Hey Snackers,
Our hearts go out to the eight victims who were killed in the Atlanta spa shootings on Tuesday, and their loved ones. We don't yet know the motive for the attacks — but they follow a sharp rise in violence and racism against Asian-Americans during the pandemic.
The Dow closed above 33K for the first time yesterday, after the Fed pledged to continue its easy-money policies while the US economy recovers. TLDR: interest rates will stay near zero, and the Fed will keep buying bonds to pump $$$ into the system and keep borrowing cheap.
Don't know what a Nissan Sentra looks like... Didn't see it coming: Uber lost a major labor battle last month, when the UK's Supreme Court ruled that its drivers are entitled to a minimum wage and other worker benefits. This week, Uber made the worker reclassification official.
But not as pricey as you'd think... Uber usually doesn't pay its drivers wages — it just connects them to riders, then keeps ~25% of the fare. While the new UK benefits sound costly, they're not as expansive as they sound.
The real story isn’t the details... It's the precedent. In November, Uber scored a major victory when CA voters said "Yes" to Prop 22. Uber had threatened to leave CA if it was forced to reclassify gig drivers as employees. But now that Uber has given UK drivers a new status, it could inspire more labor activists to push for change globally (and more lawsuits). That precedent is likely why Uber stock sank 4% yesterday.
This video is sponsored by... Squarespace has helped millions of non-coders build their own websites. It just raised $300M at an impressive $10B valuation — and though it was founded in 2003, its valuation has 5X’d in just the past three years. That's probably how it paid for its Dolly Parton Super Bowl commercial. In addition to hosting your sizzle reel website, Squarespace has also expanded to hosting online stores (great timing).
Double SUMO... Squarespace is still private, so regular investors are straight up missing out on its growth (it's a SUMO stock). But investors are SUMO'ing on its financials, too: Squarespace filed confidentially to go public in January, staying secretive with its numbers. Case in point: a one-paragraph post was all we got about the latest fundraise. While we barely know anything about Squarespace’s $$$, we do know about its publicly-traded rival Wix (also a website builder with ecommerce hosting):
Lookout for the comp... to understand the private. With public companies, the market decides value. With private companies, it's a comparison game. To determine private company valuations, investors look at their publicly-traded competitors. They find similar companies in the same industry to gauge the private company's growth potential and value. As businesses moved online and people took on more side-gigs during the pandemic, Wix had its "most successful year in history." This gives us a hint as to what Squarespace might've experienced (despite its invisible numbers).
Authors of this Snacks own shares of: Uber, Amazon, Walmart, and Disney
ID: 1568943