The CQ | An Invite to Our Can't-Miss Consumer AI Event. Plus: $CHYM!
The Forerunner Team's Must-Reads of the Week
The CQ is Forerunner’s weekly newsletter rounding up the top consumer news, plus bonus musings from our investment team and portfolio highlights. Subscribe to get the latest each weekend.
At Forerunner, we’ve always believed the consumer is the ultimate demand engine, setting the pace for what’s needed and what’s next. Today, consumers are embracing AI faster than any tech shift before. The movement is real, but still early — fragmented, and full of promise.
We see this as the right window to champion the builders shaping this future and fuel momentum across the ecosystem. That’s why we’ve teamed up with 20+ leading venture firms to co-host Humans in the Loop, an afternoon event in San Francisco on June 26th designed to spotlight the sheer ambition and creativity in consumer AI. Join us for a pitch showcase of seed-stage startups nominated by each of the firms, some high-impact, expert fireside chats (more on this soon), and prime networking.
All are welcome — founders, operators, builders, those exploring what’s next, and investors. Register here.
On the topic of unique ambition and opportunity, this week we saw Chime, one of our earliest investments, ring the bell at NASDAQ. Beyond being a truly incredible milestone for the Chime team, we see this as a catalyzing moment for the ecosystem: building a durable, public company is immeasurably hard, but it is possible and worth every struggle. More from our Founding Partner, Kirsten Green, here.
Let’s go $CHYM!
💚💚💚
What We’re Talking About on Slack:
The New York Times explores whether there’s a link between therapy culture and childlessness. Expanded perceptions of “harm,” “neglect,” and “trauma” by adults may be driving the reluctance of millennials, the generation with the highest rate of childlessness, to become parents themselves. Psychological narratives and internet culture have popularized the idea that personal struggles often stem from childhood and parental flaws, raising expectations of what "good parenting" should be. In today’s America, having children is no longer a given but often an intimidating choice burdened by pressure to raise perfect, trauma-free kids — a standard no one can meet. Mix that with the fact that today, 27% of adult Americans report being estranged from an immediate family member, and there’s mounting hesitation about starting a family for yourself. “There’s something perverse about the fact that one barrier to having children for members of my generation is a fear that we’ll fail them in the same ways that our parents failed us, or perhaps in different ways. Yet having a child is what can help you look at this story you’ve been telling yourself about the childhood hurts that made you who you are. That story may be true, but it is not the only story you could tell.”
Are young American men lonelier than women? A new poll adds to the debate. According to Gallup data from 2023 to 2024, 25% of American men aged 15 to 34 reported feeling lonely “during a lot of the day,” compared to 18% of women in the same age group. “The difference between American young men and the rest of the population was striking.” This places young American men significantly above the 15% median for loneliness among men in other developed countries, with only Turkey reporting a higher rate (29%). The U.S. is one of only three countries (along with Iceland and Denmark) where young men are much lonelier than the general population.
College grads are lab rats in the great AI experiment. While AI is increasingly taking over entry-level tasks, such as document analysis and customer service, some employers are assigning junior workers higher-level responsibilities, like tax work or client pitches. Although critics argue that young employees won’t be doing the tasks that teach them a deeper understanding of how the business operates. Another obstacle facing grads is that more employers are posting junior role opportunities, but want “work-ready professionals,” a trend referred to as the “experience paradox.” “The lesson here for businesses is that, sure, in the short term you can outsource entry-level work to AI and cut costs, but that means missing out on capturing AI-native talent…It's also dangerous to assume that giving junior staff AI tools will automatically make them more strategic. They could instead become dependent on AI tools and not learn business fundamentals.”
Related: Axios looks behind the curtain on the white-collar bloodbath. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns that AI could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within 1 to 5 years, potentially spiking U.S. unemployment to 10 to 20%. He noted one possibility for the future is "Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced—and 20% of people don't have jobs.” Despite these risks, most Americans and lawmakers remain unaware or dismissive, even as companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta compete to develop AI agents capable of replacing human workers across law, finance, tech, and customer service industries. Microsoft, Walmart, and CrowdStrike have already laid off thousands of employees, and Meta expects to reduce the need for mid-level engineers by 2025. A 2024 study by LinkedIn's chief economic opportunity officer notes that AI is already eroding "bottom-rung" jobs. Amodei proposes increasing awareness among the public and government, job retraining, and a potential “token tax” on AI usage to help redistribute wealth if AI-driven displacement accelerates as projected.
Yet another sign that things aren’t looking great for grads: Employee confidence amongst entry-level workers just hit an all-time low. Only 44.1% of workers report having a positive six-month job outlook in May, down from 45.8% the previous month—the lowest since Glassdoor began tracking in 2016. Entry-level employees are experiencing the steepest decline in confidence, dropping from 44.1% to 43.4%, while mid- and director-level workers saw slight increases. Economic uncertainty is the main driver of workforce anxiety—on Glassdoor, mentions of layoffs were up 9% over the last month and 18% over the past year, and discussions about macroeconomic concerns were up 17% in May.
Everything millennial is cool again. The New York Times put together a pop culture compendium of all the trends from the 1990s and 2000s that are making a comeback among Gen Z and Gen Alpha. There are wired headphones, big hair, JNCO jeans, and, of course, "Sex and the City." Also on the replay list: recession pop for “partying the pain away,” physical media like DVDs, VHS tapes, and CDs (revenue from sales of physical music formats reached $2 billion in 2024, up 5% from the previous year), and everything Pokémon from the video game, the series, and Pokémon Go to the trading cards, which have increased in value by 240% in the last five years.
Apple is shipping through it: After a year marked by delays in launching the much-hyped Apple Intelligence, the announcement of Apple’s new AI tools and productivity enhancements at WWDC felt “comically modest” in comparison to the AI advancements and vision of competitors like Google and OpenAI, says Platformer. “For the first time in a long time, there is a sense that Apple has begun to lose the plot—too slow to recognize the potential of AI, and not capable enough to realize it.”
Portfolio Highlights:
As Chime rings the Nasdaq opening bell, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg, Axios, Barron’s, Fast Company, PYMNTS, Investopedia, and Market Watch report on the company’s market debut.
Forbes profiles Joe Spector on his journey from co-founder of Hims to co-founder of Dutch, and how the company is using AI to expand veterinary care.
Oura ranks number 23 on CNBC Disruptor 50 list. CEO Tom Hale appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” to discuss what’s next for the brand.
Forbes reports that Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur and host of The Diary of a CEO, is now a co-owner of Stan.
Business Insider tests out Mindtrip by planning a 12-day honeymoon in Australia.
Wonder CEO Marc Lore tells Fast Company his plans of taking the company public in early 2028. Lore was also interviewed at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies Summit.
Bloomberg recommends Fora and Mindtrip as two travel tools that save time and money, with a quote from Michelle Denogean, Mindtrip’s chief marketing officer.
Business Insider reports that Superpower has acquired at-home lab testing company Base.
WebAI co-founder David Stout speaks about Apple M-series chips in a CNBC article about Apple’s strategy for Apple Intelligence.
The Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, NBC News, Real Simple and Rolling Stone, report that Away is now available on Amazon. Retail Dive also announces that Jessica Schinazi has been named CEO of the brand.
Job of the Week:
Director, Corporate Development & Strategy at The Farmer’s Dog.
There are ~800 other open roles at Forerunner portfolio companies, check ‘em out.
Love this data dump :)