👋 Good morning. We’ve got yet another reason to give that sweet math nerd a chance: If you get married, it might actually last. Not all careers fare the same when it comes to marriage, according to data from the American Community Survey. Bus drivers, bartenders, and massage therapists have some of the highest divorce rates in the US at ~48%, while actuaries are the most likely to stay hitched, with a 14% divorce rate. Guess all that risk calculation pays off in romance, too.
NEWS FLASH
📚 You can almost smell the fresh erasers… Startup Literati is trying to transform one of the more sacred childhood experiences: the book fair. While Scholastic has long reigned as king of the elementary school book sale, the startup is disrupting the space with seasonally themed fairs stocked with curated, trade-edition books tailored to specific schools and student populations. Literati, which was recently acquired by a PE firm, already runs ~4k fairs a year and says its fundraising tools can help schools raise ~5x the money from book fairs.
⛔ Stop the slop: LinkedIn is cracking down on AI-generated posts, including engagement bait and posts and comments with obvious AI hallmarks, per Engadget. It didn’t share exactly how it’ll do this — and the site still offers tools for posters to refine their writing with AI — but said that engineers and editors will work to analyze patterns and identify what “simply repeats existing ideas without contributing anything new.” Those posts will no longer be recommended to other users.
👴 Retirement exit strategy: Startup IQExit is trying to ride the "Silver Tsunami" — the wave of baby boomer business owners approaching retirement — by giving business owners deal ranges and M&A insights through bankers, wealth advisors, CPAs, and attorneys to prepare for exits in advance. There's an estimated $14T in wealth up for grabs and 6m US businesses facing ownership transitions, but 92% of American businesses end in closure instead of a sale.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
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Berry nice: Oishii, the vertical farming company best known for premium strawberries, raised $150m to expand production capacity, create new products, and invest in R&D.
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We hardly used ye: Microsoft is retiring “Together,” a pandemic-era Teams feature that put participants in a virtual room. Gallery mode will become the preferred group meeting mode.
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Doc’s orders: Kin Health raised $9m to build its note-taking app, designed to transcribe, summarize, and share doctor’s visits, and see and prep for next steps and future visits.
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All ears: Startup BlueIQ is deploying four AI-powered floating sensors in Boston Harbor that can listen to everything from whale calls to fishing boats in heavily trafficked areas to help protect marine life.
TRY 7 AI AGENT TOOLS
7 no-code AI agent tools that can really do your work
These aren’t AI tools for answering questions, but actually doing work.
Check out seven standout agents for workflows to learn how AI can execute multi-step tasks completely in the background. We spotlighted the top options for research, calendar management, recurring workflows, and even complex pipeline generation.
Pass tasks to these tools:
- ChatGPT Agent Mode – Browse the web and generate assets
- Manus – Tackle sophisticated tasks and make reusable skills
- Claude Cowork - Give Claude access to select folders
- OpenClaw – 24/7 assistant for email, calendar, and research
- Zapier – Connect apps and automate event-trigger workflows
- n8n - A more powerful Zapier that gives you technical control
- Claude Code – The best option for no-code software
Copy-paste prompts included.
THE BIG IDEA
What happens when your cereal goes to space?
When Daniel Carson thinks of space food, he thinks of freeze-dried ice cream from the ‘90s, not the lavender strawberry superseed cereal he spent years developing with his best friend and business partner.
So he was surprised to find himself in Florida last month, watching Artemis II take off, feeling the rocket’s reverberations “in the core of my soul.”
The duo’s cereal brand, Goldy’s, had been chosen as the breakfast of choice for one of the astronauts on board.
So how big of a boost does going to space give a small business?
Spam folder
Two years ago, Carson got an email he dismissed as a spam message.
“We get a lot of emails through LinkedIn that end up being them trying to get money out of us for some sort of consulting service,” he told The Hustle.
When the agency sent a follow-up, the Toronto entrepreneur began to think it might be real.
The Canadian Space Agency has a division that curates food, testing nutrition, shelf life, and taste to stock the rocket’s pantry. They’d come across Goldy’s cereal, and wanted to test it for use on a mission.
They started placing orders, a box here, a box there, shipping to CSA HQ in Quebec, then Houston, then Cape Canaveral.
After a year, it was time for Goldy’s to face the final boss: an astronaut taste test by Canada’s own Jeremy Hansen.
“They said they loved it,” he says.
They bought 110 servings to stock the Artemis.
Space groupies
Carson hasn’t heard yet from Hansen personally, but he has heard from space groupies eager to order some of their own strawberry lavender superseed blend or asking if they sell merch.
“I didn’t know there were space groupies!” he says.
The sales uptick was so big, his business partner Daniel Schreiber spent the weeks after the launch packing orders in his basement. As a team of three, Carson says, it’s a hands-on operation.
The brand’s next mission? Prepping to launch in Walmarts across Canada and the US in August — which, if you have to be back on Earth, seems like a pretty good place to land.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Ever heard of the Judgment of Paris? It’s not the French person next to you watching you try to eat snails. It’s a blind taste competition that launched America’s wine industry.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Number of stores that Swatch had to close “in view of public safety considerations” on Saturday, following the launch of its Royal Pop pocket watches, made in collaboration with Audemars Piguet. Despite the company’s plea that customers not rush to its stores, frenzied shoppers swarmed Swatch locations from New York to London in pursuit of the $400 plastic watches, anyway, prompting police intervention and at least one arrest, per The New York Times.
A limited-release product launch turning unruly isn't unheard of, but perhaps the Swiss watchmaker could have handled it better this time around — in 2022, the launch of a similar Swatch collaboration ended almost identically, with multiple reports of fights and even stabbings… Third time’s the charm?
HOW YOU HUSTLE
You all are always up to something neat. This is our weekly spotlight on a Hustle reader’s ambitious venture.
Who: Trina Slowik
What: Camp-it
The elevator pitch: “Camp-it is the Airbnb for summer camps, a national marketplace that helps working mothers find, filter, and book the right enrichment program for their kid in minutes instead of weeks. We're live in Seattle, Portland, and Austin, with zero dominant competition in a $4.8B market.”
Problem they’re trying to solve: “Every summer, working mothers lose weeks of productivity to a broken, word-of-mouth camp search process, and still aren't sure they got it right.”
One truly innovative thing they’re doing: “AI search that understands how mothers actually talk: type ‘half-day STEM camp under $300 for my 8-year-old’ and get real results instantly, no drop-downs required. And every listing is verified; real prices, real dates, real availability, no outdated garbage.”
What are you working on? Tell us here.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1891, Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope, a device that allowed one viewer at a time to view films, was first publicly demonstrated.
🎵 That’s cool: A calendar that lists songs that mention the date. For example, Rush’s “Lakeside Park” talks about people gathering on May 24 to watch fireworks.
🗞️ Newsletter: Get calm, clear financial insights from The Daily Upside.
🐱 Haha: A browser extension in which a cute cat makes you take breaks.
🦦 Aww: A little otter tucked itself in.
SHOWER THOUGHT
There is a specific correct temperature for a toilet seat. Too hot or too cold is very uncomfortable for different reasons. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Katherine Laidlaw, and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Sky's the limit" Friedman.
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