How seemingly endless pivots led to the Bulletin acquisition


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BUlletin co-founders Alana Branston and Ali Kriegsman have raced in all directions to accomplish their mission of growing small brands. In 2016, the two worked at Contently and, concurrently, launched Bulletin to rent outdoor market space to female-founded digital brands without outlets. Since then, the New York-based duo have grown from stuffy Brooklyn outdoor popups to a five-store consumer-facing e-commerce retail chain. In the last leg of Bulletin’s journey, it served as a wholesale website for retailers to purchase boutique products, generating millions in annual revenue. This week, it announced that it had been acquired by B2B (read: trade show) events giant Emerald.

Ultimately, the business of selling 3,000 brands – like mushroom chocolatier Balanced Tiger and children’s book publisher Sleeping Bear Press – to 26,000 retailers attracted the publicly traded acquirer. Although they wouldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, Emerald offered the 30 Bulletin employees jobs at the company hosting its New York Now trade show.

“We kept hearing from brands and retailers, ‘When is Bulletin doing a show?'” says Kriegsman, who is the company’s chief operating officer and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Retail & E-commerce list in 2018. [in shows].”

The acquisition is notable because female founding teams in enterprise technology are rarer than unicorns, and the female co-founders have raised more than $9 million in venture capital funding. In the process, Kriegsman became a bestselling author with her first book, How to build a fucking empire. Behold the power of this fucking kingpin.

Elon Musk isn’t the only billionaire with kids over the age of 9. Meet the richest people in the United States with the most children

Elon Musk tweeted in May that the richer people are, the fewer children they have. A review of American billionaires proves him wrong.

Money movements this week

The micro-learning platform Artist, which teaches employees of companies like Amazon, EY and Red Cross skills via SMS, WhatsApp and Slack, has announced a $12 million Series A this week. The company’s CEO and co-founder, Michael Ioffe, made the Forbes Under 30 list in 2021.

Take a jacket: OpenSeathe world’s largest NFT marketplace, revealed on Thursday that it has laid off 20% of its workforce amid a “crypto winter” as NFT sales and prices plummet. (Forbes)

While Meta seems to have abandoned its plan to build a blockchain-enabled system (they have a lot to do), two former employees who worked on the initiative have raised $200 million to create a general-purpose blockchain for NFTs, social media and more. Although their company Aptos has a valuation of over $1 billion, they are also battling a highly publicized trial and the aforementioned crypto chill. (Fortune)

As the soap opera-like drama around crypto continues, Animoca brands– a blockchain game maker and crypto investor – raised $75 million at a valuation of $5.9 billion. (Forbes)

Ex-spouses Bill and Melinda Gates reconciled to give $20 billion through their joint foundation, making them the largest donors in the world. May it be an inspiration to ex-partners around the world. (Forbes)

Victoria’s Secret – or “VS” as it’s now known – is trying to distance itself from its wingwoman-model-scandily-clad past. Struggling Mall Pillar campaigns now feature normal-looking women wearing normal-looking underwear, and people are still angry. (New York Times)

TikTok has replaced YouTube among kids and teens most consumed internet thing. In fact, people between the ages of 4 and 18 watch on average 91 minutes a day from TikTok. That’s a huge number for tiny humans. (Tech Crunch)

Rather than acting as an overbearing parent for holding companies, 39 Battery companies, which has $17.8 billion in assets under management, uses market timing to buy up struggling companies with revenues ranging from $4 million to $100 million. (Forbes)

Every year, $400 billion ends up in the trash, and because it’s cutting into corporate profits, corporations can take care of it tax deductible food waste. (Forbes)

This billionaire brokerage pioneer claims that inflation will last “for years” and that Bitcoin could become “worthless”. (Forbes)

How make sense of the very strange job market: Economists are predicting a recession, but there are tons of open jobs. What’s going on? (Voice)

Protesters try to gather in front of the houses of the Hamptons billionaires like Stephen Schwarzman and Daniel Loeb to denounce the concentration of exorbitant wealth – only problem: they started in bad house. It sounds like a metaphor *palm facing.* (New York Times)

Merlin Labs raises $105 million to solve pilot shortage by robotizing planes

The Boston-based startup has impressed investors like Baillie Gifford with its work to bring range to the US Air Force’s C-130J transport planes and a shrewd strategy that could make it the first company to win approval. security for a semi-autonomous flight control system in a civil aircraft.

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