Checking Out

Forbes' billionaires list is revealing

April 6, 2022 Read in Browser TOGETHER WITH Good morning. Two notebooks kept by the great English naturalist Charles Darwin, which were stolen 20 years ago, reappeared Tuesday at the school library they were taken from.  The University of Cambridge said the manuscripts, worth millions of dollars, were returned wrapped in plastic and inside a pink gift bag. A Happy Easter note addressed to the librarian was inside. No doubt Darwin would have appreciated that the culprit's position on theft evolved over time. Morning Brief • GM, Honda will share EV secrets. • Another promising startup bites the dust. • There are fewer billionaires this year than last. Electric Vehicles Cheap Juice: Honda and GM Pair Up to Keep Their EV Costs Down  Some automakers have been working for more than 100 years to perfect the internal combustion engine. The same cannot be said for electric vehicles, whose growing popularity has sent shock waves through the auto ecosystem.  To make up for lack of production infrastructure, Big Auto players are teaming up in hopes of keeping EV prices down. On Tuesday, General Motors and Honda announced they are joining forces to make something Tesla seems to have given up on: a cheap, compact electric car. Go Small or Go Home Tesla, the EV behemoth that occupies Elon Musk's time when he's not working on an edit button for Twitter, is squarely focused on producing cars at the luxury end of the spectrum. The $47,000 price tag on its cheapest car, the Model 3, is 34% more expensive than it was three years ago. Tesla temporarily shelved plans for a $25,000 entry-level vehicle earlier this year. With Tesla in a holding pattern, GM and Honda are promising to flood the market with millions of new EVs priced at around $30,000 by 2027: • GM says it will share its “Ultium” battery and electric motor technology, the power behind the forthcoming $30,000 Chevy Equinox EV, with Honda. The collaboration will reduce the costs of producing expensive EV powertrains, and aim to create a new architecture for small crossover SUVs. • The partnership will also help both companies inch towards emissions goals: GM has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2040 and offer a zero-emissions lineup of vehicles by 2035. Honda plans to be all-electric by 2040. Tag-Team Action: GM and Honda aren’t the only carmakers looking to combine resources in hopes of creating a petrol-free lineup. BMW and Land Rover, Subaru and Toyota, and Volkswagen and Ford have also announced plans to collaborate on building new EVs. It Takes Two: Honda is also looking beyond GM to help it in the EV market. Last month, it announced plans to create a new electric car company with tech giant (and movie studio) Sony. We anxiously await the coming attractions. Startups Stripe-Backed Checkout Startup Fast is Checking Out The tech-failure-to-TV pipeline is strong. On Hulu, The Dropout is dramatizing Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos scandal, Showtime’s Super Pumped is giving Uber’s behind-the-scenes drama the prestige TV treatment, and Jared Leto is headlining Apple+'s take on WeWork's struggles in WeCrashed. On Tuesday, a harried Hollywood screenwriter no doubt began scribbling down ideas for the latest tech tragedy: the shocking, sudden closure of one-time VC darling and one-click checkout startup Fast. Fast & Furiously Looking For Revenue Known as a fast talker, Fast founder Domm Holland is quite the character. He first made a splash in his native Australia by buying the domain Qant.as for just $20 and allegedly selling it to Qantas Airways for $1.3 million. His next venture, Tow.com.au, the “Uber of towing”, went bankrupt after a legal dispute with the Australian government. With millions reportedly owed to contractors, according to NPR, Holland skipped to the US. In March 2019, the intrepid entrepreneur launched Fast, a one-click tool storing password and payment information that aimed to accelerate e-commerce checkouts. The company raised $124 million since it launched, according to Crunchbase, highlighted by a massive $102 million Series B in January 2021 led by leading payment-processing fintech firm Stripe. But on Tuesday, after The Information reported the company’s high burn rate and lackluster revenue growth made it far from a worthy investment, the startup suddenly shut down: • Fast generated just $600,000 last year, all while hiring nearly 400 employees and routinely running through more than $10 million a month, according to The Information. It also sought — and subsequently failed — to raise a $100 million Series C late last year. • Pitchbook data suggested the company was worth just over half a billion dollars. Internally, Fast’s “conservative” estimates projected unicorn status, with some even believing it would eventually be a $12 billion company, according to NPR. Holland, who once rolled up to a press conference in a NASCAR truck, calls himself “the world’s fastest CEO.” He may be right: He’s in contention for the title of fastest CEO to ever burn through $100 million in funding. SPONSORED BY YIELDSTREET The Wolf Of Wall Street Does NOT Approve This Message In today’s world of sky-high equity valuations, what’s a sensible approach to dip into alternative investments? a.) Penny stocks *Jordan Belfort gives two thumbs up* b.) Speculative cryptos only accessible through a Cayman Islands-based website c.) Timeless, tried and true investments like real estate and fine art Astute investor that you are, we know you picked option C. And Yieldstreet is here to help you get your feet wet with professionally-vetted, diverse investment opportunities. Invest In The Best: Yieldstreet’s due diligence team is a picky bunch…and that’s a good thing. Out of the $29B+ of transactions they’ve reviewed, less than $3B have made the cut. Tackle Your Goals: Whether your focus is income, growth, or a balanced portfolio, Yieldstreet offers a wealth of investments across asset classes to fit your targets and timeline. Don’t mess around with pink sheets or altcoins. Introduce your money to savvy alternative investments with Yieldstreet. Wealth Billionaire Membership Rolls Shrink, But Their Ranks are More Interesting Than Ever Tuesday marked the financial world’s equivalent of a high school posting the latest semester’s honor roll. Forbes published its annual tally of the world’s billionaires, the most successful people in business. Reflecting the economic turbulence of recent months, this year’s honor roll has 87 fewer members than in 2021. The 2,668 billionaires listed, worth $12.7 trillion combined, have $400 billion less than they did last year. Beyond that are some interesting twists and turns. Oligarchnemesis There are two big macro takeaways from this year’s list: Sanctions work and crackdowns hurt. Russia, the subject of historic international sanctions in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, has 83 billionaires on this year’s list, down from 117 a year ago. The remaining Russians lost an average of 27% of their wealth and are worth $320 billion combined, an astonishing $263 billion drop from 2021. In China, where a government-led crackdown on tech companies has knocked $1.5 trillion off markets, there are now 607 billionaires, 87 fewer than last year. You really can’t launch a regulatory crackdown without breaking some Fabergé eggs. Then there are the little details: • The $65 billion fortune of Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese-Canadian CEO of Binance, makes him the richest person in the world of digital currencies, and, at 19th, the first crypto billionaire to enter the top 20. “I only count what's in my wallet, which is not much at all,” he tweeted. • There are 236 new billionaires since last year. Bulgaria, Estonia, and Uruguay earned their first billionaire, as did Barbados, where pop star Rihanna is living up to her song, “Better Have My Money.” Great Scott: Changing the notion of wealth is MacKenzie Scott, whose $43.6 billion fortune is down 18% from a year ago but not because of bad business decisions. Scott has given away $12.5 billion in less than two years, bringing her all the way up to fifth on the list of the world's most generous lifetime philanthropists. She only trails Bill Gates and George Soros, who have been giving away money for decades. There’s Still Time: Less than 0.5% of billionaires — 12 of them to be precise — are under the age of 30, so don’t give up on having a 10-figure bank account just yet.  Extra Upside • That was fast: Elon Musk has joined Twitter’s board of directors. • A sigh of relief: the US student loan moratorium will be extended to August 31. • What if you could bolster your family’s financial security as fast as you can fry up some eggs? Bestow is making it possible with hassle-free, completely online applications for term life insurance. So finish up breakfast, check out policies from an A+ rated carrier, and lock in premiums as low as $10/month. Voila! *Chef’s Kiss* Apply online in as little as 5 minutes, with no medical exam 一 ever.* *Partner You have 0 referrals. Share The Daily Upside, Earn Rewards Or, simply copy and paste your unique referral link and share it with others: https://sparklp.co/bb4b34b2 Just For Fun This parade in Denmark. Needs goggles. Written by Sean Craig and Vince DiMiceli. ADVERTISE // CAREERS No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2022 The Daily Upside, LLC., All rights reserved. 1230 York Avenue, Box 154, New York, NY 10065

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