VOLUME 37

Good morning. This week we have a range of stories from more tech layoffs to the controversy around a $28M shoe deal.

Hope you enjoy, and don’t forget to drink water :)

— Jacob Pace

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Tesla & Google Slash Hundreds of Employees

Just this week alone, tech giants Tesla & Google have continued to slash hundreds of employees, according to multiple reports.

Both companies seemed to cite different reasons, with Tesla needing to be hyper-aggressive about its cost-cutting to presumably compensate for its poor performance this year as as well as increase the chances of Musk getting his $56 billion dollar pay package, and Google making a more aggressive push into AI and cheaper offshore labor.

Let’s start with Tesla. After having laid off around 14,000 people from his company just two weeks ago, Musk fired hundreds more employees this week and sent an email to his entire team mentioning that he wants to be absolutely ‘hard core’ about his regime at his company.

In his email he says, “Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction,” Musk wrote in the email. “While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”

Amongst the people Musk fired was Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of Tesla’s Supercharger business who had been with the company for several years.

Additionally, Google fired its entire Python team amongst other units following a move aimed at reducing costs by hiring less expensive labour outside the United States. In response to this move, the company would essentially set up a new team in Germany's Munich, that would act as "cheaper" labour.

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Ex-Nike Exec Slams Caitlin Clark’s $28M Deal

Caitlin Clark’s $28M shoe deal with Nike caught the attention of former executive Sonny Vaccaro, who signed the deal with Michael Jordan in 1984.

According to Vaccaro, he believes that Clark should’ve gotten a deal similar to Jordan which includes a percentage of royalties in the shoe, as well as a bigger comp package.

Vaccaro said he thought the deal was “poorly handled” by the athlete’s agents, and stated “Caitlin Clark was in the best position to maximize her value immediately than any [woman in sports] that [he] knew.”

Clark’s current deal with Nike is a multi-year deal that also includes a signature shoe.

Clark, though, doesn't seem too disappointed ... $28 mil, after all, is a ton of coin -- especially considering she's only set to make $76,000 from her WNBA contract this season.

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Meta Launches Monetization for Threads

Are people still on Threads? Apparently so…

According to recent data, Threads has more daily users in the US than X, a trend that's been consistent since December, when Threads became Apple's most-downloaded app for a time.

Well, if you happen to be an active creator on Threads, you’re in luck, because just this week, Meta announced that it would start to pay creators on the platform.

The two main parameters used by Threads to pay creators are the views of their content and how often they share posts. However, to begin monetizing your content you must first receive a coveted invitation from the platform.

Reports of this newly unveiled bonus program are alleging to pay in the thousands of dollars to certain creators. This news comes right after Meta’s announcement to put ads on Threads in 2024.

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Amazon’s Twitch Launches TikTok Competitor

What’s going on? Well, it seems with all the talk of TikTok potentially needing to either sell or shutdown in the U.S., it’s given Amazon the confidence to launch its own short-form video competitor through Twitch, its live-streaming platform, called “Discovery Feed”.

The scrollable feed of content shows users entertaining clips from livestreamers on Twitch in a mobile-first format.

While the funnel is rather smart, when you think about users being able to more easily discover livestreamers, the feature is monetized but not yet paying creators, which will prove to be a challenge on top of all the other aspects of competing with the existing short-form behemoths like TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts.

However, with the explosion of live commerce in the U.S., this could be just what Amazon needs to compete with TikTok Shop.

If you made it this far, thank you! I hope you have a wonderful week. See you next time.