😎 The bros love a “T party”

Why tech workers are sleeping in expensive boxes

Much like a vampire must rest in a wooden box filled with their native soil, a tech worker must sometimes pay $900/month to sleep in a wooden box equipped with a twin mattress.

Both are cursed — one by immortality, the other by skyrocketing housing costs and the mad dash to get in on AI.

Is it a nice box, at least?

Brownstone Shared Housing rents out private sleep pods in San Francisco ($700/month), Palo Alto ($900/month), and Bakersfield ($500/month).

They’re stacked two-high like bunk beds, each 4 feet tall and 3.5 feet wide. Features include a dimmable light, temperature control, a shelf and hanging rail, charging ports, and a privacy curtain.

The “houses” contain a kitchen (sans stove or oven), shared bathrooms, and common spaces. There’s no laundry.

One tech worker described the pods as a “little toastie” but a fine place to sleep while he pursues a career in AI.

And he’s not alone

Brownstone CEO James Stallworth told SFGate that many come to do the same. In San Francisco, all 28 beds are booked through October. (There is a city inspection pending, but Stallworth isn’t worried about it.)

Utilities are included, there’s no security deposit, contracts are month-to-month, and guests can network with each other.

In Bakersfield, where the median studio apartment costs $995, Brownstone’s $500/month offering may be appealing. In San Francisco, where it’s ~$2.2k, Brownstone’s, sadly, not a horrible deal…

… nor a new one: Japan has capsule hotels for the minimalist tourist, and similar “pod” arrangements in the US attract travelers, digital nomads, and people looking to save on rent by “co-living.” PodShare, with locations across California is one such example.

BTW: For those who’d actually like to sleep in a coffin, there’s Berlin’s Propeller Island City Lodge — though temporarily closed for renovations and a “new concept,” the hotel has 25+ bizarre themed rooms, including one where you can do just that.

Peer inside our paid media playbook

Organic growth is one lane — paid ads are another. By paying social platforms to target certain data points and demographics, you up your odds of catching new customers.

It’s not cheap… but it’s extremely effective. Learn how to budget, bid, and build a paid media strategy that powers through the noise of a newsfeed.

Three steps to paid ads that perform:

1. Media planning: How to hone in on your folks.
2. Media buying: Manual or automated bidding?
3. Media optimizing: Masterfully minimize friction.

Jamal explains the sensible system that brings in new business.

Bills are back: The pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments ended Sunday, meaning monthly billing will resume for 40m+ Americans.

Electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive delivered a record 15.5k+ vehicle in Q3, a 23% increase from Q2. The company says it’s on track to produce 52k EVs in 2023.

Meanwhile… Tesla’s sales slipped in the third quarter, down 6.7% from Q2, though its numbers were still up 26.5% YoY. Added relief may come soon from its forthcoming Cybertruck, nearing its fourth year of arriving any day now.

X (formerly Twitter) announced a content deal with Paris Hilton, who will create live-shopping videos for the platform. In hyping the deal, CEO Linda Yaccarino called Hilton “the queen of pop culture, music, business, and TV,” which… Paris is great, but nah.

Grab your popcorn: Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour might’ve wrapped up, but it’s far from over. The superstar will now hit the big screen with the movie Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, targeting a Dec. 1 release with AMC.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial in New York begins today with jury selection and is expected to last six weeks. The former crypto magnate faces seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.

Apple says its iPhone 15s are overheating due to iOS and app bugs, which it will fix via a software update.

Bernard Arnault, the billionaire LVMH founder and Europe’s richest man, is under investigation by French authorities over money laundering allegations. Arnault’s team dismissed the ongoing inquiry as “absurd and unfounded.”

Sphere Entertainment’s stock popped 10%+ Monday following the buzzy Las Vegas venue’s debut U2 concert, bringing its market cap to ~$1.4B.

Tom Hanks wants everyone to know it’s a deepfake, not the actor himself, hawking a dental plan. The actors guild SAG-AFTRA remains on strike, in part over AI’s potential uses in future films and TV shows.

Marketing psychology 101: Climb inside the minds of your customers. This free guide explains how priming, anchoring, clustering, and other habit-based heuristics push people to make purchases.

Think your industry is weird? Get a load of the beaded ice cream business

Dippin’ Dots may be the so-called “ice cream of the future,” but it has a much more intriguing past.

It was founded in 1988 by Kentucky microbiologist Curt Jones, who was experimenting with liquid nitrogen to flash-freeze animal feed, landing on a flash-frozen novelty treat instead.

Jones’ beaded ice cream launched a roller coaster ride that’s included a bankruptcy, two factory explosions, a $300m annual sales peak, a cryogenics side hustle — and, as of last year, a $222m acquisition.

• New owner J&J Snack Foods must be happy with its purchase — Dippin’ Dots helped turn its Q3 earnings sheet all green.

If you think there isn’t room for two beaded ice cream behemoths…

… Sorry, but you’re so very wrong. UK-based purveyor of tiny ice cream globules Mini Melts is coming for Dippin’ Dots.

The more globally focused Mini Melts, serving 40+ countries (versus Dippin’ Dots’ seven) has now taken off in the US, per Food Dive.

• With 34k+ distribution sites, Mini Melts USA expects to sell ~30m cups this year.
• Annual sales have grown ~35% YoY, and execs think $100m+ in sales is within reach.

True to industry tradition, Mini Melts USA’s backstory is wild:

• Philly teen Dan Kilcoyne helped his brother with a school assignment: to find a product not sold locally and draft a plan that’d convince the corporation to enter the market.
• Dippin’ Dots was his pick, management bit, and he started selling them in the school cafeteria before expanding to 18 retail locations.
• When Kilcoyne got priced out by Dippin’ Dots’ franchising fees, he teamed up with Mini Melts to bring its product stateside.

Now a competing CEO, Kilcoyne is nipping at his old company’s heels, launching a very, very cold war.

The X factor: To hold off upstart Mini Melts, Dippin’ Dots must give the people what they want. By this, we of course mean more of their official mascot, Frozeti the Yeti.

Cold plunges and testosterone parties

Are you ever chilling with the boys when you realize you ought to be measuring testosterone? Well, for ~$100-$400, that could be you.

Jeff Tang, founder of the now-shuttered note-taking startup Athens Research, launched a “men’s health company” in June offering “T parties” to tackle declining testosterone levels among men, per The Information.

Here, men gather, test their T levels, enjoy meat-centric meals and homemade kefir, check each other’s deadlift forms, and take dips in the cold plunge. In the future, Tang may also offer coaching, meal prep, and more.

Is there a problem with their testosterone?

Testosterone levels have been declining across genders over the last 20 years, possibly due to chemicals absorbed from plastics and pollution. Testosterone also naturally decreases as men age.

Normal measurements are 300-1k nanograms per deciliter:

• Symptoms of low testosterone include decreased energy, libido, and muscle.
• Too much testosterone can lead to issues including acne, blood clots, and liver disease.

Only ~2% of men actually have low testosterone, per the American Urology Association.

But hormone worries…

… have created a booming testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) business worth $1.75B worldwide, buoyed in the US thanks to relaxed DEA rules around prescribing it and often filled with misinformation and scams.

Tang is not a medical doctor, nor does he have low testosterone, boasting 1k+ ng/dL.

But he prefers a holistic approach to TRT that sounds a lot like being healthy — working out, sleeping and eating well, managing stress, taking vitamins, meditation, and “talking to “hot people.”

And unlike other testosterone advocates, he’s not spouting hate speech about transgender people, who also use hormones for gender-affirming care.

So, uh, bros will be bros?

BTW: Another Tang method is apparently “semen retention,” which is… exactly what it sounds like. A urologist who spoke with The Information did not think this would boost T levels.

⚖️ On this day: In 1995, OJ Simpsons was acquitted of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman following a 252-day televised trial.

📚 Useful: An online library of short stories.

⌛ That’s interesting: Shikhar Sachdev applied to 250 jobs, timing each one’s application process. While it took 2.5+ minutes on average to apply for most jobs, it took 10+ minutes to apply to USPS and 20 seconds to apply to Netflix. Read his report here.

🎨 How to: Wired’s guide to ChatGPT’s new image features.

🐶 Aww: And now, bath time.

The one month of the year that work is spooky for good reason. (Link)