If Coca-Cola launched today, you might find its secret formula on GitHub. 

A new cohort of entrepreneurs is putting it all out there — sharing traffic stats, source code, and employee salaries with total randos on the internet. 

Dozens of these “open startups” are building their companies in public:

• Social analytics company Buffer publishes salaries, diversity stats, and product road maps. 
• The head honchos at online checkout startup Fast tweet out strategy updates, down to how the company uses quizzes to grab loyal customers. 
• The publishing platform Ghost shares virtually everything — churn, monthly run rate, user numbers.

Ecommerce company Gumroad has held open board meetings since 2019 — anyone can show up. 

The titan of TMI

Pieter Levels popularized this brand of oversharing in 2017. His blockbuster post chronicled the growth of his company Hoodmaps from a line of code into a biz with 300k+ users. 

No detail was too small: Levels even included his personal playlist.

He shares data for 2 of his other startups: RemoteOK and Nomad List.

Is this just a marketing stunt? 

Partly, yes: Public builders are characteristically open about how traffic spikes whenever they tweet their numbers. 

But it might also build community.

Publishing all your numbers is terrifying. What if your usership slides and you scare off investors? 

Sahil Lavingia, creator of Gumroad, found that the opposite happened when he threw open his books. “Our creators have grown more loyal,” he wrote. 

The artists who sell on his platform? They felt like they were in it with him.

Wanna put it all out there? 

Here are some links to get you started: 

• Buffer breaks down the pros and cons of total transparency.
• Watch out for the “Build in Public” newsletter.
• Our Steph Smith has written about a concept beyond open business metrics: open goals.

Denim-print bike shorts: $9. Mini crossbow: $17. “Brest enlarging” cream: $4.

This curious cornucopia is the low-priced foundation of Wish’s $11B+ ecommerce empire:

• Moving ~3m items/day, Wish is the 4th largest digital marketplace in the US. 
• Since January 2019, 36k+ small businesses in the US and Europe have partnered with Wish to stock/deliver its wares.

And as Forbes reports, a sudden shift means those mom and pops could decide the company’s future.

But first: How is sketchy boob goo worth so much?

It’s all about subsidies, sweetie.

Wish played middleman between shoppers and Chinese manufacturers. Shipping subsidies let producers move goods to Americans dirt-cheap… 

… which meant Wish didn’t have the high overhead of warehouses, a la Amazon. 

But on July 1, the Universal Postal Union popped the subsidy bubble. Shipping costs doubled overnight. 

Now Wish is wishing on small businesses

Wish pays them to carry inventory and become storefronts. It’s getting around the shipping dilemma by bundling orders and sending them to stores in bulk.

It’s aiming to ink deals with 100k stores by the end of the year — and eventually reach 1m retail partners. 

We, eh, Wish them well. You never know when you’ll need the following goodies:

• a human hair wig ($15)
• a definitely-not-fake Rolex ($51)
• some parasite-free detox blast capsules ($11)
• a goat hoof trimmer ($96)

You know that scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson’s son evades murder by darting through a maze of hedgerows?

The pandemic has homeowners hoping to recreate that — um — relaxing vibe.

No, really

Lars Howlett is the US’s premier labyrinth designer. They’re actually different from mazes — a maze has multiple dead ends. A labyrinth might be confusing, but there’s only one path.

Institutional labyrinth projects — schools, hospitals, and estates — are down, but private property owners are buying in. Howlett says the labyrinth “brings order out of a sense of chaos.”

But don’t take our word for it

There’s a vibrant community of labyrinthusiasts to help you get your calm on. 

They seek out public puzzles, build their own out of pixels and found objects, and use hand-held models — which we interpret to mean the kind that comes with kids’ meals.

Bet you a chicken nugget we can find the end faster.

Brace yourself: An industry journal found “an absence of published evidence” that straightening your teeth is healthy.

And a growing number of orthodontists say braces are overused. 

This is about to get metal

People spend $9.6B every year on orthodontics. About half of all kids have let the pros get up in their grills.

But for a profession concerned with uniformity, opinions on the research are misaligned:

The pro-braces crowd says: 

• One study found crowded teeth were flush with bacteria.
• Another said people who don’t get orthodontic treatment were more likely to have periodontitis, a serious gum infection.

The brace-haters’ take: 

• Some of the studies showing that braces help your oral health aren’t fully polished — several aren’t randomized.
• One paper found that fewer than 5% of people fit the traditional criteria for a perfect bite, questioning the necessity of treatment.

In 1999, Bruce Pascal got a call from his mom: She was cleaning out the house and wanted him to get rid of his old Hot Wheels from the ’60s.

Digging through the cigar box full of cars overwhelmed the commercial real estate executive with nostalgia. So he embarked on a mission to amass the most enviable Hot Wheels collection in the world.

Now 59, Pascal boasts a stockpile worth $1.5m+. 

It includes 7k+ cars, many of which are one-of-a-kind prototypes acquired from ex-Mattel employees. One of them, a pink 1969 Rear Load Beach Bomb, is purportedly valued at ~$150k.

Pascal is one of a handful of Hot Wheels super collectors, dealers, and middlemen The Hustle talked to this week. It’s a strange, passionate group that includes a BMX stunt rider, a man who owns a geese-removal business, and a retired traveling food salesman.

What drives these collectors to drop 5-figure sums on rare toy cars? And how has this niche economy managed to stay alive for 50+ years?

Find out when our story pulls into your inbox on Sunday morning.

2020 has us totally out of whack

That includes our skin.

Try this Super Pure Niacinamide serum from Glossier to help bring a little balance back to that indispensable organ of yours.

Combined with zinc, niacinamide helps return your skin to a healthy balance without the nasty side effects of usual creams — like drying out, flakiness, and irritation.

It’s like we always say: Look good, feel good, play good.  

Try Super Pure alongside Super Glow and Super Bounce and save $19: