Good Monday Morning! It’s March 1st, which means the first full month of SWIRL is officially in the books 📚. Was it the shortest month? Yes. But short things are still things, fam.
Anyway, here’s the SWIRL:
📱Tech: Could a disposable camera app crush Instagram?
📈Business: WeWork in the spotlight again
🏛Politics: America wants back in
If this is your first SWIRL, keep reading this part. If not, carry on to the content. Welcome, new Swirlers! Here’s a brief reader guide for you: the three teasers above will unfurl below to briefly cover a buzzy development in their respective areas. You’ll read a little about each one. At the end, we pull on a common thread among all three and explore what it might mean for us. If you missed last week’s SWIRL, tuck in here.
📱 Tech: Could a disposable camera app crush Instagram?
The first camera phones 🤳🏼 hit the market in 2002. Since then, advancements in cell phone photography have launched billion-dollar companies like Instagram and Pinterest. Where there are winners, there are usually losers. Take Kodak, for instance. In its prime, the film-based photography company was a $20B leader in its industry. In 2012, it filed for bankruptcy 😥. Today, Kodak is worth about $2.5B and has traded its consumer film and disposable camera business for a hodge-podge of printing, software development, and pharmaceutical production services.
In short, Kodak succumbed to the digital photography disruption. Could Instagram be disrupted in a similar way? Some think so.
A new app, that has only been available to the public for about a week, has attracted a lot of attention ✨ for the ways in which it is very different from flashy instant-gratification apps like Instagram. Dispo, short for ‘disposable,’ aims to provide users with a disposable camera experience. Photos are shot through a simple ‘viewfinder’ and can’t be edited or captioned. They must also be ‘developed,’ meaning you wait until 9AM 🕘 the next day before you can see pictures from the day before.
Remember when people would pass around disposable cameras 📸 to capture memories at parties?
Dispo wants to recreate the excitement of waiting to revel in reviewing the untouched photos from the night before. Investors like the idea 👍. In October, Dispo raised $4M in seed funding. Last week, the app pulled in another $20M from well-known venture capital firms in a Series A round. While access to the app is invite-only for now, downloads among the ‘early adopter’ class have taken off 🚀— its now the #8 photo app in Apple’s App Store.
The next few months will very likely usher in more investor dollars, more Dispo users, and more questions about whether the app has the right composition to compete with — or crush — Instagram.
📈 Business: WeWork in the spotlight again
WeWork was a high-drama business story in the Before Times.1 The plot included a former Israeli military officer turned CEO, staggering financial loss, leadership in-fighting, allegations of ‘frat-boy’ culture, and the promise of ‘work reimagined.’ Then came Coronavirus 🦠.
Coincidentally, now that there’s a potential light 🔦 at the end of the pandemic tunnel, WeWork is readying to take center stage again. Let’s review the origin story with this timeline I made for you.
The takeover by SoftBank in late 2019 spurred a messy fight 🥊 between WeWork’s then-CEO Adam Neumann and the Tokyo-based multinational corporation. That dispute was settled this past week, clearing the way for a leaner WeWork to enter the public market 💸. Nuemann has agreed to sell $480M of his private shares in WeWork to SoftBank in addition to giving up voting rights and any official position with the co-working company.
Last week, SWIRL highlighted the roaring rise of SPACs over the last couple of years. So its all too fitting that WeWork’s long-delayed debut on the stock market could soon occur through a SPAC. The special purpose acquisition company, BowX Acquisition Corp. is rumored to be WeWork’s potential merger partner 🤝. This strategy would allow WeWork to forgo a potentially embarrassing second attempt at going public via IPO by merging with BowX, which is already publicly traded 🌎.
If WeWork does go public in the next few months, some early backers could recoup their investments and many employees who weathered the last couple years could see a more stable future for the storied co-working company 🏢.
🏛 Politics: America wants back in
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken addressed the United Nation’s 🇺🇳 Human Rights Council in a video 📺 meeting.
“I’m here to reaffirm America’s commitment to respect and defend the human rights of all people, everywhere” - Secretary Blinken
His appearance in front of the international rights group is a part of a larger effort to win support for the US 🇺🇸 rejoining the Human Rights Council. In 2018, the US withdrew its participation from the body under former President Trump’s guidance, citing ‘hypocrisy,’ ‘self-service,’ and ‘bias against Israel.’ The Human Rights Council regularly meets at the UN office in Geneva🇨🇭 (pre-pandemic), and is “responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.”
Blinken admonished against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua, and had strong words for Russia, China, Myanmar, and North Korea — nations the administration has recently criticized for human rights abuses.
As such, the White House aims to reestablish 🔃 American involvement in the council. This campaign to reengage the global community is the latest in a string of moves by the President to return America to its pre-Trump arrangements.
⛈ Paris: on Feb 19th, the US officially re-entered the Paris Climate Accord
⚕️WHO: in late Jan, the US officially rejoined the World Health Organization
🇮🇷 Iran: Biden is actively exploring how the US might reenter the Iran nuclear deal
In October, the US will have an opportunity to officially rejoin the Human Rights Council when elections 🗳 for the group are held. For now, it will be participating as a non-voting observer 🙊.
The SWIRL
So, how do these three stories swirl together? Our three stories represent the resurfacing of a threatened idea💡. Each topic this week includes an idea whose time came and seemingly went…or so we thought 🤷🏻♂️.
The idea: candid photos. The resurface: Dispo.
The pressure of instant & glossy social media has thrown open a door for more authentic engagement apps like Dispo, which focuses on unvarnished experiences over the gamification of likes & monetization; it’s a throwback that lets users prioritize being present over being presented with highly-curated contentThe idea: global shared workplaces. The resurface: WeWork.
WeWork was on the ropes, but it spent 2020 settling disputes and reviving its core mission of providing co-working spaces — if you thought the world was ready for distributed office spaces before the pandemic, just wait until after; as corporations adapt to remote working and shed office spaces, companies like WeWork are preparing to fill in the gapThe idea: US participation in global bodies. The resurface: the Biden admin.
The Biden administration is working to return America to the international arrangements that defined the nation prior to the “America First” priorities under Trump. The willingness to reengage international bodies and treaties reflects a shift back towards America as a vocal leader on the world stage
We’re still in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. What life looks like after still isn’t quite clear 🌫. And as the clock ticks, we get further away from the ‘normal’ lives we led before the virus. That might be — at least, in part — why we’re seeing new momentum in movements that return us to familiar moments 💞. Reliving (or blushing at) a fun night by reviewing a photo roll with friends, sharing casual office spaces with colleagues and friends (hey, Catelyn!), and returning to international agreements with friends (and a few enemies)…all of these once-threatened ideas now appear to be ascendant yet again 📈.
Did you encounter another story from last week that fits into our SWIRL today? If so, drop a comment 💬 with a threatened idea you saw re-emerge last week!
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SWIRL is written by Matt Suber and is published every Monday morning at 7AM ET.
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Before Times = prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.