🥧 The baking boom

When you hear the name CollegeHumor, you might think of the media company whose viral sketch videos have titles like “If Google Was A Guy.”

You probably don’t think of an $8B+ public software company.

Believe it or not, Vimeo started off as a CollegeHumor spinoff

In 2004, developers Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein built Vimeo as a side project while working at Connected Ventures, CollegeHumor’s parent company.

By 2006, CollegeHumor was getting 6m visitors a month, and media conglomerate IAC bought Connected Ventures for $30m to own that audience. (Translation: IAC kinda sorta bought Vimeo by chance.)

After Google acquired YouTube for $1.65B later that year, IAC realized its luck and shifted focus toward Vimeo with the goal of making a high-quality, curated YouTube competitor.

But the market was too small

Vimeo considered investing in original content to spur growth, but Anjali Sud, then director of marketing, thought it was a bad idea.

Sud pitched IAC’s CEO on building video software for businesses, similar to what GoDaddy and Squarespace did for websites. The pitch landed her the CEO job.

That launched Vimeo’s shift to SaaS

Vimeo has since built out a suite of production tools for:

• Mom and pop stores to generate high-quality social media video content
• Creators to build subscription streaming platforms
• Fortune 500 companies to securely broadcast content in ultra-high quality

Vimeo went public earlier this week with 200m+ users and 1.6m paying subscribers. The company generated $89.4m in Q1 2021 revenue, +57% YoY.

(Little-known fact: Vimeo’s founders got the idea for Vimeo after they saw  CollegeHumor’s video of Ashley Simpson’s 2004 SNL lip-syncing debacle go viral.)

At the onset of the pandemic, baking was the self-care a lot of folks kneaded.

Aspiring bakers cleaned both brick-and-mortar and online stores out of supplies, while baking sales rose faster than your sourdough starter.

• King Arthur Baking Company sold 156m+ pounds of flour in 2020, +58% YoY
• Sales of baking mixes and ingredients jumped by ~25%, according to market research firm Mintel Group
• Hershey’s cocoa sales shot up 126% while its baking chips surged 75%
• Yeast sales increased 647%

But will home bakers keep baking when they’re not stuck at home?

The answer appears to be “yes.”

Calls to King Arthur’s baker’s hotline increased 43% during the pandemic. But in March, King Arthur co-CEO Karen Colberg told Yahoo Finance that they’re still seeing baking levels up 25%-30% over pre-pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, consumer market research firm Hunter conducted a survey that found 71% of Americans plan to keep cooking more at home. Another Mintel Group survey from March found ~⅓ of Americans were baking more often and plan to keep at it.

To keep ovens warm…

… companies in the baking biz are now introducing a slew of new products and features, per The Wall Street Journal:

• For those who’ve mastered cookies and cakes, America’s Test Kitchen is dropping a new cookbook for “The Savory Baker.”
• King Arthur’s new “Extraordinary Breads” campaign features 12 recipes beyond sourdough. It also released keto flour.
• Betty Crocker is launching simple kits for families, including “cookie cups.”

Why, yes, that is a cupcake made with cookie dough.

Stanley Druckenmiller has a long and storied investing career:

• In 4+ decades of investing billions of dollars, he has never recorded a down year.
• During one stretch, he compounded assets at 30%+ a year for 30 straight years.

As the lead portfolio manager for George Soros’ Quantum Fund…

… between 1988 and 2000, Druckenmiller was the architect of one of the greatest trades ever: In 1992, he and Soros made $1B shorting the British pound.

Today, Druckenmiller’s firm — Duquesne Capital — is closed to outside money and run as a family office. His net worth has reached $5B+.

In recent weeks, Druckenmiller has raised alarm bells…

… around the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policy, which risks stoking inflation, per his analysis.

To find out more, The Hustle spoke with the investor. The conversation was set up by Toggle AI, an investing AI startup that Druckenmiller counts among his investments.

Druckenmiller tells us:

• What makes a great investor
• How he makes an investment decision
• Whether we are in another tech bubble
• What career advice Druckenmiller has for 20-year-olds
• What he thinks of crypto (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin)
• Which Big Tech firm will be the first to reach a $5T valuation

Read the full Q&A here, or listen to the conversation on the My First Million podcast.

Last week, Google rolled out dozens of new releases during its I/O 2021 developer conference, including updates to Android and Workspace (e.g., Docs, Slides, Sheets).

But the real story is Google’s updates to its cash machine: Google Search.

For search junkies…

… here are 2 acronyms — meant to make Google Search more talkative and knowledgeable — that you should know about:

• LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) allows AI bots to better mimic conversational dialogue.
• MUM (Multitask Unified Model) gives AI a better understanding of the question being asked and the ability to string together complex search queries — AKA the AI knows what you’re really asking.

The 2 technologies are not yet ready for the public, but that didn’t stop Google from demonstrating their abilities by having Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai “talk” to the planet Pluto (anthropomorphism at its finest).

The future is conversations

The I/O demonstrations foreshadow a future Search that’s less type-in-a-query-and-get-a-list-of-results, and more chat friendly.

In Google’s own blog post, it demonstrates a hypothetical search to prepare for a hike to Mount Fuji. Instead of sifting through result pages and tweaking keywords, the AI just knows what information can help and delivers it conversationally.

How exactly? Don’t look at us. But anything’s better than accidentally clicking a search ad.