🏔️  Blanket the slopes

👋  Good morning. If you’re agonizing over that text to send the group chat, ChatGPT could likely help. And your friends might already be using it: non-work-related ChatGPT messages now account for 69% of all ChatGPT conversations, according to new data from OpenAI. In 2024, the split was closer to 50/50. So if your pal canceled on you tonight, a bot might be to blame.

STARTING UP

This startup wants you to buy now, buh-bye later 

❌  The problem: Resale fashion is a booming $130B industry, but many retailers don’t benefit from secondhand sales and few shoppers get around to actually reselling. 

💡  The pitch: Croissant is looking to make resale part of everyone’s shopping habits. The startup’s tech integrates directly into a retailer's online checkout process, offering customers guaranteed buyback value on the items they are purchasing. Croissant’s AI model generates the resale price, and the items become liquid assets inside a shopper’s account, ready to sell with one click at any time. After customers sell their items, they’re directed back to retailers to make new purchases. 

🚀  The outlook: The company is betting that turning purchases into assets will boost sales and keep shoppers coming back with resale cash in hand — because that splurge feels a lot better when you can call it an “investment.”

NEWS FLASH

• Have it your way… or else: Burger King will deploy Patty, an AI chatbot that exists in employees’ headsets to help them prep meals and — here’s where it gets creepy — monitor how friendly they are by identifying phrases like “please,” “thank you,” and “welcome to Burger King.”
  

• You know what your phone’s missing? Chinese electronics company Honor released a concept video for a smartphone with a swiveling robot arm equipped with an AI-powered camera that can take photos and analyze and react to its surroundings. In one clip, it sings a lullaby to a fussing baby. Of course, there’s no guarantee Honor will ever actually market this product… or that anyone wants it.
  

• Don’t trip: Two Michigan State University students founded BRCĒ, a startup that makes shoelaces for athletes that won’t come undone, thus preventing injuries. Different laces suit different sports. For example, football and soccer laces are designed to withstand rain and mud.
  

• OK, great name: In a single day, Those Vegan Cowboys crowdfunded $2.9m+. The Belgian startup makes animal-free casein (a milk protein found in cheese), which its partners turn into cheeses, milk chocolate, and more. Ellen Hensbergen, director of Invesdor, said the platform had never seen an equity crowdfunding campaign “take off this fast.” 
  

THINK FAST

Build and validate your next big idea

You don’t need an actual physical business or polished product to accumulate crucial user insights. 

See how eight solopreneurs built minimum viable products (MVPs) to test the waters — in days not months — with snappy ads, offers, and landing pages.

Staple “launch and learn”strategies:

1. Get early access
2. Squeeze pages
3. Letters 
4. Demos
5. Ads
6. Free tools/prototypes
7. “Wizard of Oz” MVP 
8. Flagship content MVP

THE BIG IDEA

A most excellent idea for saving snow

If you ever tried saving snowballs in the freezer until summer as a kid, you'll love this idea.

Bogus Basin — a nonprofit ski destination in Idaho with a Bill & Ted-approved name — found a secret weapon to combat the snow drought plaguing the West: snow blankets. 

Dubbed "Project X," the innovative experiment allowed the recreation area to store snow during the summer and reopen trails — long before the first snow fall, per NPR.

Strange things are afoot on the slopes

While some of us were busy watching the snow-covered Winter Olympics, the Western US has experienced one of the worst ski seasons in decades. 

• Record low snowpacks and high temps have led to bare slopes, canceled reservations, and a harsh economic blow to a multibillion-dollar industry.
  
• Even Florida has seen more snow than Utah, much to the chagrin of freezing iguanas.

But Bogus Basin was prepared. 

A bit like traveling back in time

Early last year, while temperatures were still below freezing, Bogus Basin stockpiled snow for the future with the help of Finnish company Snow Secure: 

• Snowmakers created a tall, football-field-sized pile of snow.
  
• Massive, interlocking polystyrene plastic blankets — one of Time Magazine's best inventions of 2025 — covered the pile.
  
• Snow remained frozen, even during 80-degree days.
  
• When overnight temps returned to freezing in October, the pile was uncovered, revealing that 80% of the snow remained.
  
• Special tractors then spread the snow and the first small ski hill opened.

Bogus Basin was able to welcome customers even before the first snowfall or temps were low enough for snowmaking. 

The $120k kit also proved cheaper than a proposed $6m-$7m expansion of a water retention pond for snowmaking.

Party on, dudes 

The nonprofit plans to invest $600k in additional blankets for next season, in hopes of opening an entire trail before Thanksgiving.

Resorts in Wisconsin, British Columbia, and Europe have also successfully incorporated Snow Secure's system.

While not a replacement for natural snow or snowmaking, the blankets offer a low-tech, economical tool to help ski slopes bring in business earlier. 

Providing a most excellent adventure for skiers and snowboarders.

🔗

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Buc-ee’s, Wawa, Sheetz… You definitely have a fave. But how did these roadside stops gain cult-like followings? We explore the country’s three most-beloved gas station chains.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How much your home would need to be worth for it to be listed on Infinity, a newly launched, invite-only home-swapping platform for “like-minded homeowners” — or, basically, Airbnb for people with enough money to own second or third homes in places like St. Barths, Paris, and NYC, but without equally wealthy friends whose vacation houses they can stay at like normal rich folk. 

Owning luxury real estate isn’t the only barrier to entry: members will also have to pay a $100k initiation fee for 10 years of access to the private network of off-market properties.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to white passengers, nine months before Rosa Parks would do the same.
🌲  Chill out: and build a landscape in this cozy game.
📰  Newsletter: The Stacked Marketer delivers curated marketing news, tactics, and actionable advice.

🎤  Join us: We’re sitting down with Starter Story’s Pat Walls tomorrow for a candid chat about what it took to build — and sell — his business. Don't miss it.
🐶  Aww: Just a bunch of fluff.

SHOWER THOUGHT

The rise of committee-made media and AI-generated garbage in the 21st century may be the in-universe explanation for why science fiction like “Star Trek” and “The Orville” seem to fixate on 20th-century music and films. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Danny Jensen, and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "That's snowbiz, baby" Friedman.

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