3 charts for you today exploring:
Disney+ has hit 100 million paid subscribers, just 16 months since its launch.
That puts Disney roughly halfway to catching up to Netflix's subscriber base, which is currently sitting at a lofty 204 million — but is growing much more slowly.
The pandemic has almost certainly accelerated the trajectory of Disney's growth, as we all ran out of things to watch pretty quickly, but even considering COVID the Disney+ performance has been remarkable. Hit shows such as The Mandalorian, and more recently WandaVision, have appealed to global audiences just as Disney was expanding into new markets.
Disney originally expected to have between 60 and 90 million subscribers by 2024, the company now expects more like 230 million subscribers by 2024.
Are you still watching?
As life slowly returns to "normal", it's going to be interesting to see if growth does slow down for both Netflix, Disney, and the rest of the streaming players — but what will be really interesting is how Disney approaches cinema and the box office. Historically they haven't really had to weigh-up whether to release movies straight to streaming, or to run them in cinemas first (or both). Figuring out the optimal revenue strategy is probably going to be a fun job for some data nerds over the next few years.
Best of the rest
We've left Amazon Prime Video off of this chart, as Prime is such a bundle of different services that it's hard to compare, but for the record they have 150 million subscribers. Hulu has just under 40 million, and then there's a smattering around 10-20m (HBO Max, CBS, Discovery, ESPN).
Competition to fund the next hottest startup has arguably never been fiercer, and it's showing in the valuations that venture capital investors are willing to give to startups.
According to data from Pitchbook, the median early-stage startup was funded at a pre-money valuation of $30m last year. In 2006, it was $10m. For later-stage companies, who have demonstrated significant traction or product development, the valuations are even frothier, with the median late-stage startup getting an $80m pre-money valuation.
Hot potato, hot potato
Intentionally or not, venture stage investors often take their lead from the public markets - where the valuations of technology companies have skyrocketed. To name but a few examples (there are many): Palantir is valued at 31x its revenue, Airbnb is on 21x and Snowflake is on 80x its revenue.
Those kinds of multiples mean that if you're a venture investor, you're a bit more comfortable investing at higher valuations, as there's a decent chance someone else will take those shares off your hands at a considerably higher price if the company does well. For founders, it's even simpler; more investment, in exchange for fewer shares.
Monday was International Women's Day. To celebrate the day we've dug out the data on women in the workforce, to see how things have changed in the last 70 years.
The data reveals just how big of a gap there was between men's and women's participation in the workforce back in the mid 20th century. In 1950 more than 85% of men were involved in the workforce, compared to just 33% of women (data from the BLS).
Since then, things have changed a lot. The next 50 years saw a seismic shift in our labor force as more women entered the formal workforce, and more men left it. Today, women's participation in the US labor force stands at ~56%, around 11-12% below that of men's — a gap that has remained fairly constant for much of the last 20 years.
This chart only represents participation in formal (paid) work, but an interesting recent report from the UN found that the increased burden of unpaid and informal work had fallen more on women during the pandemic.
1)Roblox is going public today. The online game platform, that lets users create (and even monetize) their own games, is expected to debut on the stock exchange with a $30bn valuation.
2) A copper trader who thought he was receiving a $36m shipment of copper, actually received a bunch of painted rocks.
3) State-of-the-art sailing boats racing in the America's Cup have reportedly hit speeds of 53.4 knots (99kmh) thanks in part to hydrofoils that help actually lift the yachts out of the water.
4) The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service recommended Amazon stock back in 1997. You probably missed that one, don't miss the next one.**
5)17.1m Americans, and around 12m Brits, tuned in to watch Oprah's interview with Meghan & Harry — making it one of the most watched interviews of modern times (per Axios).
**This is a sponsored snack.
