Hi there,

Yesterday’s newsletter on the Tesla of full-body air dryers didn’t work as expected.

Some observations:

1. The winning subject line had a word email filters didn’t like so most of you probably didn’t even get it.

2. A bunch of you responded saying you want one and love the idea. Great, but the product doesn’t exist yet. :)

3. A few of you responded with some cool positioning ideas for how to make this a huge category. Thank you!

4. Most of you responded to explain why this can’t work.

Anyways, mark my words. Someone is going to become a billionaire inventing the Tesla (or Dyson) of full-body air dryers.  

And now, let’s change gears and see what is trending among the C-suite — specifically, from earnings calls using our earnings transcript search engine.

First, D2C (direct-to-consumer) is as hot as ever on earnings calls.

What’s most interesting is the list of who is mentioning D2C the most, which you can see below. VF Corporation (owner of brands like Supreme and North Face) and Under Armour lead the pack here. That’s not that surprising.

Number 3 is Inogen. What does Inogen do? It offers lightweight portable oxygen concentrators.

Yup — D2C is everywhere.

The other hot acronym is ESG (environmental, social, and governance), which continues to become a bigger topic of discussion on earnings calls, as you can see below and also here.

2021 will continue to see the measurement of company sustainability and societal impact come into focus. It’s been a largely public-company phenomenon so far, so it’ll be interesting if these ideas also find their way into the private markets, especially for technology companies.

This year, we released a number of top startups lists and rankings — from our fourth annual AI 100 to our inaugural Blockchain 50 — based on everything from company valuations and investor strength to sentiment analysis and Mosaic scores.

You can find our top lists from 2020 below.

AI 100: The Artificial Intelligence Startups Redefining Industries
The AI 100 is CB Insights' annual ranking of the 100 most promising AI startups in the world. This year’s picks include startups working on synthetic voice, quantum machine learning, protein modeling, and more.

The Fintech 250: The Top Fintech Companies Of 2020
The financial services industry continues to attract tech companies that transform how people and businesses spend, save, borrow, invest, and more. From capital markets and insurance to digital banking and wealth management, the Fintech 250 are among the most promising of these companies globally.

Digital Health 150: The Digital Health Startups Transforming The Future Of Healthcare
The Digital Health 150 is CB Insights' annual ranking of the 150 most promising digital health startups in the world. This year's cohort includes startups working on interoperability, at-home care, emerging benefits, and more.

Game Changing Startups 2020
We highlight 2020's emerging trends to watch and high-momentum startups with world-changing potential.

As always, if you loved this newsletter, send it to a friend. If you hated it, please send it to an enemy.