👋 Happy Monday. You know work can lead to some unlikely friendships — like that Gen Zer and baby boomer who get lunch together every day. It happens in the animal world, too: At the Metro Richmond Zoo, Kumbali the cheetah and Kago the labrador retriever are celebrating their 10th birthdays together — and ten years of being friends — in May.
🎧 On the pod:The story behind the spray-on condom.
NEWS FLASH
🍦 The fast food wars continue: Wendy’s is the latest chain to announce a new product. Or, newish. The chain is rolling out Frosty Swirls and Frosty Fusions, allowing customers to mix in sauces and toppings to its classic Frosty — previously limited to chocolate or vanilla — for the first time. The desserts will also come with updated cups, lids, and spoons “designed for the perfect eating experience.” The customized option is part of the chain’s goal to boost global sales from $14.5B to $18B in three years and grow worldwide locations by 15% to 8.3k.
🚀 RIP: The Athena lunar lander, Intuitive Machines’ second moon lander, is dead. The lander tipped over just one day after arriving on the moon’s south pole, and cannot recharge its batteries due to extreme cold temperatures and the direction of the sun on its solar panels. While Athena is no more, Intuitive Machines was able to deploy NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment — and a couple other experiments — before she shut her eyes for good. The mining experiment contains a drill capable of drilling three feet into the moon’s surface. The saga is unfortunately familiar for the company: Its Odysseus spacecraft met the same fate last year.
💿 Bummer: It turns out your physical media collection might be just as ephemeral as digital media. Some DVDs distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment between 2006 and 2008 are now suffering from disc rot, rendering them unplayable, with one DVD collector saying they “curdle like milk.” In a statement released to movie news website JoBlo, Warner Bros. Discovery said it would replace defective discs. However, some titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, so the best WBD can offer is a title of similar value.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Going, going, gone: Walgreens Boots Alliance is going private in a $10B deal with private equity firm Sycamore Partners. Walgreens saw a ~50% drop in its share price over the last year and its market value, once peaking at $100B, dropped below $8B last year.
We hardly knew Ye: Adidas finally offloaded the last of its Yeezy merchandise in Q4, generating $705m profit in 2024, after severing ties with the rapper in 2022. The shoemaker also announced it will eliminate 500 “obsolete” roles from its Herzogenaurach, Germany, HQ to streamline operations.
Not so fast: Apple is holding off on AI updates designed to help Siri understand “personal context” and take action within apps. This delay will also reportedly affect Apple’s rumored smart home hub.
STEAL THIS SYSTEM
How Sam squeezes chatbots for the good stuff
If you don’t know the hotdog-selling legend who later launched us, Sam is one of the most deeply productive people on the planet.
Here’s how he trained a GPT to act as his board of advisors. See how he structured the process to optimize yourself.
Life coaching: Pulling advice based on his profile, favorite books, and scientific research.
Boosting copywriting course sales: Just a few tweaks, and suddenly CopyThat is “making way more money now.”
Improving his health by feeding it photos, fitness logs, and bloodwork.
Finding new ‘fits, AKA making it his NYC shopping spree guide.
You know when you sit down with a warm chocolate chip cookie and just can’t wait for a nice cold sheet of milk?
Wait — that’s not right.
But it is if you ask plant-based milk brand Milkadamia, which is launching Flat Pack, a square sheet of oat milk, perInc.
The company turns oat milk into sheets using a proprietary 2D-printing process.
Each sheet makes 8 fluid ounces of oat milk when blended with water, and can be torn into pieces for smaller quantities or soaked in water overnight for easier mixing.
The flat-packing process cuts out traditional cartons, bringing the company closer to its goal of lowering packaging waste by up to 94%.
It also lowers the packaging weight by 85%. The vacuum-sealed packs are 10 times lighter than the average two-pound carton of milk.
Packaging waste is a problem far bigger than a single brand: Food packaging generates 78m+ metric tons of plastic waste annually, and only 14% gets recycled.
Milking it
While it’s the latest brand to try its hand at the concept, Milkadamia didn’t invent 2D milk.
German company Veganz licensed tech from Vitiprints, a 2D-printing company, to create its Mililk oat milk sheets.
Outside of the milk category, Slice of Sauce created a dehydrated condiment line. (“Shark Tank” spoiler: the product never came to market.)
Being one of the first products to market in a burgeoning industry has its pros, but also its cons: Milkadamia needs to teach consumers about its product before they’ll buy it.
While the appetite for sheets of milk is still in question, there’s a proven hunger for sustainability: 92% of shoppers consider it an important factor when choosing a brand, according to a 2023 NielsenIQ report.
Most importantly: This could spell the end of crying over spilled milk.
Does that new shiny feature actually work? Ideas will only get your startup so far — learn how to nail your usability testing.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Cans of lager in Moosehead Breweries’ “Presidential Pack.”
Driven by potential tariffs — Moosehead sells ~20% of its beer in the US, where it also sources its aluminum lids — Canada’s oldest independent brewery said the giant crate contains enough beer for buyers to have one a day for four years. It’s available to residents in the provinces of Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia for $2.4k.
Moosehead was founded in 1867, and has been privately owned and operated by the Oland family for six generations.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1922, activist Mahatma Gandhi was arrested in Bombay on charges of sedition.
🎉 At SXSW? Dinner’s on us tonight: We’re hosting the unofficial official founder party alongside HubSpot for Startups. Add yourself to tonight’s guest list, skip the line with password “Do the Hustle,” and enjoy free BBQ and beer.
⌚ That’s cool: A website that displays timezones visually.
That’s how Tanya B., a professional line stander, feels about her gig.
You know the spot: The tiny, walk-in-only restaurant that you’re dying to get into — with a line winding down the block from open until close.
What if you could make it vanish?
Line-standing services like Taskrabbit, Same Ole Line Dudes, and Skip the Line are becoming increasingly popular, perThe Wall Street Journal.
Between 2023 and 2024, line-waiting requests through Taskrabbit jumped 18% nationwide.
Taskrabbit charges an average of $27 per hour while Ole Line Dudes has a pricing model: $50 minimum for up to two hours plus $25 for each additional hour. Extreme weather and overnight waits are extra.
Now calculate how much that famous slice of pizza is worth to you.
SHOWER THOUGHT
It’s funny how, as you progress through college, they require you to write longer and longer papers. Then you get to the professional world and no one will read an email that’s more than five sentences.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you byJuliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman, with help from Kaylee Jenzen. Editing by: Ben “Holy sheet milk” Berkley.
