Business Blog: 🏠 Straight off the printer

Life comes at you fast — one minute you're an actress/yoga teacher/fire dancer in Glasgow and the next you're internet famous as the jellybean-rationing "Meth Lab Oompa Loompa Lady," the enduring image of last month's shambolic "Willy's Chocolate Experience" that left a bunch of Scottish kids crying. Now, that actress, Kirsty Paterson, may be the only person who'll come out on top from the whole mess: she's charging $35 for video greetings on Cameo.

In today's email:

3D-printed homes: The next wave of them is here.
Weird patents: Strap your baby into this diaper/pillow.
Bananas: Thankfully, a fruit that inflation forgot.
Around the web: Star Wars plus beer ads, how grown-up Disney superfans are made, and more.

👇 Listen: The potential impact of 3D-printed homes — and the flaws that must be ironed out before it's realized.

The Big Idea

Would you live in a 3D-printed house?

In this economy, I'd live in anything that had an in-unit washer and dryer.

But that question is more than hypothetical for whoever moves into a 988-square-foot 3D-printed home in Detroit.

They can print houses now?

Sure can. Citizen Robotics, a nonprofit seeking to make housing affordable through robotic construction, printed the pieces at a facility in southwest Detroit, then assembled the home on site.

What that means is that a robotic arm — typically used in auto manufacturing, the industry that has long defined Detroit — layered a cement material to build walls, per The Detroit Free Press. (Watch a demo here.)

It's a cheaper process that requires less time and fewer people than pouring concrete into a form. Citizen Robotics said it's also strong and affordable, and will likely reduce heating and cooling costs by ~$120 per month. Those costs could be fully covered if the owner installs solar panels.

But…

… it'll still cost you $224.5k to call this two-bed, one-bath house yours.

That might seem like a steal in NYC or LA, but it's very high for Detroit, where most homes sell for under $100k. Unsurprisingly, there's been no sale, per Business Insider.

The problem, according to Bryan Cook, the architect of the home, is the development process. For 3D-printed homes to actually be affordable, they'd need to be constructed at scale and not as one-offs.

In Georgetown, Texas, there's a community of 100 3D-printed homes selling at $475k-$599k each. Georgetown's median home price is $460k.

There'd also need to be coding changes in some areas, including in Michigan where a requirement to reinforce walls with concrete columns increased costs.

BTW: NASA intends to 3D-print homes on the moon.

Free Resource

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Simplify the first three months and prime them for success. Or just be pretty forgiving if they flounder.

Your call, entrepreneur. We just send you links.

Warm welcome (as a worksheet) →

TRENDING

Spain became the first country to block Sam Altman's Worldcoin, which offers its cryptocurrency only to people who consent to eyeball scans. The scans are meant to become a reliable way to distinguish humans from machines in Altman's AI dystopia, but Spain's data protection regulator isn't on board with its potential to collect minors' personal data.

SNIPPETS

This guy's such a tease: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell still isn't budging on interest rates, saying the central bank wants to see inflation closer to its 2% goal first. He does think that'll occur "at some point this year," though.

US credit-card late fees are now capped at $8 as the Biden admin continues to tackle junk fees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates the new rule will save families $10B+ per year.

Palantir won a $178m US Army contract to build project TITAN (Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node), an AI-powered battlefield system.

Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, produces enough daily oxygen to sustain 1m humans, per new data from NASA. Though very cold, scientists believe there could be life below the moon's icy surface.

Oscar Mayer is collaborating with plant-based food brand NotCo on two new meatless products. The NotHotDogs and NotSausage follow parent company Kraft Heinz's investment in alternative dairy, despite plant-based meat sales falling 9% in 2023.

Revel is using anonymized data from Uber to dictate future EV charger locations in New York City and solve for charging deserts. The company will also give a 25% charging discount to eligible NYC Uber Pro drivers.

OK: To celebrate International Women's Day, crypto exchange Binance released "CRYPTO," a fragrance that smells like ozone, salt, and moss, available via samples at mall pop-ups in Bahrain.

Don't miss this...

When Bluesky went public, it jumped to ~4m users — even snagging Chrissy Teigen and The New York Times. So, should your business be on Bluesky? Check out what HubSpot's manager of social strategy and analytics has to say.

Weird Patents

In the 1940s, busy parents didn't always have both hands free for baby holding. Enter inventor Margaret P. Knecht of Muncie, Indiana, who patented the "baby supporter" in 1946. Part pillow and part diaper, the baby supporter would strap wee ones to a wedge-shaped, cushioned backing to keep them from tipping over, which, according to Knecht, "is an annoying and troublesome inconvenience to the mother, and also to the child."

FIT THE BILL

There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand?

Clue 1: This company has nine sub-brands serving tourists around the globe; its namesake flagship brand serves customers in durations ranging from 2 to 31 days.

Clue 2: Along for the ride during the company's first day of service were hundreds of travel agents. This business used to heavily rely on them, but that ship has sailed.

Clue 3: That aforementioned maiden voyage actually ran aground in Miami, requiring five tugboats to yoink its only ship off a sandbar. Today, the corporation has more backup, with 87 vessels in operation.

👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇

Data Point

average price per pound of common fruits

This shit is bananas: Even when the world turns upside down, the humble banana at your local bodega will never betray you. That's because the price of bananas has stayed under 80 cents per pound since 2004. (At Trader Joe's, bananas have been 19 cents each since the 2000s.)

The US, which imports more bananas by volume than any other country, has the highest per capita availability at 26.9 pounds per person. And no wonder people are reaching for the trusty fruit: The average monthly price for a pound was 62 cents in January, compared to oranges at $1.55, grapefruits at $1.71, and lemons at $2.08.

Thankfully, the Federal Reserve predicts it could take ~210 years for a banana to cost $10, so we won't be alive to witness that grim reality.

AROUND THE WEB

🌲 On this day: In 1923, Robert Frost's famous poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was published in The New Republic.

🐭 That's interesting: How Disney intentionally created Disney adults.

🗞️ Newsletter: C-suites and Wall Street are reading Semafor Business, a semiweekly newsletter penned by two of Wall Street's best reporters, bringing original scoops and exclusive interviews. Sign up for free here.

🍺 Haha: These beer commercials were inserted into Star Wars during dubbed TV viewings.

🦎 Aww: Saying good morning to your lizard friend.

Meme

Opportunity of a lifetime. (Link)

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Today's Fit the Bill answer is Carnival Corp. (Market cap: $20.01B)

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman.
Editing by: Ben "Why compare apples and oranges when you can compare bananas and lemons?" Berkley.

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