Sep 16, 2021 Sign Up

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"Anyone can have a solution but if no one cares about it, unfortunately, you are not going to have a very big company." – Melanie Perkins (Canva CEO)

Good morning! For those that missed the Verdad Capital finance guide yesterday, here it is in all it's glory. A theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has predicted that SpaceX's first all-civilian crew mission to space could potentially launch honeymoons taking place on the actual moon. If getting married wasn't expensive enough already...

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1. Story of the Day: Canva to the Moon

Canva has raised $200 million in new funding at a $40 billion valuation and became the world's fifth most valuable private startup, behind Klarna and ahead of Instacart. It also stands apart by being profitable, led by a woman CEO (Melanie Perkins, picture above), based in Sydney, and women representing 42% of the workforce.

Melanie Perkins is a 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, and was on the cover of the magazine in 2019. Canva was started in 2012 by Perkins, now-husband Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, as a tool to help anyone design, from better-looking resumes to menus, business cards and other graphic assets.

Perkins and Obrecht each own about 18% of Canva, and Adams 9%. At a $40 billion valuation, that means Perkins and Obrecht each hold stakes valued at $6.5 billion, while Adams’ stake is valued at $3.2 billion. Canva plans to use the fresh funding to double its workforce in the next year.

Today Canva has more than 60 million monthly active users across 190 countries, with big-name companies on the enterprise plan. This includes Salesforce, PayPal and American Airlines. Canva expects to exceed $1 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2021. More than 500k teams are paying for the product in some capacity.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Canva is in hyper growth mode and has plans to further build out the product in the next year, launching website design soon and working on a new video editor and an offline mode. We wouldn't be surpsoed if Canva moves up the list of most valuiable start-ups. For y'all looking to get in on the action, Perkins says she has no current interest in an IPO...

Source: Forbes, TechCrunch, Axios

2. Markets Rundown

• US stocks finished on higher ground Wednesday, helped by surging energy stocks and positive economic data, even as investors remain fixated on next week’s Fed meeting.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Weber ($WEBR) +7% after reporting its first quarterly results since it began trading publicly in August.
• (+) SoFi ($SOFI) +7% after Mizuho began coverage with a buy rating.
• (–) Yum China ($YUMC) -6% after warning that the spread of the delta variant could hit its third-quarter profits by 50% to 60%
  

3. Top Reads

A Message from Polymarket: Alexa, do you take Bitcoin?

A report in July claimed that Amazon was looking to accept Bitcoin as a payment method by the end of the year, which sent the price of the cryptocurrency up as much as 15%. Amazon denied the report, but on July 22nd they posted a job opening for a Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Lead.

One possible explanation is that Amazon is looking to build an Amazon-branded blockchain service. However, it may be more likely that retailers are looking to cash in on the crypto frenzy. Shortly after Amazon, Walmart also posted a job for a similar expert in blockchain technologies.

Will it be possible to shop on Amazon using Bitcoin in the US before 2022?

Polymarket traders are currently forecasting a 6% probability that Amazon will accept Bitcoin payments by 2022. WIll the e-commerce giant surprise us by accepting the digital currency before 2022?

Trade now or follow the odds on Polymarket. Use code “OWS” to get reimbursed up to $100 on your first day of trading!

4. Book of the Day: Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

Today humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding--and also appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing?

Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply irrational--cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and set out the benchmarks for rationality itself. We actually think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we’ve discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others. These tools are not a standard part of our education, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book--until now.

Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with Pinker’s customary insight and humor, Rationality will enlighten, inspire, and empower.

5. Daily Visual: Employees' No. 1 reason for wanting to WFH

Source: Axios

6.  Daily Acumen: Appropriate risk

We talk about risk like it’s a bad thing. But all forward motion involves risk. You can’t find a risk-free way to accomplish much of anything.

Appropriate risk has two elements:

The odds of it working out are commensurate with the benefits.

The consequences of being wrong don’t eliminate your chance to try a different path next time.

We don’t try something simply because there’s no downside. Instead, we intelligently choose projects where the downside is understood and the work is worth doing.

Source: Seth's Blog

7. Memes of the Day

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