Dear Marker Reader,

Back in September, Marker Editor-at-Large Steve LeVine identified a new class of startups: Uber, WeWork and Juul, among others, were Daredevil Unicorns, run by “aggressively blithe founders who, fueled by chutzpah, raw conceptual genius, and a promise to shatter paradigms, have dominated the last decade of technological history with eye-popping valuations.” At the time, LeVine — who has been covering business and geopolitics for nearly three decades at places including the Wall Street Journal and Axios — predicted a market correction disfavoring the Daredevils.

📉 READ: Daredevil Startups Are Finally Exposed for What They Are

It seems that market correction has finally arrived in the form of a pandemic-induced-recession. This week, as layoffs hit both AirBnB and Uber, LeVine examines exactly how these asset light, billion-dollar startups sitting on lots of cash are attempting to ride this out. “Are the daredevils dying — or only in hibernation?” poses LeVine in Daredevil Startups Are Finally Exposed for What They Are. …

Dear Marker Reader,

A phrase being tossed around everywhere right now is “retail apocalypse” — first initiated by the dominance of Amazon, and now accelerated by the pandemic. It’s being deployed in conversations about main streets, e-commerce startups, and iconic retailers.

In This Is How The Gap Dies, we examine America’s most iconic retailer, asking and methodically answering the question: what would it take for The Gap brand to actually disappear? …

Dear Marker Reader,

There are predictions flying at us from every direction right now: E-sports will replace the NFL! Movie theaters will become extinct! Telemedicine will become the new normal!

It’s a natural impulse, particularly when national disaster strikes, to imagine how it will collectively alter everything. But in Rob Walker’s Off Brand column this week, he offers a counterpoint.

📉 READ: Why Most Post-Pandemic Predictions Will Be Totally Wrong.

Walker, who has been chronicling business for nearly 30 years, examines predictions made in prior crises, like during the Great Recession, when everyone from economists to auto execs declared the coming death of the SUV, a symbol of excess. …

Dear Marker Reader,

In my nearly 20 years as a business journalist there are always those interviews that you can never quite shake. The audacious ones, the ones that leave you speechless, and then the ones that surprise you in a more subtly poignant way, like when J.Crew’s creative director Jenna Lyons told me that motivating creatives was like being a therapist: “Some people need tough love. Some people need a lot of love.” It’s a piece of management wisdom I still carry with me today.

Marker’s interview with a much more under the radar business figure will have, I think, a similar effect on you — especially as so many companies grapple with layoffs. Bob Chapman is the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, a 125-year-old, 12,000 employee, St. …

Dear Marker Reader,

As you settle into another week of WFH mission control — taking that deep breath of here we go again — we’re here to help you center your thinking.

Last week, Marker editor-at-large Steve LeVine wrote the can’t-miss This Looks Like a Depression, Not a Recession, a sobering, macro projection of what our economy is in for: “a depression-like downturn rivaling the 1930s — prolonged double-digit joblessness, an unprecedented economic contraction, and widespread bankruptcy.”

📉 READ: This Looks Like a Depression, Not a Recession

To counter that with some strategic optimism, I urge you to read the always clever Rob Walker. Today, he examines how Nike survived the pandemic in China, providing a possible playbook for retailers now facing apocalyptic conditions. You can also hear Tom Colicchio on the gutting of his 19-year-old restaurant empire, and Farmgirl Flowers’ Christina Stembel’s race to save her company. …

Dear Marker Reader,

As you gear up to begin your week, the distractions are probably already tugging at you: What are these bizarre new coronavirus symptoms people are talking about? What’s going on with the stimulus bill? Who is Dr. Fauci, and why do I need to care about him?

Marker will be your calm in the storm when it comes to navigating business (today: how the pandemic will impact the already-precarious IPO market). But our parent, Medium, also wants to help you focus on the signals, not the noise. On Friday, our in-house team of health and science editors launched the new Medium Coronavirus Blog, along with an accompanying newsletter. …

Dear Marker Reader,

Somehow, we made it to Friday. Whatever we thought our problems were a week ago, have been supplanted with a barrage of unpredictability — markets, a pandemic, whiplash economic projections, all while homeschooling on the fly.

READ: Amazon’s Pandemic Savior Complex

At Marker, we can promise you one thing during this turbulence — we’ll be here to help you find clarity amid the chaos. …

Dear Marker Reader,

A couple of weeks ago, news broke that Ty Haney, the founder and CEO of the hot athleisure-wear startup Outdoor Voices, was abruptly stepping down. It turns out that behind the scenes, the company — with $64 million in venture backing — was drowning in unsustainable customer acquisition costs.

This was not the first direct-to-consumer e-commerce company (DTC) in recent months, to reveal some very serious problems. In Maya Kosoff’s incisive analysis “Why All the Warby Parker Clones Are Now Imploding,” she connects the dots on other venture-backed DTC startups including Away, Harry’s, Casper, and now-shuttered Brandless, dismantling the economics of a category under pressure to grow at unnatural rates. …