Hello there,
Apart from the tiring April Fools’ jokes that got rehashed from the last century, it was a good month.
I came across many fascinating ideas and insights, and I’ll share 5 of them so you can spend your Sunday thinking about them.
Here we go:
Dumbphones: People fed up with scrolling on their phones for 25 hours a day are increasingly turning towards these new “dumbphones” that avoid all the addictive features of smartphones and are designed for minimal usage. With a black & white interface and restricting itself to basic functions like texting and calling, this tech is surprisingly attracting a lot of Gen-Z users too. As addictions spiral out of control, I won’t be surprised if such businesses find a profitable niche and thrive in our dopamine-driven era. {You can read this helpful piece on how to combat your smartphone addiction and develop a simple strategy for it}
Music Exploration: The music we discover and develop a taste for during our teenage years ends up defining our lifelong preferences. This is an insight that anyone would immediately relate to: I still love the intense, aggressive metal music I fell in love with when I was 15. Moreover, our willingness to explore new forms of music starts stagnating after 33 years of age as we become more averse to trying new stuff! So if you’re below that mark, make sure you try as many new genres as possible. You might not do that instinctively after your mid-30s: a time when high-priority tasks like talking to Bajaj Finance and cleaning diapers take precedence over all other things in life.
The Truth Behind Books: Publishing houses are like angel investors- because 96% of the books published every year don’t even sell 1000 copies! Almost all of the profits made by these companies come from just a handful of books: celebrity-authored titles that sell hundreds of thousands of copies, those once-in-a-decade sensations that keep selling perennially (like Ikigai or Psychology Of Money), and other stuff like the Bible. Writing a book is a terrible idea if you’re doing it for the money.
The Economist Cover Curse: It’s hilarious how The Economist’s cover pages have often indicated the exact opposite of what’s about to happen in a market. In 2003, their cover page said “The End Of The Oil Age”, and then oil went on a multi-year rally. In 2016, they spoke about “The Almighty Dollar” and the dollar continuously fell for the next full year. When they went gaga about crypto in Sept 2021, Ethereum fell by 60% over the next year. And when they declared its “downfall” after this happened, Bitcoin doubled in the next twelve months!
Protein Powder Fiasco: Indian protein brands were all over the news because it was found that some of them contained toxic compounds and mislabeled their protein content. While businesses should be questioned for these practices, a critical idea here is that the State is also responsible for such mishaps. When the need for protein grew, many players entered the Indian market, including HQ international brands. So local players lobbied the govt to raise import duties so they could be protected, effectively kicking those brands out of the market. Thanks to this, local brands had zero incentive to innovate and improve their product (due to a lack of healthy competition)- which inevitably leads to such quality blunders because they know the Indian consumer has no choice. Such pro-business (and NOT pro-market) policies lead to bad quality AND worse-off consumers, while a few businesses reap the benefits.
Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoyed this piece, you should also check out:
Why Haven’t We Seen Aliens Yet? {Fun and Thought Provoking}