1) It may surprise you to learn that Skype was founded in 2003 — a full eight years before Zoom — and that it was acquired by eBay in 2005, then by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5B. Oh, and that it still has 36m daily active users, albeit down from 40m in March 2020.
2) There are housing bubbles, and then there are bubble bubbles, except this one — the $640m US boba market — won’t be popping anytime soon, per analysts: The industry is projected to be worth $2.2B by 2033.
3) Irish company CRH is paving the way for America. No, literally — the firm generated $10.2B in 2022 revenue across its Americas Road Solutions business, which produces asphalt to help pave the 2.8m miles of roads in the US (94% of which are made of asphalt). Our hope: they churn out even more asphalt to fill the 2.8m miles worth of ungodly potholes out there.
4) TikTok and Amazon are marching headfirst toward an ecommerce duel for the ages (i.e., millennials and Gen Zers). As Amazon dabbles with a TikTok-inspired feed of shoppable videos, TikTok is rapidly building out shopping capabilities across its platform. Gross merchandise value across TikTok Shop is forecast to reach $20B by year-end, up 4x YoY.
