Sesamy, a new company started by the podcast company Acast’s founders, wants to “tear down the world’s paywalls” and get users to pay piecemeal for content such as audiobooks. One month after the launch, the company raises just over 40 MSEK to expand outside Sweden.
“The problem with subscriptions as they are today is that many of them are ‘zombie subscriptions’, in the background, and every month a sum is deducted from your account no matter how much you use the service.”
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EV automater Tesla will offer it’s “Full Self-Driving” feature as a subscription. The service is on track to hit the market sometime in Q2, according to Tesla.
“Kirkhorn confirmed this during Tesla’s Q1 2021 earnings call Monday, saying the company was waiting on just a couple of internal technical issues but that the feature should be launched very soon. Beyond that, he said that a subscription model for FSD would likely offer a great deal of recurring revenue potential, which seems likely.”
An American vitamin trend is hitting Europe. Heights, Feel, and Cuure are among the the European vitamin subscription brands that has raised a total of over £8m in the last months.
“A lot of the biggest of the new generation vitamin companies, which tend to rely heavily on social media for their marketing strategy, are American. Perhaps the most famous are Ritual and Care/of — they both offer personalised subscription boxes […]”
Monta, a company that can be described as having an Airbnb model for EV charging, has raised 40 MSEK in venture capital. The money will be used to expand geographically. First out is the Nordic countries.
“Monta takes a percentage of each transaction that is carried out in connection with charging. Alternatively, the user can purchase a subscription to access more services and then avoid the transaction fee.”
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Swedish telco giant Ericsson has unveiled a subscription service, starting at around $100 per employee, for remote working in North America that would allow employees of small businesses to start working from home in minutes with access to licensed apps, cloud storage and security tools.
“The company started working on the service with two employees in March 2020 and later added more than 100 workers and has bought a virtual desktop company, Tamsons said.”
The subscription economy brings benefits such as lower costs and increased predictability. But it might also make consumers passive and less inclined to compare prices, writes SEB, one of Sweden’s largest banks, in an analysis.
“Wine, coffee, vitamins, beauty products, contact lenses, razors, toilet paper, flowers, cat food, clothes and glasses are other examples of products that companies now want us to subscribe to, instead of buying when the need arises.”
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Wineries large and small across America consider a new way of providing wine to consumers: By subscription services.
“While the [winery subscription] models share some similarities, it seems that no winery subscriptions are exactly the same. Each winery has found a unique solution that worked for them and, importantly, for their target consumers.”
The auto industry has finally caught up with Tesla’s over-the-air upgrades and it’s ready to flex. Audi, BMW, General Motors, Lexus and Mercedes have all confirmed that upgrades to vehicles will be sold via over-the-air-software updates.
“There could be dozens — even hundreds — of unique capabilities that you may or may not have soon, depending on what you pay every month.”
