👋 Good morning. And if you’re reading this after 10:46am ET, happy spring! That’s the moment the sun’s rays fall directly on the equator, according to EarthSky, marking the spring equinox. It's the start of longer daylight hours, roughly equal days and nights, and, hopefully, some nice weather. Don’t get too excited, though, we still don’t want to see you in flip-flops at the office.
STARTING UP
This app wants to turn your scrolling into real-world plans
❌ The problem: Your camera roll is a graveyard of screenshots of restaurants to try and hidden gems to visit.
💡 The pitch: Rodeo wants those activities to make it into — and out of — the group chat. The company, founded by former Hinge execs, pulls key details from social posts and turns them into shareable plans. Users can upload links or screenshots, and Rodeo extracts information like locations and reservations, packaged in a calendar-style link. The founders say existing relationships are a green space in a saturated app market that focuses on finding new friendships and romances.
🚀 The outlook: While Rodeo has raised $8.5m in seed funding and has 20k beta users, it doesn’t have a monetization plan — yet.
NEWS FLASH
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Lift off: Sweden’s Candela raised ~$34m to build a second manufacturing facility in Poland for its P-12 electric hydrofoil ferry, a boat that lifts above the water’s surface as it sails, thus reducing drag and using up to 80% less energy than its diesel counterparts. It’s already in use in some Nordic public transit systems and will expand further this year.
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Add it up: Casio is releasing 650 beautiful calculators, priced at $624 each. While fairly basic, they can handle currency conversion and tax calculations and have a long battery life. The high price reflects the fact that each was hand-lacquered by master artisan Ryuji Umeda, per The Verge, a process that took one month.
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If you love staring at screens, prediction market app Polymarket is opening a bar in Washington, D.C. today called The Situation Room, described as a sports bar “but just for situation monitoring” with “live X feeds, flight radar, Bloomberg terminals, and Polymarket screens.”
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RIP, app full of screaming kids: Meta is shutting down Horizon Worlds, the VR social app it launched when Mark Zuckerberg was all about the metaverse. Though Meta’s plans continue to involve VR apps and headsets, it has made several recent cuts to its VR business. Horizon Worlds never really caught on, so… not really a surprise there.
EVERYDAY CASH COWS
There you are, wearing 17 hats
The strategist, marketer, salesperson, service rep, and boss, amongst other things, of your very own business.
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- Emails, social media, and SEO content
- Cold call scripts and sales pages
- Customer chatbots and crisis support
- Data analysis, deep research, and reporting
- Personal growth and skill development
Is 150 not enough or something? Grab the stack for free.
THE BIG IDEA
This guy fights car dealers for $1k
For people who close deals for a living, it’s unlike a salesperson to immediately hang up on a potential customer, much less to cuss them out — except when it comes to 33-year-old Tomi Mikula, a former car salesman from North Carolina.
Three years ago, he began leveraging his knowledge of the trade to help negotiate better car prices for buyers. Today, he’s turned it into a $200k/month business and become something of a boogeyman to car dealers nationwide, per The Wall Street Journal.
A middleman in the driver’s seat
When Mikula first started offering his services, he closed 50 deals for strangers he met online, completely pro bono. Now, his company, Delivrd, employs five pro negotiators and charges $1k per deal — though, how sweet that deal is depends on factors like timing, local competition, and inventory.
He negotiates by phone to stay focused on the numbers, rather than spending time in showrooms, which can tire buyers into taking suboptimal deals. Plus, it allows him to serve buyers beyond his area code.
Mikula also livestreams some of his negotiations (including several heated exchanges that’ve gone viral), which has earned him:
- Business leads
- 600k subscribers across YouTube and TikTok
- Notoriety among dealers…
… many of whom, he told WSJ, will hang up as soon as they recognize his voice (which is why he’s contemplating investing in a voice changer).
Fast lane to a fair price
Negotiating car prices has always been a stressful and time-consuming task for consumers, and it’s only gotten worse:
- In the US, average new-vehicle prices hit a record high of $50k+ last fall.
- Americans are also being shackled into longer and larger loans.
Informed middlemen like Mikula help level the playing field for inexperienced buyers by negotiating with dealers on equal footing, while also making the process more efficient, saving buyers time and money.
If Delivrd’s pricing is too steep for you, there’s also CarEdge, whose AI negotiator will finagle users better deals for just $40/month, saving an average of $1k+ and five hours per deal, per Fortune.
Rather go the old-fashioned route? Mikula might still be able to help — Payam Amiri told WSJ he studied the pro haggler’s videos for tips and tricks before attempting to broker a deal himself and walked away with a $4k discount on a new ride.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
What can money not buy you? What’s the best thing to spend on? What amount of money means economic security? Scott Galloway is answering all the Qs.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Estimated number of people that Target Hospitality’s temporary housing village for data center workers in Dickens County, Texas, can accommodate, per Bloomberg. Companies like Target are building these communities, AKA “man camps,” to house the thousands of workers needed to build America’s $700B+ worth of planned AI data center projects, many of which are situated in rural areas without adequate infrastructure.
But to lure top talent to the middle of nowhere, they’ll need to provide more than mobile homes with electricity and running water. Some of the juicy perks Target is offering: game rooms with golf simulators and free steaks on demand. If you were wondering why they’re called “man camps,” hopefully that clears it up for you.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1985, Liberty “Libby” Riddles became the first woman to win an Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
😴 That’s interesting: Why you should zone out.
✈️ That’s cool: A flight tracker that color codes planes by altitude.
⌨️ Game: It’s a game, but it’s in a font.
🐁 Aww: This cat is bad at being a cat.
SHOWER THOUGHT
In 2006, a ringing phone was a social invitation. In 2026, it’s a suspicious activity report. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "No big deal" Friedman.
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