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Coming to your inbox every Monday with a brand new fun-fact and all the answers to Trainwreck Labs games from the past week.
This week, we have…
A fun fact inspired by Stocktangle
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Answers to last week's games
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Instagram had only 13 employees when it was bought by Facebook
No apps were harmed in the making of this dramatic re-enactment.
When Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012 for roughly one billion dollars, the photo-sharing app had just 13 employees and had been live on the App Store for barely two years. At the time, plenty of people thought Mark Zuckerberg had lost his mind. A billion dollars for a company with no revenue, no business model, and a team small enough to fit in a single minivan? It sounded absurd.
It turned out to be one of the shrewdest tech acquisitions in history. Instagram now generates tens of billions in annual advertising revenue and boasts over two billion monthly active users, making that original price tag look like pocket change. By some estimates, the platform is worth well over a hundred times what Facebook paid for it.
The deal almost didn't happen. Zuckerberg reportedly negotiated directly with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom over a weekend, bypassing Facebook's board entirely. The two reached a handshake agreement before lawyers even got involved. Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger stayed on to run Instagram for several years before departing in 2018 amid growing tensions over the platform's independence.
The acquisition also drew the attention of regulators, becoming a key example in later antitrust cases arguing that Meta has a pattern of buying up potential competitors rather than competing with them on the merits. Whether you see the deal as visionary business strategy or monopolistic overreach probably depends on your perspective, but either way, that billion-dollar bet paid off spectacularly for Meta's bottom line.
Learn more: TechCrunch
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Answers to last week's games
Monday, January 26 to Sunday, February 1
Globle
Jan 26 Mali
Jan 27 Afghanistan
Jan 28 Latvia
Jan 29 Antigua and Barb.
Jan 30 Romania
Jan 31 Angola
Feb 1 Sri Lanka
Feb 2 Play now!
Globle: Capitals
Jan 26 Porto-Novo
Jan 27 Castries
Jan 28 Bandar Seri Begawan
Jan 29 Bratislava
Jan 30 Caracas
Jan 31 Minsk
Feb 1 Baghdad
Feb 2 Play now!
Chronogram
#1031 Peter the Great
#1032 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
#1033 Judy Garland
#1034 Charlemagne
#1035 Jean-Paul Marat
#1036 Voltaire
#1037 George Washington
#1038 Play now!
Fictogram
#799 Peter Pan
#800 Dana Scully
#801 August Rush
#802 Garfield
#803 Naruto Uzumaki
#804 Bowser
#805 Don Quixote
#806 Play now!
Metazooa
#910 green tree python
#911 stick bug
#912 mosquito
#913 tarantula
#914 earthworm
#915 black bear
#916 rabbit
#917 Play now!
Metaflora
#849 sage
#850 poppy
#851 baobab
#852 passionfruit
#853 clover
#854 dragon fruit
#855 blackberry
#856 Play now!
Linxicon
The following are the shortest paths from last week:
#714 memory → memories → traumatic → dramatic
#715 smooth → sound → phone → telephone
#716 conversation → language → plant → root
#717 express → expressing → language → intellectual
#718 works → all → numerous
#719 voter → taxpayer → exempt → unless
#720 nobody → authors → publication
#721 Play now!
Elemingle
#370 Promethium
#371 Cesium
#372 Flerovium
#373 Gadolinium
#374 Nickel
#375 Meitnerium
#376 Thallium
#377 Play now!
Stocktangle
#53 Booz Allen Hamilton Holding (BAH)
#54 Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO)
#55 General Motors Company (GM)
#56 Intel Corporation (INTC)
#57 Meta Platforms Inc. (META)
#58 Verizon Communications Inc (VZ)
#59 Deckers Outdoor Corporation (DECK)
#60 Play now!
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!
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