👋 Happy Monday. It’s officially baseball season, which means seeing the name Shohei Ohtani a lot. As MLB’s second-highest earner, Ohtani will make $102m this season — but 98% of that hefty sum will be earned off the field. With $2m coming from his $700m, 10-year contract with the Dodgers, the rest of his cash will come from sponsorships with 20+ brands.
Don’t forget: Our pitch competition is open till April 4. Submit your 60-second pitch, win $5k, bring your business idea to life.
NEWS FLASH
📱 Did an 11-year-old write this? Smartphone use was associated with positive mental health outcomes in kids, according to a new University of South Florida study. The study surveyed 1.5k+ kids ages 11-13 and found that those who have their own smartphones scored better than those who don’t on almost every wellbeing measure, including depression and anxiety. Not so fast, little buddy: it wasn’t all good news. Kids who post often on social media were twice as likely as those who never or rarely post to report symptoms of anxiety, depression, and trouble sleeping.
🛒 Today in consumerism: Amazon updated Amazon Photos to allow users to shop using their pictures. Panos Panay, senior VP of Amazon’s Devices and Services division, explained via X: “Spot something you loved at a friend’s house or a toy your kid was obsessed with? Just search your photos and we’ll surface relevant items for you.” Potentially handy if you’re uncomfortable asking a stranger where they got their bag or pants, but weirdly fine with surreptitiously taking photos of strangers to steal their look.
🍞 Did you let your pandemic sourdough starter die? King Arthur Baking Co. and GE Appliances’ FirstBuild partnered on the Sourdough Sidekick, a $129 smart device that automatically feeds your starter and even prepares it based on when you’d like to make your next loaf. If you’re asking yourself who’d want to drop money on yet another appliance when you could just remember to feed your starter yourself — uh, a lot of people. An initial Indiegogo campaign seeking to raise $50k has now raised $500k+. That said, current estimates indicate it won’t be ready to ship until January 2026.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Elon Musk said he sold social media company X to xAI, his AI startup, for $45B. Musk said the combined company is worth $80B and that the new platform will “deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences.”
Charlie Javice, founder of FAFSA software startup Frank, was convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase out of $175m by exaggerating her customer base tenfold when selling her company to the bank.
QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman will transition to partner emeritus in order to focus on founding startups, the first of which will be in the music industry. Rotman was involved in investments in companies including Credit Karma, GreenSky, and SoFi.
DONE DEAL
Finesse your next negotiation
Act like the deal is done.
Flip the script on urgency (AKA act more relaxed).
Encourage prospects to dive into pain points (use the “Five Whys”).
Deeply know your buyer’s persona.
Don’t be scared of social proof!
Strategic silence + mirroring.
The key is to stand out from the crowd. If these aren’t potent enough, try a Ted Talk. Or “making yourself big.”
An AI-generated email is cool, but what about something you could wear? Or walk on?
Generative AI marketplace Arcade is making those projects a reality. Launched in 2024, the company just closed a $25m Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $42m.
Customers — or “dreamers,” as the company calls them — can use text and image prompts to create custom jewelry designs.
The designs, which are paired with a real jewelry maker, can be tweaked and refined before being ordered in a customer’s material of choice.
In three months, Arcade dreamers and makers created 650k jewelry designs on the platform.
Now, the company is expanding into home goods, offering custom-made, handwoven rugs designed by artisans in several countries.
What a concept
Arcade isn’t the only company using AI to turn ideas into tangible products.
Off/Script’s community-powered platform lets users fund each other’s ideas, from purses and T-shirts to vases and puffer jackets.
Creators can publish their product concepts to the app, with optional design assistance from an AI studio powered by Stable Diffusion.
Once a concept is published, it needs to get 100 likes before it’s assigned a price and minimum order quantity.
The product then has 30 days to generate enough orders for Off/Script to start production and ship items directly to customers. The company takes a 30% cut on all sales.
Using AI to visualize products…
… could speed up the initial design process and lets companies gather more detailed consumer feedback before having a physical prototype.
In product research and design, generative AI could unlock $60B in productivity, according to McKinsey.
When used properly, it could reduce product development time by up to 70%.
Bigger brands have already taken note: General Motors used AI models to generate 100+ seatbelt bracket design alternatives, one of which was 40% lighter and 20% stronger than the original.
While AI can give product designers a powerful assist, it’s not taking over just yet. We’d like our handloomed rug woven by actual hands, please.
Want your own executive assistant? Of course. But that’s not in the cards for every leader. Here’s how to use Claude to create a virtual assistant in less than 10 minutes.
On the pod: Edible Arrangements is known for selling fruit bouquets, but now it’s getting into cannabis.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
How much Mark Zuckerberg may have paid for a shirt Jesse Eisenberg wore in The Social Network, in which he played… Mark Zuckerberg.
Eisenberg’s Zuck wears the blue “Ardsley Athletics” T-shirt in a scene with Andrew Garfield, who plays Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, and Zuck recently said he’d bought that very garment in an auction, perBusiness Insider. Zuckerberg went to Ardsley High School in Ardsley, New York, before transferring to a prep school in New Hampshire.
That figure comes via a movie-prop auction website that listed such a shirt’s selling price.
AROUND THE WEB
🤼 On this day: In 1985, the first “WrestleMania” was held in Madison Square Garden.
🔠That’s cool: See what the Hubble Space Telescope saw on your birthday.
Over the weekend, New York City-based brewery Torch & Crown offered customers the opportunity to get its logo permanently tattooed on them in exchange for free beer. The lifetime commitment includes two free pours per visit and a 24-pack every month through the end of the 2025 baseball season — yup, not even a whole year — which the company called “a pretty solid deal” in an Instagram post last week. Since the event, which took place on Friday, there are now at least 15 “human billboards” stumbling about the city.
SHOWER THOUGHT
We like to complain about others’ headlights being too bright, often not knowing just how bright our own headlights are.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 “Restarting my sourdough starter” Berkley.
