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THE HEADLINES
Estimated Read Time: 3 minutes and 26 seconds
HOT BOX
Cloud-based storage company, Dropbox, did the NASDAQ bell-ringing, dog-and-pony show for its IPO on Friday AM. And a 35% day one stock price pop kept the party going. The increase raised the company’s valuation from $10B to $11.9B. Not a bad day …
According to DBX (not to be confused with the EBDBbnb), there are 500M subscribers using the service … but only 11M pay to use it.
It’s not that people don’t need shared storage, it’s just that they don’t want to pay for it. Google, Microsoft, and the Apple all offer, or are in the process of offering the same service. Dropbox’s competitor, Box, IPO’d in 2015 to a similar result but their stock took an 8% hit on Friday.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Google Docs is straight up free. You can invite anyone, upload massive files, collaborate on projects … and also IT’S FREE. I see Dropbox heading the way of Box’s stock price after this initial buy up wears off.”
TWEET YOUR HEART OUT
Elon Musk went on a Twitter rant about Facebook after Sonos announced it would be removing ads from the platform for one week following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
He continued his vengeance as WhatsApp founder Brian Acton called for his followers to #DeleteFacebook.
As the situation escalated, another Twitter user suggested that Musk should delete his own company’s Facebook pages if he’s really a man of his word. Musk, who didn’t even know that Tesla and SpaceX had Facebook pages had them shut down within the hour. That is peak Silicon Valley.
It’s a good week to be a Winklevoss
Elon and Sonos aren’t the only companies that are fed up with Zuckerberg’s shenanigans. Mozilla has also announced that they’d be pausing their Facebook advertising until steps are taken to secure user’s data.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “If there’s one guy whose bad side I don’t want to be on, it’s the guy who builds his own rockets and has plans to inhabit Mars in the next decade. We’ll all be sitting pretty on the red planet, while Zuck is stuck here on the planet we destroyed with zero Facebook friends.”
STORM CHASER
You can’t make this sh*t up folks: a washed-up comedian who now produces shows like America’s Court with Judge Ross just took Comcast, Blackstone and Bain Captial to the cleaners, purchasing The Weather Channel for $300M.
You might remember that Comcast, Blackstone and Bain Capital bought the live-action Farmer’s Almanac in 2008 for $3.5B.
Before you dub Allen the master of the art of the deal …
Keep in mind that his company, Entertainment Studios, only purchased The Weather Channel. The actual channel. Not the app, the data, the website or even the arsenal of emblazoned hurricane-grade umbrellas.
IBM bought The Weather Channel’s digital assets in 2015 because, you know, “big data” and “Watson.” Apparently, weather data is important to someone besides Hank Hill: food companies, oil refiners, and commodity traders spend billions on it.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Let’s see what Twitter has to say, shall we? “Byron Allen has purchased The Weather Channel. Looking forward to watching painful sit-down interviews where he asks Tropical Storms: So, tell me where you get your material.” (@adam_cozens)”
IN OTHER NEWS
- The NBA is experimenting with offering the fourth quarter of games for 99 cents as another option for those who don’t want to pay the hefty price tag for the League Pass. No telling if this will come with a punch card where you receive your tenth fourth quarter for free.
- The streets of Malaysia just got a bit safer. Uber will (finally) sell its Southeast Asia business to Grab, but not without taking up to 30% of Grab as part of the deal.
- Chrissy Teigen has joined the likes of Rihanna and Kylie Jenner in leaving Snapchat. She cited the app redesign and constant ‘u up?’ messages as reasons for the deletion.
- Spotify cracked down on roughly two million users who’ve hacked their app to skip ads, essentially giving them the premium version for free.
- Isaac Larian, CEO of the company that created Little Tikes, put up a partially crowdfunded $100M bid for Toys R Us.
- US indices were down again on Friday:
- DOW: -1.77%
- S&P 500: -2.10%
- NASDAQ: -2.43%
ACTION ITEMS
TALKING SHOP: Did you know that working from home was “invented” by IBM in the late 70’s? And did you know the main reason your employer doesn’t want you working remotely is exactly the same reason you want to work remotely? Yup, the big boss man assumes your lazy ass isn’t getting a damn thing done.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Notion is a productivity app born from a ménage à trois involving Google Docs, Trello and Evernote. It’s gotten more than one personal tech guru all hot and bothered (I see you, David Pierce). And for good reason …
UNSOLICITED ADVICE: Who better to learn resilience from than a COO (Sheryl Sandberg) who is currently overseeing the corporate controversy that will define our generation? It’s all about the soft skills, folks. This (free) crash course on overcoming adversity is the stuff that your company’s Learning and Development team aspire to.