🍋 Sweetgreen Down Bad

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Good Morning! The tech bloodbath continues - Google will lay off 12,000 employees - the company is scaling back after growing rapidly in the pandemic. More and more banks and tech firms are setting return-to-office dates, and they might have a cheerleader in JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who says WFH should be mostly avoided by young employees especially.

The new FTX CEO wants to restart the exchange. The only problem is SBF keeps tweeting and writing Substack posts - and it’s a distraction during bankruptcy proceedings. And the FTC asked a judge to hold ‘pharma-bro’ turned convicted felon Martin Shkreli in contempt of court for forming a new drug firm.

Wall Street 2023 Compensation Survey: Please fill out the survey here. We'll be send out the results as soon as the intern can figure out how to use Excel. Our last year's comp deck got a ton of y'all raises, so you'll likely be doing yourself a favor by filling it out.

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1. Story of the Day: Sweetgreen Down Bad

(pic above not inflation adjusted)

Looks like finance bros might have to start brown-bagging it. Those of us that work in central business districts like Midtown/Financial District in New York and the Loop in Chicago are in for a rough ride, as more and more of their beloved business lunch spots are closing their doors.

But it’s not just the independent mom-and-dad spots feeling the crunch. With more and more employees working from home, some of the most popular chains are seeing a decline in lunchtime foot traffic. Take Sweetgreen for example - a favorite of those willing to drop nearly $20 on a salad. The company, with 37 locations in New York City alone, is feeling the effects with a 60% drop in stock over the past 12 months.

Restaurants that relied on catering to white-collar professionals are scrambling to re-think their business model. Many chains are building a digital presence and attracting customers through online sales and loyalty programs.

Looks like Sweetgreen is taking the lead in the digital ordering game, with 60% of their orders being placed online last year. Chipotle also stepped up its online game with nearly 40% of orders being placed through the app.

Takeaway: Some experts thought fast-casual restaurants couldn’t make a full comeback after Covid. But with the rise of delivery services and more robust mobile apps, restaurants are getting creative to meet customers where they are. Incoming LBO for Sweetgreen anyone?

2. Markets Rundown

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Stocks rallied on Friday, and tech stocks led the way.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Ally Financial ($ALLY) +20% after beating Q4 revenue and earnings estimates.

• (+) SVB Financial ($SIVB) +17% after the bank reported positive earnings, increased net interest income.

• (–) Goldman Sachs ($GS) -3% because the firm is under investigation for its consumer finance division.

Private Dealmaking

• Pathalys Pharma, a biotech startup that treats kidney diseases, raised $150 million

• Vannevar Labs, a national security machine learning startup, raised $75 million 

• Outrider, an autonomous electric truck developer, raised $73 million

• Summit Nanotech, a lithium extraction technology developer, raised $50 million

• Flashbots, an Ethereum infrastructure service, eyes raising $50 million

• Array Behavior Care, a telehealth startup for mental illnesses, raised $25 million

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3. Top Reads

• Bad vibes break out on Wall Street (Axios)

• Are tech layoffs the canary in the U.S. jobs market? (Fox)

• Netflix’s next chapter (Axios)

• Why Americans feel so poor (CNBC)

• How robots are helping address the fast-food labor shortage (CNBC)

• When the stock market and JPow are frenemies (WSJ)

• The 3 biggest reasons startups failed in 2022 (CNBC)

• What does it mean to align AI with human values? (Quanta)

• Google Docs is more popular than Microsoft, but ChatGPT could change that (Forbes)

• What top CEOs are saying about a recession (YF)

• Home prices hit a record high last year (CNN)

4. Book of the Day: What My Bones Know

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By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend.

But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning.

After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a conditixon that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect.

She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career.

She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

“Forgiveness is this act of love where you say to someone, ‘You’re an imperfect being and I still love you.’ You want to have this energy of ‘We’re not giving up on each other; we’re in this for the long haul. You hurt me. And, yes, I hurt you. And I’m sorry, but you’re still mine.’ ”

5. Short Squeez Picks

• How to ask for a raise without alienating your boss

• 23 questions you should ask yourself before you give up

• The number one phrase that makes relationships successful

• How to negotiate over practically anything

• ChatGPT is the best journal I’ve ever used

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6. Daily Visual: It's Layoff Szn

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen

“There are a lot of things in life that only work when you commit.

I don’t mean dabble. I don’t mean half-in. I mean commit.

Commitment means all in, all the time.

It’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that if you put in half the effort, you can get 80 percent of the results.

While that might work for some things, it doesn’t work for anything important.

If you’re half trustworthy, you’re not trustworthy. If you’re often reliable, you’re not reliable. If you’re mostly consistent, you’re not consistent.

The key to doing anything well is commitment. Not only does commitment help you become better at what you do, but it also makes other people want to help you.”

Source: FS Blog

8. Memes of the Day

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