You’re breaking up 📈
What's that? Sorry, I definitely have a convincing answer, I just can't hear you!
It’s disorienting, coming back to a full week after the nation’s most uncomfortable holiday. Just not so disorienting that we’ll miss Senate leaders undermining unions everywhere and rail workers specifically by forcing them to call off a strike and accept a very much less than ideal contract. Love to see laborers so essential they can’t call in sick for a day.
Don’t think that’s the last of it though — the end of the year always offers a nice excuse for layoffs and store closings that don’t have anything to do at all with unions negotiating better treatment.
Not everyone gets to shrink as a tactic, however. Smoothie chain Real Good Stuff is closing all eight of its stores, barring a last-minute savior (’tis the season). Meanwhile, the Boiler Room is finally calling it quits after a decade of pouring PBRs for bad decisions and even worse haircuts. If only it had called its employees first.
Other companies are coming in to fill the void, as always. California-based Vyond announced plans to hire 20 people for its new Chicago regional audience. The team will be led by a new Chicago-based CMO, and will help the company continue to grow its software for creating corporate training videos.
Verano Holdings has been in Chicago, but struggled to find a new home due to commercial real estate companies being wary of weed money. To get the space it needed, Verano skirted them entirely, signing a lease for office space in a residential building and almost tripling its footprint in the process.
You’d think landlords would take anything they can get, when even a growing company like Sprout Social is cleaving off half of its space on the expectation that workers won’t return to the office.
Having extensive experience watching infamous landlord Sam Zell make all the worst decisions, however, we’re not exactly surprised. Like partnering with Airbnb to fill some of the 79,000 rental units Equity Residential currently owns. Sure, there’s an affordable housing crisis exacerbated by short-term rentals, but Zell has never been averse to making money off of human suffering.
Just for fun, here’s a little article of Zell’s from 2007, talking about how the credit crisis was really just a blip, nothing to worry about.
There is good news though, never fear. A few companies are tying the bows on end of the year funding. Logistics player Better Trucks raised $15 million to grow its fleet of last-mile delivery drivers, getting your stuff from the closest warehouse to your front door. Market intelligence company Qualsights raised $7.7 million to provide consumer insights that are somehow very different from all the other ones available. And Gearflow raised $5.5 million to simplify repairs on construction equipment by connecting owners to part suppliers. We love to reduce and reuse!
And we’ll end with a duo of wins for Northwestern. One of its healthcare spinoffs, Surgical Innovation Associates, is being acquired for as much as $140 million, thanks to its invention of an absorbable surgical mesh for use in reconstructive and plastic surgery (mostly breast reconstruction). It expects to stay in Chicago, where it can hang out with fellow Northwestern spinoff NanoGraf, which is opening a factory in Chicago to supply the U.S. military with super-batteries. Don’t love the buyer, but do love any breakthrough on energy.
Jobs, Glorious Jobs
Research Analyst for Fundraising and Development at Gobel Group
A friend of the newsletter is looking to fill this remote job, which heads up research projects on healthcare philanthropy. Comes with a salary range up to $70,000 without a ton of prerequisite qualifications, so potentially a good role for the person who always has to know more.
Director of Communications at Openlands
On the other hand, the salary range for this job tops out at $100,000 — that’s $10K for each of the 10 years of experience it’s looking for. While the money may not be tops for a director role, the organization is great, the people are lovely, and the low end of the salary ($95,000) is nothing to turn a nose up at.
Marketing Director at the iO Theater
Do you love comedy more than money? If it’s your passion — along with marketing, obvi — the improv institution is back and wants you (for $60K).
Inspiration of the Week
—This tweet, giving us a reason to check Twitter outside of the general schadenfreude of watching it burn. Just a note: When someone can’t tell you what a company they’re invested in actually does, there’s a con afoot.
Forward this email to anyone who’s ready for a straight answer. They can sign up here to get twice monthly insight into what these companies do, and do not, do.
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