Munch.
What do we think? Too much? Not enough? All I know is it’s better than General Motors’ rebrand, but definitely not better than Burger King’s rebrand.
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🥄 Today's Spoonful
Virgin in space! 💫
For the first time ever, Virgin Orbit entered… orbit… with its LauncherOne rocket, Cosmic Girl (?), Sunday afternoon. The launch, done in collaboration with NASA, delivered several small satellites into low orbit.
This is not the first time Virgin has tried reaching the great beyond. However, its previous (and only other) launch had ended with an automatic safety shutdown mid-flight. The Orbit team says that identifying the error that caused the prior failsafe engine shut down helped make Sunday’s launch successful.
With more and more companies leaving Earth’s atmosphere, it’ll be interesting to see how Virgin’s future launches unfold. The company boasts a unique value-add in spacetech thanks to its flexible launching systems and Richard Branson’s beautiful hair 😍
Up, up, and away, Virgin!
Coinbase commits to a ‘better customer experience’
Coinbase, everybody’s favorite cryptocurrency wallet, forgot one of the most important mantras of building products in tech — fall in love with your customer, not your product. According to TechCrunch and this angry Twitter user (whose name I was unable to find), Crunchbase’s customer support has been notoriously hard to find:
“Multiple issues over the last month which cost me $$$ several open cases and 0% response?? When are you going to help me or is it easier to just forget. This wont be so easy when your publicly traded. Will be following up with [SEC] soon.”
For a company that enables self-management of assets as volatile as Bitcoin, it’s surprising that customer support isn’t more directly top-of-mind.
That said, it looks like the company’s turned a new leaf and is committing to better support in the future. No better time to do so either given all the recent BTC hype!
Bumble files to go public 🐝
You’ve heard of Bumble — that one dating app that hires student ambassadors? Last Friday, the company filed to go public with the ticker symbol, BMBL, on the NASDAQ. I wonder if any of the ambassadors got paid with employee stock options…
Bumble is an extremely popular company with over 40M monthly active users (or MAUs), hard-to-miss branding, and a board that is over 70% women. It’s gotten press for all the right reasons and looks to be cashing in on its hard-earned popularity.
Not to mention ‘tis the season for IPOs. We already saw Airbnb, Doordash, and Affirm go public within the last few weeks alone. Time to drop some cash on some staaaawwkkss
🥣 Cereal of the Day
Last Thursday, I profiled an awesome startup called Factmata. Factmata, an AI technology startup that provides content moderation and protection tools, is combating two of the major information threat vectors of our time: misinformation and disinformation.
But another aspect of our online experience that ties into these information threats is online harassment, often due to the extremity of public attacks.
Luckily, we’ve now got Block Party :)
Block Party is an anti-harassment tool that helps people feel safer on social media.
Social media can be ruthless. Thanks to things like confirmation bias algorithms, addiction, and general human indecency, our digital experiences can often be flooded with toxic payback.
Now, thanks to Block Party, you can block out certain mentions on social media and continue to enjoy your digital experience.
And if for some reason you’re keen on sifting through the noise, Block Party’s Lockout Folder makes it easy for you to jump into your blocked mentions and read through what you may have missed.
It’s an interesting product that comes at a time when censorship and information flow on social media are under harsh scrutiny. What comprises censorship? What information is spread with mal-intent, and what information isn’t?
As someone in The Social Dilemma once said, “Social media can be both utopia and dystopia. Right now, it’s dystopia.” Let’s hope Block Party can do something about that.
Check out Block Party here!
🍳 A Healthy Serving of...
TIL that Samuel L. Jackson didn’t land his first major role in film until he got a credit in Do the Right Thing… at 40. Just 5 years later, he starred in Pulp Fiction, gave birth to a beautifully vulgar catchphrase, and the rest is history.
Point of the story being, you can start and launch your career at age 40 and be completely fine. I got a lot of e-mails with the past few issues about career anxiety, imposter syndrome, and job nerves.
Here’s my advice and lesson #19: Really slow down, take a deep breath, and revisit your job search or applications in an hour or two.
We live in a fast-paced world and you could do yourself some good by slowing down. Put your phone away, pop open Netflix, and go binge watch three episodes of New Girl.
Your apps will be there when you get back and you’ll have a much clearer mind. You’ve got this 🤗
Go and spread love and cheer, lovely reader 😎 Always appreciate you <3
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Munch.
The Cereal Intern.020