Gm. Black Mirror is back in June. It’s been off for 5 years, but who rlly noticed anyways considering we’re all living in a Black Mirror episode lol.

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POLLS

“Beef” I stayed up til 3 watching this. Insanely good.

“House of the Dragon, Succession, Euphoria...doesn't get better. How you gonna include Peacock and not Apple TV+, though? Ted Lasso, yo!” True, Apple TV is much slept on.

“I selected Peacock as a protest vote in the hopes you'd read my response. Apple TV has hands-down the highest quality shows and it's almost insulting that Peacock was included over my iOS overlord's offering.” SAVAGERY

“Succession on HBO Max is top-notch. We are in the last season. The media deal of the century is about to go down, the kids are in charge, events are happening between LA, NY and Norway, and there is always a lackadaisical cousin Greg who makes you smile.” I need to get up to date.

Thanks for the show recs! I just finished Money Heist on Netflix (amazing) and Jury Duty on Amazon Prime (very funny). Now I’m watching The Mentalist and Beef! Need me some dark dramas.

🏠 EARNINGS

A Strong Big Tech Earnings SZN

This week was earnings reporting season for the biggest of big tech, with Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta all dropping their Q1 financials.

And, much to the delight of shareholders, those financials all came in better than expected.

Microsoft

Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations on:

• Revenue ($52.9B vs. $51.1B expected)

• Productivity and Business unit revenue ($17.5B vs. $17.1B anticipated)

• Intelligent Cloud division revenue ($22.1B vs. $21.9B expected)

• Personal Computing division revenue ($13.3B vs. $12.3B anticipated)

The result was an 8% jump in Microsoft’s share price on Wednesday.

Although it was overall a strong showing for Microsoft, it’s still far from their pandemic highs. For example, even though it beat expectations, the revenue for its Cloud service has declined every quarter for the past year.

But, if their AI plans start bearing fruit, none of that will matter.

Alphabet

The parent company of Google also beat expectations on a myriad of stats:

• Revenue ($69.79B vs. $68.9B expected)

• Earnings ($1.17 per share vs. $1.07 per share anticipated)

• YouTube Advertising revenue ($6.69B vs. $6.6B expected)

• Traffic Acquisition Costs ($11.72B vs. $11.78B anticipated)

• First-ever profit on their Cloud service ($191M vs. a $706M loss a year ago)

As a reward for their efforts, Alphabet’s stock rose 4% with the potential for more following a board-approved $70B stock buyback.

However, despite the strong report, Alphabet emphasized caution in their investor call, as the challenging economic environment is not great for advertising-reliant businesses, like Alphabet.

Sorry Googlers, the perks probably aren’t coming back anytime soon.

Meta

Despite strong reports from Microsoft and Alphabet, the week’s big winner was Meta. Yep, the most maligned tech company this side of Twitter finally had a quarter worth celebrating.

• Revenue ($28.65B vs. $27.65B expected)

• Earnings ($2.20 per share vs. $2.03 per share anticipated)

• Daily Active Users (2.04B vs. 2.01B expected)

• Average Revenue Per User ($9.62 vs. $9.30 anticipated)

Meta’s stock popped 14% on the news, and somewhere, Zuck turned his mood setting to “happy”.

But, it’s still not all sunshine and rainbows for Meta. Their Metaverse division lost $4B in Q1, continuing their trend of losing money at a clip that would make even SBF squirm.

Perhaps Zuck is smart to switch out the Metaverse for AI.

The Big Picture: Big Tech is slowly rebounding. Obviously, there is still a long way to go before the glory of 2021 is reclaimed, but these earnings show that we are finally on our way toward the next tech bull-run.

🏠 FUTURISM

Black Mirror Season 6 is Coming

Black Mirror is back in June after a 4-year hiatus.

It’s the most mind-bending show on Netflix with each episode about a different futuristic tech scenario. They envisioned a lot of the crazy that tech that’s going on right now.

Season 5 was released back in June 2019 about 6 months pre-pandemic. Yet somehow it feels like it wasn’t ever really off air. Because we’re all living in 1 big Black Mirror episode aren’t we?

The Most Accurate Black Mirror Episodes

• S1 E2 Fifteen Million Merits was about a society where the majority of people ride stationary bikes in exchange for “merits”, a virtual currency. Anyone remember STEPN and the move-to-earn phenomenon?

• S2 E1 Be Right Back is about a woman who talks to an AI version of her dead husband trained on his data. ChatGPT arrives this year and of course people are doing this.

• S3 E1 Nosedives tells of a world where people use eye plants and mobile devices to rate all their interactions on a five-star scale. Apple is releasing their mixed-reality headset soon. It won’t be long until there’s a mixed-reality Yelp app, right?

• S4 E3 Crocodile is about people using a “Recaller” to view people’s memories. There’s now an app called Rewind that records your entire computer’s actions (Zoom calls, web searching, etc.) and lets you search through it with the click of a button. Digital memory.

• S5 E3 Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too tells the story of a girl who gets an AI device based on the pop star Ashley O. Ashley O’s controlling manager put her in a coma and has a holographic Ashley O touring to make more money. Currently, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Amy Winehouse are all dead, but touring as holographs.

Why should I care? Don’t ignore sci-fi just because it’s not yet real. A lot of today’s greatest founders and builders are all sci-fi nuts building the dreams of their youth. Rockets. AI. Robots. Pay attention and be inspired.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

• The SpaceX Starship has been grounded indefinitely by the FAA.

• The Apple MR headset is in the final stages of production.

• TikTok is testing an in-app tool that creates generative AI avatars.

• First Republic Bank is probably going to get seized by the US government.

Stat: 1 million: The number of users Netflix lost in just Spain following their crackdown on password sharing. Will they reassess this policy?

Rabbit hole: Tech Remains A Good Bet (NPR)

🤑 FUNDING FRIDAY

If you want a full list of startup raises, you can go check Crunchbase. If you want the 2 coolest raises of the week, then check here every Friday.

2 COOLEST STARTUP RAISES OF THE WEEK

1. Mark Cuban’s interactive entertainment app Fireside raised a $25 million Series A this week. They’re building the “only platform that turns creators, celebrities, brands and IP owners into the studio, networks and streaming services of the future.” Creators can stream their content onto smart TVs and across social media platforms while their audience interacts with them through their phone. 🔥🔥🔥

2. Most people don’t realize that nuclear energy is a clean, carbon-free energy source and accounts for 20% of electricity in the USA. Radiant raised $40 million to build portable nuclear reactors to replace diesel generators. They’re the size of a shipping container that can produce power for 20 years. They can produce energy wherever it’s needed without grid infrastructure. Pretty incredible stuff.

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

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💬 Use CodeDesign to design a website with only your words. Insane, right? As a lazy person, AI is beautiful.

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💉 DOPAMINE HIT

Get some work done to some relaxing Pokemon music.

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