👋 Good morning. If you’re reading this before staring at your computer screen for eight hours today, we have a tip from the American Optometric Association: the 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Also helpful: blinking a lot, tracing a figure eight with your eyes, and cupping your hands over them for five minutes. Most helpful: quitting your job, logging off, buying a one-way ticket to a remote island, and starting a new life. But maybe start with the blinking thing.
NEWS FLASH
⛳ This grass is greener: Startup PennPoa is using Poa annua, a type of grass long considered a weed, to seed luxury golf courses. Its founder David Huff, a plant science professor at Penn State, developed a strain that delivers a dense, mowable putting surface, in 8-12 weeks compared to the 50 years it would take in the wild. The company is off to a good start: Demand is already outpacing supply, and the 2026 harvest has nearly sold out.
🤝 Cue all the “back in my day, finding a job was all about a firm handshake” grandpa comments: A 14-year-old entrepreneur in London launched KidsHustle, an app specifically for teens seeking gig work like babysitting, dog walking, and tutoring. There’s a big gap in the market — other gig platforms like TaskRabbit and Fiverr require users to be at least 18. Plus, KidsHustle is wisely realistic about the world we live in: When a teen starts a gig through the app, it can share a live GPS location with a parent until they’re done.
🪞 Couldn’t head it off: CaaStle founder Christine Hunsicker will serve five years in prison for defrauding investors out of $300m. Her defense team tried arguing, among other things, that her Theranos-compared fashion rental startup failed because a 30-pound mirror fell on her head in 2017. The mountain of evidence showing the books were cooked — ”falsified income statements, fake audited financial statements, fictitious bank records, and sham corporate documents” — won out.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
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Cali cleans up: California-based startups have raised a record $366B in venture capital so far this year — more than 3x the rest of the country combined, though it was thanks to some big names: OpenAI and Anthropic alone accounted for more than half of it.
- But don’t count out New York: Analysis from CBRE suggests the Big Apple has more tech workers than the Bay Area for the first time ever. NYC has added 30k+ techies since 2022.
- That’s a lot of slop: LinkedIn added a “seems like AI slop” button earlier this month to help users report AI-generated content. In its first two weeks, more than 1m people used it.
- Hot right now: Data centers. Also hot: Sending things to space. That means Starcloud is right on the money — the startup is developing satellites that run AI inference in orbit and just raised $250m to make it happen.
GROWTH HACKS
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Take it from the founder of DigitalMarketer and The Scalable Company: how you run your business makes a massive difference.
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- Growth engine flowchart
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- Company KPIs scorecard
- Quarterly sprint canvas
- Annual meeting rhythm calendar
It’s the ultimate operating system. Only for our most ambitious readers. Avoid if you’re a bum.
THE BIG IDEA
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How Chili's brought back the heat by reviving '90s abundance
If Chili's baby back ribs jingle from the '90s still lives rent-free in your head, we've got good news: the Chili's you remember is back, baby.
As Applebee's and other fast-casual competitors struggle, Chili's has staged a fiery comeback by leaning into retro vibes, celebrating indulgence, and — shockingly — listening to employees and customers, per Fast Company.
Despite customer budgets stretched further than a mozzarella stick cheese pull, the Tex-Mex chain defies odds with what's been described as “the best turnaround story of all time in restaurants.”
Stoking the flames of nostalgia
Chili's began dishing burgers and eponymous chili in Texas in 1975, eventually bringing fun, casual dining to malls across America with head-turning sizzling fajitas, frosty margs, and racks of ribs.
Despite decades of growth, the catchiest of jingles, and pop-culture cameos, Chili's lost heat following the Great Recession. Later pummeled by the pandemic, Chili's lost customers and began lowering prices and investing in ghost kitchens.
Then, in 2022, CEO Kevin Hochman brought back the sizzle by returning to the restaurant's retro roots of middle-class indulgence, focusing on marketing and operations.
Hochman streamlined Chili's menu, improving quality and value:
- Eliminated ~50 menu items (including chili!)
- Bigger burgers, crispier chicken and fries
- 50% more ribs per order
- $6 "Margarita of the Month" deal
- $10.99 "3 for Me" deal to rival fast-food chains
Following a viral video featuring the Triple Dipper combo — a mix-and-match of appetizers like mozzarella sticks and wings — Chili's saw a surge in Gen Z customers:
- Triple Dippers accounted for 6%-7% of sales in 2022; now it's 16%
- 12m pounds of mozzarella consumed in 2022; 65m pounds annually today
The chain continues to court younger crowds via social media.
Hochman also streamlined operations:
- Asked employees for suggestions — credits teams with 80%-90% of changes
- Invested $100m on repairs and maintenance
- Increased staff by 30%-40% per store
- Found clever ways to get food out faster
The results speak for themselves:
- Same-store sales are up 50% over the last three years.
- Revenue increased by $1B last year to reach $5.34B.
- 20% traffic increase in 2024.
A retro redesign will also revive a cheerful mix of color and texture to replace the drab industrial look.
Even that iconic jingle received a revamp.
Though we'll take the original any day.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Going up: Elevators are absurdly profitable — we’re talking a $134B industry. Here’s why.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
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Years it took to make Niu Lai, a movie that, since debuting Aug. 5, has been derided as “unbelievably terrible” and “one of the worst animated films ever,” and yet is rivaling The Odyssey at the Chinese box office. The film, produced by an amateur filmmaker and his mother on a shoestring budget, is apparently so bad that it’s… good? Or, at the very least, worth witnessing.
After earning just ~$1k in its first 10 days, moviegoers charmed by the authenticity of its “disaster-level” visuals and awkward dialogue have pushed ticket sales north of $3m and the movie into cult-classic territory, per The New York Times.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted to demote Pluto from the ninth planet to one of dozens of dwarf planets.
🎥 That’s cool: One new video every day.
🐹 Game: Launch the hamster.
💤 That’s interesting: Happy 100th birthday to the weekend. We love you.
🐄 Aww: A little cow with a pretty cute birthmark.
SHOWER THOUGHT
A lightly modified hearse is the ultimate camping vehicle. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Singdhi Sokpo, and Danny Jensen.
Editing by: Sara "Triple Dipper" Friedman.
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