🍋 Ending the Unicorn Illusion

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Good Morning and Happy Friday! Two new ETFs just dropped that will track how each political party’s members of Congress trade stocks. Goldman Sachs is raising over $5 billion for its growth fund. Yahoo is joining the tech layoff party and plans to lay off more than 20% of staff as it shrinks its ad biz.

Times are not looking great for Indian billionaire Gautam Adani after Hindenburg’s bombshell report. NYU’s ‘Dean of Valuation,’ Aswath Damodaran says Adani Group exploited ‘weakest links’ in Indian institutions and index provider MSCI said it will cut the weightings of four Adani Group companies.

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If you are interested in getting in front of a smart, young audience of business leaders, bankers, investment professionals, policy influencers of over 500,000 people, then fill out this form, we’ll be in touch.

1. Story of the Day: End of the Unicorn Illusion

The safety net for America's prized "unicorn" companies may soon be ripped away. The SEC is pushing for a change that would force these private startups to shed their veil of secrecy and reveal their true financial standing to investors. No longer will these companies be able to hide behind their privilege of keeping their financial records under wraps.

For years, these hot new startups have sold investors on their potential, often relying on the hype of a "hockey-stick" growth trajectory. Founders have convinced investors to pour billions into their unprofitable businesses with the promise of exponential growth in the future. Unfortunately, too often this growth has been nothing more than a mirage, with no real substance behind the claims.

The recent downfall of notorious startups like Theranos and FTX serve as a cautionary tale, reminding investors that the absence of audited financial statements can lead to disastrous consequences.

Takeaway: While early-stage investors (VC/growth equity) don’t scrutinize financial statements too heavily, that could all change under new SEC rules. Unprofitable but promising companies will always catch the eye of investors, but valuations might need to come back down to earth.

2. Markets Rundown

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Stocks closed lower as earnings trickled in.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Sonos ($SONOS) +16% after the audio products developer beat earnings.

• (–) Credit Suisse ($CS) -15% after a net loss on 2022, poor 2023 outlook.

• (–) Affirm Holdings ($AFRM) -17% after the BNPL company missed revenue and will lay off 20% of its workforce.

Private Dealmaking

• Nextracker, a solar tracker system developer, raised $638 million

• Garuda Therapeutics, a blood stem therapy company, raised $62 million

• Zeitview, an aerial data analytics company, raised $55 million

• Fabric8Labs, a 3D printing company, raises $50 million

• Acceldata, a data observability platform, raised $50 million

• Triple Whale, a data platform for e-commerce brands, raised $25 million

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3. Top Reads

• Google’s AI rollout cost shareholders more than $100 billion (YF)

• Robinhood accidentally sold short on a meme stock and lost $57 million (MW)

• Narrower profit margins could mean lower inflation (Axios)

• Tesla shares rebound from January bottom (Fox)

• Wall Street’s frozen IPO market is thawing as companies take advantage of stock rally (CNBC)

• Dealmakers are operating in a new normal for antitrust scrutiny (Axios)

• Robinhood needs more arrows to fire (WSJ)

• Bing just made search interesting again (NYT)

• UK narrowly avoids recession in back half of 2022 (CNBC)

4. Book of the Day: Why We Sleep

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Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions.

It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite.

Dreaming creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity.

In Why We Sleep, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being.

Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity.

He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night’s sleep every night.

“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

• 6 habits that 99% of high performers practice daily

• How to naturally produce more dopamine for a healthier brain

• How to transform your to-do list into a productivity power tool

• 6 ways to feel like you have more free time even if you don’t

• Do the conventional health commandments actually work?

6. Daily Visual: Super Bowl Ads and Viewership

Average rate per 3-second ad spot

_{Source: Axios}

7. Daily Acumen: Future Tech (3 of 5)

Multiomic Technologies

The cost of collecting, organizing, and analyzing digital biological information is rapidly decreasing.

Multiomic technologies give researchers, health organizations, and medical platforms unparalleled access to DNA, RNA, protein, and digital health data.

This will bring about a transformation in cancer treatment through the use of comprehensive blood tests.

Multiomic data will also lead to the development of innovative precision therapies using cutting-edge gene editing methods to treat rare diseases and ongoing health issues.

This will also open up new possibilities in programmable biology, such as the creation of new biological structures for use in industries like agriculture and food production.

8. Memes of the Day

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