🥒 Rejections, Ramen, and Jenni AI

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Hey Pickle Gang, it’s Rob.

Here's what's in today's issue:

• Starbucks Shares up 24.5% After Poaching CEO From Chipotle

• Rejections, Ramen, and Jenni AI: £3M ARR

• $30M to Build Data Dev Tools for AI

• And more…

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This Weeks Favourites

• Build in Public: My Story, so far... (link)

• Article: Search optimization for AI (getting to the top of LLMs) (link)

• Video: Slidebean - How would I run a startup (If I had to start over) (link)

• Podcast: Colin & Samir - The Full Story of Michelle Khare (Challenge Accepted) (link)

• Fun Stuff: Gary Neville gets abused by Roy Kene for being a DJ at a concert (link)

Today’s Sugar Daddy

Learn how to launch and grow an affiliate program for SaaS

Launching an affiliate program for your SaaS business can be intimidating if you’re new to it, but it is pretty simple. Rewardful has boiled it down to three core principles in their free online course:

• Principle 1: Make it simple for affiliates to earn money

• Principle 2: Run your program like a professional

• Principle 3: Build an affiliate recruitment system

By the end of the course, you'll have a clear picture of how affiliate marketing can work for your business.

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News

Starbucks Shares up 24.5% After Poaching CEO From Chipotle

Starbucks just poached Chipotle's golden-boy CEO, Brian Niccol, to shake up their leadership team. After leading Chipotle's turnaround, Niccol is set to take the helm at Starbucks on Sept. 9. Investors are buzzing - Starbucks shares shot up 24.5%, erasing its losses, while Chipotle took a 7.5% hit.

Story

Rejections, Ramen, and Jenni AI: David Park & Henry Mao

David Park lived in his parents' basement for a while. The boy was living off Ramen, and whatever his parents put on the dinner table.

But, the man had a dream. And, sometimes, dreams come true.

Just as David was ready to sell his soul, a scout for Jason Calacanis heard David on a podcast and handed him a $100,000 seed investment.

Then, after blowing up on social media, he got cancer. So he was literally smashing it, and then got put in a hospital bed. This left his mate Henry running this show solo. Madness.

Anyway, the boy survived, and is now sitting on £3m ARR.

Here’s the full story.

Funding

$30M to Build Data Dev Tools for AI

News: Encord is a data development platform for multimodal AI (things like video and sound). They just snagged new funding to supercharge their data labeling tools, making sure AI gets the quality input it needs to get smarter.

They raised $30 million in a Series B funding round, led by Next47. This brings their total funding to $50 million. The company currently serves 120 customers, including big names like Philips and Cedars-Sinai, and is also working with military and government agencies​.

Here’s the PR release, with more detail.

Growth

Build in Public - Why Do Paid Consultancy When Bootstrapping?

Okay, so I've been avoiding doing consultancy as part of the monetisation strategy for Pickle Rooms. But, I think I was wrong for not doing it.

Mainly, I was avoiding linking my time to the revenue of the newsletter, as I needed to be doing one thing - growing it.

But, everyone says you need to talk to your users, and they’re right. I, for one, need to understand what people like, and what they don’t about the newsletter. It helps me improve it.

So I thought - hey, if I’m gonna speak to readers….might as well get money for it. This way I do two things:

1. Help you guys with stuff you’re doing.

2. Understand what you want more of.

If any of you fancy a chat, you’re only a click away. But, you may have to put up with my sh*tty dad jokes…

Recommendation

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Meme of the Day

Hope you enjoyed today’s issue!

I won’t lie, it takes me a while to write, so I’d love it if you could give it a share! (just forward it to a friend if you’re lazy like me!)

Cheers,

Rob 🥒

Robert Benson-May, ACA