In today’s newsletter we discuss Rupert Murdoch leaves Fox, LimeWire gets into Generative AI, SpaceX countersues the DOJ, painter Bob Ross was a startup whisperer, Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour boosted GDPs, OpenSeas is launching a Creator Studio.

Business

"The king is dead, long live the king!" or at least that’s how the saying goes. It seems fitting for today’s news that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp., but is he really stepping down? Turns out not so much. He is retiring as chairman of Fox Corp., but he’s appointed his son Lachlan Murdoch, who will replace him as chairman of both firms with Rupert Murdoch being appointed chairman emeritus of both companies (whatever that means). My guess is it means daddy will be watching and still pulling the strings, but claim deniability in any new lawsuits going forward. Seems sunny boy might be being set up as a fall guy if Fox’s recent lawsuits are any indicator.

Rupert Murdoch stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp.

Tech

Remember LimeWire? It rose to fame in the late 90’s as a file sharing service similar to the original Napster. Soon after that it was sued into oblivion and shut down, only to be resurrected a few times in name only. In its most recent reincarnation they have modeled itself as a studio for creators. Now it's getting into generative AI with the purchase of BlueWillow “a popular generative AI image creation platform that competes with services like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.” according to an article on TechCrunch today.

Here’s a passage from the article that I find most interesting:

“Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but the acquisition will not include any of the talent working at BlueWillow. Ritankar Das, the founder and head of the company, said in an interview that the team that built BlueWillow are advising LimeWire on the platform in a transitionary period, but that they plan to eventually leave, en masse, to work on a new AI venture that is still in stealth.”

So essentially LimeWire is purchasing a product with a little bit of consulting services from the Founders, who are then ALL leaving to work on another stealth startup. Gotta love those serial entrepreneurs!

After relaunching as a studio for creators, LimeWire acquires BlueWillow, a Midjourney competitor

Space

You can’t sue me! I’m going to sue you back! I imagine that’s how the conversation went at SpaceX headquarters after the Justice Department sued SpaceX for a hiring discrimination case. Now SpaceX has sued to dismiss the same case. So what’s going on here?

“SpaceX wants to hire the very best candidates for every job regardless of their citizenship status, and in fact has hired hundreds of noncitizens,” the company wrote in its complaint.

But the DOJ sued SpaceX last month “alleging it discriminates in its hiring practices against refugees and people granted asylum in the U.S.”

I’m not going to get into the challenges of hiring people while abiding by Human Resource laws across the world. What I do find fascinating is that SpaceX has contacts with both NASA and the Department of Defence, but is also involved in lawsuits with the DOJ, FAA, and Department of Fish & Wildlife to name a few. Another example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in government.

SpaceX countersues Justice Department, seeking to dismiss hiring discrimination case

Entertainment

Bob Ross was actually a career coach cleverly disguised as a painter on TV. Hear me out. The man hosted a 30 minute show on PBS where he painted beautiful landscapes while dispensing words of wisdom. Now his first TV painting goes on sale for nearly $10m which is insane for a painter who passed away in 1995, and whose paintings are nearly all stored in a storage facility and owned by Bob Ross Inc., the company founded by his former business partners Walt and Annette Kowalski.

Why do I think Bob Ross was actually a career coach? Because he used to throw out quotes like “It’s hard to see things when you are too close. Take a step back and look.”, “There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.”, “Go out on limb. That’s where the fruit is.”, and “You can do anything you want. This is your world.” (which I think the rapper Nas took some liberties with in his song The World Is Yours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5PnuIRnJW8)

As a serial entrepreneur myself, Bob Ross’ words sound to me like a career coach or startup whisper trying to motivate a CEO to believe in themselves while they go out and conquer the world, or maybe that’s just what I hear in Bob Ross’ words.

Bob Ross’s first TV painting goes on sale for nearly $10m

Real Estate

I know what you’re thinking; not another story about Taylor Swift, but you know what I say? Yes, more and more stories about Taylor Swift! There’s a recent article out about how Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour has helped hotel industry avoid a slump, and resulted in a big boost to U.S. hotel industry this summer.

“The average revenue per room in cities where her tour landed increased more than 4 percent over the national average, and increased more than 7 percent when compared with year-over-year revenue, CNBC reported, citing Bernstein data.”

There’s even a name for the impact that Taylor Swift has on the economy: “Swiftonomics.” We’ve talked about how hotel’s increased their bookings on the nights Taylor Swift was performing worldwide, and in Colorado their GDP was boosted with $140 million in consumer spending from the concerts she held in the state. On top of that Taylor Swift seems to be attempting to singlehandedly boost the U.S. real estate economy with her purchase of an estimated $150 million in U.S. residential real estate portfolio alone.

Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour has helped hotel industry avoid a cruel summer

Crypto

NFTs are dead, or are they? OpenSea is doubling down on NFTs and listening to their customs. In October they are launching a Creator Studio which will house expansive tools for creating, managing, and analyzing their client’s NFT projects. These no-code tools will allow users to launch drops for their community to mint, and mint items directly to their wallet. Down the road they’ll be adding features that will make an NFT’s homepage on OpenSeas more closely resemble a minting site that NFT projects typically create and host on their own.

This consolidation of services is a long time coming, but the timing of their Creator Studio during this crypto winter when bluechip NFT collections have seen some of their values decrease by 90% seems a little off. What took OpenSeas so long, and why now? My thought is that other NFT marketplaces have been removing creator’s royalties to make their exchange’s NFT’s prices more competitive, so I think OpenSeas is siding with creators to offer them more tools to keep them loyal to their platform, but that’s just my take. A recent study examining more than 73,000 NFT collections found that 95% had a market cap of 0 ETH (so essentially worthless for non-crypto speaking people). Crypto winter may be here to stay.

OpenSea to Launch Creator Studio and Replace Lazy Mint

So much news, so little time. Until tomorrow we’re signing out.

— Chris