Back to the future!
We’re getting back to the socially-distanced office and are growing our team to keep up with the great ideas and growth opportunities our clients are throwing at us (keep ‘em coming) - if you know anyone who should join our team, let us know!
This month, our team in Brazil also caught up with Fabio Siracusa, Head of Stellantis’ car subscription venture Flua!, to talk the journey they’ve been through (spoiler alert: it’s been quite a ride and we’ve helped them along the way). Read the full interview here and a preview below.
Oh, and we’ve been keeping an eye on the news and ecosystem trends - catch some of our insights below.
Speak soon,
Rob & the Founders Intelligence Team
🗞 What's grabbed our attention this month 🗞
Brought to you by Ezra Konvitz & Daniella Loftus and Hendrik Jandel
Snap into it - Snapchat unveiled AR try-on services spanning clothes, jewelry, accessories and eyewear; key to the play is the possibility of engaging Snapchat’s 229 million users (170 million of whom engage with AR around 30 times a day). Where FAGMA have typically stuck to beauty-tech investments, discouraged by the clunkiness of getting (and tracking) a full-body view, Snapchat are outtacking the competition by developing a fashion play, rolling out a host of new features alongside accurate tracking with 3D Body Mesh.
So what? - Ever since the start of the pandemic we’ve been getting phygital, with fashion, where the key component to conversion is visual, leading the way. Now you can judge a dress by its Snap filter and change clothes through voice activation (or in the case of Snap’s Prada collab by swiping right a la Tinder) and brands ranging from Burberry to Buffalo are leveraging physical-digital synthesis to make real money via stores, shows, and influencers. Smart retailers and brands aren’t just thinking about AR to improve their purchasing environment and reduce the cost and environmental impact of e-commerce returns, they’re working out how to use this increasingly pervasive tech to engage audiences and build their brand.
May the government be with you - The Pentagon is considering ending the $10bn JEDI (that’s short for Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure, of course) cloud-computing contract, amid an Amazon win in court. They complained that the former President had ‘improper influence’ over the award (aka Donald Trump hates Jeff Bezos). It’s a lot of dough, and there’s more where that came from with governments worldwide now spending heavily to keep their economies afloat - take Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, which is looking to invest billions into clean energy, education, climate resistance, elder care, EVs, etc with both startups and big companies getting ready to bid.
So what? ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’ are no longer the most terrifying words in the English language as governments are getting ready to spend trillions boosting their economies post-COVID, addressing climate change and other big challenges. As with defence spending previously, we can expect to see a ton of new innovative companies leveraging the tech that comes out of it. While Big Tech has identified that their biggest growth opportunities are within the government’s realm, they don’t have a monopoly on those contracts (yet) and established corporates are well positioned to deliver innovative solutions at scale.
Track me if you can – Apple updated it’s privacy settings in their new OS, forcing all apps to ask users if they’d ‘like’ to be tracked across third party apps to ‘optimise’ their advertising experience. Axel Springer, Facebook and other media companies quickly filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, arguing their ad revenue might decline by up to 60%. In a similar move, Google will ban third party tracking on Chrome altogether and rely on first party data - between Maps, Chrome, YouTube, etc they should have enough of it.
So what? Apple wants you to know that they care about your privacy (...and Tim Cook might not like Facebook). But they’re also seeing the writing on the wall (and doing a bit of graffiti themselves), between 1) increasingly aggressive regulatory moves to give users transparency and power over their personal data and how it’s being used and 2) paid content subscriptions (like Apple’s News+, TV+ and Arcade..), the days of free content in exchange for data are numbered. If your business is built on targeted advertising, you need to go back to the drawing board: do you have a direct relationship with your customers? Is your content good enough that people will actually pay for it? Will they pay for being part of your community? We expect lots of interesting new business models coming out of these changes, less clickbait - and potentially fewer cat videos.
📸In Focus: How Stellantis is leveraging technology to reimagine the future of car ownership 📸
We’re working with some very clever people driving innovation at leading corporates - and we’re talking with them about the good, the bad and the ugly. This month, we caught up with Fabio Siracusa, Head of Flua!, Stellantis’ novel car subscription service.
About Stellantis: Stellantis is a leading global mobility player guided by a clear mission: to provide freedom of movement for all through distinctive, appealing, affordable and sustainable mobility solutions. The group owns and operates a breadth of iconic brands including Fiat, Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, OPEL, Peugeot, Citroën, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, among others. With 400,000 employees worldwide, the group has industrial operations in over 30 countries and is present in over 130 markets around the globe.
About Flua!: Flua! is Stellantis’ new mobility company offering zero-kilometre Fiat and Jeep car subscriptions service. The new digital venture was launched in January 2021 in Brazil and takes inspiration from other car-as-a-service business models within the group such as Free2Move and Leasys.
Interview with Fabio Siracusa
Hi Fabio, please tell us about your background and how that led you to become the Head of Operations at Flua!?
Fábio: I joined Stellantis 5 years ago, leading the demand planning function with a market focus. I believe that my previous experience, my orientation towards results and my constant curiosity, led the company's leadership to bet on me to launch Flua! even without having previous experience in a similar business.
Tell us about Flua!'s origin and what are the new venture's main objectives & what success looks like in your mind?
Fábio: Flua! was not born overnight, but was the genesis of a process. We realized that a consumer profile is gradually becoming detached from car ownership while seeking the core benefits offered by the car as a mere means of transportation. Flua! came to address these pain points.
Success for Flua! is to strengthen the contact and relationship with the consumer. Today, this interface with the customer goes through a lot of dealerships (dealers). With Flua!, we will reinforce this intimacy with the mobility consumers and also connect the customer throughout the journey of using cars through the Flua! App.
What advice would you give to fellow executives aiming to launch new ventures within existing corporations?
Fábio: Above all, it takes a great deal of personal humility. It is also critical to establish a level of humility with the founding team, setting clear expectations that we are going to test and learn about where we think there are greater chances of success.
Also, for executives launching new products in existing corporations, it is important for them to understand what ambition the company has. What do they aspire from this? Where do they want to go? What is the expected trajectory for five, ten years from now? These aspirations need to be clearly articulated in order to maintain all stakeholders duly aligned.
💡More insights from the team💡
1) Simon Radford wrote about how local governments can help high streets with their digital transformation (extra points if you can spot the startups founded by Founders Intelligence alumni) - read here.
2) Our Brazil team keeps on interviewing people: here’s an interview with David Schlesinger, CEO and Co-Founder of Mendelics, a Brazilian genomics sequencing laboratory. Go here to read more about deep tech in Latin America.
3) Our brilliant colleague Mathilde Carraro kindly shared her favourite start-ups, podcasts and book recommendations with us here.
That’s all, folks. If you enjoyed reading this, why not share the joy with your nearest and dearest & your remote colleagues.
PS: We’re also contributing insights to Founders News, a new personalised tech newsletter with info on your network and lots of this content too hatched out of Founders Forum - subscribe here!