Stocks up, Rivian's down bad, gas is basically free
(But you still can't afford to buy a house.)
Hello again.
As a reminder, I’m Chris Bakke, a Twitterer, and the CEO of Laskie - the best hiring platform for tech talent. I enjoy writing about hiring, careers, investing, finance, web5, and tech.
Let’s dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly from this week. As always, we’ll flip it so we don’t end the newsletter on a bad note.
The ugly:
Flowcarbon, which was co-founded by Adam Neumann of WeWork infamy and is definitely not a scam, raised $70M a few months ago to sell something called Goddess Nature Token. Sadly - and trust me, I am broken up over this - the launch of Goddess Nature Token is “indefinitely on hold.” I’d love to know what they’re doing with the $70M in the meantime.
US housing affordability in June was at its worst point since 1989. The typical monthly mortgage payment rose to $1,944 in June 2022, up from $1,265 in June 2021, assuming a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and a 20% down payment. Now, if you just raise a $70M seed round and take $10M off the table, housing affordability is less of an issue. I don’t know why more people don’t just do this.
The bad:
Rivian lost $1.7B in Q2. From seeing several of their cars in the wild, it’s clear that they already spend nearly $0 on design, so if anyone has any other ideas to cut costs, give them a shout.
Walgreens - you know, an actual pharmacy - is paying hiring bonuses of $75,000 to hire pharmacists. They better hope the DTC pharma companies that just raised their Series B slow down on paying new pharmacy grads $400,000/yr to become Chief Online Pillpushers.
The good:
Stocks are up this week. We’re all rich.
Gas is under $4/gallon on average. I paid $3.69 this week and celebrated the cost savings by buying a $38,600 NFT of a polar bear riding a scooter while eating licorice. Talk about a bargain.
It seems like the pace of tech layoffs is slowing a bit.
Okay, that’s all.
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See you soon.
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