Honestly at this point fine, let’s just all move to the metaverse. We would say “it couldn’t be worse,” but history forever proves that yeah, it could be. At least though, it would be different. Atmos Labs just raised an $11 million seed round to build out one of the first true metaverse games. The company’s game is based on an imaginary planet 500 years in the future, where players … mine minerals to buy better gear for esports competitions.
That is … here. We don’t have to travel to a distant, alien future to exchange our toil for objects that let us outrank our peers. For the love of god, it’s called escapism. If the best we can do in an infinite universe of possibility is make guns that shoot lasers instead of bullets, we are well and truly fucked.
Let’s now turn to the startups that know they’re boring. oak9 (not our capitalization choice) raised $8 million to keep building security solutions for the new world of infrastructure as code — basically the latest in the stacking cups game of building systems that are harder and harder to hack, begetting smarter and smarter hackers. Logistics, our fave, also continues to inexorably grow, with FedEx investing an untold sum in FourKites. The two companies will work together to make a software giving shippers visibility into the supply chain alongside potential solutions (presumably like hiring FedEx). FourKites continues to be hiring everybody.
Walgreens, meanwhile, is stuck with a bunch of employees it doesn’t want, after failing to find a buyer for its Boots business in the U.K. Uneasy markets have made it impossible for Walgreens to get the payout it was looking for, so it’ll be holding onto the drugstores for now.
At least Google is looking to hire — and looking for new space to put the 1,000 Chicago employees it wants to add. The delightful thing about this news is that Google is not looking for more space in Fulton Market, which it has already gentrified beyond recognition. Instead, it’s looking on LaSalle, that fusty old financial corridor. It’s even considering space in the famously maligned and long beleaguered Thompson Center. If Google manages to almost single-handedly convince Chicago businesses that the Loop is dead, get everyone to relocate to Fulton Market, then swoop in for cheaper Loop real estate? Truly iconic.
Also iconic, all these sweet sweet Starbucks baristas flexing their newly unionized muscle via walkouts. Is this what hope feels like?
This is not strictly speaking job news so much as it is rage news, but just a fun lil bit of research from ProPublica: Ken Griffin’s $54 million investment in killing the progressive income tax initiative saved him an estimated $50 to $80 million per year. Even with Kenneth’s planned move to Miami this year, that’s a good 2x return on investment — and $100 million the state won’t be able to put toward things like pensions and public health programs.
Once again, we would like to say good riddance, Ken Griffin, and get fucked.
Jobs, Glorious Jobs
Video Manager at the Pat Tillman Foundation
Working for a fellow hustler and friend of the newsletter? ✅
Working for a great cause? ✅
Making videos to tell the foundation’s story? ✅
Senior Customer Success Manager for Strategic Accounts and other roles at Front
Front, based in San Francisco but with an office in Chicago, just raised $65 million at a $1.7 billion valuation, so keep that in mind when you’re negotiating salary. The company makes a SaaS (Software as a Service) CRM (Customer Relationship Management), so you must bring a love of acronyms and a willingness to believe that you’re all “creating trust” instead of, you know, selling stuff. Still, it’s a woman-led startup, not all that common among the $1+ billion crowd.
Tools of the Week:
Creative Ladder, a nonprofit weirdly affiliated with Ryan Reynolds and dedicated to helping students from diverse backgrounds get access to creative jobs in advertising.
This guide to protecting Roe v. Wade, full of succinct information and actionable steps you can take now.
This article, which details all the steps it takes for an ethnically motivated faction of extremists to plunge a country into civil war. We are rapidly checking off boxes: “Watching what happened to the Republican Party really was the bigger surprise — that, wow, they’re doubling down on this almost white supremacist strategy. That’s a losing strategy in a democracy. So why would they do that? … Oh my gosh. The only way this is a winning strategy is if you begin to weaken the institutions.” Scare italics definitely not ours.
Inspiration of the week
Hippo. That’s it, that’s what we have for you this week. Please take care of yourselves and submit to nothing.
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