Millennials Take Over, Another $10 Billion Startup, and Other Must-Reads
Isabelle Roughol
Building news organisations where people love to work｜Journalist & media executive｜Public historian
Who run the world? Millennials. The latest US census numbers are in and it's official: Millennials (born 1982-2000) outnumber Boomers (born 1946-1964). There are now 83.1 million of us scary Millennials in the US. (The AARP still calls dibs but lumps in the Great Generation and older Gen Xers.) Millennials are also far more diverse with 44.2 percent of them part of a so-called minority... which is nothing compared with the new, thankfully yet unnamed generation: more than half American kids under 5 are non-white.
This news will no doubt feed a new frenzy of articles about conquering the Millennial consumer/employee. We are the belle of the ball, coveted by every brand from Tic Tac to Goldman Sachs. On behalf of my generation, we appreciate the attention (the clichés, not so much.) But Boomers still represent half the consumer spending in America, about two-thirds the financial assets, 63% and 62% of the US House and Senate respectively, and about three-quarters of the Fortune 500 CEOs. Who rule the world? We'll get there. (Sorry, Gen Xers, you're not part of this conversation.)
Seriously, who are all these unicorns? WeWork's valuation soared to $10 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, after a funding round of $400 million. Just last year, the company, which leases cool office space to startups, was valued at $1.5 billion. This new round puts WeWork instantly into the top 10 of the Billion Dollar Startup Club and values it at about half the size of its biggest competitor, a more traditional, publicly traded company that leases more than 10 times the space. High risk, high reward, or just high risk?
Circa, the app that hoped to reinvent high quality mobile news, is shutting down. Founder Matt Galligan says the company has run out of money after it was unable to raise a new round of venture capital and did not want to change its model by relying, like all other media organization, on advertising or subscriptions.
Julia Greenberg explains it succinctly in Wired:
No major media organization has been able to find a real solution to the problem of monetizing news online in a new way.
Godspeed. (Circa has great people to hire and an editor who's vouching for them.)
Whole Paycheck and then some. Whole Foods is investigated in New York City for overcharging customers: pre-packaged items were mislabeled to show a heavier weight than they were, and not by a little, says the city's Department of Consumer Affairs. Whole Foods didn't exactly deny the charge but said it never did so intentionally.
European leaders reconvene. Guess what about? As John Abell wrote last night, Monday’s hopeful spirit was quickly squashed and debtors and creditors are once again in a stalemate.
Things are looking up for Apple music. Now its short-lived row with Taylor Swift has ended, "thousands of indie labels have signed on to join the streaming service. Big names too: Pharrell Williams announced he'll release his next single exclusively with Apple.
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IRR Manager | Customer Implementation Manager | First Choice Manager | MBA | M.Inst.D | Toastmasters CC7
9 年Whats the relevance to say over half the kids who are 5 are non white?
Sales Development Professional connecting the food and beverage industry to actionable intelligence
9 年The problem with these generational categories is that each encompasses so many years that they ignore key paradigm shifts. There's a world of difference between a Baby Boomer old enough to have been drafted and gone to Woodstock, and one who came of age in the years between Watergate and punk rock. Similarly, the most important generational dividing lines that followed are based upon the hardware and software we use to communicate, both online and off. How old you were during the mid-90's explosion of internet use, the skyrocketing growth of social media in the mid-00's, and the subsequent mobile communications boom says a lot more about you than a broad 15-20 year long generational tag ever could.
It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire
9 年"Sorry, Gen Xers, you're not part of this conversation." Neither are the Me Generation, The Pepsi Generation, The Hippie Generation, The Beat Generation, The Hip-Hop Generation, etc. With all due respect Isabelle Roughol madam, as Bruce Lee said: “You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don't want to be like 'As Confucius say,' but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens that people are different.” I say, "Who runs the world? Human Beings. And human beings have the ability to transcend these generational labels. Thank you for your consideration.
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9 年Here, here, Jonathan O'Brien!