Gen Z’s hottest tech accessory is… iPods? Google searches for different iPod models have spiked over the past month, despite Apple’s entire iPod product line being discontinued for more than three years. One reason is Gen Z’s nostalgic love of Y2K tech, but there’s another reason we’ve seen firsthand that The New York Times reported on as well.

US stocks were whipsawed by the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut of the year, which included a signal to deliver an additional 50 basis points of easing this year if the economy evolves in line with their expectations — but a lot of uncertainty remains over whether that will actually come to pass.

The S&P 500 fell 0.1%, the Nasdaq 100 gave back 0.2%, and the Russell 2000 outperformed with a 0.2% advance, though it was up more than 2% at its highs of the day.

Google’s Waymo announced it is expanding to Nashville next year, where it will be the first autonomous car service in the area, and it delivered a huge bump to the shares of launch partner Lyft in the process.

Shares of Lyft finished the day up over 13%, while competitor Uber (which has had a similar partnership with Waymo in other cities) finished the day down nearly 5%.

Waymo is now doing “hundreds of thousands” of paid, fully autonomous rides per week, which the company says is up from the quarter of a million rides per week it was delivering earlier this year.

Back in 2019, Waymo conducted a small-scale pilot with Lyft in Phoenix, but as of today it had no active partnerships with Lyft before this Nashville venture. Lyft, meanwhile, has partnered with Mobileye to launch a self-driving service in Dallas next year. Lyft CEO David Risher recently told Sherwood News, “There aren’t enough self-driving cars and there’s too much demand, and the demand is growing.”

They’re a private company, but Pacaso just reserved the Nasdaq ticker “$PCSO.”¹ 

Created by a former Zillow exec who sold his first venture for $120M, Pacaso brings co-ownership to the $1.3T vacation home industry.²

They’ve generated $1B+ worth of luxury home transactions and service fees since inception across 2,000+ owners. That’s good for more than $110M in gross profits in less than 5 years.³

No surprise the same firms that backed large-cap S&P 500 companies already invested in Pacaso. But you don’t have to be a Wall Street firm to invest. Pacaso is giving an opportunity to invest to everyday investors, and 10,000+ people have already joined them.

But today is the final day of your window to invest. Invest in Pacaso before midnight PT tonight.⁴

The life of Starbucks as an artisanal, craft coffee brand has always been undercut by its ambition to be an enormous chain with mass appeal. But its recent drift into the world of functional beverages — such as protein-packed lattes and cold foam — reveals something else about what US coffee drinkers increasingly want in their personalized paper cups.

A new type of beverage drinker is raising the fortunes of a new type of competitor. As Sherwood’s Claire Yubin Oh and David Crowther reported, while Starbucks recently saw its same-store sales dip 2% year over year (so much for “Back to Starbucks”), the biggest gainer across the whole quick-service kingdom last quarter was a coffee chain called Dutch Bros. If you’re unfamiliar with the brand, here’s what to know:

The company’s sales have been rising steadily, as we’ve charted, and it’s not the only whippersnapper chomping at Starbucks’ heels: 7 Brew Coffee out of Arkansas has opened nearly 500 stores since 2017, similarly focuses on drive-thru only locations, and caters to a market that craves drinks with a bonkers number of espresso shots.

Starbucks seems to be moving away from its more performatively enlightened era, when coffee was a highbrow craft instead of fuel and the coffeehouse was a community hub instead of an outpost for quick and easy commerce. At the same time, American consumers — particularly younger ones desperate for value and thirstier than ever for functional beverages — are already pulling up to new places where poppin’ boba or protein milk will quench their thirst.

This obscure philosophical term may seem like just another in a string of jargon often used by the company, but this particular word carries a lot more weight. Palantir’s CTO brought it to the forefront on a recent call, saying, “Our advantage comes down to Ontology. It’s really an advantage on the AI demand side.” So Sherwood’s Matt Phillips sat down and parsed what it actually means and why it matters.