🍺 Wear your beer

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👋 Good morning. The next time you’re asked to bring a bag of ice to a house party, be grateful that party isn’t the Kentucky Derby. An estimated 120k mint juleps were served over the weekend at horse racing’s mecca, Churchill Downs, which had 10k bourbon bottles, 2.2k+ pounds of mint, and 475k pounds of ice on hand. The only thing hitting harder than the hangover: the $22-per-cup price tag.

🎧 On the pod: Fast-food wages have increased. Has job satisfaction increased with them?

NEWS FLASH

Warren Buffett waves from inside a red vehicle.

💰 Old man announces plans to play more bridge: Warren Buffett — the Berkshire Hathaway CEO, world-famous investor, and card game enthusiast — will be one less of those things by year’s end. Buffett, who turns 95 in August, somehow shocked the business world with news that he’ll cede leadership of his obscenely successful firm to handpicked successor Greg Abel in 2026. If you’re worried about the future of Berkshire Hathaway and its $347.7B cash pile, don’t be.

🪫 Don’t forget to charge your 130-meter-long boat tonight: Tasmanian shipbuilder Incat launched the largest-ever all-electric boat, a ferry called Hull 096, on Friday. The vessel, which will travel between Uruguay and Argentina, is equipped with more than 550m pounds of batteries. It can run for 90 minutes, needs 40 minutes to fully recharge, and, we assume, carries itself with an air of superiority that other boats can’t stand.

🕺 Dance like no one’s watching and like you’re not terrified of an oncoming recession: Live Nation’s Q1 earnings show that live music is playing on — 74%, or $2.5B, of the company’s overall quarterly earnings came from concert revenue. While its ~$3.4B in revenue was down 11% from 2024, that still beat analyst estimates, and Live Nation said there are 60% more shows playing in stadiums than last year.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

Pillsbury owner Hometown Foods purchased the Chef Boyardee brand for $600m. Wondering how the actual Chef Boyardee feels about the deal? He was a real person — Italian restaurateur Hector Boiardi — but died in 1985.
Company towns are back: Starbase, where almost all residents are SpaceX employees, is officially an incorporated Texas town. You’ll never guess what company its new mayor works for.
Google Gemini’s latest feat? Beating a 29-year-old video game. Gemini 2.5 Pro completed “Pokémon Blue” over the weekend — on a livestream created by a software engineer not affiliated with Gemini — a feat that Google CEO Sundar Pichai celebrated on X.

WHY NOT YOU?

$1B+ founder secrets (and what stunts growth)

Pretty soon, the world will be in awe of its very first one-person unicorn company. And you’re gonna sit down in a chair, sad as frick, and wish you did it yourself.

Save yourself the shame — get off the sidelines and build that problem-solving startup. Yes, of course it won’t be simple, but you’ve gotta start somewhere.

That’s why our 2025 hypergrowth guide covers:

What are key traits of $1B+ startups in 2025?
How is AI impacting the landscape?
Why are investors making fewer, bigger deals?
Where is the bulk of funding bucks going?
Which tech hub is hotter than San Francisco?
How can you increase your odds of hitting a moonshot?

Read on for free

THE BIG IDEA

A black leather purse with a plant, mushrooms, and a glass of beer sticking out of it on a blue background.

Chew this over: Food waste could be the answer to alternative fabrics

Sustainability is something that most of us would happily raise a glass to.

But what if the beer in that glass was the very substance that could solve a pressing environmental problem?

That’s the concept behind Arda Biomaterials, a London startup that just raised a $5.3m seed round to produce plastic and leather alternatives, per AgFunderNews:

Arda uses a proprietary supramolecular process to extract proteins from spent grain left behind from the beer- and whiskey-making process.
Those proteins are then reworked to mimic the structure of animal proteins, producing New Grain, a textile that looks and feels a whole lot like leather.

Different beers can produce different leather looks: The roasted barley from a stout like Guinness makes for a convincing black leather, while IPAs are perfect for shades of brown.

Making leather from scratch…

… means Arda can skip the tanning process, reducing the use of harmful chemicals and cutting back on production time.

While the startup is currently sourcing raw materials from Anheuser-Busch facilities near London, Arda plans to use its latest fundraising round to build a manufacturing facility 5x bigger than its current one.

The startup’s founders told AgFunderNews that working with just one major brewery in a single facility could produce 5m-10m meters of material.

Arda isn’t the only startup…

… looking for alternative sources for textile production.

Companies like MycoWorks, Hydefy, and Ecovative have partnered with major fashion brands to make biodegradable “leather” from mushrooms — a market predicted to reach $336m by 2033.
Alt. Leather created a plastic-free leather alternative made from plants.

And outside of leather, companies like Alt Tex are using food waste to create polyester alternatives.

None of this piquing your interest? Perhaps a purse made from biodegradable T. rex skin will make you bat an eye.

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How much more 66%+ of US, UK, and Australian consumers would be willing to pay, on average, for their preferred brands, per a recent UserTesting survey.

While that may seem odd at a time when many are tightening their belts, UserTesting senior director of industry solutions Bobby Meixner says that it’s during these periods that “consumers are less willing to take chances.”

Brands that are consistent offer value, and thus win customer loyalty, even as prices rise.

AROUND THE WEB

🖊️ On this day: In 1816, John Keats’ first poem was published in The Examiner. Though he went on to become a prolific poet, he died of tuberculosis in 1821, at just 25.

🦝 That’s interesting: Revisiting IT company PC Connection’s adorable raccoon ads.

🗞️ Newsletter: TheFutureParty is a free daily newsletter that offers insights on media, entertainment, and culture in five minutes.

🕺 Haha: Here, have a Star Wars rave.

🐕 Aww: Dog POV.

QUOTE OF NOTE

The advice that brought us Sweetgreen, according to CEO Jonathan Neman, per The New York Times.

As a recent grad living in Washington, DC, Neman had dreamt of opening a fast-food restaurant that served healthy food, but found himself instead employed at consulting firm Bain & Co.

It was through working there, however — on the wisdom of a former co-worker, Neman told NYT — that he ultimately decided to pull the trigger on building his leafy green empire, which today is valued at $2.45B.

Maybe listen to your colleagues sometimes?

SHOWER THOUGHT

At some point in aging, you lose your last chance to ever do a backflip. 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 “Win the battle, but lose the Warren” Berkley.

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