đ Happy Monday. Hope you were able to unwind a little bit over the weekend, and may we all channel Warren Buffett â in many ways, hopefully â going into this week. If things get dicey, give Rudyard Kiplingâs 1895 poem âIfâ a read. Buffett told shareholders in 2017 to heed the poemâs advice, including to âkeep your head when all about you are losing theirs.â
đ Donât forget to vote for The Hustle so we can take home a Webby Award. And HubSpot Mediaâs My First Million and The Next Wave podcasts deserve some trophies, too.
NEWS FLASH
đ» On second thought: The Trump admin temporarily exempted certain imported electronics, including smartphones, computers, and semiconductors, from reciprocal tariffs. That could be good news for Big Tech companies like Apple, which relies on China for ~90% of iPhone production and assembly, but such items will still be included in forthcoming âsemiconductor tariffs.â
đŁ Donât cry, kids, just decorate your marshmallows. With egg prices hitting another high last week, at $6.23 â 60% up from a year ago â Kraft Heinz-owned Jet-Puffed is getting creative to capture Easter shoppers. The brand is selling a $2 âDip and Decorate Dozenâ kit on Walmartâs website that contains six dye colors, tongs, and pens for decorating a carton of extra-large marshmallows in place of pricey eggs.
Congrats to the Windows 95 âReboot Chime,â one of 25 new additions to the Library of Congressâ National Recording Registry. The peaceful startup sound was composed by Brian Eno.
Target customers can now buy ButcherBoxâs meat boxes, which typically require a subscription, on Target Plus, the retailerâs third-party marketplace. Target has been bolstering its grocery offerings, reaching $24B in sales in 2024.
The teens have spoken: Piper Sandlerâs semiannual young consumer survey found that teens are staying loyal to Starbucks, with 51% reporting it as their favorite beverage brand. Out of all chains, though, Chick-fil-A remained victorious with 17% of the vote.
PRESS RESET
How to stack wins on wins this year
Wait a second⊠Wasnât this supposed to be your year? Or was that last year?
Trick question: itâs every year. Take Jesse Itzlerâs super refreshing worksheet to hit the âresetâ button in your brain, and explore new ways to dominate in life.
We bet youâve never seen the words ârefreshingâ and âworksheetâ in the same sentence. And we really mean it. Give yourself one good hour.
Nil might mean nothing to you, but in the world of college sports, it means quite a bit.
College athletes werenât always allowed to profit off of their name, image, and likeness (NIL), and they often forfeited their rights to do so when signing on with a universityâs team.
Thatâs since changed, thanks to a series of â ongoing â legal proceedings:
In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that refusing to let college athletes earn NIL income violated antitrust laws.
Today, the House v. NCAA case is underway in California, where a judge is still deliberating on three antitrust cases that, if approved, would pay $2.8B in damages to current and former athletes and allow colleges to pay players directly for NIL use.
Notice that capital B â weâre talking about billions of dollars here. The NIL industry is estimated to be worth $1.67B.
Of courseâŠ
⊠that means there are startups sniffing around the cash pile. One in particular, Opendorse, has raised $40m in funding to pair athletes with brand deals and is a major player in the NIL space, perInc.
Most college athletes donât have agents to help them vet offers from brands or handle contracts.
Athletes can make profiles, apply directly to brand deals, and get paid all within the companyâs app.
On the other side, brands can search for student athletes by sport or university. The company charges brands ~10% of the deal for using the platform.
It seems to be working: The company says it now has 150k athletes using its platform, 115k of whom are in college, and the dollar value of deals booked through Opendorse increased 50x between 2020 and 2024 to $100m+.
A shrinking league
While hundreds of startups flocked to the NIL space following the 2021 ruling, few are left standing.
Opendorse estimates that the number of NIL-related companies has fallen from ~250 in 2022 to 40 today.
Still worth a shot catching a big fish, though: Livvy Dunne, an LSU gymnast, made $9.5m in NIL deals over her college career. Weâd take 10% of that any day.
On the pod: Shopifyâs CEO doubles down, Googleâs AI overviews, and why Americans still donât trust AI.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Share of Uber rides in Austin, Texas, that were conducted in a Waymo robotaxi during the last week of March, per market analytics firm YipitDataâs analysis of customer receipts, viaBloomberg.
Austin customers can book a Waymo ride in Uberâs app, which differs from other cities where customers must use Waymoâs app. That could explain why Austinâs 37-square-mile operating zone scored 80% more driverless rides in its first 27 days than San Franciscoâs zone did.
AROUND THE WEB
⟠On this day: In 1910, William Howard Taft became the first US president to throw the ceremonial first pitch at an MLB game.
đ Art: A virtual tour of Spainâs DalĂ Theater-Museum, dedicated to surrealist artist Salvador DalĂ.
đ” Thatâs cool: What peopleâs favorite songs mean to them.
đź Thatâs interesting: The episode of This American Life that turned out to be a total fabrication.
Job openings are being flooded by AI scammers, and theyâre getting harder to weed out, according to Vijay Balasubramaniyan, the CEO of Pindrop Security, one of several burgeoning identity-verification startups. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four job candidates will be fake.
Cybersecurity and crypto companies hiring for remote roles have been particularly targeted by bad actors, who, after being hired, can steal company information or install malware to demand ransom, perCNBC. One such company, CAT Labs, says many of its job applicants have been North Korean spies.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Having a shitty memory is great for rewatching TV shows, but not much else.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 âStill waiting on that signing offerâ Berkley.
