The Pause Plea, Spy Fashionista & Wasted Box 🚺

Emily Hikade used to be a total badass working undercover for the CIA. She had traveled to nine countries on three continents with her family, but after a close call on a plane ride over the Indian Ocean, she knew it was time for a change. Emily wanted a safer life for her kids, and that's when she got the idea to start Petite Plume, a luxury sleepwear company, as a side hustle.

Starting the company while still working for the CIA wasn't easy, but Emily made it happen. She scouted production facilities in the morning before work, and handled customer service calls and worked with US fulfilment centres in the evenings. Petite Plume launched its children's cotton-blend pajamas on Shopify in 2015, and later expanded to wholesale and adult sizes.

Fast forward to today, Petite Plume is based in Chicago and available in major retailers like Nordstrom, Maisonette, and Neiman Marcus. Their annual revenue in 2022 surpassed $10 million, all without taking any outside investment. 

Not too shabby for a company that started as a side hustle!

And AGI is not the only spiffy startup-home in SF. There's also Cerebral Valley AI, which hosts co-working sessions in startup offices and has a Google Doc of events that are not always widely promoted.

Lots of young people are flocking to the Bay Area's AI scene to be closer to the action of hackathons, meetups, and happy hours. Apparently, people are even calling Hayes Valley "Cerebral Valley" because of the concentration of AI communities and hacker houses.

Living in communal houses has been essential to building the Bay Area's tightknit AI scene. It's how OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the wealthiest AI startups, got started. And if you're lucky enough to stay at AGI House, you might even meet some Silicon Valley elites.

In fact, the AGI House throws some insane parties where even Google co-founder, Sergey Brin might show up. 

Backstory: The team behind Wasted first met during mountaineering expeditions in various locations around the world, including the Arctic, Patagonia, Nepal, and Lake Tahoe. During these trips, they became aware of the issue of untreated human waste leaking into the natural environment from pits. Driven by a desire to address this problem and leave these beautiful locations better than they found them they embarked on extensive work with portable toilets, including surveying, installation, servicing, disassembly, and reassembly.

How does it work: Wasted’s portable toilets divert human waste from the drainage pipes to convert it into fertilizers. Every unit/station features 

• sustainable toilet paper and cleaning supplies products like bamboo TP 
• waste diversion technology
• ventilation for airflow. 
• Waterless flushing

While some places already use human waste as a fertilizer, Wasted hopes to serve as a replacement in regions where sanitation systems are underdeveloped.

Over 1,100 people, including big names like Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Tristan Harris from the Center for Humane Technology, have signed an open letter urging all AI labs to halt the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. 

The letter reads:

The letter argues that there is a lack of planning and management in the development of these powerful AI systems, and that labs are in an "out-of-control race" to create them without understanding or being able to control them. If a pause cannot be achieved quickly, the letter suggests that governments should step in and institute a moratorium. 

Notably, OpenAI and Anthropic, which spun out of OpenAI to build a "safer" AI chatbot, did not sign the letter.