Startup Stash - Eggsy, Oily, and the New Breastmilk 🐣

Here are 3 ways entrepreneurs are playing the chicken and egg game:

• Rental Chickens: There are startups like RentACoop and Rent The Chicken that deliver customers 2-4 hens, a coop, feed, and directions. You can babysit your chicken for 4 weeks to 6 months and pocket the eggs, all at a cost of $250 to $500. Rent The Chicken noted a 48% YoY increase in business in 2021.
   
• The Chicken Guru: When there's a new industry, there’s always gurus ready to help you navigate it. Startups like this one are teaching people how to tend to chickens. In 2020, sales from chicken teaching were up 400%.
   
• Chicken Influencers: And of course people are turning their newfound pastime into influencer content. They document themselves buying backyard chickens and create products around it, like this one did.

Denmark is building an artificial island to provide enough wind power to the entire country. 

Details of the island: 

• It will be built 60kms offshore. 
• The island will be the size of 18 giant football pitches. 
• It will house upto 600 wind turbines.
• The government aims to complete construction by 2030. 

The island could supply up to 1.5 times as much energy as Denmark consumes in a year - enough to power 10 million European homes. 

If this project works, other EU countries will look to replicate the system and by 2040 offshore wind could power 150 million homes in Europe. 

Denmark is one of most ambitious countries in terms of carbon emissions. They aim to slash their emissions by 70% by 2030 as compared to 1990 levels.

Research shows that breastfed babies have stronger immune systems and lower rates of infant mortality. But not every family can provide it — including same-sex couples, adoptive parents, and women who aren’t able to lactate.

Plus, hospitals freeze donor breast milk and defrost a bag for a single NICU baby, which is a time-consuming process. And if an infant doesn’t finish the milk, the rest of the bag will be thrown out to follow hygiene guidelines. This leads to obvious wastage.Healthtech startups have obviously found a solution for this problem too.

For instance, the startup BBy takes donor milk from lactating moms and turns it into a fine powder that preserves its immunological benefits. The company then delivers the powdered milk to hospitals and new parents so that NICUs and families are equipped with a fast, safe way to feed infants. 

What's more? 
This innovation has the capacity to do way more good than it currently is. The insufficiency of breastmilk is a huge problem in countries at conflict and among refugee populations. This demographic doesn't have the resources to freeze donor milk. And so this kind of innovation has the potential to benefit over 60 million such people globally.

Furthermore, BBy uses a modified spray-drying technology that modulates the temperature to create powdered milk that maintains its bio-integrity. The technology also merges immunoglobulins of multiple mothers in each batch to improve the immune-boosting effects of the milk. The powdered milk market is already massive, but doesn't include many companies that use provide immune-boosting formula. 

This technology is currently being used in 20 hospitals in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

High prices cure high prices. 

Typically, if a products costs a lot, people will see an opportunity to make money producing more of it, thus driving down the price.

But this isn’t happening in the oil industry.

Reasons why oil investments are attractive: 

• Market disruptions from the Russia-Ukraine war
• Oil prices have risen to $104 a barrel.
• Rising inflation 
• The Biden administration is allowing drilling on more federal lands.

Despite such juicy scenarios, investments in drilling and production have barely budged. In fact, the key issue facing the oil industry is underinvestment after the fracking boom collapsed.

Let’s dig into the reasons for that. 

For one, some believe that the current high prices for oil and natural gas will swiftly fall if Russia ends its attack on Ukraine.

Secondly, with all the ballyhoo around climate change, policymakers are concerned with decarbonizing the economy. Carbon taxes may soon become pervasive. This naturally makes oil investment very risky.

So while private investors are driving up the price of oil stocks, which have gone up nearly 78% in the last year, overall investment and drilling in the industry may remain bleak.