3 Things: Latam/Africa/SEA Incubator, Modular Home Offices, Podcast Production Suite
Happy Sunday and a very warm welcome to all the new subscribers! I’m thrilled and honored to have you as readers and truly appreciate your thoughts and feedback 🙏. 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 (I suck at self-promotions so can use your help)! This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about:
X for Latam/Africa/SEA Incubator
Modular Home Offices
Podcast Production Suite
1. X for Latam/Africa/SEA Incubator
Investments in emerging markets like Latin America (Latam), Africa, and Southeast Asia (SEA) have exploded over the last few years from both US and global investors. In Latam, the boom is driven primarily by fintech startups which are bringing huge swaths of the 660 million person population into the banking sphere who previously weren’t served by traditional banks. Nubank, a neobank based in Brazil is now the largest neobank in the world with 33 million customers and an eye-popping $25B valuation. In 2016, there was roughly $500M invested in Latam startups and that number has ballooned to ~$4B in 2020 with $2B of that going to fintechs across 282 deals. Similar to Latam, venture capital investments in Africa, which are expected to hit their highest level ever this year, have been on the rise and also concentrated in fintech companies as much of the continent has also been unbanked or underbanked. Looking at Southeast Asia, the investment activity, which was ~$8B in 2020, has focused more on ride hailing, delivery, and ecommerce and has created 17 current unicorns.
When you look at the most recent Y Combinator batches, a growing number of the companies are pitching themselves as the “X for Mexico” or the “Y for Nigeria”. And it's not a bad model. Taking successful American startup concepts and playbooks, combining them with local market and cultural knowledge, and adding in entrepreneurial hustle can majorly pay off and provide huge innovations in emerging markets. I think a US-based (likely SF) accelerator/incubator should focus on bringing in entrepreneurs from these geos with backgrounds in certain industries and creating a 3-6 month program to teach founders all of the best practices and playbooks from the fastest growing US startups including digital marketing, sales, growth, operations, storytelling, and fundraising. The model could provide access to the knowledge and people of Silicon Valley and a small amount of capital in exchange for equity in the company (very similar to YC and other top accelerators). There could be different cohorts based off of specific industries or geos so that the founders can also share knowledge among themselves to accelerate their learning and company development even further.
2. Modular Home Offices
The last decade brought the open office trend to (mostly tech) companies large and small across the globe. The open office concept actually dates back to the 1940s before cubicles where there would be large rows of typists or clerks who performed repetitive tasks in a large open space. The design is often credited to people like Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford who spent a ton of time on workforce and management efficiency. In the 1960s, Germany developed the concept of Burolandschaft or “office landscape” which was meant to foster more group work and team collaboration and also emphasized the open nature of work space. In the late 1960s, Robert Prost, a designer at Herman Miller created a concept he called Action Office which was meant to bring workers more privacy and evolved into what we now call the cubicle. In the 1970s as more women entered the workplace, there was also a trend towards cubicles to bring modesty into the workplace. Today, most tech companies and startups have moved back to the open office concept which many feel provides the collaborative ingredients necessary for innovation and transformation.
While some find open offices distracting and disruptive for deep work and flow, you’re unlikely to walk into a startup these days and see cubes. What you will see, however, are what looks like phone booths where individuals can go to take calls or meetings and not disturb their colleagues. The most popular company providing these office booths is ROOM which makes soundproof single person booths as well as modular $16k+ movable meeting rooms that can fit 2+ people. As more people opt to work from home permanently or a few days a week, it’s a challenge for those who live in cities with limited space to find comfortable and appropriate places to work (I personally was working on a makeshift “standing desk” in the hallway for a year). A company could build modular offices like ROOM but focus on the consumer/work from home market. The spaces should be easily customizable to fit different sized rooms, movable, comfortable enough to spend many hours in, soundproof, and optimized for modern work with accents like proper lighting and mounted camera to look great on your Zoom calls. They should also be built for a single person which would allow more efficient use of space without feeling claustrophobic like some of the phone booths do. There could also be models that are built for the backyard that can withstand weather and more wear and tear. There are many companies doing backyard office ADUs but the price points on these aren’t accessible for most and you often need a permit and some minimal construction to install. There is also a great B2B opportunity to have employers offer these spaces as an employee benefit to recruit and retain top talent who don’t want to be in an office 5 days a week.
3. Podcast Production Suite
Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google, and more have all been on a shopping spree buying up companies building in the podcasting space. There have been content plays like Amazon’s acquisition of Wondery to Spotify’s purchase of Gimlet and Parcast or individual shows like the Joe Rogan podcast. Hosting platforms are getting gobbled up; Spotify bough Anchor for over $100M and recently purchased the more “enterprise” focused podcast hosting and ad company Megaphone for $235M. This week, Amazon announced that it was acquiring Megaphone competitor Art19. There have been a slew of other recent acquisitions by the big players as they continue to battle it out in the war for our ears. One thing is clear; everyone believes that the audio space, and in particular podcasts, will continue to grow both in terms of creators, consumer adoption, and monetization opportunities.
Most of the tech-focused energy to date has been on the distribution and monetization side of the podcasting industry which is a critical part of being a successful podcastor. However, for many, creating high quality audio is a huge barrier to entry. To create a single episode today, you still need to start with proper equipment like a podcasting mic, record episodes using software like Zencastr or Squadcast, edit the recording using audio editing tools such as Audacity (incredibly cumbersome and hard to use but free), Soundtrap (my tool of choice which is focused on music but works for podcasts too), or Descript (allows you to edit the audio by editing the text transcript in a doc format), and create episode imagery, description, show notes, and tags. If you plan to promote on social media, you’ll also need to create short, engaging clips using additional tools. It’s shocking to me that despite there being 2,000,000 podcasts there is still no platform that combines all of the functions a podcaster needs to produce a high-quality episode. A suite of tools that handles multi-person recording (remove background noise, normalize volume, create individual tracks, record audio and video, etc), audio editing, social clips, episode images and text, and direct integrations to all the major hosting providers could easily build a huge business targeting the longtail of experienced and newbie podcasters. Instead of charging per episode, you could charge a monthly subscription to encourage usage and also guarantee revenue.
That’s all for today! If you have thoughts, comments, or want to get in touch, reply to this email or find me on Twitter at @ezelby and if you enjoyed this, please subscribe and share with a friend or two!
~ Elaine