Friday Fuel - Jan 15th, 2020
Welcome to all of the new Crashing Up family members who’ve joined since Monday. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, make sure to do so here.
Hi friends,
Here’s your weekly shot of Friday Fuel, a collection of things that I’ve been learning from or enjoying recently.
📕What I’ve Been Reading:
Nothing I can write here will pique your interest in this article more than the headline itself: This 19-year-old is paying her way through college by naming over 677,000 Chinese babies.
Yes, this is real…and brilliant.
🎧What I’ve Been Listening To:
Nine years ago, Evan Britton set out to create a better version of Wikipedia, specifically for internet celebrities. Famous Birthdays was born and has become the go-to resource for celebrity birthday, bio, and net worth information. Last year alone, it racked up over 30 billion unique pageviews.
This interview with Evan breaks down the success of Famous Birthdays and discusses how his relentless focus on one key idea and “staying in his lane” helped him bootstrap this simple concept into a wildly profitable business with a team of dozens of employees.
🤯What’s Blown My Mind:
With competitors like Apple and Disney spending billions on acquired and original content, Netflix was still king in 2020.
🛍️The Future of E-Commerce:
The lines between social media and e-commerce are quickly morphing into one. Facebook and Instagram have already released in-app shopping experiences, but this partnership between Walmart and TikTok blows those out of the water. There is a ton of potential for influencer-led live shopping content. This is just the beginning.
🎤Quote I’ve Enjoyed:
“The best startup naming advice I've ever heard:
If you read it, you can pronounce it
If you hear it, you can spell it.
You'll quickly become the top Google result
Vowels are back in vogue.” - Josh Constine, SignalFire
Enjoyed this newsletter? Let me know by clicking one of the links below.
That’s it for this week. If you’re new here and want to catch up on some old editions, here are a couple of my favorites: More Than a Game and The Future of NFTs. You can also follow me on Twitter or check out randymginsburg.com for more writing.
Thanks for reading,
Randy