The startup benefiting from Ozempic. Adam Neumann acquired a Hamptons surf magazine. David Sacks' new AI company.

Today, we’re going to talk about the startup benefiting from Ozempic, AI bots taking over human intimacy, and Adam Neumann acquiring the Hamptons-based surfing magazine for his real estate startup… which I am pretty sure has nothing to do with surfing. 

After coming back from a sunny weekend in Palm Beach (more on this at the bottom), I hit the ground running. I had the chance to interview people at the ADC and One Show awards, I co-hosted Tech Breakfast with Morgan, I spoke on a consumer social panel by Span Ventures, and we hosted two REAL events for media, tech, and investing. Thanks for joining!

Now, back to scheduled programming.

🤑 RAISES

• Dandi, a startup producing at-home IVF kits, raised a $1.3M pre-seed round led by Tiferes Ventures. Their main product is the Dandi IVF Care Kit, designed to make self-injections during fertility treatments more comfortable with a compression belt that cools and numbs the area and access to a virtual care team of registered fertility nurses for support. Dandi developed this kit over two years with input from fertility clinicians and patients. I really like the work being done in fertility treatment and I think the space is going to continue to grow. According to a 2023 WHO report, about 1 in 6 people worldwide experience infertility.  (Link)

• Youth, a media network and digital commerce platform for youth sports, raised a $4.5M seed round led by Will Ventures. I thought this was interesting, given the changes allowing college athletes to receive sponsorships. I want to see how much more people will be trying to profit off of child athletes before they head off to college or become pros. (Link)

• Honey Homes, a membership service for home upkeep and maintenance, raised a $9.3M Series A-1 round led by Era Ventures. One of the reasons I really like renting and have no intention of buying a home anytime soon is the ease of having someone else fix any issues in my apartment. Luckily, I’ve had great management. Homeownership sounds stressful! (Link)

• Chip City, a gourmet cookie chain in NYC, raised a $7.5M Series B round led by Enlightened Hospitality Investments. They claim to be the the fastest-growing cookie chain in the city, but I haven’t tried it yet. I don’t care much about fancy cookies, Insomnia does the job for me. (Link)

• All Things Butter, a butter brand founded by British restaurateur and chefluencer (love that word) Thomas Straker, raised a £2.2M seed round led by Access Industries. The brand I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!® is probably shaking right now. Do you think Big Butter is behind any of this? (Link)

• Chamberlain Coffee, the beverage brand founded by YouTube and TikTok star Emma Chamberlain, raised $4.6M in equity funding. Remember, she just collaborated with Kendall Jenner’s tequila brand to make an espresso martini kit. (Link)

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🗞️ NEWS

STARTUPS

• Fay, a dietitian startup coming out of stealth with $25M raised, is booming thanks to the Ozempic crowd. The startup is designed to help registered dietitians start and run their own practices with support from insurance providers, offering tools for managing claims, payments, and patient matches. Many of its patients use Ozempic because doctors prescribing the weight loss drug require patients to see dietitians, leading to increased demand for Fay's services.  (Link)

• The LA based independent wellness and farm brand, Flamingo Estate, is collaborating with everyone's favorite toilet maker, Kohler, to create a fancy collection of kitchen and bath products. The collection includes three finishes: Fresh Green, Aspen Green, and Teal, which can be applied to tubs, sinks, and toilets.  This feels reminiscent of when avocado green was the thing for appliances in the 1970s. (Link) 

• Adam Neumann's Flow is acquiring the Montauk surfing magazine Whalebone Magazine, rebranding it as "The Flow Trip." Whalebone used to have a location downtown but I can’t find it on Google. It had such a good photo booth and the best vibes. Flow, a residential real estate startup founded in 2022, will probably be using the Hamptons magazine as an in-house content arm. Kinda random, but I know he is REALLY into surfing. (Link) 

• The photo-editing app VSCO is now profitable with a user base of 200M and 160K subscribers for its Pro product. Huge news for people who like grainy saturated Instagram feeds. Will they ever be able to shake the VSCO girl image? (Link)

• Wearable AI startup Humane trying to find a buyer. I spoke about Humane in a previous newsletter after they dropped their AI Pin product, which got poor reviews from people including creator Marques Brownlee.  (Link) 

VC

• Terry Burns launched Type Capital to support Gen Z founders and invest in early-stage tech. If you have been living under a rock, back in 2017, Terry joined GV as a principal and by 2020  she was promoted, becoming the youngest partner and the first Black woman partner at the company. I can’t wait to see the next generation of founders in the Type Capital portfolio. (Link)

• The Diversity Data Alliance, made up of seven venture funds, is fixing the problem of inconsistent data collection in the tech industry by creating standard ways to collect data to make things clearer, understand funding patterns better, and help underrepresented founders more. Inconsistencies makes it hard to track where venture money goes, especially affecting marginalized founders who get less funding. (Link)

• PeakBridge Fund has raised $187M to invest in food tech startups that combat climate change. They've already invested in meat, dairy, and cocoa alternatives as part of this fund. During a time when chocolate prices are on the rise, the investment into cocoa alternatives seems smart. (Link)

LOVE BIRDS BOTS

• Bumble Roundup: They acquired an online platform for forming IRL groups called Geneva (Link) and are planning to acquire more to drive growth (Link). People are still mad that Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd mentioned AI bot driven dating. Honestly, I don’t think this is that crazy. Creepy, yes, but people are already looking up their dates on social media before meeting them in person, coming in with a preconceived notion. Maybe take that into consideration before dropping a podcast about your life. (Link) 

• "Match Group's earnings reveal that Hinge is becoming more popular while Tinder's user base keeps shrinking. The TechCrunch article says young people prefer Hinge because they're looking for serious dating. I agree and think more people are seeing dating apps as the norm for finding a long-term partner, given that securing a hookup while socializing in person is often easier than finding a life partner. (Link)

• An investigation in Wired showed readers that low-wage workers are masquerading as creators on OnlyFans. I Googled around about this and came across this post on Reddit. (Link)

• GPT-4's Chinese token-training data has been found to contain spam and porn. Sheesh.   (Link)

AI

• Researchers have used machine learning to understand sperm whale communication, discovering a kind of "alphabet”. It is only a matter of time before these guys figure out what my dog is thinking about. (Link)

• OpenAI will let creators opt out of training AI with their work.  The tool, called "Media Manager," will drop in 2025.  Right now, OpenAI uses its GPTBot Web crawler to find content online for training its models. GPTBot avoids data behind paywalls, personal info, or content against OpenAI policies. Site owners can block it with robots.txt, but it doesn't catch content reused across domains without the owner's knowledge. OpenAI plans to fix this with the Media Manager.  (Link)

• David Sacks' new AI company Glue offers a bot that assists in business communication apps like slack. The company aims to  streamline communication by focusing on topic-based "Glues" instead of channels. Right now, it supports GPT-4 and Claude 3, and integrates  with GitHub, Google Meet, and Zoom. It has a waitlist, but is not fully released. How long will it be until communication apps build this internally? I think business communication apps are interesting because companies rarely use more than one. If Slack already has this integrated in the future, why would someone download it as a third party tool? Let me know what you think! (Link) 

• The Senate suggests spending $32 billion each year on AI programs, covering things like infrastructure and national security to keep the US competitive globally. However, with elections coming up, turning this plan into law might take a while, and the AI industry could outpace government efforts.  (Link)

• AI-powered "griefbots" and sophisticated robots are being developed to help people with cognitive disorders. If you are interested, here is a 2022 study diving more into the ethics. (Link)

• AI startups are reviving Silicon Valley's hustle culture, with some companies providing nap pods for employees. I wasn’t around during the prime of Google or Facebook, but I feel like this has to be something they had on campus. (Link)

NYC HIGHLIGHTS

• Mantis VC general partners (also known as The Chainsmokers lol) released a song about the popular Greenwich Village Italian restaurant Bar Pitti. There is normally a wait, but I actually like this place a lot. (Link)

• NYC has the highest concentration of millionaires globally, with one in 24 residents being a millionaire. (Link)

• The city is planning to develop a new neighborhood, taking control of 120 acres from Brooklyn Bridge Park to Red Hook. (Link)

🧠 BRAIN DUMPS: Palm Beach Recommendations

Palm Beach was a great place for a quick long weekend trip. The food rocked, and if you are looking to just lounge by the pool or at a calm beach, it’s the perfect spot. Next time, I want to rent a bike to explore more!

• Drinks: We sat by the pool and played cards at Swifty's at The Colony; they had such a good cocktail menu! E.R. Bradley's Saloon had live music in West Palm Beach and was the most casual spot we went to at night. Cucina Palm Beach was the best bar we visited for younger people, but they did have a dress code at night so don’t forget to pack some shoes that aren’t sandals. 

• Food: Bice was a solid date spot, but Bricktop was my favorite and they had a great Caesar salad. Rocco's Tacos & Tequila Bar is good if you plan to go out in West Palm Beach afterwards.

• Brunch and coffee: Sant Ambroeus is similar to the New York location, but the people watching is different since it's in an outdoor mall area, making it a good spot to shop after. The Breakers News & Gourmet was so cool for walking around the Breakers resort, and their gift shop had nice home decor items. I saw people working in the courtyard, if you need to get some emails done while on vacation! Green's Pharmacy of Palm Beach is great for grabbing coffee, a snack, and sunscreen before heading to the beach. Seems really classic drugstore mixed with a diner. Chik Monk is where I enjoyed iced coffees before long walks, and it did not disappoint. There isn’t a ton of indoor seating but the staff were very nice! The owners import the coffee from their family estates in Chikmagalur, India.
  
  Until next time,
  Rachel Braun
  

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