If each night before bed you pray for a Cheez-It as big as your face, today’s your lucky day: Taco Bell is reviving its Big Cheez-It menu, complete with an a la carte cracker that’s 16x larger than your run-of-the-mill Cheez-It. Does 16x the size mean 16x the stomach ache? There’s only one way to find out.
In today’s email:
X marks the spot: Your chance to hunt for hidden treasure.
Weird week: A cheesy way to impress employers.
Around the web: A cool stargazing tool, a movie-themed puzzle, and more.
👇 Listen: Live from HubSpot’s Inbound 2024, Canva co-founder and CPO Cameron Adams joins the show to discuss AI’s place in creative pursuits.
The Big Idea
‘Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.’
An indie game designer is bringing the sport and mystery of the treasure hunt to modern day.
2024-09-20T00:00:00Z
Jacob Cohen
If the Indiana Jones movies have taught us anything — other than that it’s smart to quit while you’re ahead — it’s that being a treasure hunter seems like a lot of fun.
Real life has fewer opportunities for hunting treasure than fiction, unfortunately, so it’s good that people with too much money, creativity, or both have set up actual quests for valuable prizes:
In 2010, millionaire and eccentric showman Forrest Fenn announced that he had hidden a treasure chest full of gold and gemstones somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
Five people died searching for the chest, worth an estimated ~$1m, prompting authorities to call on Fenn to end the hunt.
A man named Jack Stuef found the treasure in 2020, shortly before Fenn’s death, and he has refused to reveal its location.
In the ‘80s, author Byron Preiss launched a hunt for 12 treasure boxes hidden in North America. Only three were ever found, and Preiss died without recording each box’s location.
Another search begins…
Indie game designer Jason Rohrer has set up another massive treasure hunt with musician Tom Bailey. Called Project Skydrop, this one is hidden somewhere within a 500-mile radius of New York.
The prize is a small golden trophy that’s worth ~$25k and is engraved with a bitcoin wallet passphrase that will give the winner access to a potentially massive pot of prize money.
How do I find it?
Over the next three weeks, that 500-mile radius will steadily shrink until the hunt’s website reveals the exact location.
For $20, you can get access to daily hints.
You’re not supposed to “spill the blood” of anyone else during the search, which shouldn’t need to be said, but it’s good that it was.
You don’t want to be the bad guyin the Indiana Jones movie.
Free Resource
How to quickly size up your competitors
No time for fun and games — the other businesses in your industry are out there trying to eat your lunch, and that just makes us sick to our stomach.
Take all 10 of these competitive analysis templates to start gathering new data, switching up strategies, and keeping your foes on their toes.
America has a new sweetheart, and it’s a baby pygmy hippo at a zoo — in Thailand. Moo Deng, which means “bouncy pig,” is two months old and has garnered 2.7m+ followers on the zoo’s TikTok page. The chubby, slimy little spectacle caused such a surge in visitors that the zoo announced it would limit viewings to five minutes, two days a week.
SNIPPETS
23&Me’s full boardresigned over CEO Anne Wojcicki’s ambiguous plans to take the DNA startup private. Wojcicki wrote she was “surprised and disappointed,” but would build a new board.
Amazon’s Project Amelia is now available in beta for US sellers. The AI assistant offers tools to help track sales data, customer information, and metrics.
Speaking of Amazon… It’s launching a new “Shark Tank”-style competition show called “Buy It Now.” Sellers will pitch their businesses to win $20k and have their products featured in a new Amazon store dedicated to the show.
Unlimited breadsticks in bed? Olive Garden’s parent company, Darden Restaurants, is piloting a delivery partnership with Uber before rolling it out to its 900+ US locations.
JetBlue is opening its own airport lounges, beginning with an 8k-square-foot lounge in New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport next year and followed by an 11k-square-foot club in Boston Logan International Airport.
Beauty subscription brand Ipsynamed Galen Smith, former CEO of Redbox Entertainment, as its new CEO. Last year, Ipsy folded BoxyCharm into its Ipsy brand to streamline operations.
Hey: Want to know how Ryan Reynolds decides where to invest his time and energy? Today only, we’ve got a live stream for that — and you can find that right here. (Deadpool goes on stage at 2:30pm Eastern.)
Don’t miss this…
AI experts Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lands have spent a lot of time digging through AI tools, but there are still some holes to fill. They’ve identified three big ones and offer them right here.
Weird Week
The discovery of butt-breathing animals won a scientific award. So did some other bizarre findings. How well can dead fish swim? And do pigeons make good missile guides? Thanks to the winners of the 2024 Ig Nobels — an annual award recognizing the most comical scientific achievements — such mysteries have been answered. The prize, doled out by actual Nobel laureates, covers 10 categories, including chemistry, which was won by a team that used chromatography to separate drunk worms from sober ones. I mean… we can’t all cure cancer.
Desperately looking for a job? Pizza Hut will help you (with the “desperate” part anyway). In its latest PR stunt, the chain is offering some job seekers the chance to send potential employers a medium cheese pizza — with their resume printed on the box. One stipulation: The baked bribery is only available for delivery to NYC offices, and while Pizza Hut disclaimed that it cannot guarantee results, it can guarantee you’ll stand out among other applicants. Still interested? Submissions are open through Sept. 22.
A child with an eye for antiques saved a Renaissance masterpiece from the trash. Mat Winter discovered the engraving, now identified as the work of famed German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, at a local dump in southern England when he was just 11 years old. Thirteen years later, the once-dumpster-destined artwork — a print of Dürer’s “Knight, Death and the Devil” from 1513 — just sold for $35k+ at auction. According to Rare Book Auctions director Jim Spencer, this isn’t the first gem to be pulled from a landfill: A tattered 1997 copy of Harry Potter tossed out by a school previously fetched ~$40k. What’s that saying about one man’s trash?
Fit The Bill
Can you identify today’s billion-dollar brand?
When this company was founded in 2011, it had the same name but with a “Mr.” in front.
A relevant retailer purchased the company for $3.3B+ in 2017, then the largest acquisition of an ecommerce business.
It offers 24/7 customer support, although the beneficiaries of its service are typically incapable of having a phone conversation or using a computer.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Toolbox
Don’t put too much pressure on your first click here — there are worthwhile tips behind all three doors.
🙅 “Don’t overcomplicate things”: Jenna Kutcher built a seven-figure business, then her very next move was sharing her three favorite marketing tips with you.
🎮 Play the AI game right: VC Moritz Baier-Lentz joins The Next Wave to discuss how AI is reshaping the $187B gaming industry.
🤝 Bridge the divide: Let’s not dance around it — sales and marketing leaders don’t naturally get along. How can you solve for that?
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1881, Chester Arthur was inaugurated as president, becoming the third US president to serve in a single year following Rutherford B. Hayes’ term and the assassination of James Garfield.
When cellphones were new, it was cool to have a fun or interesting ringtone. Today, if your phone isn’t permanently on silent mode you’re seen as a scumbag.SOURCE
Today’s Fit the Bill answer is Chewy (Market cap: $12.97B)
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, Singdhi Sokpo, and Sam Barsanti. Editing by: Ben “Always wanted to be on ‘Legends of the Hidden Temple’” Berkley.
