The Paris Olympics start Friday, right? Wrong. They're officially underway this morning — soccer, rugby, handball, archery, and shooting competitions all get going ahead of Friday's opening ceremony. These bonus days are great news for the Games' 70 official sponsors, who are spending a combined $1.3B to absolutely shellac the world with their ads.
In today's email:
VR: A new way to train for harassment and workplace violence?
Tip culture: is (forgive us) at its tipping point.
Background check: When cardio was punishment. Literally.
Around the web: A "cold-storage" banquet, crafting the perfect pitch, and more.
👇 Listen: The fallout from the CrowdStrike outage just keeps going.
The Big Idea
Can VR better prepare employees for the worst?
Sisu VR uses VR to train employees to handle harassment and run, hide, and fight in an active shooting.
2024-07-24T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
No one gets an Apple Vision Pro or a Meta Quest 3 and thinks, "Let's do active shooter training or learn about harassment."
But that's what Sisu VR offers — an immersive way for companies to train employees for a day they hope never comes.
A necessary evil?
CEO Jocelyn Tan founded Sisu VR based on her own experiences working as an engineer manager at various Silicon Valley tech companies.
"I faced quite a bit of discrimination, harassment, and bullying," she told The Hustle. "It was such a debilitating experience that I said, it can go two ways: I can completely leave STEM or I can do something about the problem."
Sisu's first project was VR harassment training, using scenarios taken from interviews with professionals who'd experienced misconduct.
Trainees play victim, witness, manager, and perpetrator roles, navigating situations like microaggressions, workplace politics, and how to apologize to give feedback.
The immersiveness may heighten empathy because VR:
Allows trainees to embody new identities — e.g., a different gender.
Can trigger "phantom touch," the illusion of "feeling" virtual characters or objects — e.g., someone invading their personal space.
Trainees identify gunfire and its source, and practice hiding, defending themselves, and evacuating a building. (See a video here.)
It's not graphic — the shooter is a "cardboard cutout," not a real person — but the idea is that by physically performing the actions, people are better prepared than they'd be if they only watched a video.
"You have to identify where [the shooting] is coming from so you don't run in that direction. When you're hiding, you have to move to a hiding spot and physically duck down," Sean Rossi, CTO and head of engineering, said.
It's also timed, requiring trainees to improve their response speed.
If that sounds dystopian, well, it kinda is. Tan admits it's not always an easy topic to discuss with people, but in the end, the hope is to protect and empower people — and maybe save lives.
BTW: Sisu VR built a no-code VR engine that allows developers to build their own applications, launching in August. Email hello@sisuvr.com to join the waitlist.
Free Resource
Take your brand from averagely bland to absolutely grand
To build a brand that your grandkids will hear about (and dare we say their grandkids, too), it's best if you begin with a few core things.
Namely, the three gleaming assets in our brand-building strategy kit. Save 'em now, and thank us later. (Or don't. We're used to it. It's fine.)
Packed into the bundle:
How to build a consistent brand
Brand identity worksheet
Brand-building style guide starter
Please forge something that humbles all the ho-hum humans.
We're in the thick of earnings season: Spotify posted its second straight quarterly profit; Coca-Cola beat estimates; UPS came in below estimates; GM raised its earnings outlook; Comcast's revenue dropped; Lockheed Martin crushed it.
SNIPPETS
And let's not forget the earnings showstoppers: Alphabet met expectations and saw revenues climb 14% YoY, while Tesla did not do the former — the EV maker fell short of estimates and reported a 7% drop in auto sales. Its overall revenue increased, though.
Not so fast: Cybersecurity company Wiz declined Google's $23B acquisition bid and will instead pursue an IPO, according to a memo CEO Assaf Rappaport sent to employees.
Better late than never? Google is updating its Play Store policies next month, requiring Android apps to install, work, and have a function.
California Forever, the company behind the heavily scrutinized billionaire-funded city being built in the Bay Area, is pausing development for two years to produce an environmental impact report.
The FTC is investigating how companies like Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, and Accenture are using AI for "surveillance pricing," a practice where companies charge customers different amounts based on their personal data.
Cruise is abandoning plans for its Origin autonomous vehicle. Instead of building the robotaxi from scratch with no steering wheel or pedals, it will use the Chevrolet Bolt to lower costs and streamline scaling.
Conde Nastsent a cease-and-desist letter to AI search engine Perplexity, demanding that it stop using content from the media company's publications in its search results.
Red Lobster only got one qualifying acquisition offer while seeking to exit bankruptcy. Likely new owner Fortress Investment Group would have a deep hole to climb out of — the seafood chain owes 100k+ creditors.
Amazon is launching an expansive UI upgrade for Prime Video, focusing on simplicity, personalization, and, we hope, addressing the biggest problem with the past interface: that it was impossibly shitty.
Don't miss this...
What makes an olive oil go viral? The designer behind Graza sat down with Trends to talk packaging design trends, and how a new biz can stand out.
ICYMI
'Moral disease': C'mon, is tipping really that bad?
Americans have hated tipping for almost as long as they've practiced it. In 1899, The New York Times called it the "vilest of imported vices." William Scott, in The Itching Palm, called it "a moral disease."
They still do.
As all the debates over gratuities endlessly roil — Should we tip? Who gets what percentage? Are we tipping too much? Too little? — and the nation's tipping fatigue builds, another question emerges: What can be done about it?
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: This retailer has been feeling blue over the last decade: In 2013, it had ~1.8k locations, but it's down to ~1k today, with another dozen or so stores closing by year's end.
Clue 2: Though it has spent the last 41 years under its globally recognized brand, real geeks know the store spent its first 17 years under a different name: Sound of Music.
Clue 3: This Minnesota company flexed on its competition in 2008, buying online music service Napster for $121m just a few months before chief rival Circuit City was liquidated.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Background Check
Treadmills as torture
The treadmill was once used to punish prisoners.
2024-07-24T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
A 2021 survey found 25% of US households owned a treadmill, tied with yoga mats as the second-most popular at-home fitness tool, behind weights. Yet the seemingly simple treadmill was originally conceived as a punishment — and the "mill" part was literal.
Treadmills were initially powered by either humans or animals and used to grind grains and corn. In 1818, Sir William Cubitt, whose father was a miller, suggested using a treadmill at a prison in Bury St. Edmunds, England, to keep inmates busy.
This device required several prisoners to climb an infinite staircase — so, more like a StairMaster — for hours at a time. Their use spread across Europe and the US as a means of rehabilitation, though it often just led to injury and sickness. In the 1900s, treadmills were phased out, with England abolishing their use in the penal system in 1902.
The first US patent for a treadmill as an exercise device was issued in 1913. It may feel like torture, but at least you can hop off whenever you like.
AROUND THE WEB
🔍 On this day: In 1911, archeologist Hiram Bingham found the now-famous Incan settlement of Machu Picchu in Peru, previously only known to locals.
❄️ That's interesting: The first "cold-storage banquet" was a terrifying foray into whether refrigeration, then a new technology, kept food safe to consume.
