🔥 Short ‘em, then scorch ‘em

Plus: Amazon's winning "View in Your Room" feature, how to live an unscheduled life, and more. View Online It's eclipse day in America and we're saying this for ourselves as much as for you: don't look directly at it, don't look directly at it, don't look directly at it. In today's email: Hedge fund journalism: Great reporting comes at a price. Not necessary: $1.6k to slather diamonds on your face. Digits: People really love those .ai domains, a messy land dispute, and more. Around the web: Explaining airplane sounds, "Murder on the Dancefloor," and more. 👇 Listen: A quick recap of the last month in AI — and a quick preview of the next one. The Big Idea The uncomfortable marriage of hedge funds and journalists Is it ethical to invest in the downfall of your investigative target? 2024-04-08T00:00:00Z Ben Berkley We love seeing journalists making money in this wretched industry, but one emerging funding model is… hard to come to grips with. Last week, hedge fund Hunterbrook Capital launched a news site called Hunterbrook Media. The news arm's debut feature was a thoroughly reported piece investigating United Wholesale Mortgage, America's largest mortgage lender. Truth to power. Accountability journalism. Great stuff — when taken at face value. But here's how Hunterbrook Media pays for that reportage: Before anyone hit publish, the UWM article was presented to its affiliated hedge fund arm, which shorted UWM and invested in top rival Rocket Mortgage. Now that feels a bit more unsettling. Interesting, though … Yeah, very much so. NiemanLab called Hunterbrook "one of the most unusual experiments in media ethics," adding it was "rather bonkers" from a journalistic perspective. Hunterbrook isn't the only one short-selling their investigative targets — Hindenburg Research notably employs a similar model, and Mark Cuban's Sharesleuth has been playing in this murky water since 2006. But those other operations are more positioned as short-selling first, journalism second. That isn't the case with Hunterbrook, which presents itself under a banner of independent journalism: It self-presents as a possible solution to media's crumbling model. It trumpets its advisory board's bona fides, trading off the credibility of The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and The New York Times. That's a risky road to take… … It calls more attention to the org's journalistic objectivity — and how difficult that must be to maintain when your livelihood is based on damaging the business you're reporting on. It also makes Hunterbrook the most intriguing hedge fund-reporter dalliance to date, as it presents a fascinating question: Can two industries combine forces to solve each other's challenges — for journalists, anything resembling a stable business model; for hedge funds, reliable and actionable intel on its positions — without anyone selling out? About that other question you may have… Is all of this legal? They walk a thin line, but if Hunterbrook holds to its policies and never makes investments based on nonpublic insider information, then yes, it's legal. While Hunterbrook is plainly aiming to coax a windfall at UWM's expense, it has ultimately taken a swing at a public company with publicly available information. So, it isn't shady — Hunterbrook is admirably above board in describing its modes and motives — it just, by nature, feels shady. Free Resource How to run a one-person business Is today the day you bite the bootstrapping bullet and embark on the name of this newsletter? … Perhaps, perhaps. We know the couch is always lookin' cozy, so we're guessing you'll stash our solopreneur's field guide on a Chrome tab and save it for later — or finally become the DIY phenom of your dreams. This ~30-page handbook contains the Trends network's top tips on running a business by yourself. It unwraps partnerships, marketing, mindset, and the top skills needed to succeed. Grab it for free. Solopreneurship secrets → TRENDING An official New York City business support chatbot remains online, despite the mayor's acknowledgement that the AI helper has advised small business owners to break city laws. For instance, per the bot, firing an employee who doesn't disclose a pregnancy is permissible. (It is not.) SNIPPETS Tesla is unveiling a new robotaxi on Aug. 8, at least according to Elon Musk's very brief post on X. Though Musk gave no details, he's said previously that Tesla would one day make fully autonomous cars. Meta was accused of censorship for flagging the Kansas Reflector's links as cybersecurity threats after the nonprofit newspaper published a column critiquing Facebook. Despite the post briefly being blocked on all Meta platforms, the company said it was just a mistake. Snapchat will limit Solar System, a feature that shows users which friends they interact with most, after parents complained it posed mental health risks to teens by ranking friends. Just wait till they learn about Myspace's Top 8. The percentage of US women in the C-suite of publicly traded companies has dropped for the first time since 2005. Women held 11.8% of ~15k C-suite roles in 2023, down from 12.2% in 2022. The streak continues: The US economy has now seen 39 straight months of job growth. The March jobs report added a better-than-expected 303k jobs and unemployment fell to 3.8%. Kinda surprising: More employees say they prefer hybrid work (29%) over remote work (23%), per a Morning Consult survey. Though hybrid topped remote for the first time, both got trounced: 46% said they prefer in-person work. Walmart is paying out $45m to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that it inflated the weight of grocery items, overcharging customers. The store denies wrongdoing but agreed to the payouts anyway. Walt Disney's Imagineering division has developed new high-tech audio-animatronics for its Tiana's Bayou Adventure ride that look like animations come to life. The Chuck E. Cheese rat is shaking in his boots. AMC Theatres upped CEO Adam Aron's annual compensation package to $25.4m last year, only natural for a company that recorded $397m in net losses in 2023. In fairness, though, that was a big improvement over 2022's losses ($974m). 2024's most important vote is here: We're Webby nominees for top newsletter, but we can't win without your support. Vote for The Hustle here and fulfill your civic obligations for the year. Get free stuff... Our referral program is the ultimate win-win — we get your friends reading The Hustle and you get to fuel your insatiable desire for branded goods. Scroll down to claim your prize. Not Necessary 111Skin product line. Diamonds are forever, but face cream doesn't last that long. That doesn't seem to bother some deep-pocketed customers choosing to slather literal diamond dust onto their faces for smoother skin. 111Skin's Black Diamond skin care collection is formulated using "fine diamond particles as a method to enhance the absorption" of its active ingredients. Just 50 mL of Black Diamond Cream will set you back $995, while the Ultimate product collection rings up at $1.6k+. Fit The Bill There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand? Clue 1: This company's got a fun humble-beginnings tale: It was just five people working out of a coffee shop devising a way to make it easier to sell snowboards. Clue 2: Its CEO is part of the founding team that launched the company in 2006, and he's been handsomely rewarded for all he's done to build it up. Per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is the 13th-richest man in his North American country. Clue 3: The jewel of a region nicknamed "Silicon Valley North," this ecommerce company is the most valuable nonbank entity in Canada by market cap. 👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇 By the Numbers Digits: A $500k mistake, an island's big payday, and more wild numbers Anguilla makes bank, a new way to shop, and more numbers from around the web. 2024-04-08T00:00:00Z Juliet Bennett Rylah 31%: Share of Amazon's "View in Your Room" users who say it led them to purchase an item that they otherwise would have only bought in person, per Jungle Scout. The augmented reality feature lets shoppers use their phone to see what a piece of furniture, artwork, or other object would look like in their home. $32m: How much Anguilla made off of ".ai" domain names in 2023. The Caribbean island's top-level domain has long been ".ai," but the boom in artificial intelligence has led to entrepreneurs snatching up domains. This was such a boon to the nation that it accounted for 10%+ of its GDP. (P.S. We previously covered how close Anguilla came to losing control of its ".ai" cash cow here.) $500k: The price of one big oopsie — or, one three-bed, two-bath home in Puna, Hawaii. Annaleine Reynolds bought the empty lot it sits on in 2018 for $22.5k to build a women's meditation retreat center. However, while she was stuck in California during the pandemic, a construction company mistakenly built a home on it. Now the matter is going to court as Reynolds grapples with no retreat, higher taxes, squatters, and a lawsuit from the home's developers. 7%: How much grocery retailer profits rose over total costs in the first three quarters of 2023, per an FTC report that accuses some retailers of using "rising costs" as an excuse to hike prices. The FTC also alleges that larger grocers bullied suppliers to keep them stocked over smaller rivals during the pandemic. Some lawmakers now want the FTC to invoke a mid-century price discrimination law that requires suppliers offer the same discounts to all retailers. AROUND THE WEB 🚀 On this day: In 1993, astronaut Ellen Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. 🎤 Haha: Please enjoy 2.8k people beautifully singing "Murder on the Dancefloor." 🎧 Listen: In this episode of My First Million, Sam and Shaan discuss how they disable distractions, being effective vs. being efficient, and how to manage an unscheduled ife. ✈️ That's interesting: What all the noises on a plane mean. 🌅 Aww: Hi, Gerald. SHARE THE HUSTLE Hey. Don't keep us a secret. Refer just 3 people and we'll send Hustle essentials as a thank you. Share this custom referral link: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Your referral count: 0 Today's Fit the Bill answer is Shopify (Market cap: $95.99B) Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben "Congrats to the moon on its big win today" Berkley. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. PODCAST JOBS CONTACT US The Hustle, 2 Canal Park, Cambridge, MA 02141, US. Never want to hear from us again? Break our hearts and unsubscribe.