, an industrial design startup, raised a $20M Series A led by Index Ventures. The company uses AI tools to enable designers to turn ideas into photorealistic renderings in real-time rather than manually creating them with things like CAD tools.

• Flip, a social commerce app featuring a marketplace of review videos from shoppers, raised $144M led by Streamlined Ventures. Imagine TikTok, but only about products. It’s like a stream of ads. Remember when people would text random contacts to get more cash on Flip? Wild. Although I never bought anything, my friend got me a giant plush hoodie off of Flip and it’s great. Lets see if Flip will Flop (lol). This seems like a bad way to doom scroll... which brings me to the company below.

NEWS

• Palmsy is an app that simulates the social media experience by allowing you to post content and receive fake likes and comments from your phone's contact list. While any posts you make go into a void and are unseen, Palmsy provides that sweet, sweet dopamine boost of getting engagement without the downsides of real platforms, acting as a "social media methadone" to help reduce addiction to online validation. Nice if you have problems Tweeting at the clurb but it kinda makes me feel weird. Imagine a black mirror episode with the company keeping all those “void” posts for blackmail and selling them to your enemies. Netflix, call me. Brings a whole new meaning to social media being “fake”. Speaking of fake followers…

• MowPod is blowing up podcasters by incentivizing gamers to follow shows on Apple Podcasts in exchange for more in-game rewards. Ashley Carman has done it again. Big fan of her reporting.

• Spotify is testing video courses. Idk how I feel about online courses; I did the online college thing for a while and I didn’t get much out of it. Youtube has a lot of free resources and I mostly search out online education when I’m looking to solve a specific problem with something like Adobe premier.

• X is testing a feature that lets users make/join communities labeled “adult content” or other “not safe for work”. Some mods are pissed about the Reddit IPO but I don’t think they’re going to want to switch platforms. Lets stop going to sketch websites in public.

BRAIN DUMPS

• Golf is the new tennis. Get into Women’s Golf, Los Angeles studio 22RE popped off on this Miami golf clothing boutique, I keep getting ads for the these sick golf shoes from Malbon which also sells tennis stuff. Prediction: Vacation (hi Marty) will make something golf themed.

• Can we have audio only podcasts again? Almost every podcast I produce has video but I enjoy audio-only as a consumer. Makes it more mysterious. Also feels cooler. Harder to grow, yes, but lighter lift and lets you really focus on what the person is saying rather than the visuals.

• Prediction: Bryan Johnson creates a hardware product and it competes with a fitness tracker like an Oura Ring. Maybe I’m just manifesting this. I know he talks about Whoop but they aren’t that cute and from his home and skincare, it seems like he cares a lot about aesthetics .

Until next time,
Rachel Braun