The Water Coolest is a free daily business news and professional advice email newsletter created for weekday warriors that is delivered fresh daily at 7 AM EST. You can subscribe at thewatercoolest.com.
THE HEADLINES
Don’t have 3 minutes and 49 seconds to read The Water Coolest? Listen to ‘The Water Coolest Minutes’ on all of your favorite podcast outlets in 2 minutes or less.
MADE IN CHINA
Despite having his attempt to rescue the trapped Thai soccer team via unmanned submarine thwarted by the head of rescue operations, Elon Musk is riding high after Tesla announced that it plans to open its first factory in Shanghai.
Tesla plans to have the factory up and running in two to three years and churning out 500k electric roadsters in just five years. Of course, the move does little to compensate for the fact that Tesla will raise prices on all vehicles sold in China by 20% to offset tariffs.
Tesla’s share price jumped 2% on the news, but buyer beware: the company is burning through cash like an investment banker with his first bonus and additional financial commitments mean Elon & Co. will be forced toraise an estimated $2 to 3B to keep operations running.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Owning TSLA ain’t for the faint of heart. The company is locked in a high-stakes, white-knuckle race against itself to see what happens first: production comes around or they run out of cash. There’s always somebody who will throw in for a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity.'”
SOMETHING DOESN’T AD UP
MediaMath, a New York-based ad-tech platform is rolling in some newly raised capital that nets out to approximately $225M … thus proving that if you add “tech” after any industries’ name, VC’s will pull out their checkbooks.
How does MediaMath plan to spend the money? Managment plans to buy out a few original investors, acquire competitors and probably snag a few bean bag chairs for the office. What’s left over will go into the development of new technologies.
This newest round of funding will add to the more than $500M raised to date, and catapult the company to unicorn status.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “This is for anyone who ever asked what math could do for them after high school.”
KNOCK, KNOCK, WHO’S THERE?
… will become a reality for residents in 100 cities across the country as Postmates plans to expand their delivery services. This expansion will broaden Postmates’ reach by more than 50M potential customers, in cities such as Detroit, Charleston, and Cleveland. Yes, even Cleveland!
UberEats’ little brother is also planning to expand its partnership with Chipotle, delivering burritos and overpriced guac from an additional 300 locations.
While this all seems well and good, Postmates still lags behind competitors DoorDash, Amazon, and UberEats in market share and funding. DoorDash raised $535M this past March and over $700M in total. Postmates’ last round of funding in 2016 netted the company just $276M.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “It’ll be interesting in 20 years when people joke about getting knocked up by the Postmates man instead of the milkman.”
IN OTHER NEWS
- The only two certainties in the summer of 2018? Death and tariffs. Donny Politics has gone and done it again, retaliating against China’s retaliatory tariffs with plans to hand down additional import taxes on $200B worth of Chinese goods.
- Find a better name for an investment bank CEO in waiting than Ted Pick. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Teddy Equities was promoted from trading chief to head of Morgan Stanley’s institutional securities group in a sign that he is a leading contender to succeed current MS Chief Executive, James Gorman.
- This is Coke country. Just ask Pepsi. PepsiCo. beverage sales fell in North America for the fourth quarter in a row, but the owner of Frito Lay saw a slight uptick in revenue overall, thanks to its snack division (read: Sweet Chili Doritos).