🕶️ Scarcity beats nostalgia

brought to you with

Eight bullets of updates

1. 🩺 Nearly a million medical cannabis records were left exposed, including Social Security numbers and health details in Ohio.

2. ⚡ Startups now scale fast with lean teams, as companies hit $200M in revenue with just 30-40 people thanks to automation.

3. 🐝 Beehiiv's CEO confirms their unique approach of not taking a cut from creators, boosting subscription revenues by 15%.

4. 💻 Shells lets you access a full desktop environment on any device, streamlining your business ops.

5. ⚖️ Kalinda’s new AI helps class action lawyers qualify cases in under 15 minutes, slashing hours from legal screening.

6. 🎉 Deel celebrates a legal victory in a "Rippling-aligned" battle, as it secures a lawsuit win, untangling complex corporate legal web. 

7. 💰️ Most startups think they have 18 months of runway—until a $10k mistake derails it. Pressure-test forecasts ASAP.

8. 👓️ Two ex-Harvard students launch smart glasses with always-on mics, doubling down on selfie privacy drama.

✦

📈 Pop Mart Labubu Franchise Sales Surpass Barbie and Hot Wheels

Pop culture, meet Pop Mart. This year, a quirky toy franchise from China has casually outpaced Barbie and Hot Wheels, pushing $670M in sales with its wide-eyed Labubu figures and setting its sights on a ten-figure finish.

It's a masterclass in modern toy economics: limited drops, near-fanatic fandom, and the kind of collectibility that keeps eBay humming. Western icons are suddenly the underdogs in a market where scarcity and hype trump nostalgia, signaling a remixed future for brand-driven merchandising and global toy dominance.

✦

How Your Pension Became a Pyramid Scheme

✦

Get Compliant in 15 Hours—Not 6 Months

Delve helps fast-growing companies get compliant with an AI-automated platform. SOC 2, HIPAA, and any other certification in just 15 hours.

The proof is in the pudding:

• Lovable → From zero to fully SOC 2 compliant in just days

• Cluely → Unlocked millions in enterprise contracts within just days

• Bland → Switched over, got SOC 2 compliant and unlocked $500k ARR within 7 days

If you’re suffering elsewhere, they’ll even migrate you off another platform all included.

Slidebean readers get $1,000 credit using code SLIDEBEAN1KOFF + Free Airpods Pros when you get compliant

Getting compliant in days >>> quarters.

✦

These companies just raised money

1. 🧱 Databricks just hit a $100B valuation after raising $1B to  fuel an AI agent marketplace push  with fresh capital.

2. 💤 New York's Eight Sleep secures a $100M investment, bringing their total funding to $260M.

3. 🛰️ SpinLaunch nets $30M to build a satellite-powered broadband network, aiming to boost global internet connectivity.

4. 🙋‍♂️ Firecrawl scores $14.5M and is still hiring human agents after impressing Shopify’s CEO.

5.  🧪 Functionize grabs $41M to help enterprises automate software testing for faster releases.

✦

✦

📢 Grok AI Chatbot Conversations Publicly Searchable by URL

Grok’s “share” button is doing more than just helping users flex their chatbot conversations; it’s generating unique links that are now fully visible to Google and friends.

Which means those once-private exchanges with the bot could show up on your next search for “best breakup texts.” It’s a privacy headache waiting to happen and a new chapter in the never-ending saga of user data accidentally (or lazily) unleashed on the open web.

As chatbots embed deeper into workflows and creative processes, expect more of these “whoops, we indexed it” moments, opening up risks for users and content moderation teams alike. No clear fix yet, but the debate over what gets crawled by bots just got another AI-sized wrinkle.

✦

✦

Startup Events and Deadlines

1. TODAY! l Slidebean’s Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Aug 21 l Online

2. New York Venture Summit | 9, 10 Sept | NYC

3. Techstars Foundercon 2025 | 15-17 Sept | USA, Colorado

4. Antler Canada | Deadline: Sept 29 | Canada

5. 500 Startups Flagship Accelerator l Deadline: Oct 11 l USA

✦