Founding father energy 🧨
This newsletter is coming early so we can spend Friday nursing a hangover like our Puritan colonizers intended. Also, you can pay for this newsletter! As of now, everything is free, but we’ll be switching to one free letter, one paid letter each month. If you want a subscription and can’t afford to pay for it, email us — the goal of this newsletter is to make everyone millionaires.
Review aggregator ReviewTrackers raised a $10 million Series B funding round, which it generously plans to put toward adding 100 positions to its Chicago team, mostly in engineering, sales and support.
Cameo, meanwhile, attracted a lot more attention for its $50 million fundraising round. The startup — which allows you to turn minor celebrities into human puppets — has not, however, announced any plans to hire more people to its 65-person Chicago team, opting instead to grow internationally.
Showpad’s not even from here, but it’s using a $70 million funding round to hire another 35 people in Chicago to help grow its sales training software.
Health tech company Livongo is looking to raise $100 million, but the old-fashioned way — by going public. The stock will hit the market with a promise that “costs will increase substantially” as Livongo tries to grow, so … good luck? We’ve already heard it’s not a phenomenal place to work, and we can’t imagine becoming a publicly held company is going to help with that at all.
Beer and food distributor Reyes Holdings is selling off its Reinhart Foodservice unit to a Virginia-based competitor in a $2 billion all-cash deal, no doubt losing some jobs as the industry consolidates. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical company AbbVie is buying Botox-maker Allergan for $63 billion while both sides look to diversify their products and cut overhead. At least we can guess Botox will continue to be a money-maker.
Belmont Cragin is getting a shared commercial kitchen from L.A.-based Amped Kitchens, where Beyond Meat was incubated. It doesn’t necessarily mean any new jobs now, but looking at the growth RxBar and other big-time Chicago food startups have seen, we expect it to generate a few hit companies over the next several years.
Job with badass potential
Job: Senior Economics Editor at the University of Chicago Press
Work: Acquire and edit economics manuscripts for publication by the University of Chicago Press, a job that sounds either really exciting or truly miserable depending on who you are.
Downsides: Dealing with economics professors who are all basically just waiting for the Nobel committee to call.
Perks: We are struggling to think of a job that has this much prestige, where you would also absolutely have people look down on you all the time. Still, we’ve heard the U of C Press is a great place to work, and everyone we know there stays there. If you dig on monetary theory and business strategy, please get this job. You know where to send the preview copies.
A few other jobs we’re curious about …
Executive Director at Third Coast International Audio Festival
Support quality podcasts — and underrepresented voices — by raising funds for this nonprofit and spending them smartly. If you’re interested, just know, today’s the last day to apply.
Marketing Strategist/Content Developer/Writer at PAWS Chicago
There is just no world where we’re not going to recommend this job, even though, no, you probably shouldn’t take it. It is not likely to help you build skills the job market is going to take seriously — might give you a chance to meet some powerful donors though!
Exhibitions Digital Project Manager at the Field Museum
… Because we want behind-the-scenes access
Copy Editor and Proofreader at CB2
… Because we want your discount
Inspiration of the week
“There’s nothing to apologize for. You’ve done your research, you’re clear on the value of your time. It’s okay not to say yes to everything.”
—Elaine Welteroth on the power of preparing for negotiations. She also recommends asking for a day to think it over, which feels impossible, but also incredible. Act like you have multiple options to weigh, because you do. “No” is always an option.
And if that doesn’t help, some corollary advice from the white man Welteroth goes to for negotiation advice. “Don’t worry about what they’ll feel and what they’ll say. Do it anyway. Ask anyway.” Let’s take that founding father energy right into this holiday.
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