Stocks Rise Despite A Spike in Jobless Claims

Dow: +0.07% | Nasdaq: +0.36% | S&P: +0.20%

Catch Up Quick

• Twitter (TWTR) posted its fastest sales growth since 2014 → shares are up ~40% since we named it a turn around stock to watch in May

• Elon Musk says Tesla will “most likely” resume the acceptance of Bitcoin as a payment option → price has rebounded ~10% since

• Local officials across the United States are starting to reimpose mask rules as the Delta variant takes hold

• UPS, Airbnb, DraftKings, HBOMax, Capital One, and Charles Schwab are among many that experienced outages today in wake of service disruptions from DNS provider Akamai Technologies → showcases the risks of an increasingly connected internet infrastructure

• FTX, a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange that launched less than 3 years ago, raised a $900M Series B at an $18B valuation → largest-ever funding round for a crypto company (minting a billionaire out of the 29-year-old Founder)

• A start up building an NFT platform that lets users buy, sell, breed and race digital horses raised $20M from Andreessen Horowitz and others

• The U.S. life expectancy fell by 1.5 years in 2020 due to the coronavirus → the steepest drop since World War II, leading to the lowest level since 2003

• UBS says space tourism alone could be a $4B market by 2030 → we’ve also written how space is a promising investment opportunity

• JPMorgan plans to give wealth management clients access to crypto

• Texas Instruments (TXN) gave a lower-than-expected forecast for Q3 revenue, revamping concerns about chip supply shortages

• Deutsche Bank says to buy Electronic Arts (EA), citing a 24% estimated upside amid a strong slate of upcoming games and a push into mobile

• Clearview AI, a controversial provider of facial recognition tech for law enforcement, raised a $30M Series B

• JPMorgan granted CEO Jamie Dimon a "special award" award of 1.5M stock options to stay at the bank

Thought of the Day

• Within eCommerce, a realm we discuss frequently, components such as the digital store front, search functionality, product selection, check out, and payments combine to form a type of sales cycle

• Having this in mind, companies have specialized in these components, such as Shopify with store fronts (initially), Stripe with payments and Bloomreach with product search

• This way, online vendors can outsource select business processes to focus on other things while optimizing sales cycles

• Beyond the annoyance felt by any online shopper who has dealt with inputting shipping addresses / credit card details across multiple sites, the check out process however remains relatively untouched

• San Francisco-based Fast is aiming to change that, with $125M in funding from investors such as Stripe and Index Ventures

• At online stores where Fast has been installed, shoppers who’ve also signed up for the tool can securely check out in one simple click

• It’s possible this approach may not scale seamlessly given it requires two networks (shoppers and sellers) to function → online stores won’t want to install it if only a few shoppers use it, while shoppers won’t want to sign up if they can’t use it anywhere

• However, if the company can growth hack their way to scale, this very aspect will shield them from both new entrants and existing players looking to streamline the check out process

• To help achieve that scale and combat this “chicken and egg” problem, marketing guru Matthew Kobach was hired just last year, with an extensive track record of successful product launches (such as Bakkt)

• If the Fast team can pull off its mission, the company could very well become a household eCommerce and even bring its one-click check out solution to various other points of sale such as brick & mortar retail, doctors offices, restaurants and more!

Another Interesting Start Up

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