🦄 SVN: 🚨 IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨

Happy America Everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July. It’s always brutal coming back to work after a week of fireworks, glizzys, and cold ones… Anywho...

On a more serious note, we have made the executive decision to move Silly Valley News to the LinkedIn Newsletters Platform. There’s a lot of reasons for that choice and I’ll spare you the details. However, it does mean you’ll need to re-subscribe if you want to keep getting SVN delivered to your inbox. Here is the link to re-subscribe via Linkedin. See you on the other side 🙂 

This Week’s Piping 🔥⛺️ (Hot ‘Tent)

• AI Startups Raise $27B in 3 Months; Account for Half of All Startup Funding

• Driverless Car Gets Pulled Over by Cop for Running Red Light

• Boeing Gets Gentle A Slap On The Wrist

• More tidbits of interesting news stories to make your 🧠 bigger...

The Silly Valley

🤖 AI Startups Account For Nearly Half of all U.S. Startup Funding. While many startups have struggled over the past two years, AI startups are unsurprisingly booming. In the past 3 months alone, investors have poured over $27B into U.S.-based AI startups. With startup funding reaching its highest point in the last two years ($57B), and AI startups make up nearly half of that total figure. In fact, there’s been a revival of the ‘growth at all costs’ mindset that infamously inflated the tech industry with VC Tom Loverro calling this the “Great Reawakening.” While it’s easy to assume that these AI startups are getting higher funding because the tech is just so friggin’ hot right now, they are also require significantly more compute power and therefore are more expensive to run. This has lead me to make the executive decision to rename myself Corp.AI just incase anyone wants to give me money er, “investment.”

🚓 Driverless Car Pulled Over By Cops After Running Red Light. A Waymo taxi was pulled over by police in Phoenix after running a red light. Bodycam footage shows the vehicle weaving and turning into an oncoming traffic lane before finally pulling over in a parking lot. Waymo says “inconsistent construction signage” is the reason for the traffic violation and that Waymos are still “safer than human drivers.” It wasn’t just the robot vehicle that short-circuited though. The cop was unsure how to proceed since the driver didn’t have any skin complexion.

🧵 Meta’s Threads Announces 175M Active Monthly Users. While engagement on the platform still lags way behind its rival X, Threads has seen its monthly active users grow from 100M in Q3 of 2023 to 175M today. Threads debuted a year ago during a tumultuous time for X, formerly Twitter, as Elon and the platform seemed to be getting more toxic than ever. Threads scooped up users with its promise of driving “friendlier” conversations, but it’s still unclear whether the friendlier, text-based platform and its 175M monthly actives is enough to drive the engagement Meta can monetize. Personally, I forgot it existed until I read this article.

Sales Tip of the Week

Outside the Bubble

🎬 After Turning Down a $26B Deal, Paramount Pictures Sells for ~$8B. After months of negotiation, Shari Redstone, Chair of Paramount Global, has finally sold a significant portion of Paramount’s assets to David Ellison (son of Larry) and Skydance Media. This comes after Redstone rejected a $26B cash offer from Sony and Apollo Global in May because she feared selling to private equity would mean stripping down her family business to sell off in parts. Redstone also nixed a previous deal to Skydance for only $1.75B due to shareholder concerns. While it’s not $26B in cash, it’s better than the original offer from Skydance and Paramount’s stock jumped 8% after the announcement. Let’s hope the new mogul-nepo-baby can run the company better than its previous one.

✈️ Boeing Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy. It’s been a deservedly rough few years for Boeing as they suffer yet another reputational blow. The guilty plea, stemming from its attempt to defraud the U.S. for its role in two fatal 737 Max crashes, will require Boeing to pay $487M in fines. This is a far cry from the $24.8B the victims families wanted. The agreement also requires Boeing to operate under the oversight of a third party monitor to be chosen by the government, for at least three years. Family members of the victims blasted the agreement stating it “fails to recognize that because of Boeing’s conspiracy 346 people died.” Naturally, the Justice Department defended the deal stating “this resolution protects the American public.”As if I needed one more reason to dread my next flight to Schuamburg, Illinois.

☘️ Boston Celtics Win Championship and Now… Are Gonna Sell The Team? In 2002, Wyc Grousbeck and his dad, Stanford Professor and billionaire Irv Grousbeck, led the purchase of the NBA team in coordination with the Boston Basketball Group for $360M. Fresh off their second championship as owners, they announced that they’re planning on selling their majority stake of the franchise while it’s valuation sits at $4.7B. Not only would it be a nice 13x ROI, the sale would also allow them to avoid paying extremely high luxury taxes because of player salaries (close to $300M per season), on top of general operating costs. With the franchise bringing in around $500M in annual revenue, its the perfect time for Grousbeck and Daddy to sell high before they become the bad guys that have to say the party’s over.

Last Week’s Piping 🔥⛺️ (Hot ‘Tent)

We turned S.A.D. into a Movie and you should watch it and send it to your Sales Team.

Throwback to a classic…

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