An unknown buyer dropped ~$844k on a shabby 1818 first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein last week. If you're feeling particularly bummed about losingout on the auction, you can always wire us $844k and we'll slap around a copy of Frankenstein until it looks 200+ years old.
In today's email:
Summerween: Spooky season, sure. But spooky summer?
Not surprising: Global startup funding is trending up, doubly so if you're in AI.
VR treadmill shoes: The latest way to waste your paycheck.
Around the web: Top albums by year, where to pick your own fruit, and more.
👇 Listen: Why the Halloween economy isn't limited to the fall anymore.
The Big Idea
Summerween is here to make your summer spooky
People are now throwing Summerween parties, and we would like to be invited, please.
2024-07-11T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
Tired of Christmas decor clogging shelves months early? Well, get ready for Summerween, the new trend adding ghosts and ghouls to your pool parties.
Summerween is an established holiday in the animated series "Gravity Falls," where residents gather in June to carve jack-o'-melons.
But on social media…
… the term has gone viral for a few reasons: capitalism, and because we love an excuse to throw a theme party.
Summer is typically when retailers like Pottery Barn and Michaels drop their 2024 Halloween collections. In 2023, Americans spent $5.2B+ on Halloween decor.
It's also when Halloween attractions, like Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights and Six Flags' Fright Fest, start announcing fall plans.
Meanwhile, Summerween parties are combining the aesthetic of Halloween with summer vibes.
… also share a long history. Sure, Halloween takes place around Halloween, but many hits are actually summer flicks: Friday the 13th, Midsommar, Jaws, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I Know What You Did Last Summer.
It's also a great time to sit in an air-conditioned movie theater, making it a popular season for horror at the box office.
This year's releases include A Quiet Place: Day One, MaXXXine, Longlegs, and Alien: Romulus, while last July's Talk to Me unseated Hereditary as A24's highest-grossing horror film, earning $92m+ globally against a $4.5m budget.
There are no more federal holidays between Independence Day and Labor Day, so go ahead. Get a coffin pool float and have yourself a Summerween.
Free Resource
How to land a developer role despite AI
The gap between you and AI is getting wider by the minute.
That is, until you start to lock in new strats. Here's YouTuber Tech With Tim's checklist for thriving while you're heads-down on the hunt.
Essential tips for job-seeking devs:
Communication skills
Key programming languages
Nailing down your learning process
15 top channels for surfacing new skills
Portfolio, resume, and interview prep
Unlike AI, you don't need to eat the web for answers — get on track and grow your brain with this framework.
The ultimate case of "underpromise, overdeliver": Amazon promised it'd match all of its energy consumption with renewable energy by 2030 and, well, they say they've hit that vague goal seven years early. Congrats?
SNIPPETS
Samsungunveiled its Galaxy Ring yesterday, facing off against Oura in the smart ring arena. The $400 ring is designed to be worn 24/7 and uses AI to collect, analyze, and provide coaching on a user's health data.
Speaking of Samsung… ~6.5k union workers are extending a planned three-day strike to be "indefinite" after the company failed to respond to demands over pay and working conditions.
Microsoft and Apple won't have formal seats in OpenAI's boardroom, exiting observer roles on the ChatGPT maker's board of directors amid EU antitrust investigations.
Walmart will open five US automated grocery distribution centers. The ~700k-square-foot centers will use robotics to retrieve and pack perishable food onto pallets for faster shipment to its stores.
CNN will lay off ~100 employees as it leans into more digital and video offerings and plans a "strategic push into AI."
Thanks, Whataburger: After Hurricane Beryl left 1.8m Houston customers without power, Whataburger's app went viral as a better power tracker than the local utility company, which has no app.
Las Vegas' iconic Mirage will close next week after 35 years, but before it shutters, the casino is legally required to give away $1.6m in unclaimed prizes.
Revenge of the Nerds: Ferrara Candy has a big hit on its hands with Nerds Gummy Clusters, a gummy candy covered in a bunch of smaller Nerds: It's currently worth ~$500m in sales.
Pull it together, founders: Ever since global VC funding started cooling down in 2022, setting out to raise a big round for the average startup has felt like a one-way ticket to misery. We're talking "sipping wine coolers in the dark, listening to Dashboard Confessional" levels of bleak here — 2023 marked the lowest point for venture funding since 2018.
For those seeking any available ray of hope, though, last quarter offered something to latch on to: Global startup funding picked up in Q2 2024, perCrunchbase. Receipts totaled $79B, representing the best period since Q1 2023, up 16% QoQ and 12% YoY.
This doesn't mean the money drought is ending for everyone, however — more than half of all funding went to AI and health/biotech startups. AI-related companies, in particular, claimed 30% of all VC cash, putting up its best quarter in recent years, and landing five of the quarter's six $1B+ funding rounds.
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: This New Jersey-based company says it works with half of American health care providers to serve one-third of adult Americans every year.
Clue 2: Its couriers make 70k+ stops in the US on a daily basis and can probably navigate to every hospital's phlebotomy station with their eyes closed.
Clue 3: This company generated $9.25B in revenue last year, but it generated zero goodwill with the writer of this clue for requesting 9-12 hours of fasting before a blood draw.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Not Necessary
Freeaim
Go the distance: Want to travel the world without leaving your room? Willing to look super goofy doing so? Then Freeaim has a product just for you. The startup's VR shoes are compatible with all SteamVR-supported headsets and let users walk inside virtual reality games. The shoes, whose motorized wheels let users step without actually moving, give the sensation of being on a treadmill, and "feel natural and comfortable after just 10 minutes," according to the company. They are also — according to Freeaim's website — "affordable," at the price of $5k.
AROUND THE WEB
🥤 On this day: In 2002, convenience store chain 7-Eleven began celebrating Free Slurpee Day.
💿 That's interesting: The most-streamed albums on Spotify from every year since 1960.
🧠 That's cool: Enjoy these old, occasionally questionable scientific papers.
