Hi, welcome to your Weekend.
One of my favorite tech memes is the “We’re so back” post, the kind that pokes fun at the industry returning to the good old days of expensive perks and wine-soaked dinners.
I had a real-life “We’re so back” moment this week when I attended a bacchanalian feast thrown by Bain Capital Ventures at Fogo de Chão in San Francisco. Bain Capital’s private equity arm announced last month that it was buying the Brazilian steakhouse chain from Rhone Capital for a reported $1.1 billion. Given the painful slowdown in deal-making this year, any acquisition is reason for celebration. But when the deal is for one of the startup world’s favorite churrascarias, well, as the Brazilians say, bom apetite!
Needless to say, the turnout for Fogo de Chão’s all-you-can-eat skewers of alcatra (top sirloin), fraldinha (bottom sirloin) and filet mignon was beyond Bain’s expectations. Some 130 people showed up “before we stopped counting,” said BCV partner Kevin Zhang, who helped organize the event. As more people crashed the party, the Bain hosts just set up more tables and kept the steak and caipirinhas flowing.
Approximately half the invitees were startup founders—every one of them seemingly launching an AI company. The rest were scout investors, seed fund managers and “rising star tech talents” being mentored by the firm, according to Zhang. I was the only media member there, rare for a party in San Francisco with free food.
Of course, Bain Capital acquiring a billion-dollar steakhouse chain isn’t necessarily a sign that the deal markets are thawing. But that, plus a trio of tech IPOs, plus an ebullient Marc Benioff shouting on X that “San Francisco is now the #1 AI City in the world” all communicated one thing last week.
We’re so back.
Men are indeed thinking about the Roman Empire…a lot. Margaux spoke to former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who, alongside other tech luminaries, is offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can find text passages hidden within the 2,000-year-old Herculaneum papyri. The dream is to use AI tools to peer into artifacts that were charred beyond recognition during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
“Would you rather be regulated by an expert or by an idiot?” That was the rhetorical question one European diplomat put to Chris Stokel-Walker, who reports on how the EU’s enforcement model finally forced Silicon Valley to bend a knee. The question for U.S. lawmakers is whether they can glean anything useful from the EU’s approach.
Despite Silicon Valley’s drift toward sports that require an octagon, tech executives are still applying their competitive spirit to the track. In this week’s The Most Epic, five committed runners tell Annie about running jaw-dropping distances in far-flung locales.
Noticing: “Social shopping” for fall
It’s really hard to get excited about a spreadsheet. But when Magasin author Laura Reilly released her crowd-sourced fall 2023 shopping Google sheet, I audibly squealed. The spreadsheet is essentially a master doc of everything a cohort of chic, plugged-in, fashionable women are buying or craving right now. The categories give a curated picture of the current market, with columns itemizing this fall’s purchases, last fall’s most worn pieces, readers’ current favorite shops and more. Though it’s all a bit dizzying, the guide is still less overwhelming than the limitless scrolling that comes with online browsing. Reilly’s spreadsheet is perhaps a harbinger of the future of shopping, a data-driven replacement for the fashion influencer. It’s “social shopping,” she writes—more democratic than a fashion magazine, but still crowdsourced from a very particular crowd. The only thing it’s not ideal for is my bank account. —Annie
Watching: TikTok as movie streaming service
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that anonymous TikTok accounts are pirating movies, chopping them up into bite-sized clips and gaining hundreds of thousands of followers in the process. But who, exactly, is watching these chopped-up movies via TikTok? It’s me. Yes, TikTok has become my favorite movie theater-slash-streaming service. Last night, I watched nine separate TikToks of Honey, the 2003 dance flick starring Jessica Alba—and I would’ve watched more, if only User60562882151481 would post new scenes faster. Even though these clips are blatantly violating copyright law, the Journal reports that studios don’t appear to mind, since the accounts increase the popularity of movies at zero cost. So tonight I’m going to watch 2013’s Ender’s Game, split into 57 parts, without feeling an ounce of guilt. —Margaux
Reading: A new Big Brother is watching
The newly-launched 404 Media published an investigation this week into ShadowDragon, a government contractor that collects user data from the farthest corners of the web. ShadowDragon’s main product, SocialNet, can map out a user’s activities across an astonishing range of online services—including pregnancy-tracking sites, payment apps, social media platforms, video games, bodybuilding sites and even fetish communities. Two of the company’s biggest clients are ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, according to 404, but ShadowDragon also works with corporations and nonprofits. It’s shocking the kind of surveillance we’re signing up for when we agree to lengthy Terms & Conditions online—even within the most innocuous-seeming services. —Julia
Makes You Think
It was the eldest boy, after all!
Until next Weekend, thanks for reading.
—Jon
