Hi there,

Students at Colorado State University will be able to major in marijuana starting this fall. 

To be blunt, it’s about time.

The school expects the budding program to be in high demand, and after weeding out unqualified applicants, they expect to have 60 supherb students rolling up for classes after 4 years. 

The Cannabis Biology and Chemistry program will consist of 2 tracks: a “natural products” one focused on biology, and an “analytical” one focused on chemistry. 

Nothing beats a boombox serenade though

Long distance is hard — but now you can sleep on a connected pillow that lets you hear your loved one’s heartbeat.  

Check out 60+ startups looking to add an extra dose of romance to your Valentine’s Day here.

Pandemic chatter

With coronavirus fears continuing to grow, are public company execs talking about it during earnings calls? 

So far, not yet — there have been just 6 mentions of "coronavirus" on Q1'20 earnings calls. Many have not happened yet, so we expect this will climb.

Even the term "pandemic" hasn’t come up a great deal over time on earnings calls.  

As we look back to earnings calls from 2008 using our earnings transcript search engine, we see a peak in Q3'09 (talk of H1N1, aka swine flu), but after that, discussions mentioning the word "pandemic" have generally stayed under 10 per quarter. 

Novavax, Becton Dickinson, and Aethlon Medical mention the term "pandemic" the most. You can see the top 10 here after logging into CB Insights.

It was only just a dream
 

D2C mattress startup Casper went public last Thursday, pricing its IPO at $12 a share.

Check out the top stakeholders in the company here.

Address the problems

Five years ago, tech cos began publishing salary ranges in an effort to promote pay equity. But that’s not all that can be done.

Read more in Aon’s guest post about how startups can make their pay-setting processes more transparent here.

Trust your gut
 

The gut microbiome has been gaining attention for its potential relationship with a wide range of medical conditions.

Expert Intelligence clients can read more about how microbiome personalization could reshape health here.

Axios. Dion Rabouin (@DionRabouin) breaks down the increase in pre-IPO funding and cites CB Insights research.

P.S. Friendly reminder that prices for the Future of Fintech (June 14-16, SF) increase on February 15. Register today and save $500 with code FOFFEB.

The highs of college. Students at Colorado State University can now major in weed.

CNN

Blockchain bros meet their match. Cypherpunk witches love crypto.

CoinDesk

New York Times

Usurping the throne. Startups are attempting to end the reign of Tampax. 

The Guardian

Plasmic popcorn. A high-res time-lapse of the sun, or a video of melting kernels?

The Verge