👋 Don’t believe everything you see. It’s a good reminder, and one that visitors to the Chengdu Snow Village project in China’s Sichuan province needed. The “winter wonderland” lured tourists with photos of snow-covered log cabins, but visitors were left wanting much more when the “snow” turned out to be bedsheets and balls of cotton. What’s that saying? Fool me once, Willy Wonka experience, shame on you; fool me twice…
🎧 On the pod:Why startup unicorns are becoming an endangered species.
NEWS FLASH
🍗 The artist formally known as Kentucky Fried Chicken? KFC parent company Yum! Brands is moving 100 employees from the chain’s Louisville, Kentucky, office to one in Plano, Texas, where the group’s Pizza Hut staffers are already located. Yum! Brands, which after the move will have headquarters in Texas and California, said the relocation would allow the company to “foster greater collaboration among brands and employees.” While that’s all well and good, there might be another draw for making Colonel Sanders pack his bags: Texas offers low corporate tax rates, attracting companies like Tesla and Oracle to move in.
🧷 We hardly knew ye: If you bought a $700 Humane AI Pin in spite of its many excoriating reviews, we regret to inform you it will stop working on Feb. 28. The company has advised users to download their data before that date, and will refund customers within the 90-day return period. As for Humane, HP is buying the company’s IP for $116m and transitioning its employees to HP IQ, a new team focused on “building an intelligent ecosystem” across HP’s products. While $116m may sound like a nice chunk of change, it is a far cry from the unrealistic $1B buyout Humane originally wanted.
🎮 Pokémon no: Niantic struck it big in 2016 with its ARG “Pokémon Go,” filling parks with gamers searching for a Charizard. Now, however, it reportedly wants to offload its game dev business, possibly to Scopely — a mobile gaming company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group — for ~$3.5m. Niantic has shelved six of its games since “Pokémon Go” and is focusing on building a geospatial model, which could have applications in AR games and wearables, or robots that require navigation capabilities, such as self-driving taxis, drones, and delivery bots.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Iced out: Ticket prices for the 4 Nations Face-Off Championship between the US and Canada are in line with this year’s Super Bowl. The cheapest ticket, at ~$1.2k, is 450% more expensive than its initial price, and many are selling for $2k-$4k.
That’s that: Nikola, the EV truck company founded in 2015, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company was once projected to become the Tesla of long-haul semitrucks.
Appleannounced the new $599 iPhone 16e yesterday. The lower-cost phone has the same processing power as the more expensive model, thanks to Apple’s A18 chip, but just one camera lens. It hits the market later this month.
FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM
Get ready for years of speculation about Apple robotics
Wish Apple would just give you a folding iPhone already? Sorry, but they’ve got other things in mind. Robots are one of those things.
The company is said to be working on both humanoid and non-humanoid designs.
One glimpse into their research showed an emotive Pixar-style lamp robot.
But one top analyst says these efforts are still in a proof-of-concept phase, with nothing arriving for consumers until at least 2028.
In the bestiaries of the Middle Ages, the unicorn was a violent beast that could be coaxed into a tranquil slumber only by a virgin woman — at which point hunters would harvest its horn for its various medicinal properties. Yay.
Today’s startup unicorns — those that achieve $1B+ valuations — are having their own struggles.
What happened?
A startup’s ultimate goal is to “exit,” resulting in an ROI for investors and founders either through an acquisition or IPO — but that’s tricky for any startup.
Carta tracked 4,369 US startups founded in 2018. Of those, 2,707 have shut down, and just 15 have IPO’d.
Unicorns — like their mythological namesake — are supposed to be rare, yet a covid-era boom in VC spending saw 354+ companies achieve unicorn status in 2021, perBloomberg.
Since then, high interest rates have dried up VC funding for sectors aside from tech’s buzziest — AI, of course. Many once-high-flying startups have been acquired for much less, lost considerable value, or collapsed.
Convoy, a trucking startup valued at $3.8B in 2022, shuttered in 2023 after failing to find a buyer.
Beyond Meat, once valued at $10B+, is now worth ~$287m.
Of 2021’s unicorns, fewer than 30% have raised funding in the last three years, per Carta data.
But also…
… let’s get back to the supposed rarity of a unicorn. Many startups are likely overvalued, according to experts.
In 2017 — before the more recent unicorn boom — a Stanford study warned that the then-100+ US unicorns were reporting values an average of 51% higher than their actual worth.
How does that happen? Some startups make generous promises to preferred shareholders, rendering common shares “nearly worthless.” Stanford Business offered this example:
In 2008, SpaceX offered investors 2x their money back among other terms, leading to more investments, thus raising the company’s valuation.
So what now?
Bloomberg is calling this the “era of the zombie unicorn,” in which startups — many of which are still unprofitable — are struggling to find funding among more conservative investors.
They’re forced to agree to low-value acquisitions, raise at lower valuations, or take unfavorable deals — e.g., those that require changes in ownership or pay-to-play from previous investors. That is, unless there’s another boom like covid, but hopefully… not covid.
When a Silicon Valley OG talks, we listen. Tune in for crazy stories of Zynga’s early days and three free business ideas to run with.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Percent of CFO job listings that mention AI, according to software company Datarails’ analysis of 1k job descriptions.
That’s up from the 8% of CFO job postings that included AI just one year ago in January 2024.
If you’re hoping that’s just an anomaly, nah, not so much. Demand for AI also extends outside of the C-suite: Mentions of AI appeared in 35% of all financial analyst listings, more than double the 14% in 2024.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1985, Ireland approved the sale of contraceptives, defying the Catholic Church.
⚔️ That’s interesting: A man’s quest to find the owner of a Japanese sword his grandfather brought home following WWII.
🧠 That’s cool: The newCrunchbase introduces live, predictive intelligence that can help you find and act on opportunities.
❓ Haha: A Bluesky bot that asks “Jeopardy”-style questions and chooses a winner based on likes.
Liwei Liao, the owner of LA seafood market Joint Seafood, isn’t wrong — until recently, caviar’s place in the world remained high-end, unapproachable, and unimaginative. Today, thanks to social media and the appetites of younger consumers, the fish-egg delicacy is garnishing everything from fast food and potato chips to ice cream, per Business Insider, with global sales ballooning ~74% between 2020 and 2024.
Now if only its prices would receive that same low-brow treatment…
HOT TAKES
Yesterday, we asked if you’ve noticed prices surging when booking a rideshare.
For 67% of you, the answer was a definite yes. Another 23% said they might’ve noticed a slight uptick, while 9.5% said they haven’t felt the change.
Readers mostly report using Uber (68%), with Lyft coming in second at 28%.
Rising costs aren’t a huge issue for the 30% who said they almost never call a rideshare or the 38% who only do so every few months.
For those who are booking rides, they’re often eventful:
“A driver decorated his SUV in Christmas lights and wore a full Santa suit (beard included). It was a little concerning.”
“One driver tried to sell me weed, and at least two tried to ask me for a date. I declined on all counts.”
“A driver tried to set me up with her granddaughter while actively running a red light.”
SHOWER THOUGHT
At some point in the mid 2000s, someone decided that saying double-you double-you double-you in front of every web address was too much effort and we all just collectively agreed.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben “Chicken nuggets, hold the caviar” Berkley.
