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👋 Good morning. Remember that it’s good to be a team player — but that there’s a fine line. This guy might’ve crossed it: Tim Friede let himself be bitten by venomous snakes 200+ times along with hundreds of venom injections over 18 years. Why, you might ask? Friede’s antibodies were able to fully or partially neutralize venom of 19 of the world’s deadliest snakes in mice, according to a new study, and could one day do the same for the ~3m people who are bitten each year.

🎧 On the pod: DoorDash’s play for food-delivery dominance.

NEWS FLASH

📚 MrBeast — AKA Jimmy Donaldson — has yet another venture: a novel. Donaldson is teaming up with author James Patterson on a thriller slated for 2026. The plot centers around a contest in which 100 contestants face risky challenges, form alliances, and backstab one another to win $1B, which sounds like a very “Squid Game” version of the viral stunts MrBeast pulls IRL. It’s unclear how much publisher HarperCollins ponied up to score the collab between Donaldson, YouTube’s biggest creator, and Patterson, who has published 67 No. 1 New York Times bestsellers, but it’s rumored to have won an eight-figure bidding war.

🥡 Did someone order a billion-dollar deal? DoorDash said it’s acquiring restaurant booking platform SevenRooms for $1.2B in cash. That wasn’t all: DoorDash also snatched up British food-delivery service Deliveroo in a deal worth $3.9B. While that all sounds great, DoorDash reported Q1 revenue that fell short of analyst expectations. Those analysts have high expectations, though: The company’s $3B+ quarterly revenue represents a 21% increase from last year, and it saw 732m orders, up 18% year over year.

🏀 From beyond: NBC will use NBA narrator Jim Fagan’s voice on its next season of “NBA on NBC,” despite the fact that Fagan, who narrated the games from 1990 to 2002, died in 2017. The NBA received permission from Fagan’s family to recreate his voice with generative AI. In a statement, Fagan’s daughters, Jana Silvia Joyce and Risa Silvia-Koonin, said their father would have been “so thrilled” to participate as someone who took “great pride in his work with NBC Sports.” Previously, NBC used AI to recreate broadcaster Al Michaels’ voice for use during the 2024 Paris Olympics, though Michaels is still alive and calling NFL games.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

One more time: Rite-Aid filed for bankruptcy on Monday, not even a year after it exited its first bankruptcy. It intends to keep stores open as it finds buyers.
Heads up: Cosmos 482, a piece of space debris from a Soviet vehicle that went kaput on its way to Venus 50+ years ago, will be crashing down to Earth around May 10 — though the specifics of the when, where, and on whose head are unknown.
Instacart launched Fizz, a 21+ drinks and snack delivery app that wants to help you plan your next soiree. The app lets hosts invite guests to their carts for item selection and bill splitting before scheduling a delivery.

BUSINESS BLAST OFF

For building the business of your dreams

Time to climb into the ol’ mind palace and dig up that genius thing you thought up last summer… or was it the summer before that? (Just keep stabbing, it’s in there somewhere.)

Once you remember: use these nine nimble templates to test your next big idea and expound on the pitch.

Nine startup-friendly templates for:

Assessing feasibility
Brainstorming names
Pitching and presenting
Building your tech stack
Estimating expenses
Planning profit channels

Fill out all of these and you’ll have the bones of a business plan, swank-lookin’ slides, and foundational docs for your first co-workers.

Business launch kit

THE BIG IDEA

Nylon’s new idea: An invite-only influencers’ club

Groucho Marx famously said he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member, but that’s unlikely to be the case with Nylon. The magazine’s high-profile parties are coveted invites.

Nylon is launching an invite-only membership program centered around events and community later this year. It costs nothing to join, but you do have to be very cool.

How cool?

Bryan Goldberg, CEO and founder of Nylon parent Bustle Digital Group, told Fortune that the goal is to assemble “thousands of the most influential young tastemakers in America.” Specifically, 50k people who average 100k social media followers each, for a reach of 5B.

Why? Well, while similar communities and private clubs charge members to join, Nylon’s model is different. Goldberg is counting on brands that want access to its tastemakers to pay up, much like they already do to be featured at Nylon events.

That’s interesting…

… when you consider that most publications try to earn revenue through subscriptions and ads — both of which are on the decline — unless you’re talking about the The New York Times’ recipes and games.

They seem to churn out as much content as possible, farming for clicks and social media engagement, but don’t really focus much on in-person communities.

While Nylon’s model may not be accessible to regular people, it may inspire other publications.

People are hungry for IRL opportunities to make new friends — whether that’s through friendship apps that facilitate meetups or, as we recently covered, communal saunas. So, sure, why not a membership around a shared interest in a particular media brand?

For example, Atlas Obscura, which achieved profitability in 2023, earns revenue from brand partnerships, but also experiences, including members-only events, online courses, and even group trips.

Time will tell if Nylon’s model will turn a profit, but it does sound a lot cooler than clickbait and articles divided into 20 slides with five pop-up ads each.

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Share of parents with children ages 0-13 who say that “reading books to my child is fun for me,” according to a survey from Nielsen and HarperCollins, per The Guardian.

It seems that the age-old tradition of a bedtime story is on its way out, with just 41% of parents with kids ages 0-4 saying they frequently read to them, compared to 64% in 2012.

Some parents blame a lack of time and an increase in homework, while Gen Z parents, more so than their millennial and Gen X counterparts, see reading as an educational subject versus a “fun thing to do.” HarperCollins suggests this is because the younger generation grew up with more digital forms of entertainment.

We think it’s because they’re not doing the voices. If you want reading to your children — or your pets, even — to be fun, everyone knows you have to do the voices.

HOW YOU HUSTLE

We don’t need to tell you — our readers are amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it was worth dedicating some real estate to. Here’s our weekly spotlight on a Hustler doing something big.

Who: Ashley Catherine Dick

What: Cinora Films

The elevator pitch: “We make it easier for filmmakers to create their dream project.”

Origin story: “I started Cinora because I was frustrated at the industry falling apart. I have worked with the BBC, major funders in the UK, and I am a member of BAFTA, and I was struggling to find work. So I started producing my own films, and along the way realized I had insight from a lot of successful productions — I pulled this knowledge together and created the Filmmakers Gameplan, which synchronises all areas of production and saves time and energy on managing a film project.”

Biggest win: “Launching the Filmmakers Gameplan and an optional course to learn more about production management whilst using the tool. The first cohort started in March and we’re so excited to be working on bringing their films to life.”

Advice to a fellow entrepreneur: “Start on your idea as soon as you can — it starts growing as soon as it’s out there in the world.”

Conventional advice you think is BS: “‘We all have 24 hours in a day.’ It’s not the same 24 hours for everybody, so don’t beat yourself up if you have to go to a day job and can’t dedicate all of your time to your hustle.”

Want to be featured here? Tell us how you’re hustling.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven’s final symphony, “Symphony No. 9,” debuted in Vienna.

🦉 That’s cool: A short film about the owls at Boston’s Logan Airport.

🗞️ That’s cool: The Assist is a free, 4x-weekly newsletter sending actionable career and wellness tips to 200k+ go-getters.

📱 Haha: An interactive Nokia 3250. (In case you forgot, hold the power button on the top of the phone to turn it on.)

🐿️ Aww: Very graceful.

QUOTE OF NOTE

If you're not able to self moderate and police yourself, it's endless. You're not going to win; you're not going to see the end of the party.

Ain’t no party like a VR party, ‘cause a VR party don’t stop — unless you decide it’s over… at which point you pop off your goggles to realize you’re suddenly way too drunk, alone in your living room, and unsure what day it is.

VR parties have exploded in popularity since the pandemic, offering unmatched visuals and world-class DJ sets. But unlike IRL clubs, virtual ones never close, which can make it hard for VR ravers — like one 38-year-old IT worker who told Wired he once partied in the metaverse for 60 hours without ever leaving his apartment — to know when to call it quits.

SHOWER THOUGHT

There’s no biological flying thing a human can ride. SOURCE

Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman, with help from Singdhi Sokpo and Kaylee Jenzen.
Editing by: Ben “Dog Fancy’ member” Berkley.

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