3 Things: What Percent Consensus, Lingo Translator, Infant Formula Tablets
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:
What Percent Consensus
Lingo Translator
Infant Formula Tablets
1. What Percent Consensus
These days, people treat everything that they read on the internet as fact. Whether it’s social media, blogs, or plain old results in a search engine, we are constantly being bombarded with information parading itself as the “truth”. You can pretty much Google anything and immediately confirm a pre-existing notion or bias, or go down an endless rabbit hole of inconsistent answers to the same question leaving you more confused than when you started (and wasting hours internet scrolling). So how did we come to the place where we believe everything that we read? The internet itself in some ways gave rise to misinformation. We are taught from a young age to trust what we hear from elites and authorities be it the government, mainstream media (who abide by journalistic ethics), or educators who all have various versions of checks and balances. As the Western world lost trust in institutions and the open internet model removed traditional gatekeepers, we got an explosion of unvetted information and never received proper training on how to rigorously assess and evaluate the validity of the information we consume.
Everyone can now be an expert on any topic they choose and if they are skilled at SEO (or wrote about it at the right time), their “wisdom” will rise to the top of Google searches. I want a chrome extension that scrapes the first, let’s say 2-3 pages of Google search results content and shows me what percentage overlap there is in the information. Essentially this would show you whether this was truly verified “factual” information (the closer to 100% consistency among result content) vs pure opinion or speculation (closer to 50% or below consistency). When you do a search in Google a little box would pop up at the top showing you what percent consensus the top results had within their content helping you have the appropriate rigor in assessing how much to trust different content or helping tailor your searches to find more consistent answers. It could also flag outliers that diverge from the general consensus letting you know that you should probably either skip that result or read with more scrutiny.
2. Lingo Translator
Assuming you are not a lawyer… have you ever read a legal document and thought to yourself “I understand exactly what this is saying and what the potential implications are”? I thought not. How about speaking with a doctor or getting a medical bill and trying to parse what it says or whether it is even accurate? Have you ever tried to navigate the infinite number of 3-letter acronyms that the federal government uses (OMB, RFI, DHS, FFY, oh my!)? Nearly ever highly specialized profession ends up with their own language that only insiders can decipher, despite often having to deal with lay people for their work. This leads to lots of Googling, frustration, and ultimately distrust and dislike for many of those professions.
Imagine a chrome extension or webapp that could turn any industry-speak into easily understandable parlance. When you’re on a webpage, have a PDF/doc, or are reading an email, you can click a button and select what type of language you are trying to decipher (ex legalese) from a dropdown menu and the service scans the content and summarizes it in simple, human terms. Similar to the concept in idea #1 it could also help you understand what is standard and what is unusual that you should probably pay attention to. Since the product would be consumer facing, the most likely business model is offering it for free and having an ad-supported model. If you don’t want ads, you can pay a nominal monthly fee to remove them, similar to many apps on mobile app stores. There is also a data play as the extension/app would see the contents of searches, documents, and more related to very specialized fields and while I don’t love the business of selling user data, the product would have the ability to build proprietary user data sets.
3. Infant Formula Tablets
The formula industry is already over a $50B annual market and is expected to grow to $109B by 2027. The category is dominated by 4 brands/companies in the US: Similac (owned by Abbott), Enfamil (owned by Mead Johnson), Nestle (who owns Gerber, Nido, Cerelac, and NaturNes) and Danone (mostly popular in Europe). One of the reasons that the formula market is growing comes down to convenience, especially for working moms. Millennial women are opting for formula due in some part to short maternity leaves and changing gender roles where formula allows partners to share in the feeding responsibilities. Whatever the reason, by 6 months of age, 77% of babies will have had some formula with over half getting just formula and possibly starting some solids.
While formula is a godsend for many and is definitely an easy, convenient feeding option, there are some drawbacks (outside of the whole “should you use formula in the first place debate”). First, formula is extremely expensive costing families $1-2k a year which is cost prohibitive for many. This is due to the price of powdered milk which is FDA regulated, distribution costs, taxes (especially import tax if opting for a European brand which often contains better ingredients), and regulations. Formula is also messy as the powder gets everywhere and has trouble going into the narrow neck of the bottle and is cumbersome to actually measure out. The scoop is meant to be for 2oz but what if you want 3 oz or just 1 oz? Given how large and growing the market is and the fact that many families are opting for the convenience factor, there would clearly be a market for formula tablets. Press the powder into small Tums-like discs each portioned to be used with 1oz of water for easy measuring. Just drop the tablets into the bottle (which you can do ahead of time if you are going to be on the move), add water, shake and you’re good to go. They could also come in small to-go rolls which can be used for travel, day outings, or while a child is at day care or being cared for by others. With the rise of e-commerce and the willingness of parents to pay nearly anything for their kids, a new DTC brand could make some headway on social media and partnering with influencers.
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 share with a friend or two!
~ Elaine