some diamond stats to send him today
great for you, bad for de beers
Good morning and welcome back to as seen on.
I celebrated my 26th birthday this weekend and am currently in a very sober mood. It’s time to take life seriously.
Today, I wrote about Coach’s Gen Alpha strategy and why more marketing dollars will go to A.I. companies in the next couple of years, some stats on the diamond market to send your boyfriend, and location sharing as the new relationship litmus test.
ENJOY!
I’m noticing a new kind of GLP-1 coverage taking hold, which has less to do with its effects on users and more to do with everyone else. Last week, The New York Times wrote about how weight loss drugs are upending marriages, and the Financial Times covered how menus are shrinking to accommodate tiny appetites. TechCrunch reported on two nutrition counseling startups, Berry and Fay, which recently raised $50 million each. Berry CEO Noah Kotlove told TechCrunch the company had been growing tremendously fast. “It’s a very large market,” he said. How large, though? Hear me out: Kotlove goes on to say sessions with his nutritionist are like therapy, “but instead of talking about my relationship with my family members or my partner, we were talking about my relationship with food.” I’m pretty confident that the TAM for a startup like this is probably larger than we might imagine. One of the second-order effects of the GLP-1 boom is that everyone is thinking about food and their bodies differently, and with greater frequency—even those who have no intention of using the drugs. I know I am. In my group chats, we’re discussing the politics of size, the ethics of GLP-1s, and the effects of these drugs as a proxy for talking about how we feel about our own bodies—and how our lives might be different if we liked them more. Or if we could quit vaping, snacking, or whatever habit we don’t have enough self-control to break. GLP-1s help with those too.
I didn’t think it was possible, but we are somehow more aware of our physicality, for better or worse. Does this make sense? Because even if you’re not using Ozempic, you know someone who is—or someone you think is—and now you, too, are wondering. It’s the what if of it all. These second-order effects—how GLP-1s are affecting people who don’t even use them, from friends to lovers to casual observers—are what I’m most interested in. Of course, nutrition counseling startups are booming; everyone’s got food on their minds.