🦄 SVN: The First Edition

Hello my sweet, gorgeous people!

Happy last week of Q1 and welcome to the first edition of Silly Valley News. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I’m stoked to finally get it out there! This is going to be a weekly newsletter that will hit your inboxes every Monday. Silly Valley News will be quick, digestible, skim-able tidbits to make you a slightly more informed human. Like everything I do, this will be a work-in-progress, and I’ll be reading/listening to feedback (just reply to this email). Anyway, without further adieu… Silly Valley News.

The Silly Valley

• 📈 Reddit crushed its IPO last week, despite exactly zero years of profitability in its 19 years of existence (it lost $91M last year which was good by their standards). Trading opened at $34 per share and rose to $50.44 before settling in at around $46 by week’s end. But not everyone was happy, in particular Reddit’s users who are worried about the site’s future now that they are corporate sellouts publicly traded. Shareholders, eh? Either way, the strong performance suggests the waters are once again warm for tech IPOs (and our RSUs).

  

  Diamond hands or nah? Photo Credit: AFP via Getty Images

• 🤖 Apparently AI is coming for Software Engineers first. AI might not be able to replace salespeople (yet), but it’s well on its way to replacing the nerds (a.k.a. the Software Engineers who think salespeople are a bunch of toxic, alcoholic idiots… kinda accurate, but still). Cognition AI launched from stealth last week with the world’s first fully autonomous AI software engineer - “Devin”. With $21M in funding from the likes of Co-founder Tony Xu, and Bond Villain Peter Thiel, “Devin” can ship entire web projects end to end. “Devin” has the potential to replace some junior developer roles. Good thing no one needs an entry level job to build a foundation for their career… or wait.

  

  Ominous AF presentation. Photo Credit: Cognition Labs

• ⏰ TikTok finna be banned for real? Congress passed a bill to ban TikTok because the Chinese government is allegedly using it as a way to spy on, divide, and make Americans dumber. If the bill passes the Senate, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, will be forced to sell it to an American company if they want people to keep doom-scrolling. Potential buyers include Steven Mnuchin and Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank. This is likely to be a long battle, so be sure to keep smanging and sharing in the meantime.

  

  LOL. I’m sure it did. Photo Credit: Greg Nash

Silicon Valley Darling and Professor Jonathan Haight thinks we should!

Outside the Silly Valley Bubble

• ⚾ Even if you don’t give an F about baseball, this Shohei Ohtani gambling scandal is juicy. For context, Shohei plays for the LA Dodgers and he’s one of the best pitchers AND hitters in the Majors. That’s like being the best salesperson AND developer at your company. He also just signed the largest contract in sports history with a 10 year, $700M deal. However last week, word got out that Shohei’s interpreter was in $5M of gambling debt…and, being the good guy he is, Shohei (apparently) paid off his friend’s bookie for him. Then the law firm representing Shohei claimed that he was instead the victim of a “massive theft” at the hands of his interpreter. Now there’s an FBI investigation. I think the smart play by Shohei would be to hold off on hiring a new interpreter so he doesn’t have to answer any questions about it. Foolproof.

  

  Shohei and his interpreter Photo Credit: Kyodo News/Getty Images

• 🏠 Will people actually be able to buy homes again? The National Association of Realtors agreed to settle a series of lawsuits that will likely slash realtor fees from the standard 6% to somewhere closer to 1% - 3% and experts say the expected savings could trigger one of the biggest jolts in the housing market in 100 years. On top of that, the Fed is planning on lowering interest rates before the end of the year. We’ll have to see if these changes are enough….

• American’s Credit Card debt has soared 17% over the past year and total household debt is now the highest ever at over $17 trillion. Not tight! But also quite literally too tight! Financial experts say the problem is my wife’s addiction to Amazon prime.

  

Sales Tip/Fact of the Week

Last Week’s ‘Tent

• What’s your company’s MAT/PAT leave? I asked and you answered. While we haven’t poured through all of the data quite yet, the best plans in the U.S. appear to be Atlassian and AirBnb. Atlassian offers 26 weeks for MAT leave and 20 weeks for PAT leave with full pay and no tenure required. AirBnB offers 24 weeks for MAT and PAT leave with full pay and no tenure required as well. The worst plan? That award goes to SHI, an IT company that offers 0 maternity and paternity leave while loving to brag about their female CEO Thai Lee.

• March Sadness is BACK! Vote on my story for the best sales team in the world.

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• Check out the latest episode of Demoted on Spotify or wherever you get your pods. Video version on YouTube!

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