The Water Coolest is a free daily business news and professional advice email newsletter created for weekday warriors that is delivered fresh daily at 6 AM EST. Signup here to receive The Water Coolest every weekday.

 

THE HEADLINES

 

HACKER GIRL SUMMER

Don’t worry, Paige, you aren’t the only one who hates those f*cking Capital One Cafes.

ICYMI, a former Amazon Web Services employee named Paige Thompson hacked Capital One’s cloud and stole the data of more than 100M credit card applicants via a misconfigured firewall. Luckily Paige was a complete f*cking moron by hacker standards …

Somebody didn’t enroll in Anonymous’ MasterClass …

Despite covering her tracks during the e-heist, Thompson openly spoke about her haul in chatrooms and on social media … and used her real name on her GitHub page. A concerned member of the hacker community even warned: “don’t go to jail plz.”

Capital One was eventually tipped off by an anonymous email with a link to the hacked data … and a Cap1 intern ID’ed the perp in like 3 minutes.

The fallout

Although it didn’t take Cap1 and authorities long to uncover Paige’s identity, it will undoubtedly take time to recover from the sh*tstorm of lawsuits and the PR fallout. Ironically, Capital One had touted its forward-thinking and early adoption of the cloud.

Shares of Capital One fell by nearly 7% yesterday. And you can bet your ass there is a Congressional hearing in Richard Fairbank’s future.

Ms. Thompson faces charges of computer fraud and abuse.

And as for you? Capital One wants you to be “vigilant” (not to be confused with “be a vigilante”). The financial institution will probably alert you at some point, via some channel, that you may have been hacked. In the meantime, look out for anything sketchy in your credit card/financial statements … and go sign up for Amex.

 

FRUITS OF ITS LABOR

Apple reported earnings on Tuesday, and boy were they juicy.

The tech giant reported EPS and revenue beats of $2.18 per share and $53.8B, respectively, for the quarter ended June 2019. And to keep the good times rolling, Tim Cook & Co. upped its Q4 guidance from $61B to $64B.

It’s the first time in two quarters that Apple has seen growth in its revenue between periods, and came despite the fact that revenue for iPhone and services was actually below estimates. Fortunately, Mac and wearable divisions picked up the slack and offset the lack of performance. A young Justin Long has a smile on his face.

The stock rose 4% in after-hours trading.

Winner winner

Apple outperformed expectations in China where it had struggled over the past several quarters. The Chinese VAT tax reduction from 16% to 13% was a big help in the company’s overall profitability along with a trade-in and financing plan.

Speaking of financing, the maker of the iPod nano has linked up with Goldman Sachs to launch a credit card, that will be released in August. Like most credit cards, the Apple Card will track and categorize purchases, provide cashback, and even offer no late fees … but it also has the added benefit of making each and every customer more pretentious than your friend who does Crossfit.

Apple may develop additional financial apps down the road pending the results.

 

A TALE OF TWO SERIES

They say Tuesdays are the best day to buy airline tickets. Well, they’re apparently also a great day to land massive sums of VC money. Case in point: productivity software firm Monday.com and real-estate brokerage Compass closed funding rounds worth $150M and $370M, respectively.

Monday.com, a relative newcomer to the workplace collaboration game, closed itself a Series D round led by Sapphire Ventures. The $150M funding round brings Monday’s valuation to $1.9B. Can it really be the worst day of the week if it’s worth over a bil?

Rapid growth has spawned investor interest for Monday, as it now counts more than 80k orgs as customers, up from 35k just a year ago. That roster includes heavy-hitters like Carlsberg, Discovery Channel, Philips, Hulu, WeWork … and The Water Coolest.

Meanwhile, in NY…

Compass could be (read: most certainly is) gearing up for an IPO. Compass’ $370M Series G round was led by Dragoneer, a firm with a record of late-stage investments in companies preparing to go public. Do Slack and Uber ring a bell?

Dragoneer was joined by SoftBank’s Vision Fund (version 1.0, for the record), Canada’s Pension Plan Investment Board and the Qatar Investment Authority. The deal values Compass at $6.4B, which it plans to invest in new technologies and tech team members on the East and West coasts.

What’s so special about Compass?

What started as a run of the mill real estate company has transitioned into a full-blown tech play which points to its suite of online home-marketing services as a selling point. On the traditional real estate side, Compass lures top agents away from your friendly neighborhood real estate agency with promises of big commission checks and stock options. It also has been providing sellers with money upfront to fix up their houses before selling.

 

---

IN OTHER NEWS

• Death, taxes, and Elon tweeting production numbers to f*ck with the SEC. These are life’s only guarantees. Two nights ago the meme master himself responded to a tweet by stating hopes of manufacturing 1k solar roofs per week by the end of the year. This, of course, is in violation of Musk’s amended accord with the SEC from April, where the Tesla CEO must get any production figure tweets pre-approved by a Tesla security lawyer prior to posting.

 

• Where’s Howie Mandel when you need him? Trade talks could be over just as they’re resuming, as The Donald has suggested that significant progress must be made or the two countries risk ‘no deal at all.’ He continues, saying that China may be willing to give up a lot, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to accept it. In summary: we have no idea WTF is going on bur markets are spooked. *shrug emoji*

 

• I love a good pounding in the morning, don’t you? The pound is getting, for lack of a better word, pounded, as investors fear the economic fallout of the UK quitting the EU without a deal. Having seen heavy selling the past two days, the currency has dropped as low as $1.2091 and nears a 34 year low. With a Brexit deadline of October 31st looming new Prime Minister Boris Johnson is determined to get out of the EU by whatever means possible.

 

• Citigroup is planning to cut hundreds of jobs in its fixed-income and stock-trading divisions this year. This includes almost 100 jobs in the equities unit, 80 of which are in the London branch. An analyst from Sandler O’Neill commented that the rest of Wall Street may be thinking the same way. Besides market swings, banks have struggled with a declining performance by hedge funds, newer regulations to lenders, and smaller spreads.

 

Ready to become the most well-informed bro in any room? You can subscribe here.