- Will's Weekly Roundup
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- Will's Weekly Roundup
Will's Weekly Roundup is a curated list of tech, business, and startup headlines from last week to kickstart your Mondays.
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Business
The business headlines you missed (or need to see again)...
Pickleball - Pickleball injuries may cost Americans nearly $400 million this year. LINK
IRL - Unicorn social app IRL will shut down after admitting 95% of its users were fake. LINK
Amazon - Amazon is now paying coffee shops, florists, and antique stores to deliver packages. LINK
Interns - The typical Citadel intern is making $19,200 a month. LINK
Wine - Red wine sales within France have halved since the 1990s. LINK
Lawyers - On Wall Street, lawyers make more than bankers now. LINK
Starship - SpaceX’s Starship rocket program costs are approaching $3 billion. LINK
Swift - Taylor Swift’s "Eras Tour" is forecasted to bring in over $1 billion in revenue, which would surpass #1 Elton John’s ongoing "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" ($887M) and #2 Ed Sheeran’s "Divide Tour" ($776M). LINK
Visa - Visa acquired Brazilian fintech startup Pismo for $1 billion. LINK
Nat Geo - National Geographic laid off its last remaining staff writers. LINK
Snap - Snapchat crossed 4 million paid subscribers for "Snapchat Plus" ($3.99/month). LINK
Apple - Apple stock hit a record and is on the cusp of reaching a $3 trillion market value. LINK
PE - Nearly half of private equity fund managers and operating partners said they are understaffed across the organization. LINK
PwC - PwC, one of the world’s big four consulting firms, is selling its government advisory business in Australia for just cents after a scandal left its reputation in shreds. LINK
Meta - Meta announced "Meta Quest Plus," a $7.99/month virtual reality subscription service offering users access to two new titles every month. LINK
Costco - Costco is cracking down on membership sharing at self-checkouts. LINK
Food - Never count out the all-you-can-eat buffet - sales are reportedly soaring at buffet operator Golden Corral, up 20% this year, as unlimited helpings help fight back the rising cost of dining out. LINK
Waze - It's been 10 years since Google acquired Waze for $1.15B. LINK
Tech
The tech headlines you missed (or need to see again)...
Vatican - The Vatican worked with Santa Clara University to create its own AI ethics handbook to ask deeper questions about AI’s role in society. LINK
Ozempic - Soon, pill versions of Ozempic, the diabetes drug celebrities are injecting themselves with to lose weight fast, will be available. LINK
Starship - SpaceX is making more than 1,000 changes to its Starship rocket before its next flight. LINK
Mars - 4 volunteers just entered a virtual "Mars" made by NASA and won’t leave for 378 days. LINK
Air Taxis - Joby Aviation received permits to fly its first eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle) built on its production line with the plan of delivering its first electric aircraft by 2024 and commercializing an air taxi service by 2025. LINK
Covid - An ex-Pfizer employee was charged with insider trading over Covid treatments. LINK
VGX - Virgin Galactic will soon launch its first commercial rocket plane spaceflight. LINK
Wildfires - X Prize is a nonprofit that hosts multi-million dollar innovation competitions. One of their ongoing competitions is developing solutions to fight wildfires, with a prize of $11 million dollars, where teams have to detect a wildfire at ignition within a 1K square acre region and put it out autonomously within 10 minutes. LINK
Watchlist
Startups and companies I’m keeping an eye on…
SnapCalorie is an app that lets you take a picture of any meal and a real live nutrition expert will label your food plate for you. LINK
Gradient is making window AC/HVAC units with modern designs. LINK
Betr is Jake Paul's micro-betting app that enables users to place bets on things like predicting whether the next play of a football game will be a run or a pass. The company recently raised $35 million. LINK
Ribbo AI is a tool that learns from your docs, website content, blogs, and other sources to generate a chatbot that answers questions within the context of your data. LINK
Warp is a modern, Rust-based (coding) terminal with AI. LINK
Top Picks
Specific articles, videos, and documentaries worth taking a look at…
James Cameron's Deepsea Challenge (documentary). LINK
Burger King’s commercial featuring a Whopper getting moldy (video). LINK
The drugs that power Silicon Valley (article). LINK
Hokas: the ugly shoes now worth billions of dollars (article). LINK
Outside Interests
Interesting internet finds…
Affirmative Action - The Supreme Court ruled against the use of affirmative action in college admissions, declaring that race cannot be considered as a factor when selecting applicants. LINK
NYC Traffic - NYC will implement traffic congestion pricing by spring 2024 where drivers will be charged for driving in parts of Manhattan. LINK
Taliban - The Taliban government, facing US sanctions, is struggling to operate as it relies on WhatsApp, leading to a cat-and-mouse game. LINK
Chinese Spyware - The Chinese spy balloon that was floated across the US early in the year was decked out with US-made equipment. LINK
Crash - James Crown, the billionaire businessman who held several leadership roles including board member of JPMorgan Chase, died in a car racing accident in Colorado. LINK
King Charles - King Charles fires up his own YouTube channel to discuss "sustainable solutions to the climate crisis." LINK
Toothbrush Test - The Toothbrush Test, coined by Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, emphasizes the importance of creating an indispensable product that people will use at least twice a day. LINK
Workouts - Here's a simple website that generates personalized workout routines automatically based on your equipment selection and the specific muscles you want to focus on. LINK
Microscopic Handbag - A microscopic handbag the size of a poppy seed sold for $63,750. The handbag was made by the boundary-pushing creative company MSCHF. LINK
Laziness - The definition of hacker's laziness: deciding not to do something unless it's clear that it's going to work and that it matters, and not doing things just to do them. LINK
Visuals
Three visuals worth taking a look at...
The US stock market has officially entered its latest bull market.
The United States spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined.
The power of tiny gains.
Wisdom
Two quotes of wisdom...
"There is usually an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it’s getting done." ― David Allen
"If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn't have a job if he was any smarter." — John Gotti
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