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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Four young finance bros obtained the glossy treatment in an article that lit up social media and sparked plenty of backlash. We followed up with one of the Wall Street studs, who declared he’s leaning into the buzz becautilize “controversy sells.”
Private credit and the “SaaSpocalypse”
Tech-focutilized Blue Owl became the poster child of private credit’s exposure to software when its stock cratered following the market’s AI-driven software sell-off.
Concerns over Blue Owl’s exposure have other major private credit bosses, like Blackstone’s Jon Gray and Apollo’s Marc Rowan, talking up their portfolios, to explain why software loans aren’t a risk to their businesses.
Salesforce’s president weighs in
Last month, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff joked about ICE at an employee event, drawing criticism from employees and executives. In the first companywide gathering since, President Robin Washington addressed the controversy in an all-hands, according to audio of the meeting reviewed by BI.
While Washington didn’t mention Benioff’s comments, she assured employees that the company was listening to them and that it’s “appropriately adjusting.”
Hiring managers aren’t reading your résumé
Anyone can spin up a buzzword-filled résumé in seconds with the assist of ChatGPT. But that builds it difficult for qualified job candidates to stand out from the fake ones. As a result, the résumé has been relegated.
Some recruiters are focapplying on a person’s enthusiasm and skills rather than shiny credentials, even offering paid work trials to evaluate candidates. In a callous job market where no one is creating it to the table, everyone is seeing for a shakeup.
Venture capital firm TRAC flipped the startup-investing playbook from gut calls and insider access to data science. TRAC developed an AI model to predict which startups are likely to become unicorns.
In 2023, TRAC’s model correctly predicted two of today’s hottest startups in venture: legal-tech darling Harvey and the prediction market Kalshi, both now valued at $11 billion. TRAC declares the 30 startups that built its 2026 list have a 1-in-5 chance of reaching a $1 billion valuation.
More of this week’s top reads:
Curated by Steve Russolillo and edited by Dan DeFrancesco, Akin Oyedele, Grace Lett, and Amanda Yen.
This is a shorter version of our flagship newsletter, which brings you in-depth analysis and summaries of the top stories from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
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