Latest / The Curve / The Weekly: Sydney Sweeney’s Prediction Market and the Generation Beauty Forgot
Transcript
- 0:01Coming up in today's episode, I'm absolutely shooketh Sydney Sweeney.
- 0:06She is, in fact, an investor of Novik.
- 0:10Do you remember the ad campaign?
- 0:11She's sitting on the edge of a basketball hoop looking very sexy and naked.
- 0:15Huge developments in this story.
- 0:18We break down exactly what is happening in the prediction market thanks to Sydney Sweeney.
- 0:21And we will also be discussing a newish beauty brand that launched two years ago in the US and has just launched in the UK, serving up until now pretty underserved demographic of women 40 plus.
- 0:34We'll be asking what Sarah Creel is getting so right and why this is a demographic of consumers that have been so left behind for so long.
- 0:43Hi, and welcome to The Curve Weekly, where we read the finance news so that you don't have to.
- 0:47I'm Sophie Woolwright, ex-television and radio producer, who was sick and tired of not understanding the economy, how to grow my wealth, so we started this podcast.
- 0:56And I'm Emma-Louise Boynton, a writer, broadcaster, and recently published author who focuses on opening up conversations we are typically taught not to have.
- 1:04And today, I'm filling in for Vic Harris.
- 1:07But before we dive in, we've got a quick word from today's sponsor.
- 1:13Strong returns in one year, I mean, you could say luck, but strong returns over 10 years, that's a track record.
- 1:21Find out more about Generate's 10-year track record and see their disclosures in the show notes.
- 1:26Remember though, track record does not guarantee future returns.
- 1:30So I've just been instructed to say, hi, Sophie, how was your holiday?
- 1:36So I'm going to do as I was told and say, hi, Sophie, how was your holiday?
- 1:39You're looking glowing.
- 1:41Thank you so much.
- 1:42I just want to actually say, before we were recording, Emma asked me that.
- 1:46I said, ask me, I'm like, I had the best time.
- 1:50You know, sometimes working remotely can be a bit of a nightmare.
- 1:53You can't find air con.
- 1:55You can't find Wi-Fi.
- 1:56You can't find a desk.
- 1:58You know, and it's a disaster and you think it's going to be great.
- 2:00And then all of a sudden, it's not.
- 2:03It was so good.
- 2:06I'm like, I think doing one week like that every year is the dream.
- 2:09Sometimes I think when you just take yourself out of your usual context, it just sparks your creativity.
- 2:15I can find I'm almost like some kind of desperate to work.
- 2:18because I'm out of my usual like day to day like rat race like routine and I get such good ideas and I get I kind of end up doing much better work than if I just sitting at my desk in London being miserable
- 2:28I agree.
- 2:29I think remote working or being a digital nomad is so glamorized.
- 2:35And when you do it, I actually don't like it.
- 2:37I actually love a routine.
- 2:39I like having a base.
- 2:40But doing a week was amazing.
- 2:42I agree.
- 2:42I could not be.
- 2:43It's a novelty.
- 2:44Totally.
- 2:45It's a novelty break of it.
- 2:46I already told you that phone dying was not ideal.
- 2:50But I will say...
- 2:51The rice worked.
- 2:53But your phone's back.
- 2:55It's back.
- 2:55She's back in action.
- 2:56She had two days in rice and she is back to her lovely self.
- 3:01Can you believe it?
- 3:01Wait, that actually works.
- 3:02I know.
- 3:02I thought it was a total old lifestyle.
- 3:04So nice.
- 3:05No, it works.
- 3:06Wow.
- 3:06So you've come back from holiday, reset, rested.
- 3:10You've got a really nice glow about you.
- 3:11Thank you.
- 3:12You look well.
- 3:12Yeah, I'm feeling great.
- 3:14But I'm also in the green because I mentally spent a thousand pounds on a new phone, but I haven't had to.
- 3:21So she's feeling good.
- 3:22Oh my gosh.
- 3:23That is real gummer.
- 3:26That is like actually you didn't get any money back.
- 3:29Or you didn't earn any money.
- 3:30No.
- 3:30But actually not spending that money.
- 3:32I mean it is.
- 3:32It puts you into.
- 3:33Kind of.
- 3:34It's kind of like a neutral.
- 3:35You know how I stay in neutral?
- 3:36Yeah.
- 3:37By getting like freebies.
- 3:38I feel like you stayed in neutral.
- 3:41I would say.
- 3:41Would we say neutral?
- 3:42I would say we're in denial a bit at the time.
- 3:45A denial shade of green.
- 3:47Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 3:47We're fine with that.
- 3:48I'm loving that.
- 3:49Yeah.
- 3:49Yeah.
- 3:49I'm so glad you had such a nice time.
- 3:50Thanks.
- 3:51Do you have any questions you want me to ask you?
- 3:53Oh, okay.
- 3:54We could ask how my weekend was.
- 3:55How was your weekend?
- 3:57So, Sophie, my weekend was actually amazing.
- 4:00What did you do?
- 4:00Very different.
- 4:01I was at a very sweet literary festival called the Henley Literary Festival as I was doing a talk about my book, Pleasure, The Reclamation of My Body, out now.
- 4:10And it was actually really momentous for me because I used to volunteer at literary festivals, cultural festivals online.
- 4:20across the UK basically all the time.
- 4:21So from about kind of 17, 18 years old, I was a cute little nerd who wanted to go and see smart people talk about their art.
- 4:29But I could not afford to buy all the like hundreds of tickets I legitimately wanted to purchase to see everyone.
- 4:36So I would just volunteer at festivals like all over.
- 4:38Like, you know, if there was a festival on, you best believe I was on the door being like, hi, welcome.
- 4:43So cute.
- 4:44So precious.
- 4:44Like I really look back.
- 4:45I was also fucking crazy at certain points.
- 4:47So I really look back on that version of me and thank God, you absolute blessed child.
- 4:52But one of the festivals that I really loved was Henley Literary Festival because I started working there.
- 4:56Henley Literary.
- 4:57Henley, yeah.
- 4:58So very cute little town.
- 4:59It's like an hour outside of London.
- 5:00And I started volunteering there at 18 and I went back honestly like every year for more than five years.
- 5:06And I got promoted.
- 5:06I was like, lead volunteer, like putting out the chairs, being in charge of volunteers.
- 5:11Then I would occasionally get to introduce the authors.
- 5:14My first experience with a mic and a stage and a little kind of quivering of the voice.
- 5:18I got really nervous, obviously a foreshadowing of what was to come.
- 5:21And my favorite place in the world is a stage with a mic.
- 5:23But I also harboured this seemingly very wishful dream that I would one day go back as an author.
- 5:29So this year, 16 years after I first volunteered at Henley, I went back as an author.
- 5:34So it felt like a really special kind of momentous moment on my like journey to being a writer.
- 5:39It's a really good reminder how long it takes to get to where you want to be.
- 5:42Oh my gosh, I would say, I'm glad I didn't know how many years it would be.
- 5:49Good things take time.
- 5:50They take time.
- 5:51A lot of the attitude towards a career shift or whatever your dream is or the pinnacle of what you would consider success within something you're trying to achieve can be really frustrating sometimes to look around and feel like everyone's winning all the time.
- 6:04And actually the time and energy and graft it takes to actually do something like that.
- 6:10And it's not as though you haven't worked hard over that time.
- 6:12It's been 16 years of hard work.
- 6:15Totally.
- 6:15And also other building other stuff in that time.
- 6:17But I think, you know, my friend Charmaine always talks about thinking about like your work as a body of work, as opposed to individual pieces of work that you expect to be like that one hit wonder that propels you to success.
- 6:27Because I think often we hear stories of success of like, oh, they did that one thing and it just launched their career.
- 6:32Oh, they did that one thing and they weren't really, we see the overnight success, but what we don't see is the 10 years behind that.
- 6:37And then we'll kind of talk about this, I guess, in the second story we're covering today.
- 6:40But I really like the idea of like our working lives being building a body of work that over time delivers us to the place that we're meant to be.
- 6:48I can't wait to dive into these stories, one of which I don't understand at all.
- 6:52So I cannot wait for you to tell.
- 6:54OK, yeah.
- 6:55So we've all seen Sydney Sweeney, the latest ad campaign.
- 6:58If you haven't seen it, she is sitting sort of naked on the top of a basketball hoop.
- 7:03She's holding balls up at the end of the ad saying, you know, it's just sports.
- 7:06Just sports.
- 7:07Just sports.
- 7:09No big ass.
- 7:10just sports so they wanted a show just sports i have watched it so many times and i i'm embarrassed to say i have seen it i would say at least eight to nine times
- 7:23Her boobs are unreal.
- 7:25They are so incredible.
- 7:26Phenomenal.
- 7:27Her body is like, I don't know if they've really seen a body like that before.
- 7:30I mean, even when she's sitting on top of the basketball rink, I had to pause it so many times to be like, oh, my God, the underboob.
- 7:39Like, just the way her body is amazing.
- 7:40My underboob is, my boobs are such different sizes.
- 7:43The underboob on one side is so different to the underboob on the other.
- 7:46So, like, seeing, like, really, the curvature.
- 7:49Did you see she actually just put out a new one this morning?
- 7:53Yes, I did.
- 7:53It was like a part two of it.
- 7:55Yeah, basically to doubling down because she's had so much backlash of people on the internet basically saying you're doing such a disservice to women in sport by hyper-sexualizing this idea of women in a kind of sporting context.
- 8:05So she's had such backlash.
- 8:06And being Sydney Sweeney, she does not care.
- 8:08And she has doubled down.
- 8:10Can you tell me why, though?
- 8:10Because I was really interested to learn about this.
- 8:12Well, it's funny you say that because when I saw her post this part two, I thought, I wonder if that was always in the content plan, though.
- 8:19Or if it was added, you know, because it is almost a carry on or a recap at the first.
- 8:23But then I reckon there's – what she is good – she is the queen of rage baiting.
- 8:28She doesn't care.
- 8:29She knows what is going to garner attention.
- 8:31And, like –
- 8:33Listen, putting aside the kind of feminist squirming that I think it evokes in all of us, for what it set out to do, which was to generate huge views, huge publicity, and to start internet discourse, it succeeded on all fronts.
- 8:54Massively.
- 8:55It's been one of the most talked about stories the past couple of weeks.
- 8:58So was her American Eagles story.
- 9:00Totally.
- 9:01She knows how to rage bait.
- 9:02And she knows how to rage bait.
- 9:05And then she leans in.
- 9:06And I think that's her particular form of genius.
- 9:09Because a lot of people would then, you know, I'm so sorry.
- 9:11They'd issue an apology.
- 9:13She doesn't.
- 9:13She just goes, leans in.
- 9:14It's like, obviously, this was like, you know, that wasn't my intention.
- 9:18She doesn't care.
- 9:19Yeah, I mean, I just would not have a skin thick enough for that.
- 9:22Because I almost feel as though she's going against the entire female population with what she's saying and the way that she's responding.
- 9:30But anyway, the thing behind this marketing campaign and the biggest story that I didn't realize is that Sydney Sweeney is actually an investor in Novick.
- 9:39I didn't know this until I researched it.
- 9:42And I was like, God, of course, of course.
- 9:44She is like creative director.
- 9:45She was involved in planning how this was marketed.
- 9:48So she, it's so smart, isn't it?
- 9:52I mean, she is profiting from this business growing.
- 9:55It's nearly worth 2 billion, which is just months after they did a last round of funding.
- 10:01So, yeah,
- 10:02I mean, essentially, for anyone that's missed what the prediction market is, a lot of people talk about this as glorified sports betting.
- 10:11And Novik is a prediction market platform.
- 10:13Exactly.
- 10:13So there's a few different ones.
- 10:16There's Kelsey, which you may have heard about.
- 10:18There's three or four kind of major players.
- 10:21I hadn't even heard of Novik before.
- 10:23I don't even know how to say it properly.
- 10:25I would be so curious to know if anyone listening had heard of this platform before Sydney Sweeney came along.
- 10:30I had never heard of them.
- 10:32They'd never been – I mean, obviously, it's not necessarily my area of media that I read about.
- 10:37But to me, they were like – I didn't – No, so I hadn't heard of them either.
- 10:41And I thought it was almost this initial, hey, like launch campaign.
- 10:44We're launching.
- 10:45It's been around since 2021.
- 10:46It's still quite new, actually.
- 10:49It's new.
- 10:49But there's all these other platforms that are production market businesses and trading platforms that are emerging and becoming quite common and well-known.
- 10:58Yeah.
- 10:59So since Sydney Sweeney decided to put her boobs and her just sport.
- 11:04It's quite fun to say.
- 11:05It is, really?
- 11:07I just shoehorn in another little thing.
- 11:09So since Sydney ended up going and doing this campaign, which has just absolutely provoked, I mean, the entire internet.
- 11:17our bit of the internet I wonder if there is a kind of alternate internet that we're not a part of that's super right wing that's actually been like oh my god love Sydney's so empowering so weirdly someone the other day was saying to me they were comparing with their boyfriend a reel that had gone viral and the comments they saw compared to the comments that they saw was different so they saw all these like ragey comments and people being like this is so stupid and I was like oh my god the algorithm's fully the algorithm is fucked yeah
- 11:39absolutely missing with us we live in different worlds we do based on our algorithm so i reckon what we're seeing in response to sydney sweeney and obviously the media that we're consuming is probably going to be more kind of centrist left-leaning it's all going to be like oh sydney sweeney what did that you know this is like anti-feminist there is a whole tranche of the social media sphere and you know more kind of right-leaning platforms that are probably you know celebrating it so what impact did she end up having
- 12:05The company has grown to having more than 250,000 users in the US.
- 12:09250,000?
- 12:10Yeah.
- 12:10A million?
- 12:11So to give context, it's not as though this is like a tiny little platform that's got a few users.
- 12:16So there's more than 6.5 billion that's been traded in contracts.
- 12:20So it's not small money.
- 12:22Huge.
- 12:23And the September campaign with our gal has really brought this whole company into mainstream conversation objectively.
- 12:30So whether or not it's for positive or negative reasons, it's catapulted this business into an entirely new market that they didn't have access to.
- 12:39So she is an equity investor and she's also a strategic partner.
- 12:43So she's involved in the creative direction.
- 12:45She may have even come up with this whole idea.
- 12:49Which if she did, I have to just put my hat off to her and say she's a marketing genius.
- 12:54I don't love it, but it's clever.
- 12:57The amount that she owns, I couldn't find.
- 13:00I don't know if it's public, how much of the business she actually is involved in.
- 13:04But the premise of being an investor, as everyone knows, is that if this gets more users, more money on platform, she is making money.
- 13:10In terms of the campaign and what it did, so it's had a 900% increase in the brand mentions following the campaign.
- 13:1838 million views on the Instagram reel, the OG one, so not the one that just came out.
- 13:23Like...
- 13:24crazy yeah so according to the Forbes like seek metrics they look at like you know how something's been almost measured across the different like social platforms so the average brand mentions for the business before the campaign were around 392 and they've now increased to 4,633 in the four days following the campaign and that will just continue going up for that period in which because I mean that's four days after so that was obviously in the like
- 13:50immediate but then you had all the think pieces that would have come out in those days so that's also going to be a long tail end to that those impressions and i imagine would just drive that number up even more i mean essentially they're killing it and for probably the business that was slightly behind us you know even the fact that you'd heard of polymarket and calci they will be giving them a run for their money at this point and i was interested to see that the
- 14:17said in the aftermath of the ad that the company is really hugely supportive of women's sports and never intended to portray anything else and I'm like really oh it's so funny are you oh my gosh but yeah they're just like doubling down all which is to say this campaign has been from a marketing standpoint so regardless of what you think of in terms of the
- 14:41impact on the portrayal of women in sport the kind of feminist reaction to the sorry it shouldn't just be feminist the general reaction to how sydney swing we portrayed women's role in sport so putting that aside from a purely commercial perspective this campaign has been a huge success so it's driven up is it's driven up the value of the company yeah it has driven up the social media impressions i guess the interesting thing with that is what does that look like long term does the visibility of the company mean that it's going to continue to
- 15:10more and more users or is this kind of a flash in the pan?
- 15:13But I guess if she's an investor, this is like a long-term partnership, which is the difference between doing a one-off campaign with someone, like just using her face once.
- 15:20Let's just say I think her boobs will be the balls that we see on social media promoting the Just Sports for a long time to come.
- 15:26Great line, Sophie Hallwright.
- 15:29That was an absolute banger.
- 15:32That was a slam dunk, if you may.
- 15:34That was a...
- 15:36No, but it's the fastest going prediction market there is right now.
- 15:41And so they've done multiple raises, as you can imagine.
- 15:45It's really tech heavy.
- 15:46There's a lot of money being pumped into this business.
- 15:48So while you can see, okay, there's like six, six and a half billion going through it in terms of contracts, the amount of money that they've spent on growing, marketing, etc., expanding is huge.
- 15:58But they have reportedly quadrupled their valuation to $2 billion.
- 16:02And that's just in four months.
- 16:04So when someone goes to market, they've done several funding rounds.
- 16:08Basically –
- 16:10When there are institutional investors, that's where it's starting to go mainstream, right?
- 16:14So they've gone through Series A, Series B.
- 16:17That is almost like where the price has been stricken.
- 16:19So the last time people put money in, there's a valuation.
- 16:22That's the money that they give.
- 16:23And in the last four months, according to all of the stats that you're seeing online and how much it's growing –
- 16:28it's quadrupled since that point so if they were to then go to investors now and be like hey guys Sydney chuck in a few more million it's you can now only get a quarter of what you could four months ago she will negotiated something like being able to buy totally if you want to see my nipples just so you have to give me a really good rate in perpetuity
- 16:46But so please can you explain to me what a prediction market is?
- 16:49Because before this episode, I tried to do some more research into that.
- 16:52And honestly, I felt like I was reading articles in different languages.
- 16:55I could not understand even the bare bones of this.
- 16:57So can you please explain in really, really simple language?
- 17:01Yes.
- 17:02So what I want to start with is saying this is not a new business or a new business model.
- 17:07Interestingly, it's been around since 1988, and it was created as a place for people to essentially gauge the presidential election vibes.
- 17:17So...
- 17:17In a similar way to how it's being used now to almost understand what is the cultural undertone for big events, whether it be politics, whether it be literally anything.
- 17:31The prediction markets now, they've evolved a huge amount.
- 17:34And now it's like it's covering all different almost like outcomes that are being predicted, whether it's sports, politics, big events.
- 17:42But it started in regards to the US election.
- 17:44So it was essentially the idea that like rather than relying just purely on polls, you could use collective views of people putting money behind what they thought was going to happen.
- 17:53So it was almost like a temperature check for what are the people thinking?
- 17:56What are the people saying?
- 17:57So that's kind of where it came from originally.
- 17:59So it's literally like doing a mass survey saying, what does everyone think is going to happen in relation to insert big cultural events?
- 18:08So a prediction market is essentially a marketplace where people trade contracts based on the outcome of future events.
- 18:17Let's do a sporting example because I think that that's a really good way to get your head around it.
- 18:20So if we pretended that the All Blacks team in England were playing rugby…
- 18:26You could buy a contract, which is like a trade.
- 18:29So kind of like if you were buying a share of a business, you're buying a contract.
- 18:32I have my little pocket of money and I'm going to go and spend my in the green money to buy this contract.
- 18:36Yes.
- 18:37Betting that the All Blacks will win.
- 18:40All Blacks, yeah.
- 18:40Good bet.
- 18:40Let's be honest.
- 18:41I agree.
- 18:42Let's imagine it's a pound or a dollar.
- 18:43Okay.
- 18:44And you're putting like 0.60 down that you think the All Blacks will win.
- 18:47If the All Blacks win, the contract pays a dollar.
- 18:52So I get a dollar?
- 18:53No, because you put down 60.
- 18:54So you're getting 40 back.
- 18:56So I'm at 40 profit, but I get my 60 back.
- 18:58Yeah.
- 18:59So you get the dollar, but you're only making 40.
- 19:00Yeah, still winning.
- 19:02Yeah, winning.
- 19:02In the green.
- 19:03Whereas if All Blacks lose, you don't get anything.
- 19:06So you lose your 60.
- 19:07Okay, fine.
- 19:08So there's like two sides of the same coin is essentially what's happening.
- 19:11And how different is that to how gambling typically works?
- 19:13Yeah.
- 19:14So with a sports bet, let's say the same thing was happening and you were betting on the All Blacks versus England.
- 19:19You only either win or lose when the game finishes and there's a clear outcome.
- 19:24The difference with these contracts is that you can actually trade at different times.
- 19:28So like it might be halfway through the game and you could place a contract.
- 19:33So someone else, does that make sense?
- 19:35It's basically really similar to how bonds work or even how you buy a share where you're kind of constantly trading.
- 19:43So it's just so different to a black and white win or lose outcome where it's like I'm putting down, here's five because I think all blacks are going to win.
- 19:51And you have to wait till the end of the game or like if you're betting on sports like horse racing.
- 19:56You know, you can't halfway through the race change who you're going to win.
- 20:00you're going to change horses because actually based on your new knowledge, you're going to swap.
- 20:04So obviously you'll get a lesser amount.
- 20:06Yeah.
- 20:07So it might be, it might be really obvious at halftime that, I don't know, say all blacks are five up and England's is five zero.
- 20:14You can still go, I'm going to buy a contract for the all blacks winning, but it might be you're paying 75 rather than 60.
- 20:21So the reason that it's different and that they're arguing that it's not as clear cut is because it actually does kind of work in the way that,
- 20:30that other financial products or markets work.
- 20:34So, yeah, so it's interesting because actually CalShare and like quite a few of these platforms are banned in lots of states in America because it is like, objectively it looks like sports betting.
- 20:46It is, but kind of is.
- 20:48Well, yeah, what this whole conversation is bringing up and made me really think about is, you know, we've got all these different –
- 20:56avenues to trade, different types of assets.
- 20:59You've got bonds, you've got the stock market, you've got crypto.
- 21:03Are prediction markets going to become a part of Wall Street, a part of the mainstream place in terms of, you know, if someone looks at their portfolio, they've got bonds, they've got crypto, they've got shares, are they also going to be trading outcomes?
- 21:15And that's an asset that is just so normal and commonplace that it's actually just kind of a...
- 21:22You know, it's like a well-known, financially regulated, quite reputable way to invest.
- 21:27And it's just interesting to look at whether or not we think that's true.
- 21:31And the way that you can kind of figure that out is if you actually look at the people that are investing in these businesses, like investment banks and hedge funds are starting to explore the prediction markets, which is a massive, like big green flag that says that it's looking like institutional finance is getting involved in this.
- 21:51Prediction markets use binary contracts, which allow, but essentially you're betting against other users.
- 21:57And thus that kind of the value is being constantly reset depending on supply and demand.
- 22:02So you're kind of you and all your prediction peers are essentially setting the like trading value.
- 22:07Whereas when you're gambling, the like value is set by the house.
- 22:11Well, you're betting against the house.
- 22:12You're betting against the house.
- 22:14So there's something even in that.
- 22:15It's a marketplace in the same way that a stock market is because...
- 22:18If you wanted to sell an Amazon share and I wanted to buy it, I have to be there to buy it from you.
- 22:23You're not actually buying it directly from the company.
- 22:26So in the same – yeah, that's a really simple way to think about it is the distinction between betting is that sports betting, you're betting against the house.
- 22:34And actually in this case, you're trading against other people.
- 22:37Would you do a prediction?
- 22:38What is the terminology?
- 22:38What would I say?
- 22:39Would you place a bet?
- 22:41Would you predict?
- 22:42Buy a contract?
- 22:43Would you buy a contract?
- 22:44That sounds so sexy.
- 22:45It sounds so lame, doesn't it?
- 22:46I don't know.
- 22:47I don't know.
- 22:48I mean, I should do it for research purposes just to see.
- 22:51Yeah.
- 22:51Should we do some before the next session?
- 22:53Maybe.
- 22:53Should we buy some contracts?
- 22:55But we'll limit ourselves.
- 22:56There's going to be a sex year.
- 22:57Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 22:58There's going to be a sex year.
- 22:59Ten pounds.
- 22:59Ten pounds.
- 23:00No more than ten pounds.
- 23:01I come back next week.
- 23:01Are you in the red or the green?
- 23:02We're both in the red.
- 23:03I am so far in the red.
- 23:05I've lost all my savings.
- 23:06But that's the thing.
- 23:07You could get addicted to it.
- 23:08I can see myself getting addicted.
- 23:10And I think the thing that's more addictive with this type of investment comparatively to...
- 23:14stock market investing.
- 23:16And maybe that's just because it's my approach and how we've spoken about investing on the curve.
- 23:19I don't go and check stock all the time.
- 23:21I'm not so involved in a company's earnings.
- 23:24I'm not obsessed with being so up-to-date that I'm going to be consciously making new decisions.
- 23:29Whereas...
- 23:30what I think the prediction market leans into is it's it's cultural relevance so people are excited by reading about involved in these conversations which means that the frequency in which you would be trading or buying contracts would be increased which lends itself more to day trading or gambling which is where if you have an addictive personality or you don't set clear boundaries with yourself you could it could be quite dangerous it me it me
- 23:55I can just see you turning into a little like gamer I'm like worried and coming up after the break we're going to be discussing the financially forgotten generation and how one beauty founder is cashing in by creating a brand designed to fill this void I'm very excited for this one but first we have a quick word from today's sponsor
- 24:13Okay, so any KiwiSaver provider can have a good year, but how can you tell if they're a really good provider from the one that just got lucky?
- 24:22And honestly, that's consistency.
- 24:24A provider might be able to get a 20% return one year, but that could actually just come down to one or two investments performing unusually well, rather than a consistent investing skill.
- 24:35So what you wanna look out for is if a fund performs over a long period of time.
- 24:40See Generate's performance and disclosures by using the link in the show notes.
- 24:44And thanks Generate for making this episode of The Curve Weekly possible.
- 24:49This is a story that I stumbled across the other day while reading the paper and immediately stuck out to me because it feels so obvious, but just not a lot of people are doing it.
- 24:59So New York-based beauty founder Sarah Creel has launched her eponymous beauty brand, Sarah Creel Beauty.
- 25:04Sarah Creel Beauty.
- 25:05in the UK and in Ireland.
- 25:07So it just launched in September here after hitting major retail placement in the US since its 2024 launch.
- 25:12So it is relatively new.
- 25:13It is targeting women over 40 and the brand really is testament to the fact it is good business to be catering to an often overlooked older demographic of women who have money to spend.
- 25:25Now the beauty editor at The Guardian, Sally Hughes,
- 25:29said in her piece, which talked all about this brand and is how I found out about it, that she very seldom dedicates an entire column to a single brand, but felt kind of compelled to do so.
- 25:39because of how exceptionally good and smart the Sarah Creel beauty brand is.
- 25:45She said, I think Sarah Creel is worthy of the inches, which I think says a lot.
- 25:49Sally Hughes has been writing about beauty for many years.
- 25:52First and foremost, how many brands do you know, beauty brands, that cater specifically to women who are 40 plus?
- 25:59The only one I know is Trini London.
- 26:02Yeah, Trini.
- 26:03And she has been around for about five years now.
- 26:06Yes, but I don't feel, even though Trini is older, the, like, advertorial around the brand doesn't feel like it's, it doesn't, to me, actually, the brand doesn't feel like it's very specifically catering to 40+.
- 26:17I don't know if I've seen any beauty brands that have really clearly tried to target that generation.
- 26:23Trini is, she started the brand when she was 50.
- 26:25So obviously the formulations and the way that she was, even in the weekend, I was asking Luke's mum what her makeup was before we recorded this.
- 26:32And she said it was Trini and she loved it.
- 26:33Wow.
- 26:34And she bought it because she really likes Trini.
- 26:36She finds her really funny.
- 26:37But also she's obviously representing a different generation.
- 26:42we are so obsessed with youth and how we look and all beauty products are generally trying to target people who feel insecure about getting older there's generally like the beauty industry in general has been created around that and so the images and everywhere we look feels like there is such a disconnect between products that are being created generally everyone you see using them is super super young what Sarah Carell is doing is
- 27:06actively going against that and to your point at the start when I saw the story I thought the same thing I thought it's just the most obvious yeah business ever and it got us thinking how enormous this entire generation is and how underserved it is in terms of businesses products and and just like it's enormous how much money could be made in this space and I think you're right to say I mean so much
- 27:31beauty and so much of beauty advertising happens online now where we know you see lots of young influencers who are you know advertising moisturizers serums etc they're kind of dewy skin and it kind of makes sense therefore that beauty brands would target young people because young people congregate online and there's a kind of direct consumer like you know chain there but who has cash um
- 27:56Older women, like the generation before us, so kind of 40, 50 plus, are the last generation that have typically out-earned their parents.
- 28:03They've done better.
- 28:04Our generation isn't out.
- 28:06We're not out-earning our parents yet.
- 28:08You know, our economic fortunes aren't looking so great.
- 28:11There's 64% of Gen X women and 74% of Burma women, which I feel is perhaps like not the right or correct terminology.
- 28:20But where they have felt...
- 28:23underrepresented when it comes to product and advertising.
- 28:26And you're so right.
- 28:29More than seven in 10 women from both age groups, so Gen X and Boomer,
- 28:34said they'd be more likely to purchase from brands that featured people of diverse ages in their ads.
- 28:40Really what this is to me is just everyone is sick and tired of seeing 15-year-olds using moisturizers.
- 28:46And actually, not only is there not products that are being targeted to a generation, as you see, that's been forgotten, but everyone, and this is even millennials, 76% of millennials want this too.
- 28:57So there's this collective feeling of we are bored of focusing on
- 29:03Gen Z, why is everyone obsessed with this generation?
- 29:06And actually zoom out and look at the people who have the money, the CFOs of the household.
- 29:12Like, also if you look at Gen X, that was a lot of our parents' generation.
- 29:17And there's probably people listening to this that also are in that generation too.
- 29:21They were sort of the last ones on the cusp of there being quite a lot of men that work and women that stay at home.
- 29:27It's almost financially impossible to not have two people working these days.
- 29:32But that generation specifically were the ones that were told to save to budget, but they were in charge of the spending.
- 29:38So they weren't taught really how to grow wealth or invest, but what they are in charge of is consumer spending.
- 29:47So it's like if they've got the most money and they have the most power of where that money's going, why on earth have there not been so many other businesses pop up left-hand center?
- 29:57It's just such an obvious white space.
- 29:59But I think what is so wonderful about the story, and this is really kind of why I gravitated to it so much –
- 30:04is that Sarah Creel's own story really tells us everything we need to know about why this business, why now, and how she was particularly able to make the most of what feels like such a glaringly obvious business opportunity.
- 30:19And that's because she started working.
- 30:21So she's been in beauty for decades.
- 30:23So she started working on the counter at Clinique and then spent three decades, that's three decades, 30 years, working her way through some of the most demanding creative environments in beauty,
- 30:33Bobby Brown, Tom Ford Beauty, Prada Beauty.
- 30:37In 2018, I did not know this, but 2018, she co-founded Victoria Beckham Beauty, which we talked about with the former Spice Girl herself and served as CEO until 2022.
- 30:46All of which is to say she has spent...
- 30:49decades amassing a really deep, insightful understanding of the beauty space, really understanding the customer, understanding what products are on offer, building a business with Victoria Breckin, which we know has been a huge part of the business's kind of revival.
- 31:06And she noticed in that time that...
- 31:08But there was this underserved demographic within beauty consumers.
- 31:13But before starting a business, she surveyed 2,000 women to validate her assumption that, yes, it was an underserved audience.
- 31:20They didn't feel like they were getting products that were, you know, targeted at, you know, wrinkling skin.
- 31:25Like my mum, for example, often smudges, like, you know, like mascara smudges or things smudge.
- 31:29And of course, it's because your skin is not retaining or using product in the same way when you have less or more collagen.
- 31:34It makes so much sense.
- 31:36Totally.
- 31:36And so she saw that opportunity, surveyed 2000 women and response.
- 31:41Ninety nine percent of them came back and confirmed what she already suspected, that age specific formulas and real representation of beauty were both critical and almost entirely absent from the market.
- 31:50And then she was able to really hit the ground running with her own beauty brand.
- 31:55And I think this to me is a story both about an underserved demographic and a like really good business opportunity.
- 32:02But also one, it kind of flies in the face of a lot of our bait and assumptions about what a founder looks like and who a founder is today.
- 32:09I feel like we're constantly bombarded with the idea of a founder being young and beautiful.
- 32:14I mean, maybe not beautiful, but there's a kind of, we really valorize youth and.
- 32:19in terms of entrepreneurship.
- 32:21We have, you know, things like Forbes 30 Under 30, which are giving cultural accolades, the idea of like starting businesses young, like the younger the better.
- 32:29And actually, you know, there's a lot to be said for accumulating wisdom, market understanding, knowledge of your consumer, being your consumer, and then starting your business slightly later in life, which I don't think we really talk about enough.
- 32:41Well, even back to what you said at the beginning of this podcast, the idea that your career is a body of work and you're collecting things along the way.
- 32:49So I wrote actually on the plane on the way back to the UK about how I think that we're just getting our timelines so wrong.
- 32:57I wanted to put something on Substack about this because if you were then to look at almost the way that we put pressure on women to find the love of their life by 30, to be married, to have kids, to all this stuff –
- 33:07For me, having met someone much later in life has meant that I'm in... Not much later in life.
- 33:12Yeah, but I am in 35.
- 33:13A lot of people say you should do that by 25.
- 33:15I'm not saying I'm old, but I guess my point is just in the same way...
- 33:18It's not the classic timeline.
- 33:20Yeah, and my communication skills, my confidence, what I'm attracted to, I'm so much more in tune with the older I am.
- 33:27I think the same could be said for your career and amassing all these skills and experience over time to get to 50 and start a business is...
- 33:34I would way rather back as someone who's 50 and has all of this experience.
- 33:39Life experience, totally.
- 33:40Business experience, brand experience, et cetera.
- 33:42And there's this really toxic narrative that youth equals success or youth is the ultimate goal.
- 33:51I wanted to look into it.
- 33:52I wondered if there was a correlation between businesses started by older founders being more successful.
- 33:57Because I was like, is, you know, the accumulation of experience actually, doesn't it make decisions more successful?
- 34:00Yeah, really interesting.
- 34:01And there was a study by MIT in 2019.
- 34:03So it's a little bit old, but it's still 2019, where researchers calculated a mean age of 45 among the 1700 founders they looked at of the fastest growing new ventures.
- 34:13And they found the batting average for creating successful firms rises dramatically with age.
- 34:20I quote, a fifth year old founder is 1.8 times more likely to achieve upper tail growth than a first year old founder, they wrote.
- 34:27Oh, I love that.
- 34:28How amazing is that?
- 34:29It's so cool.
- 34:29I also think in a society that puts such a premium on youth and beauty and a lot of pressure around that, particularly for women, because obviously then there's, you know, bringing conversation around biology, kids, everything.
- 34:40I just think it's so inspiring to...
- 34:42hearing stories like this, like about like Sarah Creel's company, and then actually seeing that that kind of, you know, validated by data, that actually we have our whole lives to achieve incredible things.
- 34:53It's not all bunched into these like 20s and 30s and we're always running out of time.
- 34:57Actually we have until, you know, decades.
- 35:00This not only highlights the exact same way that we talk about investing, as in invest in your niche, invest in you have a specific lens on the world and you see opportunities differently to someone next to you because of the extracurricular, the sports you play, the things you buy, the people you spend time with, your lens and what you see as popular, whether it's a product or a consumer or what people are talking about.
- 35:30So you see opportunities in different businesses as an investor, but also potentially owning businesses.
- 35:37For example, if you are 50 and you're seeing all your friends go through menopause and they're feeling incredibly underrepresented and there's no products that are helping them get from A to B or for whatever reason, that is also so unique.
- 35:51You have this...
- 35:52You have this perspective.
- 35:54I'm excited for things that I haven't experienced in life yet because I think I'm going to stumble into these problems that I want to solve for myself and for other people.
- 36:05What it made me think is, you know, you look at the flow apps that were created by guys and they are period trackers that men spotted a –
- 36:13a niche or like a white space and created this huge business from it my point is like be the woman that spots an opportunity and don't just because you're 55 think that you're not in a position to start a really incredible business that's serving an audience that maybe doesn't have what they need totally
- 36:31There would have been so many people who looked at the beauty space.
- 36:35And I for sure have felt like there's just all these brands popping up left, right and center in the beauty space.
- 36:40If you zoom out and you look at total addressable market, which every investor asks you about, you know, like how big is your term?
- 36:46It's basically the idea of who do you think you can sell to?
- 36:49And when we were raising capital, a lot of people were saying, well, there's all these competitors.
- 36:52It's like.
- 36:53we're creating something for half of the population, you know, financial knowledge.
- 36:57There's three other people doing it.
- 36:59It's not that big a deal.
- 37:00Look at the beauty space.
- 37:01It's so oversaturated.
- 37:02If you were to come up with an idea targeting a generation that has so much more money to spend, there's so few competitors, you actually could, I mean, raising capital for this, I'm not saying it would be easy.
- 37:15Mm-mm.
- 37:16But it's just a really good reminder in the same way we follow sheep or we become these, like we follow what everyone else is doing with investing.
- 37:22Yeah, yeah.
- 37:23The same with business ideas.
- 37:25You have a unique perspective.
- 37:26Start like zooming out a little bit.
- 37:28I feel like we are beginning to see more.
- 37:31I mean, one, we're seeing more women-led businesses en masse, which is great.
- 37:35But we're seeing more women-led businesses catering to typically underserved audiences.
- 37:40Have you seen other examples of businesses that kind of similar to this are tackling kind of age-old problems with women that just have gone so underserved for so long?
- 37:49I was thinking about this and looking into it.
- 37:52you know, why do we sell beauty products to such a young audience?
- 37:56Why do we then have people using those products that, as you say, look 15?
- 38:01And zoomed out and was thinking, gosh, what are the opportunities that are in this space?
- 38:06And I came across a stat that I thought was just like quite baffling, that the commercial opportunity within perimenopause and menopause was valued at $231 billion.
- 38:17Billion.
- 38:18In 2024.
- 38:19Billion.
- 38:20231 billion.
- 38:21What?
- 38:22And that's across so many different categories within it.
- 38:25Like, I've not experienced menopause or perimenopause.
- 38:29And I also don't have friends that I've spoken to about this.
- 38:31Yeah.
- 38:32What I feel is starting to happen, I don't have a specific example of like one business or businesses.
- 38:38And maybe we're at the forefront of this and this will take, you know, 50 years to actually come into fruition.
- 38:43But I feel as though we've now started talking about money and investing and how women need to take control of their finances.
- 38:49More women are now working, hire earners than men.
- 38:52Like that's all happening.
- 38:53We're then investing in businesses.
- 38:55We're realizing there's all these gaps happening.
- 38:58in all different generations, in all different spaces, because there's been such a lack of female founders.
- 39:05And then, you know, what we're doing with the fund, we're investing in businesses that are high leadership teams or founded by women.
- 39:11You know, once we have more women starting to think about these opportunities or look around them and spot opportunities, create businesses, that flywheel will be so impressive because you'll have women that –
- 39:21have their own money to invest in businesses that are started by women that are serving women.
- 39:26You know, we haven't been in that position before.
- 39:28I mean, that's just like one stat.
- 39:30But over $200 billion to me, if I was in that space and I knew what I was, like I had different, I don't know whether it's like hot flushes or I was struggling to sleep or whatever, rather than creating more collagen products or more retinol products or more stopping getting older products.
- 39:48I would be trying to think about what would make my life more comfortable.
- 39:51What do I actually need right now that I can't currently buy?
- 39:54Or the what's available to me is deeply unsexy and makes me feel fucking geriatric.
- 39:59When actually what I'm going through is really normal.
- 40:01And yeah.
- 40:02I recently actually saw a new, I think it was a skincare brand that was specifically targeted at Mothers.
- 40:08With like really sexy packaging, great branding.
- 40:11I mean I just saw it kind of through a, I was doing a bit of a doom scroll.
- 40:15But I saw it advertised and then just read a little bit about it.
- 40:18And it was like, for so long, products that have been focused or like advertised to newish mothers have felt kind of quite like surgical almost.
- 40:27Like just really deeply unsexy.
- 40:29Whereas this brand has come in being like, sorry, you haven't like lost your old identity.
- 40:34You haven't like suddenly become this like, you know...
- 40:37dispensable old like past your use by date exactly you haven't passed a use by date you actually still feel good totally and here's a brand that meets you where you're at and I think that's the opportunity that we're really discussing here is you know wanting to see more brands like this beauty brand which are meeting women at every stage of their life where they're at and the best people to create those brands are women who themselves have first-hand experience and they're not
- 41:06of the problems that we face at each point in our various life cycles.
- 41:10I don't know if you've heard of this terminology.
- 41:12I actually hadn't.
- 41:12But the sandwich generation, have you heard of that?
- 41:15So it's basically saying that Gen X women are at the peak of their earning and spending years.
- 41:20But they're nicknamed the sandwich generation because they're often having to care for millennials and Gen Z children as well as taking care of their parents and the boomer generation specifically.
- 41:30So as a result, a lot of their spending decisions are spanning all these different generations.
- 41:36You know, it's like, what do I buy for my grandchild?
- 41:41Or what am I buying for my daughter?
- 41:42And what am I buying for my, you know, and they have the most money.
- 41:45Yeah.
- 41:46So it's just like such an exciting place for innovation around all sorts of categories, like tech, healthcare, groceries, beauty.
- 41:53Like I think in general, if you are looking around feeling a bit stuck or you're thinking you don't have what it is that you need, if you can start to put a lens on of firstly, like, does this exist and can I find it somewhere –
- 42:10If not, honestly, start researching into whether or not you can create it.
- 42:14And one thing just to add to that is we started this conversation talking about how a lot of beauty brands have ended up targeting young audiences because young audiences are online so much.
- 42:23And so a lot of the kind of social media first...
- 42:26advertorial has been targeting young people because that's where young people mostly are.
- 42:31But I also just looked up more and more older people are also online now, also using social media with a greater frequency, which means for brands, including new brands, where socials is a kind of obvious place to start when you're advertising, I think it's a lot of
- 42:44your audience is increasingly there too.
- 42:46So it's not just, you know, Gen Z and millennials scrolling away.
- 42:50Don't worry.
- 42:51Mesa has successfully captured the attention of older generations as well.
- 42:56And there was a recent YouGov poll which found that more than 50% of adults aged 55 and older use social media at least once a week with many reporting frequent smartphone scrolling and digital engagement.
- 43:06I mean, if my parents had anything to go by, my dad is addicted to his phone.
- 43:09I'm so glad we brought this up.
- 43:10My dad is so addicted to his phone.
- 43:13I couldn't believe it.
- 43:14However, if you're a entrepreneur looking to target people, it's worth like recognizing this.
- 43:20Just know they're all on there.
- 43:21They're all online now.
- 43:22So there's no excuse.
- 43:25Your audience is online and they need your products.
- 43:29So just go out there and create them.
- 43:30Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 43:30It's my takeaway from this story.
- 43:32But it'll be really interesting to see.
- 43:32So Sarah Creel, her beauty brand, going back to the start.
- 43:35has just launched in the UK after a very successful two years in the States.
- 43:41So it'll be interesting to see how the brand is received, how it does here.
- 43:44If anyone listening is, you know, 40 plus and can't access these beauty products and you want to place an order...
- 43:50send it to me in London.
- 43:52I will do a giant suitcase worth of makeup haul back to New Zealand.
- 43:57I'm going back for summer.
- 43:58If anyone needs me to bring it back.
- 44:00The Curve Women.
- 44:01I will do it for you.
- 44:02You are going to absolutely regret promising that, Sophie.
- 44:05I don't know.
- 44:06Sorry, when you're at the airport and you are sweating profusely because you have this ginormous overweight suitcase filled with makeup.
- 44:13Makeup's light.
- 44:14Maybe don't go for foundation.
- 44:15Go for like eyeliners.
- 44:17Go for light.
- 44:17Just have a suitcase of eyeliners.
- 44:19You're going to get stopped in search.
- 44:20It will look suspicious.
- 44:22It will look real suspicious.
- 44:23Like this is some sort of illicit trading of eyeliners.
- 44:27Maybe someone in Australasia needs to just create this business then.
- 44:30Yeah.
- 44:30Or should just take that.
- 44:32Listen, look at how far she's moving.
- 44:34If E-Maren works in the beauty space, I would just jump on this.
- 44:37I'd be doing it well.
- 44:38I love that.
- 44:39It felt like such a galvanizing piece to read that was a reminder, I think, for both of us that the best is yet to come.
- 44:45The best is yet to come.
- 44:47Someone said the other day, your 40s are your best yet.
- 44:49And I thought, I can't bloody wait.
- 44:51And I'm so glad I haven't done yet.
- 44:52I heard that about 50s.
- 44:52So listen.
- 44:53Oh, brilliant.
- 44:54Brilliant.
- 44:56Thank you so much, Emma.
- 44:57And for anyone who would like to read your book, let's promote it again.
- 45:00Oh, my book?
- 45:00Yes.
- 45:01You mentioned my book.
- 45:02Yes, yes.
- 45:02The Reclamation of My Body.
- 45:04It is out now.
- 45:05And actually, it really speaks to a lot of what we've been talking about just now.
- 45:07It does.
- 45:08Because it talks about how women have historically been disconnected from our bodies.
- 45:13We've been kind of shamed about our desires, our sexual needs and wants.
- 45:17And it's a book about how we reclaim our desires, how we reconnect with our bodies in order to live lives.
- 45:23Because we can be...
- 45:24sexy and feel lots of pleasure into our 30s 40s 50s i plan on it in my 80s aided no doubt by my book yeah have a read out in australia and these are them yes okay we'll link it in the podcast and we will see you on friday for oh so exciting emma sorry that was probably sound like an orangutan through your microphone um friday's episode we're talking about labgon versus natural diamonds it's a really funny can i cast my vote yeah
- 45:49lab grown all the way oh really interesting i'm i'm looking at a lab grown engagement ring for myself okay love that the size that i can get yeah for a lab grown custom made female founded jewelry brand ring is like a hundred times bigger than what i'd get for got real diamond and listen i'm more is more is more is more oh i love that so i'm all outgrown where do you start
- 46:11Well, you'll have to listen to this episode.
- 46:13Oh, listen.
- 46:13I'll be tuning in on Friday.
- 46:15I cannot wait as I peruse.
- 46:18Yeah, no.
- 46:19I loved this conversation.
- 46:20My mind has changed a lot on this since researching and then talking about it.
- 46:24But you'll have to listen.
- 46:25Oh, my gosh.
- 46:25Well, I will tune in.
- 46:27I can't wait.
- 46:28Bye, Sophie.
- 46:29Bye.
- 46:29Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Curve.
- 46:32Feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you thought.
- 46:34We always love hearing your feedback.
- 46:35New episodes are out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so make sure you're subscribed to be notified whenever a new episode drops.
- 46:41In the meantime, we're around on socials so you can find all the links in the show notes.
- 46:45Hope you have a great week, and we will see you for the next episode.
- 46:48Okay, quickly, the Curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial advisors.
- 46:54Our platform exists for educational purposes only, and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision.
- 47:04And always remember to do your own research before making any investment or financial decision.
- 47:08We're here for any knowledge and support you need, but the final call is always yours.
- 47:12And thanks for being here.
- 47:14You got this.
- 47:14Yeah, we know you got this.