👋 Good morning, friend. Nearly four in 10 US adults are part of an online community, according to Pew Research Center, and that share rises to about half for young adults ages 18-29. Social media sites and apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok top the list of where people find community online, of course, followed by online discussion forums, video sites and apps, and video games. Might we suggest a humble newsletter?
NEWS FLASH
🧱 Lego’s passion project: A plastic toy that once targeted young boys and parents’ bare feet, Lego is growing up and looking to expand its audience. The brand is winning over adults, teens, and girls by building products around “passions” — Formula One, Olivia Rodrigo, and bonsai trees — instead of just demographics. It’s working: The company’s revenue for the first half of the year was up 21% to $6.27B, and net profit climbed 32%.
🍎 No bad apples: Apple updated its App Store guidelines to ban apps that generate offensive content as well as “nudify” apps disguised as ordinary apps and said it will remove any app that adds features after it has submitted a version for review. The company said its review process blocked 150k+ apps and removed 193k developer accounts for violations of fraud and abuse policies.
⛳ The world’s biggest retirement community gets bigger: Florida’s The Villages — home to ~170k people and one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the US from 2010-2020 — is building 3.8k+ new units and adding amenities like rec centers and golf courses to grow to 260k retirees and 130k+ homes over the next 20 years.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
- You get a share! You get a share! Everybody gets a share! Elon Musk announced his plans to give every American child (there are ~73m of ’em) a SpaceX share next year, a promise potentially worth $10.7B at the company’s current share price.
- Also feeling generous: Anthropic. The AI giant plans to give 5% of its shares to a new Public Benefit Fund, pending stockholder approval, that could back nonprofit donations, direct payouts, and programs addressing AI’s impact on the job market.
- On ice: University of Minnesota researchers froze pig kidneys at -238 degrees Fahrenheit for up to a year and then thawed and transplanted them into living pigs, a process that could one day help the 100k+ Americans waiting for organ transplants.
- PE has a boo-boo: Unilever is selling its colorful bandage brand Welly Health to PE firm Forward Consumer Partners for an undisclosed price, ~5 years after buying a majority stake in the company from its founder.
BYE-BYE, BUSYWORK
Your CRM should already know
Most CRMs are just expensive filing cabinets. You log the call. You research the lead. You write the follow-up. You move the deal. Rinse, repeat, burn out.
HubSpot Smart CRM is designed to handle the busywork before you even open your laptop.
What runs quietly in the background:
- Calls: Logged and summarized the moment they end.
- Leads: Researched with a first outreach drafted, automatically.
- Deals: Next steps flagged before you have to ask.
- Workflows: Repetitive tasks automated — no code required.
It's not the CRM you have to manage. It's the one that may just manage itself.
THE BIG IDEA
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Feed me, Seymour! People are hungry for carnivorous plants
Tired of houseplants that look pretty and soak up water but don't earn their keep?
Consider the humble Venus flytrap, which not only looks cool, but will rid your house of unwanted insects — a win-win.
Plant lovers are snapping up flytraps and other carnivorous plants in record numbers, helping to grow the bottom line of specialty nurseries that sell these unusual plants, per The New York Times.
Who's hungry?
The latest carnivorous craze traces back to one unexpected influencer: Charles Darwin.
That guy loved carnivorous plants and is often credited with nurturing a fascination with the plants in the scientific and public imagination.
Darwin called the Venus flytrap "one of the most wonderful" plants in the world, and said he cared more about sundews — which trap insects on their tentacles (!!) — "than the origin of all the species in the world.” Okay, bud, we get it.
Victorian authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells were similarly inspired and wrote about man-eating plants — likely fodder for later fiction like Little Shop of Horrors and The Day of the Triffids.
Pandemic pets
More recently, the popularity of carnivorous plants spiked during the pandemic, offering fun, quirky houseplants for homebound hobbyists — with less commitment than a pet. Sundews even inspired COVID-19 research.
And demand continues to bloom:
- California Carnivores had its best year in four decades in 2025 and sales are already up 30% from last year.
- Around 630 varieties of carnivorous plants are known to science, including a range of trap styles, such as adhesives, snap traps, and pitcher plants.
- Most sell for $10-$30; some go for hundreds or even thousands.
- They're popular around Halloween — even Trader Joe's sold Venus flytraps.
- The global rare and exotic plant market hit $4.2B in 2026 and is expected to reach $11.5B by 2033.
The finicky plants prefer harsh habitats like bogs, mountaintops, and depleted soils, making them hard to grow at scale and allowing smaller growers to thrive.
They do face threats, however, as one-fourth of species are at risk of extinction due to habitat loss and poaching.
Looking to join the club? Countless Instagram and TikTok videos offer inspiration.
Don't worry, chances of a Little Shop of Horrors situation are pretty slim.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Sounds too good to be true: This founder built a $30k/month business from a remote island — here’s how she works.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
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Number of fake job listings that Chicago resident Jay Jones has helped take down on employment sites like LinkedIn and Teal, per The Wall Street Journal. Jones, who calls himself “The Profiler,” is basically the Robin Hood of a bleak online job market filled with recruitment scammers looking to steal money, time, and data from desperate job seekers. He got into the vigilante work, which he does between driving for Uber, while searching for employment himself — and though he’s still on the job hunt, he’s managed to turn his pro bono work into something of a side hustle. Today, he trains cybersecurity professionals to identify scams and makes money off his own Profiler-branded merch.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1962, “Monster Mash” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending the last two weeks of October at the top of the charts and becoming an enduring Halloween hit.
🏂 Game: Shred like a penguin.
💀 Get in the spooky mood: Guess the animal from its skull.
🖥️ That’s weird: You’re sitting at Elizabeth Holmes’s desk.
🐶 Aww: A very snuggly, sleepy pup.
SHOWER THOUGHT
People will complain when movies are longer than 2 hours, but binge watch episodes of tv shows 5 hours straight. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Singdhi Sokpo, and Danny Jensen.
Editing by: Sara "That bites" Friedman.
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