Down Round

MrBeast is the most popular individual YouTuber, with over 180 million subscribers. He makes a lot of sleekly produced videos where he gives away money, cars, islands and life-altering surgeries. To some, he is history's greatest philanthropist. To others, he's deeply evil in a way that is hard to articulate. Which side of the divide you fall on is mostly a generational thing.

To help us understand the man, the business and the phenomenon that is MrBeast, we're joined by writer Max Read, who formerly edited Gawker and has written for New York Magazine, The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine. (And possibly other New York related publications.) Max recently authored a feature article for the NYT on MrBeast, making him well-placed to take us on this dark odyssey into the heart of YouTube.

Max also writes a newsletter called Read Max, which you should subscribe to.

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A fun one for you this week. Over the past few weeks, we've been blessed with many news stories about Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire who is putting his considerable wealth towards becoming functionally immortal through a weird diet, militant sleep schedule, and injecting himself with his son's blood.

Pretty neat! On this episode, we discuss Johnson's quest, and where it fits in with recent Silicon Valley fixation on biotech and the physical sciences.

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Snapchat was one of the major social media platforms of the 2010s, and still remains pretty popular with the kids. It helped create much of the modern social media landscape, but hasn't been able to turn that into lasting wins -- in no small part because every innovation it comes up with is pretty quickly cloned by its biggest rival, Instagram.

Now it finds itself in a precarious position, with parent company Snap Inc reporting a decline in revenue and the company trying just about every pivot Down Round loves to see, from AI to augmented reality.

Links

• Snap plunges on first-quarter revenue miss - CNBC
• Snapchat is releasing its own AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT - The Verge

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One of the most enduring rumours in tech markets and investing subreddits is that Apple is on the cusp of buying Disney and integrating its IP and content into Apple's tech and distribution network. It's like a sick fantasy for guys with no lives and ZERO swag.

It seems pretty unlikely. But with news that returned CEO Bob Iger could be planning to break up the empire and sell off assets like ESPN, the rumour mill is kicking back into gear. We ask the question: should Apple buy at least PART of Disney?

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QR code menus became popular during the pandemic, when everyone collectively decided it was much safer to have your beers delivered to the table at the pub instead of walking up yourself.

Now there are a million different providers of QR code menus. But but how does it all work, and is it actually a good business? We dig in.

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Zoom was basically the very definition of a COVID stock, briefly becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world. After the pandemic — and amid intense competition from other video conferencing platforms — it looks much less strong.

In this ep, we look at Zoom’s rise to power, what it’s been up to over the past couple of years, and how it’s look…

Big news, WeWork fans! The company has announced that it is hurtling towards bankruptcy, with serious doubts about its capacity to continue as a “going concern”. For those who haven’t been paying attention for the past couple of years and assumed it was bankrupt and out of business anyway, this will be a shock.

In today’s ep, we take a tour through the WeWork story — particularly what it has been up to since its famous IPO collapse in 2019.

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The internet — and particularly Twitter/X — was ablaze last week over LK-99, a new new compound that was being heralded as a possible room-temperature superconductor, which is the holy grail of materials science. It turns out it almost certainly isn’t, but that didn’t stop everyone going absolutely berko.

That weird social phenomenon was worth a look tho…

Recent years have seen a surge in telehealth and online health delivery — from essential prescriptions to more discretionary health spending. Everyone from smaller boutique startups to Amazon want a slice of the pie. There’s a big debate in the medical community about so-called ‘asynchronous care’ — where a patient and doctor communicate through non-live online services. Pharmacists, already rattled by the retail revolution led by Chemist Warehouse, are also mad about this stuff. But many patients do like to do medicine on the computer.

Today we’re joined by Tim Doyle, founder of online healthcare company Eucalyptus, who gives a window into how this stuff works in Australia. And maybe beyond. (No promises.)

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By popular request from at least two of you, we’re digging into the BlackBerry. The first popular smartphone and mobile email device, BlackBerry was too professional, too keyboardy, and simply too Canadian for this world.

In this episode, we dig into to what made the BlackBerry work, right up until it didn’t.