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Haliey Welch, better known as the hawk tuah girl, is ready for a rebrand. After being thrust into the spotlight in 2024 thanks to her now-iconic hawk tuah catchphrasefeatured in a video interview uploaded by the Tim & Dee TV YouTube channelWelch experienced a crash course in the highs and lows of viral fame. In early December, she announced the launch of her own cryptocurrency memecoin, $HAWK. The coin quickly tanked, leaving fans upset and prompting an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Anyhoo, Im gonna go bed, Welch said as she ended a livestream on X on December 4. She wasnt heard from again until three months later, when an Instagram Reel circulated highlighting headlines surrounding her absence. In the video, a voiceover says, The Hawk Tuah Girl has died, before Welch wakes up from what appears to be a dream. Welch isnt deadbut she is ready for a reset. Im in the middle of rebranding right now, Welch said in a recent interview with PokerNews Connor Richards. Ive had a lot of time to think. I want to rebrand. As for what that will look like? I guess youll have to watch and see. Step one is clearing her name. The SEC has officially closed its investigation into the HAWK coin, finding no evidence of wrongdoing, according to International Business Times. Next is telling her story. Welch is the subject of an upcoming documentary developed by Emmy-winning production company Bungalow Media + Entertainment. The film will chronicle Welchs unexpected rise to fame, the scrutiny that followed, and reveal the incredible power social media has to crown and crucify its internet darlings, per the press release. Then comes her return to the spotlight. According to TMZ, Welch will make a cameo in Glen Powells upcoming series Chad Powers. Shes also relaunching her podcast Talk Tuah, following her split from Jake Pauls Betr Holdings. Vanity Fair recently profiled Welchs reemergence and the hard lessons shes learned. You got to be really careful what you tie your name to, and you definitely need to know what youre getting yourself into when you agree to do it, she told the outlet. Thats something I definitely should have done beforehand. The following day, Welch headed to Las Vegas for her first public appearance since the crypto fallout: a Celebrity Poker Tour event. When asked what the event involved, she glanced at her publicist. I dont know. I dont know, really, how it works. I just tell them Ill be there, and then I kind of be there, she said. When Vanity Fair pressed her about the optics of promoting a gambling event so soon after fans lost money on her coin, Welch seemed confused and asked him to repeat the question. Her publicist quickly intervened, requesting they move on.
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E-Commerce
Daniel George, the founder and CEO of AI company TwinMind, has quite the resume. He was a part of a Nobel Prize-winning team that worked on using artificial intelligence (AI) to detect gravitational waves and black holes. He also worked on AI projects at companies like Wolfram and Google X. Perhaps most notably, he created an AI tool that automated his own job as a VP at JPMorgan, allowing him to spend a few years traveling the globe. And now, George counts himself as a startup founder, and he’s bringing his latest project to the masses: TwinMind, an AI platform that listens to everything you do, say, and browse, and its all stored locally and encrypted, he says. TwinMind can be downloaded as an app on an iPhone and functions like Jarvis in your pocket.” ‘Proactive’ AI that runs your life? Effectively, users turn it on and can leave it running all day (if they choose to). The app listens to and digests the users surroundings, and produces end-of-day reports or wrap-ups, capturing things that you may have forgotten or missed. Everything is processed as its ingested and transcribed on the fly. George claims that this helps with security issues, as audio isnt actually stored or saved anywhere. All that is saved are the final outputs of the model, for privacy considerations, he says. For iPhone users, the mic icon will always display when the app is listening and transcripts don’t actually identify “who said what words exactly.” Given how the app functions, however, it does seem possible that people could be caught in the background as the app is running without knowing it. TwinMind says it encourages users to ask for consent according to local laws. TwinMind runs as an app on existing hardware and stores information locally, then uses what it learns to be proactive and surface relevant information for users when and as needed. Attracting users and Silicon Valley investors The app launched in late March and has already attracted thousands of users through word-of-mouth, George says. It has also attracted the attention of Silicon Valley investors, including Anand Rajaraman, Dan Roth, and Michael Liou, who collectively were some of the earliest investors in companies like Facebook, Robinhood, and others. Data from PitchBook clocked TwinMind’s valuation at $30 million last year, while George says its latest valuation is $50 million. George and his two cofounders, CTO Sunny Tang and chief scientist Mahi Karim, all met working at Google X. He says they’re now living together in a Bay Area house while they build and scale TwinMind, working 100-hour weeks for the past year-and-a-half. The app works in more than 100 languages and, according to George, can run for more than 12 hours without sapping a smartphones battery, as it uses an LLM to process speech directly and produce a daily memory, or rundown, that resembles a bulleted memo comprising each session. It really understands everything youve gone through, everyone you know, and your values, George says. TwinMinds app is available for download and is free to use. As for whats next, George says TwinMind is now planning a Series A funding round and for the first time is speaking with VC firms while the company grows. He says it’s amassed roughly 10,000 users so far. Once people use it, they wont stop, George predicts. I cant live without it.
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E-Commerce
A book festival took place over the weekend in Baltimore, but even if you’re local, you likely didn’t hear about it until after the fact. The event, called A Millions Lives Book Festival, is now trending on social media, but for all the wrong reasonsit’s being called “the Fyre Festival of book festivals,” if that’s any indication of just how disappointing it seems to have been.A Million Lives, organized by author Grace Willows and Archer Management company, came to Baltimore’s Convention Center on May 2 and 3. While the event was allegedly described to authors as an extravagant fantasy-themed ball where they could promote their books to hundreds to thousands of attendees, videos on TikTok and Threads suggest that barely a handful of attendees showed up, and there hardly appeared to have been any setup done in terms of decor. Videos show what looks like a mostly empty room with some tables. The only real setup appears to have come from the book vendors themselves and whatever books, signage, and display items they brought.In one of many recap videos posted to TikTok, one author explains that prior to heading to Baltimore, she was convinced the event was going to be absolutely massive. Author Perci Jay says she counted at least 120 vendors, authors, narrators, and speakers prior to attending. The numbers were so big, she cleared her schedule, and even planned huge life events around the book festival. “I’m currently pregnant with twins,” Jay says in her recap video. “I planned my pregnancy around this event, like a clown.” Jay now says that doing so was a huge mistake. Not only did she not earn back the money she spent on the event from book sales, she lost a bundle. In addition to the $150 table fee she paid, she also shelled out $250 to sponsor the event in order to get extra author promotions, such as social media posts, her logo on the organizer’s web page, and more. She also traveled from Texas to Baltimore. However, according to Jay, none of what she signed up for ever came to fruition. She didn’t get her logo on the site, no social media posts about her were made, and the event itself was a huge flop with almost no readers in sight. Beyond that, Jay claims there were issues with hotel bookings. According to her, “featured authors” like herself were promised a free stay at the Hilton, which is connected to the Convention Center, but at the last minute were bumped to the Days Inn across the street. “Does this look like I’m at the Hilton?” Jay jokes, panning the camera around her hotel room. Other authors reported not being able to check in to their hotel at all, or having to pay hotel fees they were promised were already covered. Author Luna Laurier, who also posted on TikTok, said that not only is she out thousands of dollars from the event, but the hotel actually called her in the middle of the night saying that she had to take over payment for her room, which she had been told would be covered by the organizers. “I’m still kind of in shock,” she tells her audience in the post. “I really cannot believe that it got as bad as it did.”Mikayla Hornedo, an author who saw red flags prior to the event but decided to attend anyway because she used to live in Baltimore, was utterly disappointed as well. Hornedo shared her experience at the festival on TikTok, saying that her very “generous” estimate was that 40 attendees in total showed up on Friday. Archer Fantasy Events did not respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment, but did post an apology online, which directed vendors seeking refunds to reach out to them directly. “I do understand that the ball tonight was not set up to standards,” organizer Grace Willows said. “There were a lot of issues getting set up, and it was not set up well . . . if you would like a refund, please contact me and I will issue a refund immediately.”Still, for many, the apology fell short. In the comments section on Instagram and TikTok, many flat out called the event a “scam.” Multiple comments mentioned that Willows explicitly told them in emails that hundreds, if not thousands, of tickets had been sold. “In our correspondence, you told me you expected 1,200 attendees; otherwise I wouldn’t have paid the table fee, which I hope you refund,” one commenter vented. Other comments pointed to the thousands that some vendors spent to get there, with one suggesting that giving refunds may not be enough to make up the financial cost for some authors. “Honestly, you need to be worried about litigation at this point, given how many people are saying they were told a lie about how many tickets you sold,” it read.
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E-Commerce
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