What's coming up on Caffeine
Plus: Some excellent weekend watching and more shots fired at Google, this time from news media.
Good morning Caffeinators,
Read on to take a sneak peek at what’s coming from Caffeine in the next week for our subscribers, your usual Weekend Fuel recommendation and a parting shot.
And if you’ve got a story, press release, interview to pitch or just want to tell me I’m wrong about something - send it over to finn@caffeinedaily.co
If you’re interested in working with Caffeine as a partner, flick Georgia an email on: georgia@caffeinedaily.co
Have a great weekend, look after each other and we’ll see you next week.
Finn and the CAFFEINE team
Coming up on Caffeine:
Scaling consumer products brands in the US: DTC lessons from Bodewell’s P&G exit and other businesses - Jamie Duff: Next week we have a guest column from Jamie Duff (a Kiwi, now living in the US) who was the co-founder of Stolen Rum; his second venture, DTC medicated skincare company, Bodewell, was sold to P&G in 2021/2022. Jamie also had a stint at Jack Abraham’s VC fund, Atomic, and has consulted to PE, VC and corporates for growth strategies across marketing, brand and product innovation. He is going to share some of his insights and lessons for both early-stage founders & teams, and executives, tackling high growth in the challenging landscape of consumer products
Our final shout out to our first in person event: I know, I know you’re probably sick of hearing about it but we’re VERY excited and consider this our final reminder that our first in person Caffeine event, The Risk-Reward Equation: How to Innovate Without Derailing Your Startup, is on Wednesday next week for those of you in Auckland. Remember, it’s free for you Caffeinators using the code CAFFEINEFRIENDS. Just make sure you hit APPLY with promo code. Get your ticket here.
Next episode of The Startup Theatre Pod: We’ll be back next week with another episode of Startup Theatre (literally about to run and record my segment as I send this so please forgive any typos). I’ll be talking about the deep tech success of New Zealand, whether we can build a Silicon Valley in Auckland and a check in on the weird, wild world of AI.
Here’s what’s on our radar. Hit us with your own recommendations.
Andor Season 2: I hate to generalise about any audience but I feel its a safe bet that a decent proportion of the Caffeine readership are fellow nerds like me but even if you have never even seen or liked a single Star War - I still think you should be watching Andor Season 2.
It just broke an IMDB record for the highest rated run of TV episodes in history, toppling titans like Breaking Bad or GoT. At first, the idea of telling a prequel story about an unknown character in Star Wars which sets up a the movie Rogue One sounds like a crazy idea.
No jedi, no famous faces and an ending that’s already been spoiled. But it’s some of the most grounded, human and exceptionally made sci-fi I’ve ever seen. If you didn’t know it was set in the Star Wars universe, you’d just think it was some beautifully crafted story about what it truly takes to overthrow a fascist state. 5 Stars.
News media slam Google for ‘theft’ of content in AI search: Maybe this one hits a little close to home for me but I can’t see how Google’s AI search mode becoming the default, generating content for users without them ever needing to click a link, isn’t going to have an outsized impact on the already struggling news sector. Now Danielle Coffey, the CEO and president of News/Media Alliance, has blasted the move in a statement.
“Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company,” she said.
If you value your content, please pay for it when you can. Otherwise it’ll be sucked up into the ever expanding vortex of free AI slop.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Want to get in touch with a news tip, bit of feedback or just to chat? Email hello@caffeinedaily.co. Look after yourselves this weekend and we’ll see you Monday.