Fairy tales of eternal economic growth
Let’s start with Amazon, the star of the HQ2 season of The Bachelor. Chicago did not get the rose, but now we’re at the post-show and Jeff Bezos is making eyes. He’s promised to add 400 tech jobs and 70,000 square feet to the Chicago office and placed an order for 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian. Rivian is based outside of Detroit, but the vans themselves will be made in Normal, Illinois. Should bring some much-needed manufacturing jobs downstate.
The Old Main Post Office continues to fill out with Cboe confirming it’ll move into the newly renovated space. It’ll also be moving its trading floor back to the Chicago Board of Trade, meaning that Cboe now has feet in two landmark downtown buildings.
Forager dug up a seed round (yes, we are proud of that joke), earning $3.25 million for its logistics platform, which aims to make it easier to ship across country lines within North America. A pun and an opportunity to mention logistics?? We are overcome.
We’ll ride that emotional high right through the next news, that legal weed company Cresco Labs is planning to pay $283 million to acquire competitor Tryke and earn a bigger stake in the Arizona and Nevada markets. Meanwhile, people still sit in jail for holding a joint. Anyway Cresco has lots of money, they can probably hire you.
Health care incubator MATTER is opening a branch in New York City, and while we would normally dismiss that idea out-of-hand, it will be good for Chicago businesses to pitch New York businesses on partnerships and earn funding from New York VCs.
To cap the week off, Jimmy John’s is being sold to Atlanta-based Inspire Brands, home to such fine eateries as Arby’s and Buffalo Wild Wings. We are concerned that this will shrink the Jimmy John’s corporate jobs in Chicago — and maybe lose Chicago-based ad agencies some business. But we do think it’s extremely good that Arby’s and Jimmy John’s are equals now.
Badass news you might have missed
Want to know who earned the title of “corporate Miley Cyrus” last issue? You’ll just have to subscribe.
Job with badass potential
Job: Head of Digital Strategy at Highwire PR
Work: Teach clients how to adopt and improve their social media outreach, showing them how to communicate and measure on different platforms. Use social listening tools to inform your strategies, and advise on paid social and search campaigns. Work with content teams and creatives to keep the voice consistent. Win new business to help Highwire grow its social offering.
Downsides: The agency is based in San Francisco — but Chicago is stacked with cloud, fintech and health care-tech companies. We think you’ll be fine, even if you have to fly out to show the new bosses all the money you’ve made them.
Perks: Most PR firms chase glitzy consumer companies. When you make a choice to only go after business-to-business companies, you immediately cut the competition down. Then there’s the fact that Highwire is even more specifically focused on B2B tech companies — cloud, finance, health care, security, all the good things dripping with VC money right now. It may not sound like the most thrilling work, but it really is the stuff changing how our systems run. And attending industry conferences is built into your job description, so you know you’d stay ahead of new tools and trends for when you did want to leave.
A few other jobs we’re curious about …
Associate Director of Social Media, Digital Copywriter and Social Media Manager at Vital Proteins
This supplement company … er, lifestyle brand … is everywhere right now — including in a beachin’ new office in the West Loop. Could be exciting times for those fluent in CPG, peptides and Poosh.
Creative Director, Video at The Art Institute of Chicago
A unique opportunity to make art about some of the world’s greatest art. Work with the digital and marketing functions but also curatorial, exhibition design and more. Could mean incredible feedback and support, or could mean lots of excruciating approvals and opinions. Either way, worth a look for the 5+ weeks of PTO alone.
Inspiration of the week
—Our tiny accountability queen Greta Thunberg, who hoisted us all on her back and made us feel righteous, even though we still use Ziploc bags. This weekend Greta, we invest in beeswax paper to try and be worthy of you.
Forward this email to anyone who’s ready to hold others to account. They can sign up here and get some help watching.
Got a tip on an excellent job? Reply to this email, send us a new one at hey@gethustl.in, or reach out on Twitter.