Kim Kardashian turned Skims into a $4 billion company. She wants to build the next generation of unicorns with SKKY Partners, her new private equity firm | Hollywood is broken. Jason Blum, the king of low-budget horror, has the fix. | Digital detoxing? New study says the ‘Goldilocks’ rule for social media screen time use may be the key | Nearly 1 million chickens will be slaughtered on a Minnesota farm. The reason: bird flu

View online | Unsubscribe (one-click).
For inquiries/unsubscribe issues, Contact Us

Kim Kardashian turned Skims into a $4 billion company. She wants to build the next generation of unicorns with SKKY Partners, her new private equity firm - Fortune

The SuperReturn private equity conference is usually a staid affair. It’s an event where people in conservative suits talk in small groups and in hushed tones, raising funds and sourcing deals. But at this year’s event in Berlin this June, hundreds clamored to find a seat for a 30-minute panel. The room quickly reached capacity well before the session, titled “The Next Generation of Consumer Brands,” was scheduled to begin. Some investors banged on the hotel conference room doors, pleading for a spot inside. One locked-out man got into a physical skirmish with a security guard.

The conference attendees were fighting to hear from a familiar face—Jay Sammons, a 16-year veteran of Carlyle, a top private equity firm—and one new to them: Kim Kardashian, the entrepreneur, influencer, and now private equity investor.

A year ago, Kardashian and Sammons announced their plans to launch SKKY Partners, a private equity firm reportedly aiming to raise a $1 billion fund to invest in consumer businesses. (The pair declined to confirm that figure.) The industry was intrigued by Sammons’s decision to leave behind a well-respected career to partner with a member of reality TV’s most famous family—and by Kardashian’s interest in this usually stuffy corner of the financial world.

Continued here

Want to accelerate software development at your company? See how we can help.

Hollywood is broken. Jason Blum, the king of low-budget horror, has the fix. - Fortune

The Hollywood Legend of Jason Blum has been told so many times by now that he could sell the IP: how as a struggling young producer he turned Paranormal Activity, the $15,000 found-footage thriller from 2009 that everyone told him was worthless, into a $890 million global theatrical franchise. How he used the spoils to build his production company, Blumhouse, into a horror hit factory that has since made nearly 200 movies and grossed $5.7 billion at the box office. How even as Hollywood’s giants have seen a precipitous drop in profits over the last decade, even as streaming platforms have watched their subscriber bases plateau, even as the entire theatrical business—the very idea of going out to see a movie—has become deeply imperiled, Blumhouse’s hits keep coming and coming and coming. Like a serial killer with a machete in one of his movies. There’s your log line.

But there’s another version of Jason Blum’s origin story—more of a prequel, really—and it takes place in 1962, seven years before he was born. It’s a story about Jason’s father, an ascendant young L.A. art dealer named Irving Blum, and it opens with the day he visited the small Upper East Side Manhattan apartment of a kooky weirdo who was painting a ludicrously extensive series of Campbell’s soup cans. Thirty-two of them. No one in the New York art scene liked Andy Warhol. Soup cans? Was this some kind of joke?

On the spot, Blum offered Warhol his first solo show in Los Angeles, but just for the soup cans. All 32 of them, and nothing else.

Continued here

Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium

Digital detoxing? New study says the ‘Goldilocks’ rule for social media screen time use may be the key - Fortune Well

Considering going on a social media hiatus? New research suggests short-term breaks from social networking sites (SNS) may not give you the mood boost you’re looking to achieve. Still, the scientists suggest cutting back can reduce the negative effects of social media without giving you significant withdrawal-like symptoms.

Americans check their phones more than 100 times a day, often drawn to social media networking sites whose algorithms lure us with enticing ads and posts. Around seven in 10 Americans use social media, and teens report spending an average of nearly five hours a day on social media platforms. This usage has been associated with increased mental health issues, feelings of low self-worth, social comparison, and depression, particularly for younger girls.

“Social media use has been linked to causing or worsening various mental health symptoms. Research shows that it can disrupt sleep [and] increase stress levels and self-reported symptoms of depression,” Naiylah Warren, a licensed family and marriage therapist and clinical content manager at Real, a mental wellness app, previously told Fortune.

Continued here

Nearly 1 million chickens will be slaughtered on a Minnesota farm. The reason: bird flu - Fortune Well

Nearly 1 million chickens on a Minnesota egg farm will be slaughtered to help limit the spread of the highly contagious bird flu after it was confirmed there, officials said Monday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the virus was found at a farm in Wright County, Minnesota, as well as in three smaller flocks in South Dakota and Iowa. Whenever the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus is detected on a farm, the entire flock is killed as to keep it from spreading to other farms.

In addition to the Minnesota case, the USDA said some 26,800 turkeys will be killed on a farm in McPherson County in South Dakota and nearly 17,000 birds will be slaughtered on two farms in Iowa’s Clay County.

Continued here

You are receiving this mailer as a TradeBriefs subscriber.
We fight fake/biased news through human curation & independent editorials.
Your support of ads like these makes it possible. Alternatively, get TradeBriefs Premium (ad-free) for only $2/month
If you still wish to unsubscribe, you can unsubscribe from all our emails here
Our address is 309 Town Center 1, Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri East, Mumbai 400059 - 93544947