Hi, 3 charts for you today:
35 years ago Howard Schultz took the top job at Starbucks, a small chain serving coffee in 11 locations. Over the next 3 decades, across two different stints as CEO, Schultz would reshape Starbucks into a US, and then a global, coffee empire — with more than 25,000 locations by the time he stepped down in 2017.
Now, he's back (again). Schultz is once again stepping up to the top job, this time as interim CEO, as Starbucks looks for its next leader.
The third act
Investors seemed to like the "return of the king", with the company's share price rising almost 5% on Wednesday. But Schultz's third act as CEO, even if brief, will require a different playbook from the "grow, grow, grow" one that characterized much of his reign.
With more than 15,000 Starbucks stores in the US alone, Starbucks is running out of places to grow and has a workforce that is increasingly threatening to unionize, citing poor working conditions and low pay. Last year Schultz visited employees in Buffalo in a bid to dissuade them from unionizing. His plea didn't work, and as of the latest count more than 100 Starbucks locations have now filed for union elections.
The "splinternet"
Russia's population is increasingly cut off from the rest of the world, and we're not talking about just physically. With complete bans on major social media platforms like Facebook, and many more tech companies voluntarily withdrawing services, Russia is at risk of creating a "splinternet" according to writers at MIT.
VPNs are having a moment
To get by the increasing number of internet restrictions, many Russians have turned to virtual private networks (VPNs), which offer an encrypted connection over the internet. By re-routing traffic through other servers, your physical location, and other data about your browsing habits, can stay hidden.
5 or 6 years ago you might have tried to trick Netflix into thinking you were in a different country by using a VPN to access the different movies and shows in that country. Now VPNs are providing a vital lifeline to the digital world.
Indeed, Russia's app stores (on both iOS and Android) are completely dominated by VPN and other privacy providers according to Sensor Tower. Since the invasion on Feb 24th one such app, developed by Signal Lab, jumped from being the ~500th most downloaded app on any given day to being the number 1, for pretty much the last 2 weeks straight.
This week Aussie company Linktree announced it had raised a fresh $110m of investment, valuing the company at $1.3 billion.
Link in bio
Those unfamiliar with Linktree specifically might be familiar with the phrase "link in bio". Because many social media platforms want to keep you on their app or website, many don't allow external links to be posted easily. On Instagram for example it's still not possible to post a picture and link to somewhere else on the web.
Hence, "link in bio" refers to a common tactic on social media, in which influencers or brands put links in the bio section of their profile, to drive traffic to their other websites, stores or social media accounts.
Linktree's founders noticed this behavior, and put together an unbelievably simple product - a super simple landing page that could host a bunch of URLs and links. The result was that celebrities, influencers and brands could just put one link in their bio, which itself would then have multiple links to whatever they wanted. That simple product, which admittedly has evolved, is now worth $1.3 billion.
Sometimes the really simple ideas are the best.
1) An entire NBA game was filmed with 110 data capturing cameras, tracking precisely every player's movement and rendering a very realistic, if slightly glitchy, digital recreation of the game.
2) US labor markets tightened further, with unemployment claims dropping again. America still has almost 11.3 million jobs open - a record high (chart here).
3) A mind-blowing, and oddly scary, visualization of how many humans have ever existed, and how many there might be to come.
4)Miso Robotics AI-powered robotic kitchen assistants can completely transform the economics of quick service restaurants, helping to boost margins by up to 3x. Invest in the kitchen of the future today.**
5) Chocolate and candy sales hit a record $36.9bn last year in the US, up 11% on last year.6) How long since a city broke a daily temperature record? Our friends at pudding.cool built this interactive map of the US.
**This is sponsored content.
