🤳 Startups for influencers

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👋 Good morning to all the Olivias and Liams out there. The Social Security Administration released its 2024 list of the most popular US baby names, and Olivia and Liam held the No. 1 spots for girls and boys, respectively, for the sixth year in a row. If you tried to be original and name your son Truce, too bad; the name rose 11.1k+ spots in the last year alone.

🎧 On the pod: Entrepreneur and small-biz enthusiast Maha Abouelenein on how to start, grow, and scale your business in 2025.

NEWS FLASH

🍴 Boston and Philadelphia are readying the white tablecloths, because the Michelin Guide is coming to town. The team behind the esteemed restaurant ranking system announced its new Northeast Cities category will include the two cities, following a string of expansions in recent years. Michelin doesn’t visit a city for free, or for cheap: The Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau paid $1m for three years of Michelin coverage, and Texas forked over $2.7m to make it into the guide.

🚗 Might want to book that Memorial Day trip now: Travel for the holiday weekend is projected to top a 20-year-old record high this year, according to data from AAA. More than 45m Americans are estimated to travel at least 50 miles from home between May 22 and May 26 — up 1.4m travelers from 2024 and beating out the record 44m who traveled in 2005. This year’s adventurers are mostly choosing to stick to the comfort of their cars, with 87% of travelers — 39.4m people — taking road trips.

🥜 Newtella: Nutella hasn’t dropped a new variety in 61 years and, frankly, why should it? It’s perfect. Yet Ferrero just announced Nutella Peanut, which adds roasted peanuts to the iconic chocolate-hazelnut spread to court North American consumers, who apparently love peanuts. The product will be made at an Illinois facility where Ferrero makes other peanut offerings — including Butterfinger, which is getting a limited-time marshmallow and white chocolate flavor this year.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

Now that’s an AI use case: Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University introduced LegoGPT, an AI model that can generate Lego structures from written prompts. The system ensures models can actually be stable and physically made, whether by human or robot hand.
Your portfolio's favorite news: The US and China agreed to drop US tariffs on Chinese imports from at least 145% to 30% for 90 days, and Chinese levies on US imports from 125% to 10%. US stocks surged as a result, with the Dow rising ~2.3%.
Only a few years behind: Fox Corp. announced Fox One, a forthcoming streaming service targeting cord-cutters that will include all of its brands — Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Weather, etc. — on one platform.

GEMINI GEMS

Don’t be scared to cheat more at work

The main reason Gemini is such a beautiful tool is because it lives right inside your Google Workspace apps.

So if you (like us) swim through labyrinthine networks of Docs and Sheets and emails and projects, and sigh every time you've gotta switch tabs to ask a chatbot with no context more questions, then this should be a very easy call.

Read Mindstream’s five-minute Gemini guide to:

Create content bundles (emails, social posts, LPs) from a single prompt
Extract key spreadsheet insights without formulas
Leverage a little-known extension that acts as your personal knowledge base
Simplify work with eight more powerful features, including Deep Research and automated meeting notes

Gemini 101

THE BIG IDEA

Several hands holding phones take photos of a man in a green shirt.

Who influences the influencers?

A 2023 study found that ~60% of Gen Zers want to be influencers.

And who can blame them? Yapping on TikTok is more fun than being in an office, and Goldman Sachs forecasts the creator industry could be worth a whopping $480B by 2027.

The economy supporting the creator economy

But being an influencer is apparently not all it’s cracked up to be: Imagine the toll your phone takes on your brain, except being on your phone is your job.

CreatorCare, a telehealth startup, hopes to help by offering therapy specifically geared toward creators, per Wired:

Co-founder Shira Lazar says creators face anxiety, depression, disordered eating, and fluctuating income.
The work can also warp a creator’s perception of online interactions — positive messages and likes may be nice, but negative comments can feel much worse.
Creator burnout is rampant, but hard to mitigate; if you stop posting too long, you may lose your whole livelihood.

Influencers also say there’s a stigma around the creator industry, with some people denying it’s a “real job” (not us, we definitely know it’s a real job).

CreatorCare's tailored therapy sessions, which will start at $60, could help them open up without facing judgmental reactions.

It’s not just therapists…

… courting creators. There’s an emerging market for creator-specific firms of all stripes:

Trips has raised $3.5m to help influencers copyright whatever they’re creating.
Stir is helping creators track their finances, almost like it’s a real job (which, of course, it is).

But what if a creator no longer wants to create?

AI startup Delphi is building a library of “Digital Mind” clones from the content created by influencers, startup CEOs, and other “modern leaders.”
An influencer could set up an AI “clone” of themself and never have to communicate with fans again.

That’s the setup for countless sci-fi horror stories, but when has that stopped anyone?

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How much more likely Gen Z is than previous generations to “avoid management roles to protect their well-being,” according to management consulting company Development Dimensions International.

That stat is behind the latest corporate buzzword: conscious unbossing, per Business Insider.

While boomers and millennials might’ve grabbed the corporate ladder — sometimes begrudgingly — their Gen Z counterparts are prioritizing autonomy and work-life balance over LinkedIn bragging rights.

Makes sense, considering those overburdened managers are not only stressed, but increasingly getting the axe.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1861, Australian astronomer John Tebbutt discovered the Great Comet of 1861, estimated to return in 2267.

🧠 How to: improve your memory through exercise.

🚂 That’s interesting: Why no one’s ever taken a train from Portugal to Singapore, the world’s longest possible train trip.

🗞️ Useful: Keep up with AI’s rapid changes and learn how to integrate the tech into your life.

🦏 Aww: One rhino’s trash…

QUOTE OF NOTE

The tow handle can pinch consumers' fingertips against the cooler, posing fingertip amputation and crushing hazard.

It’s probably hard to lick your fingers after a delicious picnic when you don’t have any: Igloo recalled another 130k of its Flip & Tow Rolling Coolers last week, expanding its recall of 1m+ in February over a “fingertip amputation and crushing” risk, according to the company. Since then, the number of reported fingertip injuries has jumped from 12 to 78, including several that resulted in amputations. Yikes.

SHOWER THOUGHT

As robotics technology gets better, the robot dance will make less and less sense. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman, with help from Sam Barsanti, Singdhi Sokpo, and Kaylee Jenzen.
Editing by: Ben “Create & Barreling” Berkley.

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