Hershey offers Pirate Brand a $420m parlay

Hershey makes a $420m Booty call

Hershey has purchased Pirate Brands, the geniuses behind Pirate’s Booty and Smart Puffs, for $420m. The cheese-puff prodigy is the latest of several healthy snack brands to fall under the spell of Hershey’s kiss.

Power to the puffs

As it turns out, you’re not the only one out there with a secret love for orange finger dust: The annual market for cheese puffs is $2.5B.

Pirate’s Booty is the hottest brand in the category, with an 8% annual growth rate. Food conglomerate B&G Foods bought Pirate Brands for $195m in 2013, and in the past 5 years, the value of the puff producers more than doubled.

Now, Hershey hopes that having the Pirates onboard will help the chocolate company add to its treasure chest. Financial analysts say the acquisition should bring the Kiss-crafters closer to their financial targets.

There’s some healthy competition in the snacking industry

The trend away from meals and towards snacks has intersected with the health-food craze -- making healthy snacks the holy grail for food companies.

In May, PepsiCo bought Bare Foods, the makers of fruit and vegetable chips. General Mills bought organic snackmaker Annies for $820m in 2014, and most other big food companies have either acquired or launched health food brands in the last few years.

Hershey’s cheesy choice is the latest in a series of several healthy snack acquisitions designed to keep Hershey competitive with other diversified food companies.

On a snack-quisition spree

Last year, Hershey purchased Amplify Snack brands -- the makers of SkinnyPop and Paqui tortilla chips -- for $921m. Before that, the chocolate-maker spent millions buying the snacking-chocolate company barkTHINS and the jerky company Krave.

Hershey now refers to the foods in its salty-sweet lineup as “snack-fections” -- positioning the company as more than a mere candymaker to compete with larger, more varied businesses.

With chocolate, jerky, and cheese puffs under one roof, Hershey hopes it has enough Booty for everyone -- including the health nuts -- to snack on.

Brazilian scooter startup Yellow raises $63m in Latin America’s largest ever Series A

Yellow, a Brazilian e-scooter and bike company, raised $63m in a Series A funding round led by GGV Capital.

According to TechCrunch, GGV Capital has backed several other transportation companies (including Lime), and this marks their first foray into the Latin American tech industry.

“RING RING!” *picks up banana phone*

“Yellow?”

After selling their ride sharing startup, 99, to Didi Chuxing for $1B last year, Ariel Lambrecht and Renato Freitas quickly joined forces with cycling industry veteran Eduardo Musa to form Yellow.

Soon after, the bike- and scooter-sharing service screeched into the eye-line of venture capitalists, raising a $12.3m seed funding round in April.

US-based firms have remained notably absent from the Latin American tech sector. But…

2017 was a marquee year for Latin American startups

With more than $600m invested in the first quarter of 2018 alone, it’s not crazy to think the streak will continue. This could mean big green for Yellow — and, they’re going to need it.

Though most companies purchase scooters from Chinese suppliers, Yellow plans to build its own factory locally and manufacture its own hardware.

iHeartMedia continues push into podcasts with acquisition of Stuff Media

As the radio industry continues to lose reception with Earth, iHeartMedia has agreed to acquire Stuff Media, the company that owns the massive HowStuffWorks podcasting empire.

The move comes a week after iHeart announced it was partnering with the how-to network to launch a new season of its hit podcast, Atlanta Monster, on its network of radio stations.

Early reports indicate the acquisition was ~$55m — but that figure is still unconfirmed.

iHeartPodcasts

Since filing for bankruptcy protection in March, iHeart has been hellbent on making itself a major podcast contender. So far, it’s been working pretty dang well.

According to Fast Company, podcast listening ballooned by 73% between 2017 and 2018 for the company, primarily from its “Podcast, Meet Broadcast” initiative that coupled the media conglomerate with the biggest podcast publishers (NPR, ESPN, Gimlet, etc.).

iHeart also hosts more than 750 iHeartRadio Original podcasts, including Anna Faris is Unqualified.

But HowStuffWorks brings iHeart to a whole new level

The learn-it-yourself platform was originally founded in 1998 and reportedly had a number of owners before going independent and raising a $15m Series A last year.

HowStuff’s podcasts receive more than 61m downloads and streams a month, with the company’s flagship series, Stuff You Should Know, on pace to surpass 500m downloads this year.

Street-mapping startup Mapillary scores a mysterious Amazon Rekognition partnership

Mapillary, a startup on a mission to “fix” the world’s maps, partnered with Amazon’s machine vision program, Rekognition, to build street-level maps.

Starting with a parking app, the Swedish company plans to build a platform that rivals Google’s Street View. But the partnership raises questions about Amazon’s mapping ambitions that Mapillary can’t seem to answer.

Seems like a good spot to start...

Americans waste $73B a year looking for parking spots. Like any good Swedish designer, Mapillary thinks that’s a bit excessive.

Mapillary plans to use its database of more than 350m crowdsourced street-level photos to “read” street signs and develop smart parking maps, replacing the analog parking systems that still exist in many cities.

The company, which has raised $24.5m, already secured a contract from a “large [unnamed] US city” to build parking maps.

Is that you, Amazon? We hardly Rekognized you

Mapillary has also stated it will use Amazon’s Rekognition API — which is infamous for its secret use as a law enforcement tool — to detect and read text on street signs.

But when TechCrunch pressed for partnership details, a spokesman said, “I can’t comment on what Amazon is doing, or why. It would be nice to have that part of the announcement, but it ended up not working out this time.” And Bezos slowly withdrew the knife held against his throat (jk)...

Amazon’s evasiveness is noteworthy. The company recently launched its own mapping API, and if they are about to tap into a 350m-picture crowdsourced image database, you can bet they’re gonna use it.

monday.com snags $50m to keep your office hummin’

“Only well-oiled machines allowed.” That’s the imaginary sign above monday.com’s New York offices.

The workplace collaboration startup recently closed $50m in funding at a valuation of $500m -- and it all started with a simple Gantt chart.

See, monday.com specializes in getting s**t done. They help your team collaborate on every project, from a new website redesign or media scheduling, or even just planning Sarah in Marketing’s 30th birthday -- Spoiler Sarah, we’re going to Dave & Buster’s.

Helping 35k businesses get more done

Think of monday.com as your go-to productivity suite. Organize timelines, delegate responsibilities, and track progress all from one intuitive dashboard.

With monday.com, everything your team needs is in one location. Attach photos, files, and comments to individual projects with ease.

And because everything happens in the context of your ongoing projects, it’s easy for your crew to stay up-to-date -- AKA no more details lost in lengthy email chains.

It’s no wonder companies like WeWork, Discovery, and even Mickey Dee’s trust monday.com to keep their teams organized. It just works. Plus, with a free 14-day trial you can test drive before you buy.

1. It used to be impressive if a product came from half the world away, now it’s impressive if it’s local.
2. Smelling is just breathing normally but thinking about it more.
3. When we pretend to scream, we whisper.
4. Your head is very slowly 3D printing your hair.
5. Staying up late at night is basically setting the next day to a higher difficulty.
6. via Reddit