The Return of the Newsletter (and the great ones you should subscribe to as a Consumer Tech enthusiast)

I’ve realized recently that I don’t get much value out of Twitter these days. There is just too much noise. Which is why I find it hard to use it as a resource to discover the latest news and relevant articles about innovation, tech and consumer in particular. Instead I fell in love again with an old-school medium called email. Newsletters are surging in popularity in my inbox (and many others’ inboxes as well as it seems). I am a big fan of human curation enriched with the editors’ thoughts on a topic and article. And while I believe that an AI will eventually be able to deliver a similar level of curation, I feel it will take a very long time for machines to get the editorialization just right.

I like the personal touch and the connections that I build up over time with the people that take the effort to curate their world and opinions for me. The best newsletters feel like a 1-to-1 conversation, similar to maybe podcasts or some influencers on social media.

Here are a couple of my favorite newsletters. If you are an entrepreneur in Consumer Tech or an investor in the space this selection might also resonate with you.

• To understand what the future brings: The Exponential View. Azeem Azhar’s weekly newsletter is by far the best resource to casually understand better how our future might look like. Topics he touches upon range from machine learning, quantum computing and bioinformatics to the future of media and social topics. Big fan! → subscribe here (if you aren’t subscribed already. Azeem is tracking >45k subscribers)
• Dan Frommer has just recently started his newsletter The New Consumer, but we are already big fans at Heartcore. Dan offers thoughtful reflections on consumer trends and notable transactions. The subscription doesn’t come for free, but is totally worth it. → subscribe here
• Smart reflections on consumer Tech from VCs: Since it is quite core to a VCs work to monitor industry trends and news it is not surprising that many great newsletters are coming from colleagues at other funds. Drinking from the Firehose, curated by Alex Taussig from Lightspeed might be my favorite one in this category. Other great thoughtful newsletters from VCs are the ones from Forerunner Ventures, as well as Ben Evans and Andrew Chen from Andreessen.
• Keeping up to date on who is raising from whom: Dan Primack’s Pro Rata is published five times a week and allows you to quickly understand which investors are investing in what kind of companies, models and markets. Dan also adds his view on the most relevant deals and tech related news.
• Lean Luxe is a great weekly newsletter and a vibrant Slack community on everything consumer brands, with an emphasis on consumer goods categories, Luxury and DTC in particular. → subscribe here

And then of course I read our own weekly newsletter on consumer insights and relevant transactions that we recently launched stealthy-ly to our portfolio and friends. Shameless plug, but you can subscribe here if you like.

Which newsletters did I forget or would you recommend me subscribing to?

Photo by erica steeves