PT Barnum & peloton

Hi there,

So who else is getting their significant other a Peloton for Christmas?

Anyways, a tone-deaf ad by Peloton had social media ablaze the last 2 weeks, in case you aren’t attuned to or don’t care about what the Twitterati is upset about.

The relentlessly mocked ad saw an intense amount of media coverage with newspapers, TV, social media, etc. all covering the news that matters.

From a business perspective, I do wonder if the induced Streisand Effect will actually result in killer Q4 sales for Peloton. The Streisand Effect, if you’re unfamiliar, is said to occur when “an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.”

Yes — of course, most of the coverage was negative.

But if you subscribe to the PT Barnum philosophy on media — “I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right” — this was an exposure bonanza for Peloton.

It will be interesting to see its Q4 results.

If they are above expectations, I do wonder if we will start to see marketers court controversy more deliberately with the hope of having their own Peloton moment.

Eyeing the money

Financial services corporate venture capital groups invested in a record 329 deals worth $8B in 2019 YTD.

Check out our latest report for more trends in financial services CVC investments.

Metabolomics

If you know what metabolomics are and are interested, keep reading. Otherwise, skip to the next section.

The top patent players in the metabolomics space are given below, as determined by our patent search engine.

The most active investors and acquirers in the metabolomics space are here.

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Forbes 30 Under 30 who?

Since we announced our AI 100 in February, 7 of the featured companies have been acquired, 4 became unicorns, and several have partnered with cos like Microsoft, Oracle, HSBC, and more.

Check out where they are now.

Striking gold

Banks are more actively investing in startups, with annual deals up over 8x between 2014 and 2018.

Citi and Goldman Sachs are the most active investors, but Goldman has backed the most unicorns.

Check out other top investors in our latest CVC report here.

Do you have what it takes?

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• Provide hardware and data infrastructure for AI applications
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Applications are now open for our fourth annual AI 100.

CNBC. Kate Rooney (@Kr00ney) reports on a new high in investments from financial services cos into startups and cites our latest global financial services CVC report.

Financial Times. Kentaro Iwamoto (@kentaro_iwamoto) reports on Grab’s partnership with Mastercard and cites CB Insights data.

Nikkei Asian Review. Jun Suzuki (@JunSuzukiNikkei) and Tomoya Onishi cover Southeast Asia’s leapfrog into e-money and reference CB Insights data.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. We’re looking for a director of product. See the role here.

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