Trends

What you need to know:

Private equity giant Blackstone acquired the video advertising startup Vungle last week in a reported $750m deal.

Billions of people looking for reliable, unlimited data at reasonable rates are expected to help the prepaid phone business grow by 4% a year through 2026. It might not sound like huge growth, but consider the market:

Andrew Wilkinson has sold only two of the 20-plus companies he has founded. In a different world, one where private equity groups and hedge funds didn’t act like the private equity groups and hedge funds they are, he might have sold all of them.

What you need to know: Inspired by faith and minimalist design, a pair of Christian millennials launched Alabaster, a photography-focused Bible publishing company. Early investment capital came from Daniel Fong, founder of $70m furniture business Million Dollar Baby.

Just the thought of online dating elicits a collective groan among anyone who’s done it. And that’s precisely why Dawoon Kang and her two sisters founded Coffee Meets Bagel: They wanted to improve one of the most anxiety-filled stages of people’s lives with technology that makes them forget the pain points.

Your future summers may include far fewer wedding invites, and it won’t be because you’re less popular. The wedding industry, long overdue for disruption, is trending smaller and more affordable as millennials rethink costs and strict traditions that were once considered mandatory. 

There was a time when I nearly succumbed to the siren song of #vanlife. My wife was working as a travel nurse—I tagged along as a writer/entrepreneur—which meant that, for two years, we moved to a new city every three months. I thought about purchasing an RV on numerous occasions. It would’ve made a ton of sense over short-term apartment rentals, but I couldn’t bring myself to put down the cash—or take showers under a bag with a hole poked in it.

Sam Parr: A big CEO of a huge media company that you know of told me this business will never make more than $2 million dollars a year. And it wasn’t until like six months ago where I was like, “Man, there’s like a path to make literally $100 million a year in revenue.”

This year Away, a suitcase startup, raised $100m in new funding at a staggering $1.4 billion valuation. The company has raised a total of $181m and is rumored to have over $125m in revenue. The stats alone are quite amazing.