3 Things: Goldbelly for International, Life Skills on Roblox, Democratizing Reality TV

Happy Sunday! Each edition of 3 Things will contain a dive into 3 rabbit holes I’ve found myself going down recently. Subscribe to get each week’s edition straight to your inbox and if you enjoy it, please share! This past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about:

• Goldbelly for International

• Life Skills on Roblox

• Democratizing Reality TV

1. Goldbelly for International

Since 2013, Goldbelly has been satisfying cravings for authentic NY Bagels, Philly Cheese Steaks, Chicago Pizza, Maine lobster rolls, and New Orleans Gumbo. After going through Y Combinator in 2013, the company launched a curated online marketplace for gourmet food from around the country. By 2018 Goldbelly had shipped food to every state which included over 292k bagels, 67k pastrami sandwiches, and 134k pies. By aggregating the best iconic regional foods, Goldbelly caters to nostalgic people living far from where they grew up, serves as a fantastic gifting platform, and acts as a fun way for couples or friends to have a special dinner or treat. During the pandemic, they were able to add cooking classes and meal kits to the platform, providing a life raft for restaurants who saw their sales plummet and adding more fun options for the masses who were stuck at home and looking for something special. This also perfectly coincided with the rapid consumer adoption of e-commerce for food.

Goldbelly offers fare from all across America but what if you want ramen from Tokyo, pizza from Napoli, croissants from Paris, or gulab jamun from Mumbai? There are close to 50M people in the US who are foreign born and 10s of millions more who are 2nd generation. Plus, as the world has become more connected, many people have traveled abroad or have certain foreign food affinities. A company could operate central hubs in the US where they order from the most famous restaurants and bakeries from across the globe and ship them to American consumers looking for a special meal. I tried Talia di Napoli pizzas and they were fantastic. International brands would ship partially cooked and frozen items to distribution centers in the US and the company would manage the branding, marketing, and customer acquisition. There is a natural addition of meal kits and live cooking classes with chefs from around the world which would add nice upsell and cross-sell opportunities. This could also be easily used for parties and corporate events.

2. Life Skills on Roblox

This past week, Roblox went public via a direct listing and is currently trading at ~$70 for a market cap of $38B. The 17-year old company experienced a meteoric rise during 2020 reaching 164 million monthly active users, roughly 2x the number from 2018. Currently, over half of all kids under 16 in the US are users of the product and for the demographic of 9-12 year olds that number is over 75%. And, they’re not just on Roblox playing games; they are doing virtual birthday parties and treating the platform as a social network, similar to behavior that has emerged on Discord. What’s also fascinating is that Roblox is the platform and infrastructure to build games but not the game creators themselves. There are millions of games that have been developed on Roblox by 2 million developers (mostly teens and young adults) and they are free to play but most involve paid features or accessories for your avatar that require in-game currency called Robux.

While Roblox by nature is a platform meant for people to build and monetize games on top of (currently over 345k people are making money from building on the platform), there are also opportunities to take advantage of the fact that the platform has the eyeballs and attention of most of the youth in the US. One of my favorite non-intuitive marketing campaign stories was TurboTax’s in-game ad campaign on the popular Zynga game FarmVille back in the early 2010s. I heard this story at a marketing conference many years ago and the product manager explained that Intuit (the owner of TurboTax) realized that the primary demographic of people who use TurboTax to file their family’s tax returns was a middle aged woman in middle america. That was also the exact primary demographic of the FarmVille user base. During tax season one year they launched an in-game ad where you had to complete your tax return to earn Farm Cash, the in-game currency. The campaign was wildly successful. They had deeply understood their customer and got them to do something completely out of context from game play because the incentive of Farm Cash was so strong for this persona. I see a similar opportunity on Roblox. Is there a way to teach kids and teens about things like mental health, ethics, personal finance, and other critical life skills on Roblox by offering them Robux? I think there is. It could take the form of an edtech play built on Roblox with various games and modules where you earn Robux instead of spending them by completing various skills. This is an opportunity to both do well and do good :)

3. Democratizing Reality TV

The very first “reality” TV shows aired in the late 1940s when a few programs starting depicting characters in unscripted situations which was a broad departure from traditional television at the time. Queen for a day, which started as a radio show, and Cash and Carry were 2 early examples but the first major hit was Alan Funt’s Candid Camera which launched in 1948 filming unsuspecting ordinary people becoming the victims of practical jokes. For the next 40 years, most reality TV was focused around game shows but that shifted in the 1990s and early 2000s with TV shows like The Real World, Road Rules, Survivor, American Idol, and America’s Next Top Model. The genre evolved into either drama soaked sagas where groups of people are placed in a house (or on an island) with each other to battle it out for a specific prize or a competition among professionals with skills like singing, cooking, or dancing who compete for the title of the “best” plus money and contracts that come with winning.

Recently, I’ve participated in and listened to many Clubhouse rooms where founders come “on stage” for a few minutes to pitch a group of investors and then get asked questions and receive real-time feedback. Every time I do one I keep thinking that it’s really just a mini, less produced version of Shark Tank. That got me thinking… is now the exact moment where reality TV can be democratized and reproduced by small groups of people on almost any social network? Many new social platforms are arising that incorporate video, audio, photos that seem like perfect platforms for people who are natural community builders and are passionate about a specific niche to create the modern reality show. These platforms also encourage audience participation and direct monetization. Remember how big a deal it was when American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance started allowing viewers to text their votes in? I recently even watched a Netflix glass blowing reality show so this can expand into many areas. Let’s stick with the glass blowing example. Imagine if the audience selected a batch of participants from audition videos and each week the participants uploaded a video to the platform where a host gave live color commentary and expert judging. There could be an interactive photo gallery where you could view each week’s pieces and a comment, voting, and tipping section where you could support your favorite creators. Each week someone would get voted off until there is a winner. Many similarities to existing game and reality shows but now, anyone can start their own and directly monetize the fans, no more middle men and gatekeepers. With the current ease of video editing and number of creator platforms and monetization tools currently coming to market, seems like a perfect opportunity.

That’s all for today! If you have thoughts, comments, or want to get in touch, find me on Twitter at @ezelby and if you enjoyed this, please subscribe and share with a friend or two!

~ Elaine