DMing with angel investors 💌
It's getting rough out there for consumer brands.
Good morning from Paris.
TODAY’S LETTER INCLUDES:
DTC brands fundraising via Instagram
Sweetgreen + espresso martinis + a bus to East Hampton… what could possibly go wrong?
An adventure down a little tunnel we like to call the “Goldman Breezeway”
ARE YOU HIRING? I have been getting a lot of emails – especially from college students looking for summer internships – from readers looking for work. I’m thinking about adding a space on Feed Me for businesses who want to advertise open positions that they’d want my (qualified, genius) readers to fill. If this is something you’d be interested in, email me emily@readfeedme.com
Look, Feed Me is #16 on the Substack leaderboard for business newsletters. Thank you Eyewitness Beauty and Business of Fashion for mentioning Feed Me this week. And to my paid readers, thank you for all of your thoughtful questions to David Ulevitch last week! Answers coming this week. I just got an insane energy reading in Paris and I’ll write more about it later this week.
NEWS:
Bumble completely cleared their Instagram feed. And they’re announcing a rebrand tomorrow. I’ve covered this briefly before, and
did a great deep-dive earlier this year (“Dating apps are literally hell. Hinge having two separate pages for people who are “in your league” and “out of your league” is what I would personally consider an offense worthy of being tried at the international criminal court. Plus, you have to PAY extra for filters.”) and Axios reported earlier this year that 79% of U.S. college and graduate students said they do not use any dating apps. I’ve been getting a lot of emails from readers asking me to write about the new wave of matchmaking startups (a lot of people are using them), and Jewish dating app Lox Club recently launched their own matchmaking feature. Last week I heard of another matchmaking startup that just finished a pretty solid raise. But back to Bumble… I like this move, I think they need to address their user dropoff and souring reputation, so I hope whatever they announce is legit.Three women were diagnosed with HIV after getting “vampire facials.” The procedures were done at an unlicensed New Mexico medical spa, and are believed to be the first documented cases of people contracting the virus through a cosmetic procedure using needles, federal health officials said. Investigators still do not know the precise source of the contamination. A 2018 H.I.V. diagnosis in a patron who reported having no behavioral risk factors led to a public health investigation when the woman said she had received a cosmetic treatment involving needles, called a platelet-rich plasma microneedling facial.
I don’t have many thoughts on the De Beers acquisition debate. But an ex of mine did know a guy in the De Beers family and apparently they have a monkey in their Upper East Side apartment.
Emma Apple Chozick
TikTok series Brand Family Tree is a series about former employees of a company who went on to launch their own brands. It’s fun, and she’s made one for Away and Glossier so far.