👋 Good morning. Hope your week goes by as quickly as a Taco Bell drive-thru. The chain got hungry drivers their food in an average of just 4.3 minutes in 2024. If you just glanced at your calendar and saw three more days of back-to-back meetings, we fear your week might feel more like Chick-fil-A’s 8-minute average wait time.
💡 Don’t forget:Our pitch competition is open until Friday. Submit your 60-second pitch — this could be your Big Break.
NEWS FLASH
🤖 Whoa: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that ChatGPT gained 1m users in an hour, and that the “biblical demand” has left OpenAI struggling to keep up with new sign-ups. What’s behind the surge? OpenAI made its image generator free to all users. That’s already been a wild ride, with some people using it to generate images in the style of Studio Ghibli, sparking copyright concerns, and others generating fake receipts, perTechCrunch. If the latter has you tempted to fake some expense reports, a) please don’t, and b) know that its images contain metadata that will indicate if ChatGPT whipped them up.
💰 The three-comma club got bigger: A new batch of billionaires just joinedForbes’ 2025 list. The 288 new additions — up from 265 in 2024 — are worth $2.4B on average and collectively bring nearly $680B in wealth to their new, exclusive club of 3k+ billionaires. Some names you’d know, like Bruce Springsteen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Seinfeld, while others you might not — Marilyn Simons, the widow of hedge fund mogul Jim Simons, is worth $31B. Before you start trash talking the new additions, check out this stat: Almost 70% of them are self-made. Congrats, we guess.
📈 A new meme stock: Shares of conservative media outlet Newsmax Inc. have skyrocketed since its IPO on Monday, at one point bumping its value to ~$30B and making founder and CEO Christopher Ruddy a billionaire. It’s tough to sustain such a meteoric rise: Bloombergnotes that of the seven other stocks that also surged 700%+ following a US IPO in the past five years, the average company’s shares are now down ~94%.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Hooters — the restaurant chain known for its Buffalo wings… and other things — filed for bankruptcy, but will remain operational. The chain’s 400+ locations across 42 states and 29 countries will all operate as franchises after the bankruptcy process is complete.
Prime Air, Amazon’s drone delivery program, is back in action in Texas and Arizona. It was paused in January for a software update to fix issues with the drone’s altitude sensor caused by the dusty conditions in Arizona. The company aims to deliver 500m packages by drone each year by 2030.
Tinderlaunched The Game Game, an OpenAI-powered feature for US iOS users that lets singles practice wooing AI personas. Users flirt by talking to the app, which then scores them and offers constructive feedback for future flirting with, ideally, humans.
SCALE UP
Scaling strategies from OpenAI, Figma, GitHub, and Toast
Python became a go-to language for beginner devs thanks to simple syntax and flex functionality.
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You’ll also get links to top tools and resources, like research publications and a browser-based code editor. Lucky you.
Every now and then, someone says that Tumblr — the charming social media platform that will not die — is having a resurgence.
We discussed this in 2022, when The New Yorker reported that 48% of Tumblr’s users and 61% of new sign-ups were Gen Z.
Now, Business Insiderreports that Gen Z makes up half of its active monthly users and 60% of new sign-ups.
That’s not much of a needle move, but maybe that works.
A little history
David Karp founded Tumblr as a microblogging platform in 2007. It enjoyed a popular run until Yahoo acquired it in 2013 for $1.1B.
Users liked Tumblr for all the reasons they didn’t like other apps. It wasn’t gummed up with ads, users could be anonymous, and it allowed NSFW content (which Yahoo banned).
None of that screams profitability. WordPress parent Automattic acquired Tumblr in 2019, reportedly for just $3m.
Today…
… Tumblr benefits from chaos: it reported a 350% surge in user growth after Brazil banned X, and a 395% increase in posts tagging “TikTok ban” in January, when TikTok was briefly offline for US users.
But in an era of cozy gamers and surging plushie sales, Tumblr’s real strength is in vibes.
The big platforms are swamped with ads, algorithms, attention-seeking influencers, and arguing. Automattic has made some changes, including a video/GIF tab and plans to join the fediverse, but Tumblr has remained mostly the same.
A recent Tumblr ad campaign leaned into its weirdness. An example line: “There’s been a lot of talk about masculine energy, but at Tumblr, we’d like to inject some asexual trampoline ghost energy.”
But…
… are vibes sustainable?
While advertisers once avoided Tumblr due to its NSFW content (it reversed its nudity ban in 2022) and difficulty targeting ads to anonymous users, it’s currently free of the controversies that have led many to dump X.
Andrew Roth, the founder of Gen Z-focused research and consulting firm DCDX, told BI Tumblr could capitalize on monetizing users’ “intentions on social media versus the attention of them being around,” focusing on their desires and how to reach them.
That, too, sounds very vibes, but if it gives Gen Z at least one platform that isn’t totally enshittified, Godspeed.
On the pod: Can Hooters be family friendly? Seems like a stretch, but it might be the chain’s best strategic move after filing for bankruptcy.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Years a group of artists spent occupying an apartment they surreptitiously built inside the Providence Place Mall in Rhode Island.
The project is the subject of a new documentary, Secret Mall Apartment. It details how, in the early 2000s, the group found a hidden hallway in the mall and began moving in objects including a couch, table, rugs, TV, waffle maker, and PlayStation. They saw it as a protest against gentrification, but it also served as a cozy crash pad and meeting space until security busted them.
Artist Michael Townsend was banned from the mall for life following the apartment’s discovery, but that ban has since been lifted. The apartment, however, remains sealed.
HOW YOU HUSTLE
We don’t need to tell you — our readers are amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it was worth dedicating some real estate to. Here’s our weekly spotlight on a Hustler doing something big.
The elevator pitch: “Steve is an AI-powered financial coach that helps millennials take control of their money and retire earlier.”
Why: “Millennials are facing a financial crisis… Traditional financial advisors are expensive and inaccessible, while most personal finance apps only analyze past spending instead of helping users plan ahead.”
Origin story: “I grew up with limited access to financial education — my dad always told me that the stock market was just gambling, so I avoided investing for years. It wasn’t until I was well into my career that I realized how much that mindset had held me back.”
Advice to fellow founders: “Talk to customers before you feel ready, share your idea even if it’s not perfect, and embrace the discomfort of taking risks. The more shots you take, the luckier you’ll get.”
What would you spend $1m on today?: “We’d launch The $1M Financial Makeover Campaign, giving away $1M directly to real people who need financial help while also providing them with Steve’s coaching.”
Want to be featured here? Tell us how you’re hustling.
AROUND THE WEB
🧑🚀 On this day: In 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odysseypremiered.
Despite being stranded at the International Space Station for over nine months — on a mission that was originally supposed to be just eight days long — astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams both said they would be down to give it another go aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft while speaking at a news conference for the first time since their return last month.
Apparently, the two didn’t have as bad of a time in space as we’d imagined here on Earth: Aside from missing family and home-cooked meals, they reportedly spent their days working out and celebrated every holiday “in style,” including building a reindeer and riding it around in zero gravity. Fun, but maybe not potentially-another-year-in-space fun.
SHOWER THOUGHT
A crocodile has a massive advantage over a lion in deep water, but the lion wins on dry land. Therefore, there must exist a depth of water that makes it an even fight.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 “Def doesn’t have an old emo Tumblr” Berkley.
