Platform Pioneer

Good morning! A former Chicago school district official has been sentenced to 9 years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing $1.5 million worth of [chicken wings](. Today we’re exploring: - Pop prizes: Olympic medals per capita. - It Ends With Us: A #BookTok hit became a box-office smash. - Susan Wojcicki: The YouTube exec’s legacy in light of her passing. Have feedback for us? Just hit reply - we'd love to hear from you!   After 19 days of non-stop sporting action, the Paris Olympics drew to a close yesterday with a Hollywood-worthy finale as Tom Cruise abseiled into the Stade de France and drove off on a motorcycle [with the Olympic flag]( — setting the stage for Los Angeles in 2028. Table stakes Power. Entertainment. Money. The Olympics have long been an extension of the geopolitics of the day, and this year’s competition was no different. The two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, wrestled for top spot of the medal table. Tied on 40 gold [medals each]( — the primary measure used by the International Olympic Committee to rank countries — the US claimed the top spot due to a higher silver medal count, helping it to a total medal haul of 126, the only nation to break the century mark. But, one of the most striking macro stories of the games is India’s relative underperformance. Despite a population of more than 1.4 billion, India won just 6 medals, with no gold medals, placing them 71st in the rankings. A country with phenomenal economic potential, which is increasingly being realized, many experts blame a chronic lack of investment in athletics and sports for the country’s underwhelming performance. Although, understandably, pouring money into elite sports is unlikely to be a vote-winning domestic policy when poverty and malnutrition remain all-too-common issues. Indeed, India’s GDP per capita remains around one-fifth of China’s. Small but mighty India’s place on that chart begs another question: which nations outperformed relative to their size? [See here for the top 10](. [Read the full story on the web](   Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool & Wolverine surpassed $1 billion at the global box office, and Blake Lively’s big screen adaptation of romance-drama novel It Ends With Us achieved a $50 million debut. Perhaps the only person with more to celebrate than the Reynolds-Lively household, though, is the author of the book that inspired the latter movie: Colleen Hoover. While the 44-year-old Texan first self-published back in 2012, her books have exploded in popularity since 2020. According to Circana BookScan via [Vox](, Hoover’s titles have now sold almost 30 million in-print copies; in 2022, she held 6 of the top 10 spots in the NYT paperback fiction list, outselling the Bible [that year](; and It Ends With Us has been a [NYT bestseller]( for over 132 weeks, currently standing at No.1 for combined print & e-book fiction despite being published 8 years ago. Page-turning Indeed, Hoover’s meteoric rise has coincided with the ‘BookTok’ boom. During the pandemic, a global community of readers and authors converged on video sharing app TikTok to discuss their favorite titles, offer recommendations, and post reactions to viral novels, giving rise to major author success stories like Hoover, Sarah J Maas, and Taylor Jenkins Reid, among others. Cut to present, and the [#BookTok]( hashtag has garnered over 35.6 million posts, and counted more than 200 billion total views on the app at the end of [last year](. Zoom out, and you can even see a broader jump in the popularity of young adult fiction (+50%) and adult fiction (+42%) titles — BookTok’s bread and butter — relative to pre-pandemic 2018, per [Circana]( research on the US book industry; meanwhile, nonfiction titles have seen a slight slump over the same period. [Read this on the web instead](   Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, employee number 16 at Google, and one-time landlord for the tech company’s founders in the late 90s, died at 56 after living with lung cancer for 2 years, according to a Facebook post from her husband [on Friday](. Current Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai paid tribute in a memo to employees, highlighting Wojcicki’s role in building the Google ad business, her work leading YouTube, and her parental leave advocacy (Wojcicki was the first Googler to take maternity leave) which “[set a new standard for businesses everywhere](”. Platform pioneer Wojcicki has been credited with convincing the Google board to stump up the $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2006, as Google Video, the unit she oversaw at the time, [struggled to compete](. 8 years later, she was made CEO of the video-sharing platform, with [The Wall Street Journal]( reporting that YouTube made about $4 billion in the year that Wojcicki took the helm. Per Alphabet’s latest annual report for 2023 — the year that Wojcicki [resigned]( to focus on her family, health, and personal projects — adverts made the company $31.5 billion. That figure was up ~690% since 2014 and accounted for more than 10% of Alphabet’s overall revenue for the year. [Read this on the web instead](   More Data - New electric bandages could heal wounds 30% faster than [traditional dressings](. - Crypto startups secured $2.7 billion in VC funding, up 2.5% on the previous quarter but still down 75% on [peak funding from Q1 2022](. - Developers are using an almost 5-ton 3D printer to construct 100 homes in Georgetown, Texas — they’ve already sold over 25 of the [printed properties](. - Boeing management is meeting with the company’s biggest union today for contract negotiations, in the hope of staving off action that could see 32,000 machinists [go on strike](.   Hi-Viz - Mapping the cities and towns in America where $1 million+ starter homes have become [the norm](. Off the charts: Which two fast food chains — one that’s nailed revenues per restaurant, and one that’s mastered expansion — have we taken off this chart from last week? [Answer below]. [Answer here.](   Thanks for stopping by! 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