The Pulse by EllisX: Tech & Business Trends Worth Exploring — Feb 15
This past week brought us an important milestone and a record: Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe-Herd became the youngest woman to take a company public. The company’s stock popped by 64% on the first day, making Wolfe-Herd the youngest self-made female billionaire. According to Bloomberg, less than 5% of the world’s self-made billionaires are women, which means we have a lot of work to do to close the gender wealth gap. At EllisX, we can’t wait for the day when an IPO led by an underrepresented founder would be so commonplace it elicits a yawn. Until then, we’ll celebrate the success of each founder who IPOs.
With that said, let’s take a look at some trends we noticed over the last week:
Tech can detect COVID before nasal swabs do
Your earliest COVID-19 diagnosis may come from no place else but your Apple Watch. According to a study conducted by the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Apple Watch can identify the early onset of COVID-19 seven days before a nasal swab test by monitoring people’s heart rates. The study observed healthcare workers who used Apple Watches to monitor their heart rates between April and September. It shows the potential of technology to detect diseases before we’re even aware we’re sick, and could play an important role in managing the spread and prevention of contagious diseases.
An unlikely match: unions and tech workers
Tech workers have long been the recipients of lavish perks and high salaries that it didn’t seem likely they would ever form unions. However, it seems like unionization is in vogue. This past week Medium workers announced that they’re unionizing, warehouse Amazon workers in Alabama are expected to vote on unionization and Alphabet workers formed its first-ever union last month. Out of these three, Amazon workers are the only group that have traditionally been under the union umbrellas. As for the other two, it seems like unionization is a way to ensure alignment of values between the companies and their employees. We would not be surprised to see unions forming at more tech companies this year, especially Big Tech (looking at you, Facebook).
Stories, newsletters and social audio?
Stories spread from Snap to Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Several weeks ago the same started happening to newsletters. Now, it seems like social audio will be next to cut across all social apps. Pioneered by Clubhouse last year, social audio was soon on the map for Twitter, which is launching Spaces, and it now seems like Facebook has plans to launch a social audio platform as well. Just like with newsletters, it remains to be seen whether social audio products for Twitter and Facebook will take off, and we can’t help but wonder if video will be next?
What are your thoughts on these trends? If you’re in need of an expert opinion, you can always find one here.
