OnlyFans owner made $1 billion in the last three years
we need to talk about this company more
august reading recap drops on sunday, featuring a special guest interview with . read july’s here.
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The Black List Helped Reshape Hollywood. Can It Change Publishing?
Trump Media has lost 75% of its market value since going public in March
Guess how many articles about the horrors of veneers I’ve read in the last month? I couldn’t give you an exact number, but it's a lot. Since my attention has been called to the issue of perfect, blocky, white teeth, I’ve started noticing them on every screen. Part of why I love binging old rom coms on tubi is the relief of nice, normal smiles. The difference between Netflix and Tubi can be boiled down to the teeth. Jon Marashi, an L.A.-based dentist whose clients include Halsey, Ben Affleck, and Kate Hudson, told The Cut that “the young non-famous patients who now turn up at his office will often show him older pictures of their own teeth. They want realistic casings with slight flaws replicating the translucency and misalignments — stealth veneers, bespoke to fit a person’s face. Many of these new young customers approach the procedure as if it were a much lower-stakes cosmetic treatment, like a shot of Botox.” Good. Enough of people looking like FREAKS!
This picture was immortalized on my feed yesterday. And by that, I mean it was everywhere.
Very into the creative direction for Cult Gaia’s fragrance launch. I can’t keep up with all these fragrance launches though, so I’ve quit trying. Like, adidas came out with a fragrance line with Coty this week and I completely missed it. All these launches make me nervous. I simply don’t think there’s space in the market for all of them— which leads me to think that fragrance is turning into a very nice smelling bubble.
So brand hotlines are a thing now. Miranda July is doing one for Prada’s “Now That We’re Here” fall campaign, Hairitage by Mindy launched a hotline for personalized hair care recommendations, and over the summer, Christina Aguilera’s brand Playground had a hotline for sexual wellness tips. Last year, Oatly had an emotional support hotline. (So weird). I need at least one of these brands to tell me what the ROI on this is.
Would you buy your skincare dupes from Walgreens? They’re banking on it. Bless them.
The Times wrote about how women talking dirty has become big business. To wit: the success of All Fours, Call Her Daddy, and Gillian Anderson’s new book, Want. Meanwhile, Hawk Tuah girl is launching a podcast called Talk Tuah.
Remember a few weeks ago when I was speculating on the state of Goop? Well, they just laid off 18% of their 216 person workforce. One of the things I had called out was their rapid category expansion and a lack of focus on their core audience. I said, “I can’t believe I'm saying this, but they really should have kept it tight and kooky with the WASPY ladies. Bee venom therapy and vagina candles weren’t for me, but at least they were for someone.” Now, they’re restructuring operations to focus on fashion, beauty, and food. Revenue for their beauty business, which includes premium line Goop Beauty and the more affordable good.clean.goop, rose 40% last year. They also recently opened a new store at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur, California, the first to include an in-store treatment room. Goop Kitchen, their home delivery healthy meal service, recently completed a $15 million capital raise from Uber co-founder and CloudKitchens CEO Travis Kalanick and others, at a $90 million valuation. I hear they handled the layoff process pretty badly.
I feel like I knew Fishwife was going to launch a cookbook. I’m not sure if I heard it somewhere, or if I just know these things. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. The cookbook was written by Fishwife founder Becca Milstein and chef Vilda Gonzalez, who has a Substack you should check out. There are 80 tinned fish recipes (must know more), and promises to be a “SEXY SEXY TINNED FISH BOOK.” I’ve never made a meal from a cookbook in my life, Nigerian that I am, but I’ve been toying with getting one or two, because aren’t cookbooks the sort of things adults just have?!
Beyond Meat’s Hail Mary comes in the form of a whole meat steak alternative that mimics the taste and texture of a filet. CEO Ethan Brown said the rollout will likely include a partnership with a restaurant chain known for serving healthier food, because working with Dunkin’ and McDonald’s apparently did their brand no favors. But we could have told him that. Earlier this year, they announced a turnaround strategy that included cutting jobs, hiking prices, and discontinuing its jerky product. Most importantly, they shifted their marketing strategy to focus more on health benefits and less on climate change. Brown says the meat industry has done a very good job of spreading misinformation about plant-based meat’s processing. Beyond’s stock has dropped by a third in 2024; once valued at $14 billion, it’s now under $400 million. They really need non-meat eaters to love their fake steak as much as meat eaters love that Sweetgreen steak.
Okay, I’m really enjoying Poppi’s social rollout for their new Cherry flavor. I wasn’t even going to write about it, but as I told
for an interview about brand social, I do love a pretty picture. But more than a pretty picture, what gets me is an aesthetic grid. Poppi is really good at telling color stories on their IG feed, particularly when they have a launch coming. It was all neon green when they launched their Lemon Lime flavor (my fave), purple and blue for their Wild Berry launch, and a toned-down orange for their drink of the summer, Orange Cream. Rhode used to do something similar with its product drops—greys to reds to yellows to pinks—but have moved away from that in recent months. Also, Poppi merch is actually good. They’re hosting a launch party in New York this weekend. There’s apparently going to be a “very special performance.”
Neon’s founder and CEO Tom Quinn also thinks A24’s valuation is sus. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about his company's biggest competitor, he said, “In their first seven years, they released three foreign-language films and three documentaries. We’ve released 64 — 32 foreign-language films and 32 documentaries. We are very different, but are very much on the same trajectory. They won best picture, and we won best picture. But I don’t understand their business and their valuations. I’m sure most of the industry doesn’t either, but more power to them.” Neon, the indie studio behind Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, I, Tonya, and more recently, Anatomy of a Fall, has had a big year with Immaculate, the Brat (not brat) documentary, and Longlegs, which grossed $102 million at the US Box Office and had one of the best movie campaigns I’ve seen in a while. Those creepy billboards generated 1.4 million calls from 68 countries.
On the flip side, Netflix and Amazon are investing big in Christian cinema. I haven’t seen this talked about a lot, but it’s a genre that’s been doing pretty well lately. The Chosen, a TV show about the life of Jesus and his apostles, is one of the most popular series in the world. All seasons so far have been crowdfunded by fans who have poured $40 million and counting into its production budget, enough to pay for three out of a planned seven seasons. Sound of Freedom, a thriller about child trafficking, grossed $250 million worldwide on a $15 million budget last summer. In January, Amazon signed up to produce both films and TV shows with a new independent studio owned by Christian filmmaker John Erwin. Netflix, too, is investing in faith-focused films from producers Tyler Perry and DeVon Franklin. First up is R&B, a spin on the biblical love story of Ruth and Boaz set in the modern-day South.
OnlyFans owner, Leonid Radvinsky, made $1 billion in three years from dividends. $472 million last fiscal year, 338 million in 2022 and $284 million the year before that, according to UK financial filings. OnlyFans posted a profit of about $485.5 million in 2023, up 20% from the previous year, and revenue rose about 20% from a year earlier to $1.3 billion. We don’t talk about this company enough imo.
There’s never good news from Snapchat. Case in point: New Mexico is suing them over the sexual predation of minors. “Most voters in this country — Republicans and Democrats— are becoming aware of the threat that this poses, not only to mental health but also the physical well-being of their children,” said New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez.
e.l.f Cosmetics is releasing an album titled Get Ready With Music (boring), featuring songs from Charlotte Rose Benjamin, Betty Who, Meduulla, and more. It drops October 15th but you can listen to their debut single, Hairpin, on Spotify now. It’s fun. Forever in awe of the power of e.l.f’s marketing budget.
The creatives behind Vacation Inc. and Poolsuite are launching Poolsuite Partners LLC, a “boutique digital agency working with brands like Ralph Lauren & Yahoo to create iconic internet experiences.”
Nikki Haley’s new gig is as vice chair of Edelman’s EGA division, their Global Advisory consultancy focused on public and government affairs. Haley will be tasked with helping companies and brands understand the role politics plays in corporate America, and navigating that world. “Politics has become a critical consideration for clients in brand marketing, employee engagement, and reputation management,” said Edelman. “In her time as Governor, Haley had great success in attracting foreign companies to South Carolina and as Ambassador to the UN, helped lead important work on global issues.” Thoughts and opinions not fit for this platform. Sorry.
France has a new prime minister. Michel Barnier is 73, conservative, and has promised to respond to the “anger” of the people.
Cable is dead, so ESPN doesn't want to be a TV news network anymore—it wants to be a sports lifestyle brand. By which it means sports betting, streaming, and doubling down on social media. Surely, it should have done at least two of those things a while ago, no? For example, they partnered with Barstool on a show in 2017 but then got cold feet, and the show was canceled after one episode. Now, they’ve signed a 10-year, $2 billion deal with sports and gambling company PENN Entertainment to launch ESPN Bet (PENN used to own Barstool), are building a TikTok creator network, and plan to use AI to help create a personalized version of their popular show SportsCenter for each user.
Fewer Americans want to ban TikTok than a year ago, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. In March 2023, half of US adults supported a TikTok ban; now, just 32% do. 28% of respondents surveyed by Pew in July and August said they oppose a ban, up from 22% last year. The share of Republicans who want TikTok banned dropped from 60% to 42%, and those numbers fell from 43% to 24% over the same time period among Democrats. I wonder if the Trump and Kamala Harris TikTok campaigns have anything to do with this.
Who is doing The Dare’s PR? He’s everywhere this week.
How did BDG—which owns Bustle, Nylon, W, and others—manage to secure a growth investment from Medici Capital Partners? This is not a hypothetical question; I’d love to know. Like many digital media darlings of yesteryear, BDG has previously explored going public but has instead repeatedly laid off employees. In 2021, they rebranded from Bustle Digital Group to BDG ahead of its plan to go public via a SPAC in a deal that would value it at around $600 million. Then in 2022, CVC Capital Partners explored acquiring BDG. Neither exit materialized. I’m just here wondering what numbers inspired such confidence in Medici Capital Partners. That’s a deck I’d love to see.
Two years and one crypto meltdown later, Andreessen Horowitz is closing its Miami office. TLDR: AI is up, crypto is down, so SF is up and Miami is down.
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever raised $1 billion for his new AI firm Safe Superintelligence. The three month old company declined to share their valuation, but sources said it was close to $5 billion. (Because only in AI will a three month company have such a valuation). Investors include A16, Sequoia, DST Global, and SV Angel. I first wrote about Sutskever when he left OpenAI in May to join rival Anthropic, after serving as OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-lead of its now defunct Superalignment team with Jan Leike. At the time, he tweeted that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products” at OpenAI. This man Is big on SAFETY.
Business of Fashion wrote about a tech company I’ve been following closely for a while. Ty Haney founded tyb is a community rewards platform that hosts your favorite beauty brands, including Glossier, Topicals, Ouai, and Rare Beauty. And I swear every week they’re adding a new brand. Most recently, it was Chapstick and Paris Hilton’s Sliving community. I’m not sure what “community” means when it comes to brands anymore but I do recognize the power of superfans, and I know a good loyalty platform when I see one. (FT job is on adidas’ global membership team). I predicted a while ago that “community” would shift to “loyalty,” which would shift to “membership” because companies do need to see the ROI on all those community activations. tyb does a great job of bringing those worlds together, and
wrote a great mini case study about how Topicals uses the platform.Travis Kelce and Megan Thee Stallion? Hot. (And actually fun to watch).
Nordstrom’s CEO really wants the company to go private. Erik Nordstrom and his brother Pete Nordstrom, the executive vice president, are leading a group of investors that is offering to acquire Nordstrom for $3.8 billion, or $23 a share in cash. The brothers are the fourth generation of Nordstroms to head the store, whose shares are up 25% since the start of the year, but down nearly 27% over the past five years. “The lack of any real premium would, under normal circumstances, make the offer unattractive,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of the consulting firm GlobalData Retail. “However, as a family-run firm, the dynamics are slightly different.”
i so look forward to these! it's like the only way my brain can process business news
can't wait for sunday!