👋 Good morning. There’s new data proving something you already knew: The worst person on the plane is the one watching a YouTube video without headphones. Or sitting in on a Zoom. Or fighting with their spouse. According to a survey of 2.5k+ US adults conducted by The Points Guy and YouGov, 40% of passengers think airlines should ban phone and video calls altogether, with 27% saying the noise is the most annoying passenger behavior. They also weighed in on another hot topic: 51% said it’s OK to recline seatbacks.
NEWS FLASH
🍽️ Who — dead or alive — would you want to have dinner with? We have our answer, and it’s Nvidia’s leather-jacket-clad CEO, Jensen Huang. He might just be the most valuable dinner guest in the world: LG’s stock jumped 30% on reports its chairman would be dining with Huang, and a Korean fried chicken company’s shares spiked after Huang was seen sharing wings with Samsung and Hyundai execs. Huang’s in on the joke, saying in Nvidia’s Q2 earnings call that whoever he dines with sees their stock double the next day. There’s even a blog that tracks where he’s spotted eating — maybe we’ll try to crash the next one.
👔 What’s a “small business,” anyway?: The Small Business Administration is pitching a rule change that’d reset what passes for “small” — and it doesn’t sound all that small. Currently, the qualification cap for federal loans and grants via the SBA is $47m in revenue. The proposed change would open up benefits to some companies making up to $1.01B, which you may not be shocked to learn is highly controversial in some circles. Some poor SBA employee will find out just how much: The agency is accepting public feedback on the change through Sept. 21.
🌳 Maybe good ideas do grow on trees: Canadian startup DicinFoam, spun out of the University of British Columbia, is turning logging waste into a biodegradable foam that could one day replace plastic packaging. The startup’s pilot plant in Vancouver is already producing ~400 pounds of foam a day from sawdust, wood fibers, and forestry residues, and plans to scale to ~1k tons annually, making use of the 30% of every harvested tree that goes unused.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
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Bear market: Build-A-Bear Workshop downgraded its sales outlook for a second time this year and fired the chief growth officer it hired back in June. But it's leaving the ousted exec with the warm and fuzzy feelings you’d expect from the brand: he’ll make $532k+ on exit.
- Ouch: Zoox and Waymo test drivers sustained 24+ injuries in 2024 and 2025 from sudden braking and other sudden movements made by autonomous vehicles, according to TechCrunch.
- From dusty planet to dirt: TerraBlaster, maker of laser tech that was deployed on the Mars rover, just raised $12.5m to build sensors that drag through soil at the speed of a tractor and map nutrient levels in real time to give farmers a faster picture of where to apply fertilizer.
- Wish your AirPods could surveil you?: You’ll love the new $250 AI-forward earbuds from startup Plaud, which will record your conversations and feed them right into Plaud’s suite of AI products covering transcription, translation, and meeting summarization.
POWER PROMPTS
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THE BIG IDEA
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Send your dog's poop to this startup — they won't be mad
Mailing your dog's stool to a molecular lab and waiting two days for the verdict may be a new love language for anxious pet owners.
At least that's what at-home diagnostic startup Petwealth is banking on. Its value prop is compelling: "Sending us your pet's poop could save its life and thousands of dollars."
Here's how it works:
- Petwealth sends you a kit — priced between $129 and $299, depending on the test type — to collect a pet's fecal, oral, and respiratory samples.
- You mail those samples back, and Petwealth runs them through PCR panels to screen for 50+ pathogens.
- A day or two later, it sends back AI-written test results.
What does its market look like?
A majority of American pet owners see their pets as almost as (or equally) important to their families as human members, fueling a $158B+ pet care market.
Doggie DNA testing is nothing new. Outlets like Embark, Wisdom Panel, and Basepaws offer 23andMe-esque services for identifying breed ancestry and genetic health risks.
Petwealth takes a more clinical approach, trading lineage-tracing novelty for focused diagnostics.
Other players are emerging in the space — including Ollie, a fresh pet food company, which just acquired an AI app for reading your dog's health from photos of its poop.
Are at-home pet poop tests really for the greater good?
Petwealth claims that 70% of pets hide illness until it's late (animals are notoriously bad with their words), but its testing doesn't usually stem directly from a vet's recommendations.
While at-home PCR testing can help with early detection of pet health problems, it could wind up compounding owners' anxiety.
The company is also moving into the B2B space — partnering with Kennel Connection, whose software supports 5.5k+ daycares, kennels, and groomers.
That play quietly raises the question, "Is this for anxious owners at home, or the pet-care industry itself?"
Still, the money's real, and its "catch it before it's a $4k vet bill" pitch isn't all bark.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Rules to live by: Treat others how you want to be treated, never let them see ya sweat, and always bring two Diet Cokes to a negotiation. Wait, what? Hear us out.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
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Share of employees who think they could run the company they work for better than their boss, according to a survey by recruitment agency Howdy via Inc. Behind the sentiment isn’t hubris so much as it is a lack of confidence in and respect for their higher-ups: 72% said leadership made at least one decision that made no sense to them in the past year, including unnecessary layoffs, ~25% said they don’t follow their own rules, and 60% think their boss just doesn’t grind as hard as they do.
What might quell their disdain? For 80%, seeing their boss take a pay cut to avoid layoffs could help. But since that probably won’t happen, you might be better off simply adopting your boss’s work ethic.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington.
👤 That’s cool: See how shadows fall at any time and place on Earth.
🏛️ Go to Harvard Business School: Kinda. Put your business instincts to the test with HubSpot’s founding CRO at HBS on Sept. 17.
🥊 Game: Browser boxing.
🐱 Aww: Hi kitty.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Six degrees of separation becomes a lot fewer degrees when you base it on people who have indirectly shared a public toilet seat. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Singdhi Sokpo, and Jay Fuchs.
Editing by: Sara "Holy crap" Friedman.
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