💧Coming soon: toilet water?

Are we ready for ‘toilet to tap’ drinking water?

Your dog loves drinking out of the toilet, why shouldn’t you? Well, you actually can with some added filtration steps.

In an op-ed for Bloomberg, Vanderbilt professor Amanda Little pushes for the US to get on board with recycled sewage, sometimes called “toilet to tap.”

What the heck is ‘toilet to tap’?

It’s recycled wastewater from sources like showers, toilets, and dishwashers that undergoes a multistep filtration process. It’s both clean and safe to drink.

In fact, Orange County Water District Manager Mike Markus told CBS in 2015 that its Fountain Valley plant — which treats 100m gallons a day — was the cleanest in the entire state of drought-stricken California.

But people still don’t like it because of what psychologists call…

The Yuck Factor

Back in 1993, there was a plan to pump reclaimed water to drinking supplies in the San Gabriel Valley.

But it garnered enemies, including Miller Brewery, who had a nearby plant and worried consumers would be put off. The term “toilet to tap” actually originated during this squabble — and the plan never happened.

Then in 2015, SoCal announced another recycled wastewater project, and people were still reluctant. Only this time, Jon Stewart mocked people who thought recycled water is gross.

This is the way

Little thinks recycled wastewater is the future. While some water-treatment plants work by taking salt out of ocean water, that’s over twice as expensive.

According to the professor, it’s time to expand infrastructure beyond California. There is a nicer term, btw: “showers to flowers.”

And as for beer? A Swedish brewery made a wastewater Pilsner…

• China’s social giant ByteDance (owner of TikTok) is headed for a $250B+ IPO. Its CEO Zhang Yiming will step down in the lead-up to this public debut, handing power to the company’s head of HR, Rubo Liang.
• The US government is proposing a minimum 15% global tax rate. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says such a move would stop the “race to the bottom” for tax regimes.
• The market’s rally post-COVID created a record number of 401(k) and IRA millionaires, per wealth manager Fidelity.

Today, Anthony Casalena’s stake in Squarespace — his website for building beautiful websites — is worth ~$2.4B.

The platform has 3.7m subscribers and reached $621m in 2020 revenue (+28% YoY). Here’s its path to success:

2003: Anthony Casalena starts writing the code for Squarespace after recognizing the need for a website platform that takes design seriously.

2004: Casalena officially launches Squarespace with a $30k check from his dad to purchase servers. He manages the entire business out of his dorm at the University of Maryland. By 2005, Squarespace has 10k+ trial accounts and 478 customers.

2006: Squarespace brings in $1m+. Following college, Casalena moves to New York and begins hiring a skeleton team.

2010: After turning down a buyout offer from Getty Images, Casalena accepts his first institutional investments from Accel and Index Ventures for $38.5m.

2012: Squarespace surpasses 100 employees and launches its commerce offering in 2013.

2014: Squarespace raises another $40m in funding and purchases its first Super Bowl ad spot.

2017: Squarespace raises an additional $200m. Its Super Bowl ad featuring a pissed-off John Malkovich wins an Emmy.

2019: Squarespace acquires appointment site Acuity Scheduling and social media template platform Unfold.

2021: Squarespace raises $300m, acquires hospitality management platform Tock for $400m+, and goes public with a market value of $6.6B.

And it all started in a dorm room.

Another tech company tries to save flailing publishers, what’s new?

On Tuesday, TechCrunch reported that Piano — a subscription and analytics tool used by dozens of top media houses — raised $88m in a new round of financing.

This latest round brings Piano’s total raised to a whopping $241m. Notably, the internet’s favorite uncle — LinkedIn — joined as an investor in the latest round.

Publishing is so hot right now…

… and it’s undergoing yet another identity crisis, with journalists jumping ship to start Substack newsletters. Paywalls — once hated — are now in vogue.

Piano’s pitch to publishers: Don’t beat ’em, join ’em.

The startup offers publishers a variety of tools and services to track reader engagement on-site, sell subscriptions and memberships, and soon manage newsletters.

It touts ~1k customers, including small media operations like The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and The Economist. Heck, even The Hustle’s own Trends once used it, but let’s not talk about that… we’re keeping this story friendly.

Wait… WTF is LinkedIn doing in there?

Per TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden, LinkedIn may use Piano to bring its network of ~740m users outside of LinkedIn.

Think of sign-on features at your favorite publishers using your LinkedIn account. Based on the professional network’s track record of rolling out new features, we’re not holding our breath.

Either way, Piano is padding a war chest — and with its lineup of big name customers, we bet you’ll probably be hearing more from them.

How This Man Sold His Soap-Opera Blog for $9m

Ramon Van Meer has never seen a soap opera. Yet somehow he built the most popular soap-opera blog on the planet — and was raking in millions per year! On My First Million’s Greatest Hits #3 episode, Ramon details how he got the idea and flipped a $49 WordPress theme into a multimillion dollar payday.

He breaks down:

• How to test ideas quickly and build products with no technical expertise
• How he dominated the soap-opera industry without having ever watched a soap opera
• The tactics he used to scale from $0 to hundreds of thousands in revenue in a matter of months

Here’s a wild story. You might have heard about the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, but have you heard about the Saxenas?

This power family took Twitter by storm after it emerged that former money manager Puru Saxena had a parody account called Pedro pretending to be his brother.

After calling on his followers to report the account, they did precisely the opposite and formed a dozen new members of his family. Moral of the story? Embrace the meme and don’t take yourself too seriously on Twitter.

(P.S. This segment was written by Dr. Parik Patel, one of Twitter’s funniest parody accounts. Periodically, he will round up the “tweets of the week” for The Hustle. Check it out here.)