This is Jack. This is Nick. And we all have a September 11th story. But this is one we’d never heard about before: The Great 9/11 Boat Lift. On the day of the attacks, 500K people were evacuated by ferries, yachts, and tugboats from New York Harbor—the largest maritime rescue in history (topping even Dunkirk from WWII). Another story we’ll never forget.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Subscribe here to get TBOY 3x/week every week.

1) Adidas’ Yeezy Replacement: The OG Samba

Adidas has 99 problems…and Kanye West is all 99 of them. Adidas’ discontinuation of Kanye’s Yeezy line left a half-billion-dollar hole in the company’s 2023 earnings. Instead of replacing Kanye with another famous wild card design partner, Adidas is replacing him with “The Samba,” the iconic shoe invented for soccer players in 1950 that’s hitting its prime at 73 years old. The critics are calling it →

• Vogue: “The It-Girls’ Current Favorite Sneakers”

• GQ: “The Sneaker of the Summer, yet again”

A$AP Rocky, Olivia Wilde, and every “totally relatable” celebrity have been snapped by paparazzi this summer in Sambas. That’s why Google searches for “Samba” just hit an ATH and #Samba has been viewed 4B times on TikTok. The new Adidas CEO wants Samba to be the next big Adidas franchise, so he launched a Samba-only store in Shanghai and a Samba cafe at Paris Fashion Week.

The Takeaway →

Great companies let their brands outshine them. Top-selling sneakers become their own brands—think Air Force Ones, Chuck Taylors, and Stan Smiths. Adidas is hoping Samba can do the same. While some companies might get insecure about a single brand outshining them, great companies don’t. They actually *hope* that their best products move out of the house and learn to do their own laundry flourish on their own.

2) A Chobani Writing Job Pays up to $300K

And we don’t think it’s crazy. Greek yogurt pioneer Chobani sells $2B in yogurt, creamers, and oat milk a year. It hopes to ride its 20% share of the US yogurt market to an IPO soon.

But all the attention is on their recent job listing: “Executive Writer.” Basically, a ghost-writer for legendary Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya. Digging into the JD:

• ✍️ “Responsible for capturing our CEO’s voice and assisting in strategic communications.”

• Translation: Write speeches, letters, and Slack messages that Chobani’s CEO will publish as his own.

The job description wasn’t a surprise…but the salary was: Up to $278K annual pay (plus bonus). Sounds like the Poet Laureate of dairy. The position has now been filled, but the drama hasn’t let up. Most X’ers (tweeters?) thought $300K for writing about yogurt was ridiculous. But we don’t, because…

The Takeaway →

Every CEO is really the CCO. What executives say publicly (and privately) has never been more scrutinized. That’s why a CEO’s top role these days is actually Chief Communications Officer. They must inspire investors, customers, and employees with their words (not just their profits, like in the past). So a full-time, top-notch writer to support the CEO in doing just that? Worth every penny.

3) A Top-Performing Stock of 2023? It’s…Drumroll...Carvana

The company that invented the car vending machine (real thing) has experienced 3 extremes in 3 years: The stock surged 1,000%...then fell 99%...and then surged 1,000% again this summer.

Carvana has become the Amazon of autos—an online used car marketplace. It makes an offer on your used Honda then sells it online. Here’s how it got to be a top-performing stock of 2023:

• 🚙📈+1,000% (2020): Mid-Pandemic, we start buying cars via the internet instead of in-person dealerships.

• 🚗📉-99% (2021-2023): Post-Pandemic, Americans go back to their usual habits, including dealerships. Carvana’s revenues shrink as investors realize it overexpanded with $7B in debt.

• 🚙📈+1,000% (since May): Something strange happened to all that Carvana debt…

Forgiveness. This summer, Wall Street money managers excused $1.3B in Carvana debt and delayed the due date of another $2B in Carvana debt by two years. Carvana’s lenders basically said “pay us when you can” and helped it avoid bankruptcy (sending the stock up 40% that day). But when did ruthless Wall Street lenders become Mr. Rogers?

The Takeaway →

Guac is always extra. Some people say “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” We say “guac is always extra.” It means nothing is truly free—you’re paying for it somehow. Here’s the asterisk on Carvana’s debt forgiveness: Lenders doubled the interest rate on the remaining debt to up to 14% and took all of Carvana’s Hondas as collateral. There’s always a catch. Guac is always extra.

Spoiler: A lot is going down on Tuesday.

📚 Elon Musk’s highly anticipated biography by Walter Isaacson (who also wrote bios of Einstein, Da Vinci, and Steve Jobs) drops tomorrow.

⚖️ Google’s historic antitrust trial kicks off Tuesday. It’s the biggest monopoly-busting case since Bill Gates’ Microsoft in the ‘90s.

📱 Apple’s expected to unveil its iPhone 15 at a major annual product event, also tomorrow.

🛒 Instacart hopes to hit a $10B valuation with its IPO next month. Context: It was valued at $39B in March 2022 (tech’s been hit hard, but it’s bouncing back).

🤳 Venice (the one in Italy) has a new plan to deal with over-tourism: fees. All visitors will have to pay a $6 entry fee.

🎾 Coco Gauff won her first Grand Slam Title at 19 years old—and then she shared the whole experience from the court on TikTok.

And one more thing. Guac is always extra. That is all. IYKYK.

—Nick & Jack