Digital Dollars & Da Vinci Sleep Cycles
The futures of Eat, Sleep and Trade
Want the pulse on posterity? Curious how enduring, everyday things we do may look in 10, 20, 100 years? You’ve found your groove: Welcome to Future Beat.
Hi everyone 🥁!
Many of you already know my simple heuristic: Common words are big markets. Eat, work, love, play, sleep— things frequently done are dollars frequently spent 💰⏰
Common words also endure: “what” humans do changes little. “How” (i.e. technology) changes big time.
An illustration: water transport 💧🚛. In 312 B.C. Romans started moving water via aqueducts. In 2021, Americans via Congress allocated $55 billion for water infrastructure, including making fresh water via solar-powered micro-desalination. Transport endures, but transportation tech evolves. How we love, play, communicate— all that changes, too.
This week I have some early observations— not predictions—on the future of common words like sleep, eat, and trade.
Oh, and Jobs! As always, I curate amazing opportunities at first-rate startups building the future (scroll to way bottom). If you or a friend is interested in any of these, shoot me a note.
Future of Sleep 😴
Olympic athletes snooze with Light Therapy, and AI-powered mattresses hit Vegas
Sleep is a product. A badly innovated product. “Da Vinci napped 20 minutes every 4 hours” may be the most innovative sleep idea I’ve heard, and it’s 500+ years old.
And yet bad sleep is a big pain point: “As a nation we are not getting enough sleep” — 1 in 3 Americans are sleep deprived—as Wayne Giles, M.D., former director of CDC’s Division of Population Health reported in a CDC study.
Other countries don’t sleep enough either. While in the U.S. the economic cost of bad sleep exceeds $400B, staggering costs apply elsewhere: $138B in Japan, and $60B in Germany, for example.
Our understanding of and response to sleep deprivation is evolving fast. One reason: wearables + Big Data. We no longer require overnight sleep lab visits (“Polysomnography”) with sleep technicians diligently monitoring brain activity, airflow, heart-rate, snoring, etc. Our new sleep technician is a watch…
The Apple Watch, now worn by 100 million people worldwide, and other wearables turn our bedrooms into sleep labs. Understanding feeds innovation, and in turn demand: as of 2020, the market size of sleep technologies (“sleep tech”) surpassed $12.5 billion and is expected to grow ~18% CAGR.
Future Beat: This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas gave a glimpse into the future of snoozing. The 360 Smart Bed uses AI and machine learning to personalize just about every subtlety of “cosiness”. Other areas I’m amazed by: Bulgarian startup AYO combines Chronbiology (the biology of natural rhythms) and Light Therapy to control our circadian rhythms—and help us sleep (Olympic athletes used Ayo in the Tokyo Games to overcome jetlag). Here’s to hoping we can all fall asleep this easily…
Future of Eat 🌯🍔🥗
From “Old Fashioned” to “Fashion Forward:” Cracker Barrel restaurant chain goes virtual
Cracker Barrel (Nasdaq: CBRL) is as “old-fashioned” as it gets—its slogan is literally “The Old Country Store.” And yet late last year the 600+ American restaurant chain took a truly “fashion-forward” measure. Now, CBRL and GRAMMY-winner The Weeknd share something in common: a virtual brand.
Virtual bands have a history. Notably, in music Gorillaz took flight as a virtual band back in 1998—and just last summer, The Weeknd performed a virtual concert on TikTok to 2 million viewers (it was AWESOME).
Virtual supermodels are in vogue— and now literally in Vogue (for example, Calvin Klein campaigned w/ IRL supermodel Bella Hadid and virtual supermodel Lil Miquela). Last December, Nike bought a virtual shoe company to sell sneaker Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) (side note: Looks like Gary Vee just bought one of them on Open Sea).
Enter Pancake Kitchen and Chicken ‘n Biscuits—CBRL’s two virtual brands. Actually you can’t enter—there is no brick-and-mortar presence, and the brands share a “ghost kitchen” (i.e. overhead) and exclusively deliver (e.g. via DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grub Hub, etc).
“The strategic intent behind it was to appeal to guests who would otherwise not be coming into a restaurant… who we believe would be a completely incremental piece of business” - Cracker Barrel CEO, Sandra Cochran
These “Virtual Restaurants” share kitchens with other businesses to cook their food, thereby 1) optimizing one of the most important restaurant KPIs— what it takes to cook the food (COGS) and 2) increasing the SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) by reaching patrons who for whatever reason won’t come to the restaurant.
Future Beat: Keep an eye on big, mature legacy food brands, especially in remote / rural markets launching virtual brands. I predict in 2022 we will see a lot more of these, especially with supply chain issues, inflation, and exogenous Covid-19 factors pressuring restaurant margins.
Future of Trade 💵🔂
China’s Digital Yuan is now avail on WeChat— and a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency is surely inevitable
Currency is a product, also a badly innovated one. In 2013, my band Filligar opened one of the first “Bitcoin for music” stores (proof: Reddit). I have since kept a laser eye on the crypto space not only because of a self-interest in monetizing a difficult to monetize asset class (music), but also the student in history in me remembers that currency is itself an ever-evolving product… 💷💵🦖
Consider colonial America (e.g. 1600s-1700s)— money shortages drove money innovations. Today, we are facing new sets of money challenges (inflation, and Great Power competition with China, which now has a digital currency— to name only a few).
Congress has already passed 30+ bills related to cryptocurrency and others are on the way. In the words of U.S. Congressman French Hill (R-AK) and his team:
We need a digital dollar to participate in that movement of commerce onto the blockchain in the years ahead…. Consumers could gain access through mobile apps, reducing transaction costs and speeding up settlements compared with payments in traditional currency formats.
Future Beat: Congress is likely to move forward with a digital dollar, because China already has— the yuan is available for WeChat’s 1 billion+ users in time for the Beijing Olympics. Still, there will be a “clash” between fiat (e.g. pro “hegemony of the Dollar”) regulators and crypto evangelists to play out—surely with surprises. Congress is certainly deep in the debate…
On a crypto note! In mid-February, I am heading to ETHDenver (the world’s largest crypto event) and am excited to share more on-the-ground learnings on how the future is shaping up for trade.
Future Beat gives periodic insights on “common words” and how they’re changing. To give you a sense of the kinds of words—and tech areas—I am curious about, I made this:
Are there other areas you’re interested in? I’d love to hear your interest areas—and especially your feedback / views!
Jobs! (sorted by “Word”)
Wear. Archive Resale (peer-to-peer resale) has 11 openings
Pay. Topi (digital payments) has 7 openings
Work. Gloat (future of work) has 129 openings
Work. One Schema (automation) has 3 openings
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Rock on 🤘,
Pete
FUTURE BEAT
(views are Pete’s / only Pete’s)
