Facebook, Fast Fashion, and the FRIEND Framework
Greetings, Pulse Subscribers!
Pulse in your inbox is like fun in the sun: hot, hot, hot! Here’s the agenda:
The biggest funding round we’ve ever reported
Discounts? Checkmate.
Gold for old sneakers
Help for hospitality
A brand’s best FRIEND
Meta’s monkey business
Away we go!
Startup Deals
Fast Fashion | At Pulse, we’ve seen some big funding rounds. Still, this one takes the cake: Shein, the Singaporean online fast fashion retailer, recently secured $2 billion in new funding. That’s no typo—it raised $2 billion with a capital B. In the hyper-competitive world of fast fashion, where new styles come fast and cheap, Shein is known to be especially quick on the latest trends and especially inexpensive. This round of funding puts Shein’s valuation at $66 billion, which, while staggering, is actually down from $100 billion a year ago. Recently, Shein has come under scrutiny for its manufacturers' working conditions, as well as the environmental and health impacts of its operations, but this funding round should bolster its ambitions to go public in the second half of 2023.
Discount Browser Extension | Is anyone old enough to remember clipping coupons? It was a pain! However, keeping track of every online discount and promo code available is also a pain. That’s where Checkmate comes in. Checkmate is a Safari-based browser extension for your phone that automatically pulls discounts and promotions from across the web, the Promotions folder in your email, and through separately negotiated deals with brands. At the end of last year, Checkmate hit No.1 in the Apple App Store and has since surpassed 400,000 users—over 60,000 of whom are daily active users. Checkmate claims to save users “2x more than the competition”, and it recently raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Google Ventures, with backing from celebrities like Paris Hilton and the Chainsmokers’ venture firm, Mantis VC.
Sneaker Resale Marketplace | Vintage and limited edition sneakers are crazy popular right now—so popular that the counterfeit market is estimated to be five times as big as the legitimate market. That’s why sneakerheads turn to platforms like Laced, a UK-based startup that connects sellers of authenticated premium sneakers to buyers. What sets Laced apart from similar services is how it presents the sneakers for sale: The seller sets a price, with no eBay-like auction element available, and the shoes are then placed in a queue prioritized by the lowest price first. The only way to get to the front of the Laced queue and in front of more buyers is to have the lowest price. Laced claims this encourages sellers to set more reasonable prices in a sector where markups can be astronomical. Laced raised a $12 million Series A led by Talis Capital, with participation from H&M Group Ventures, which invests across sustainable fashion, new retail, and retail enablers in an effort to explore circularity and sustainability in its own business.
Hourly Worker Staffing | It’s 2023, so isn’t it odd that many businesses think the best way to find quality workers is by putting a sign in the window and waiting? Instawork offers a modern alternative, connecting businesses in the hospitality industry with qualified and available workers. But Instawork is more than a giant want ad: It uses AI to match pre-vetted workers with shifts, then handle all the paperwork, insurance, and payments. This way workers can work when they want, and businesses can reliably get the help they need, when they need it, with no extra headaches. With postings that range from nationally recognized hotels to favorite local hot spots and over half of the baseball and football stadiums in the US, Instawork lets businesses take down that “Help Wanted” sign. Instawork recently raised $60 million in Series D funding at a $760 million valuation, led by TCV with participation from Benchmark, Spark Capital, and Greylock.
Essential Reads
The team at Forerunner offers up a fascinating essential read that introduces a new tool for businesses to gauge brand impact. We’ll let them explain:
Building a remarkable brand is foundational to building a remarkable company. But tangible guidance and measures of success have been lacking to date, making it elusive for leaders to gauge progress. In an effort to distill and codify the best practices we have learned through investing in break-out brands over the past decade, we are introducing new tools to quantify brand strength and provide actionable insights over time: the Brand Power Score, powered by the FRIEND Framework.
Learn more about the Brand Power Score, the FRIEND Framework, and how to score your own brand here.
Q: “Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit?”
A: “Anywhere it wants to.”
This time the 800-pound gorilla is Meta. Back in 2020, Meta rolled out Shops as a way for users to buy directly from businesses’ Facebook or Instagram pages. What was originally touted as a streamlined shopping experience for both consumers and businesses has now become … mandatory. Beginning April 24 of next year, Shops without checkout on Facebook and Instagram enabled will no longer be accessible—meaning businesses won’t be able to link out to their own sites. Eight hundred pounds is an awful lot of gorilla.
Read more about the forthcoming change here.