Happy Friday! We hope you’ve enjoyed your first week of receiving 50% more charts in your inbox than you're used to — here’s to the many 3-send weeks ahead. Today we’re exploring:
A flurry of layoffs at high-growth companies and startups have again swept over the tech ecosystem in the last 2 days. Fintech company Stripe, one of the world’s most valuable startups, was one of the most high-profile to announce cuts along with Lyft, Opendoor, Chime and of course Twitter — where potentially up to half of employees are expected to be let go today via email.
Overhired
Stripe's news arguably has the most signal value for the wider economy. In announcing the cuts, which will see ~1,000 of Stripe's 7,000-strong workforce lose their jobs, CEO Patrick Collison wrote that 2022 represented “the beginning of a different economic climate”. Collison said that the company had been “much too optimistic” about future growth and that they had “overhired for the world we’re in”.
Collison’s words echo sentiment that's being felt across exec teams at high-growth tech companies and startups. As markets hit record highs last year, fundraising was easy, and sustainable business models were eschewed in favor of growth and innovation at all costs. That narrative has flipped very quickly. It’s now almost more unusual for a tech company to have not announced job cuts — website layoffs.fyi has been tracking a list of announcements since 2020, and it’s littered with high-profile names.
But it’s not just startups having to contend with sluggish consumer spending, higher interest rates and a slowing economy. Tech giants Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple have all announced hiring freezes this year.
Luck of the draw
The Powerball jackpot has grown to an eye-watering $1.5bn ahead of the draw on Saturday, the second time in history that the Powerball has broken the billion threshold.
Anyone fortunate enough to hit the jackpot would be given the option to take the full amount paid over 29 years, or a lesser one-off payment of $746m, though taxation would, of course, almost halve the lucky lotto player’s windfall.
Numbers game
Although not without its critics, the numbers game — with the ever-alluring promise of instant riches — still has a grip on many Americans, with 42% of US adults playing at least once last year. Indeed, Americans reportedly spent over $105bn on lottery tickets last year, splashing out more than they spent on books, concert and movie tickets, and video streaming services combined.
The good news for the nation’s players is that the billion-dollar prize pot is becoming more common in the US lottery landscape. Across all lotteries, the ten digit figure has been hit five times since 2016 and twice in 2022 alone, the first being the $1.34bn Mega Millions jackpot that was split by two anonymous parties over the summer.
In theory, with the odds of winning the jackpot at roughly 1-in-292-million, there is a tipping point at which buying every single $2 ticket would be worth it. Of course actually buying, filling out and then finding the winning ticket among 292 million is a lot easier said than done.
Move with The Times
Despite being 171-years-old, The New York Times isn’t doing a bad job of keeping up with the demands of modern news consumption, as the newspaper revealed this week that it had added another 180,000 digital-only subscribers last quarter.
All the news that’s fit to digitize...
The Gray Lady’s online arm has been progressing steadily for a while, amid a wider move towards subscription revenue and away from advertising, but the pandemic really kicked things into gear. 2020, for example, was the first year in history that the Times’s digital subscription revenue outweighed their print figures, a trend that has been compounded in each passing quarter since.
In terms of subscription revenue, the Times’s print products brought in ~$10m less last year than they did in 2020. Their digital subscription revenues, on the other hand, rose by $176m, widening the gap between the online and print mediums further. Ad revenue (not on the chart) has also fallen in the last decade.
...and more besides
With its acquisition of Wordle at the start of 2022, as well as popular sports website The Athletic, the Times has cemented what you might call a “land-and-expand” strategy, bolstering its online entertainment offerings to broaden the appeal beyond core news. That little blue bar at the top of the chart will be a lot bigger in 5 or 10 years, if all goes to plan.
• Perfect for those long, dark days during the holidays is this 60,000 piece jigsaw puzzle from Costco.
• After buying The Washington Commanders in 1999 for $800m, Dan Snyder is now looking to sell at a valuation of $5.6bn – interested buyers reportedly include Jeff Bezos and Jay-Z.
• QuantConnect is democratizing access to quant investing tools, with industry-leading backtesting and analysis tools at ~1% of the cost that institutions pay. Now they're crowdfunding a round of investment — help build the future of quant investing.**
• Cutting edge scientific research has found a way to extend the shelf-life of fresh pasta to 120 days.
**This is sponsored content.
• Underrepresented groups' share of S&P 500 companies board of director seats.
• Visual exploration of spending for different age groups and the impact of inflation.
The Click List: The More Data and Hi-Viz links readers clicked on most in October:
1) Polarization: great chart from The Economist on what Democrats and Republicans can actually agree on.
2) A new scientific study reveals the truth: yes, mosquitoes do prefer some people to others.
3) A deep dive on the blue tick black market.
