CHARTGEIST
BY JON J. EILENBERG
new brand relationships more warily. Then,
unless they’re blinded by love, they tend to
jump at the first signs of glitchiness.
When Blue Apron ill-advisedly went pub-
lic in 2017, it had a valuation of nearly $
billion. With brilliant marketing, it gained a
multi-furlong lead among meal kits, includ-
ing an also-ran I worked on, and it had an
unshakable reputation for being the luxe
one. At the same time, I remember taking
one look at my first, lovely, logo-adorned
box and thinking: This can’t last. Sustain-
able seafood, no GMOs, antibiotic-free and
five-star, verdant herbs? The margins must
be nearly zilch. But to reduce cost would be
to reduce quality, and to hold onto a market
of pious foodies, Blue Apron couldn’t risk
that. So the company kept spending without
hiking prices, while still throwing no end of
freebies at customers to gain loyalty. In May,
the NYSE warned Blue Apron that it was in
danger of being delisted. It’s currently valued
at about 94 percent less than it was at its IPO.
Maybe attending to supply and demand is
not such a quaint superstition after all.
Companies that do manage to blind users
by love, like the Calm meditation app, now
seem to concentrate on the product, while
essentially bootstrapping. Between 2012 and
2016, investors, evidently late to get religion
on mindfulness, turned Calm down by the
dozens on the grounds that it was “fluffy”
and “a load of nonsense.” Founders Michael
Acton Smith and Alex Tew decided to do
what entrepreneurs did before startups were
called startups: work on the product on a
Scrooge budget with fewer than 10 employ-
ees out of a one-bedroom apartment. They
gave little away but rain sounds and a short
free trial; once you paid, the app provided
lovely, sleepy music and stress-relieving
meditations for its users. Of whom there are
now 2 million active subscribers. Gaining
traction with extensive, elegantly produced
content, rather than giveaways and market-
ing jazz, has allowed them to expand their
offerings to meet the desires of subscribers,
who pay up to $156 a year for their services.
And well after the company turned profit-
able on its own terms, in 2017, VCs came
calling. Now I’m not saying the Calm people
are good people and Blue Apron people are
not. I’m just saying Calm has been valued at
$1 billion. Meditate on that.
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN (@page88) is a
regular contributor to wired.
RESEARCH FUNDING
Revelations of
Jeffrey Epstein
connectionsScientific
institutions that
remain untouchedNews stories
about (former) CEO
Adam NeumannDemand for
its IPOConfidence
that they’re the
right wordsNumber of
words typed