Startup Stash - Ruts, Repairs, & Sewing Tassels🧣

Did you rip your favourite jacket this summer? Do you still own sneakers that have clearly seen better days, but you’re not ready to part with them? Well, instead of letting them gather dust, why not give them a new lease on life? Tingit, a Lithuanian startup, is a fashion repair marketplace that helps you do just that.

Here’s how the platform works. Snap a quick video of the damage, upload it through the app, and get a quote for the repair. If the price works for you, simply pay through the app and ship your items to one of their trusted repair shops. Easy peasy. 

The idea is not just about fixing what’s broken—it’s about making repairs a regular part of your routine, reducing money and material waste. 

Sadly, Tingit is currently only available in Lithuania. But in a few months, the startup plans to expand across Europe and then perhaps, the Americas, thanks to a fresh €500,000 pre-seed funding boost.

Problem: AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity’s search engine require vast amounts of training data, which is often sourced from copyrighted materials. This creates a major issue for creators whose intellectual property is used without permission or compensation, leading to potential copyright theft and loss of revenue.

Solution: Enter Story Protocol, a San Francisco-based startup that has raised $80 million to tackle this. Story’s blockchain platform allows creators to prove they made a piece of content and are the intellectual property owners by storing their IP on the platform. By embedding licensing fees and royalty-sharing terms into smart contracts, Story ensures that creators are properly attributed and compensated whenever their work is used by AI platforms.

This helps IP owners set clear rules for how content can be used and the price to pay for reproducing it. It also eliminates the need for lengthy legal negotiations, disputes, lawyers and middlemen, making it easier for creators to protect and monetize their work.

Ofcourse, copyrighters will have to pay for this service. Story charges a network fee for any action that takes place on its network, which is not too expensive considering the dollars lost in revenue due to AI using your IP. 

But AI firms aren’t too happy about this new tech. They’ve been mining hordes of data — sometimes without permission — to train their AI models. With Story’s tech, firms won’t be able to tap into data troves willy nilly. 

Why does all this matter? For one, not many startups are designing tech specifically to combat IP theft by AI. So far, only one project from the University of Chicago, called Glaze, offers a free app for artists to combat IP theft.

According to some stats on Indeed job postings (chart below), employers are hiring fewer software engineers. Sure, overall employment for software developers is still growing ever-so-slightly, but growth has slowed down quite a bit in the past year and a half. 

Why? 

Interest rates have become a key factor in the downturn of tech hiring. Since 2022, the Federal Reserve has been raising the target range for the fed funds rate, impacting interest rates across the economy. Higher interest rates make it less appealing to lend money to businesses when safer, government-backed options offer better returns.

But how does this tie into tech hiring? For one, software development often requires upfront investment, typically financed through loans. As borrowing becomes more expensive, companies are less inclined to take on debt to fund new projects.

Additionally, FAANG companies are scaling back their hiring. With limited growth potential and rising costs, they’re not bringing in as many new employees, and even referrals and interviews have slowed.

Lastly, hiring is hard now because lying and BSing has become more rampant. However, This is more of a symptom of the labor market than a cause. 

🪴 Growth Minus Profit - Roblox is still very unprofitable, despite the fact that more than 80 million people log into Roblox on average every day. 

➰ The Tattoo Business - The global tattoo market is worth $2.2B in 2024. 

🐛 Compete For Bugs - AI ethics nonprofit Humane Intelligence and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology are holding contests for people who want to find bugs in generative AI models.

🚪 College Problems - More than 500 colleges have closed their doors in the last decade, thanks to fall in enrollment numbers.

🏧 ATMs Stealing Money - ATM fees have hit a record high. It now costs ~$5 to withdraw money from an out-of-network cash machine. 

💊 Banks & Drugs - TD Bank, Canada's second largest bank, is bracing for billions in fines over reported Chinese drug trafficking.