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Quick Hits
IM8, the supplement company founded by David Beckham and health-science firm Prenetics Global Ltd., has lined up around $1 billion in growth financing from General Catalyst. Under the deal, the firm will finance up to 70% of IM8’s marketing spend in exchange for a capped share of its revenue. Founded in 2024, IM8 is reportedly the fastest-growing supplement brand ever recorded, reaching $100M ARR in just 11 months. The company expects revenue to top $210M this year, exit at a $300M ARR run rate, and surpass $400M in annual revenue by 2027. News like this confirms my suspicion that my indifference to wellness as a practice is doing this newsletter a great disservice.
It’s not so bad that Bryan Johnson has been diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis, because now his 30-year-old girlfriend (formerly his personal assistant) gets to share some of the spotlight. Kate Tolo is publicly mapping her biological data through her menstrual cycle in a $2.6M/year experiment funded by Immortals, the couple’s supplement/longevity company. Ostensibly to bring more awareness to endometriosis, which Tolo was just diagnosed with — but also because Immortals is about to launch vaginal microbiome tests. Johnson’s tweets about their sex life and her vaginal health aren’t oversharing when you consider the pre-launch product-market-fit study and extended organic marketing campaign at play here. All the world’s a stage, you know?
But there’s nothing more delicious than a fictional age-gap couple, so I’m eagerly awaiting the film adaptation of Asymmetry, starring two certified beautiful people, Richard Gere and Diana Silvers. It’s about an unexpected relationship between a celebrated older author and a young editorial assistant, and is supposedly inspired by author Lisa Halliday’s own affair with Philip Roth in her twenties.
A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed Gus sold at Sotheby’s for $50.1 million last week after a 10-minute bidding war involving seven bidders, making it the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold at auction. The rich are collecting fossils. “We all think they should be in museums. That would be incredible,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of Science & Natural History, told Air Mail. “But I think that’s just because people don’t know how hard it is, how expensive it is, to find these things. They don’t understand the laws involved, and the very long process of excavation.” Of course, according to Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, for one-thousandth of Gus’s price tag, a small institution could fund two seasons of fossil hunting. But that’s beside the point, I guess.
Young people ditching their corporate dreams for skilled work are having a hard time convincing the people around them that they aren’t ruining their lives. One 21-year-old HVAC technician said his girlfriend told him not to let her parents know he was going to trade school. In a report published last year by Jobber, a software company for small businesses, 71% of Gen Z respondents said that vocational school carried more stigma than college. Only 7% of parents of Gen Z-ers said they would prefer it if their child pursued a trade or vocational program. The number of students at public two-year schools focused on vocational and trade programs may have grown by nearly 20% from 2020 to 2025, but I promise you it’s not because its the “cool new thing”.
All the cool girls want chic courthouse weddings, which makes me feel better about my elopement. Sorry mom.
No one works harder that the Stanley partnership and licensing teams.
I have an essay coming out imminently in which I promise to opine on the state of romance fiction fandom and the many authors and publishers benefiting from the Heated Rivalry/Off Campus halo effect. One such publisher is 831 Stories, which, in the heat of Off Campus mania, signed a first-look deal with Hulu to develop series based on its books and has now announced its first annual RomCon- possibly inspired by Prime Video’s Obsessed Fest, which I learned, was a success. They’ve so far had great instincts around building teen franchises. Netflix, by contrast, remains on the backpedal, struggling to replicate the success of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Kissing Booth. Last month the streamer announced an adaptation of Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker, with Alex Cooper attached as a producer. I’d love to see the price tag on some of the deals.
Willa Bennett’s first major hire at Cosmopolitan and Seventeen, Brandon Tan, has joined GQ as global fashion director, reporting to the publication’s new editor-in-chief, Adam Baidawi. He succeeds Miles Pope, who spent a decade in the role before departing last month to join Vuori as vice president of style, talent, and activations creative.
In keeping with the spirit of the times, Vice founder Shane Smith appears to be shopping an “explosive tell-all about his wild-child life and the rise and fall of his $6 billion company”, all while relaunching Vice News after its bankruptcy. According to Page Six, he may also be dating Olivia Nuzzi. But also maybe not.
Some Thoughts on Beauty 🫦
Gracie Abrams is the new face of Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle. I’ve been listening to more of her music. It’s just okay, but she’s very beautiful, and I enjoy her existence as a celebrity.
My friend is very excited about Glossier’s I ♥ NY campaign. Also, a reader sent me a note letting me know the brand has only announced plans to close 9 stores in the next 2.5 years. The only store with a set date to close is Chicago which closes 7/19.
Lore founder Melanie Bender’s Instagram broadcast channel is one I pay an embarrassing amount of attention to. I do this because she is very smart and I want to be like her. These days, the only brands I enjoy engaging with are the ones that make me feel smart because I get it—or at least like the kind of person who pauses to appreciate things. The rollout of their latest scent, Lil Softie, was perfect. The actual perfume is also perfect.
Rare Beauty and Ella Bright make a lot of sense. Same vibes, but I like Ella more.
Everyone has great things to say about MERIT’s partnership with the Ritz-Carlton. The illustrations are a hit! Did you know they had a Substack? It’s really good, actually. In a world full of beauty brands shoving what increasingly feel like cheap, gimmicky moments down my throat, it’s always refreshing to encounter content that feels considered — even literary, in its inclinations. Like how great is this? What’s tragic about the very real literary crisis is a future where everything — from music to movies to literature and advertising — needs to be dumbed down. Investment in art requires the belief that enough people will get it. There can be no beauty without consideration.
That’s It For Beauty
Very rarely does my TikTok algorithm surface anything useful (I’ve been made to understand this actually reflects poorly on me), but yesterday I came across a post that gave words to all my discomfort around Hailey’s Gap collab. Is she possibly doing too much? Why is she doing so much? The comments on this video made me realize that most people still primarily see Hailey as a model and an influencer, not a founder. But even as a founder, there’s a case to be made for cross-category ubiquity and the founder halo effect. There’s also a case to be made for overexposure. Thoughts? I will be getting those jeans though.
I was going to include this story about billionaires buying out entire blocks to build luxury compounds, but changed my mind the moment I saw the term “landmaxxing.” It’ll be a great day when that particular verbal appendage gets retired.
“Since private equity giant Blackstone acquired Spanx for $1.2 billion in 2021, the shapewear company has cycled through five CEOs while profits fell by nearly half,” writes Puck‘s Malique Morris. Blackstone has now reportedly sold its majority stake to HPS Investment Partners.
’s Q2 2026 Brand Social Trend Report is particularly insightful.
I’m really enjoying ’s Substack Private Label. Yesterday, she noted the influx of bikinis printed on T-shirts and button-ups this summer, along with a short list of the brands doing it right.
I don’t believe I’ve read a single piece on Partiful that didn’t bring up the founders’ Palantir past and what it could all mean vis-à-vis ethics, surveillance, AI, and so on. If users are concerned, its growth isn’t reflecting it, and with its first monetized feature, investors might even see their money’s worth someday. As I always say, people care a lot less than they appear to. They’re also mostly pretty lazy.
Ashton Kutcher is a serious VC now. After leaving Sound Ventures, the firm he co-founded more than a decade ago with Guy Oseary, the longtime manager of Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kutcher is now raising $500 million for a new AI-focused venture fund at his new firm, Decimal Capital, alongside Morgan Beller, who co-founded Libra, Facebook’s ill-fated cryptocurrency project, before the company became Meta Platforms. For context, most debut venture funds raised this year came in under $50 million, so Kutcher and Beller are asking for roughly ten times the going rate for a Fund I — but thanks to Sound Ventures’ early stake in OpenAI, reportedly worth $400–600 million on paper today, it’s an ask they can make.
OpenAI is developing a mobile, screen-free smart speaker that can control smart home appliances and tap into the capabilities of ChatGPT. If that sounds an awful lot like an Alexa or an Apple HomePod, OpenAI wants you to know it doesn’t see them as comparable — theirs is a home computer, not a souped-up loudspeaker. I don’t see Apple’s lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets doing too much damage in the end, but it might be enough to push back the launch. Which might be the point.
The founder of Hinge has raised $18M to build a new AI matchmaking service, to make the dating experience more human. Color me curious. “Overtone is not a dating app,” McLeod wrote in a blog post. “By that I mean it’s not a social platform with profiles that reduce people to stats, quotes and photos. There are no opaque, algorithmic feeds trained on split-second impulses. And there’s no juggling likes, matches and chats across many people at once.” Match Group, which owns Hinge, Tinder, and OkCupid, is a major investor, mind you. There’s something so annoyingly sanctimonious about this new wave of consumer social platforms — all these founders writing like they’ve discovered the human condition or whatever.
Do data centers make you want to cry? Fear not — tech companies are commissioning architects and builders to build data centers to look like tech campuses or art museums, complete with landscaping and community amenities. One Phoenix neighborhood even got to vote, choosing pickleball courts over a dog park, which really, says a lot.
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