Good morning.
Sticker Mule CEO Anthony Constantino gave his 79 customer-service employees an extra $2,500 each the other day. It was not a bonus for customer service but combat pay for having to deal with the vitriol sparked by his pro-Trump email to customers and post on X, calling for an end to political hate following the assassination attempt. “They were getting a massive amount of death threats and messages that I should kill myself,” Constantino told me last night. “If you read my actual statement, it’s a pretty reasonable position.” (He was right in tweeting that “awesome people, all over the world, love Trump.” And I’ll just add that awesome people love Harris, too.)
As former AT&T Business CEO Anne Chow discovered when she sent a heartfelt email to her team following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there can be a fine line between values and ideology. Preserving democracy is a shared value. Having a boss who labels one candidate a racist is ideology. Sharing one’s political views can come at a cost. Palantir CEO Alex Karp, a Democrat, says cofounder and chairman Peter Thiel’s support for Trump has made it harder to get things done. Partisan politics have infiltrated the corporation, consultant Bill Schaninger notes, creating a similar divide to what we see elsewhere.
Then again, if you’re the leader of a scrappy company like Sticker Mule, adding hot sauce to orders while promising “custom printing that kicks ass,” maybe you’re okay if some customers are offended by your missive, arguing “business should not get involved in politics.”
In fact, Constantino would do it all over again. “Some people, if they hear you’re a Trump supporter, you just turn into complete garbage in their mind,” he says. “I don’t see Trump persuading his followers to hate the other half the country. I just don’t see that.”
People can share their views on such matters once they get to the polls. In the meantime, if customers don’t agree with Constantino, they can vote with their feet.
More news below.
Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
Follow on LinkedIn
TOP NEWS
Major jobs revision yields minor effects
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Wednesday that the U.S. economy added 818,000 fewer jobs between March 2023 and March 2024 than previously reported, marking the biggest revision to U.S. payroll data since 2009. Markets were largely unfazed by the news, however, as Fortune previously reported that investors were expecting an even larger revision. Fortune
Kamala hype brings dollar down
The value of the U.S. dollar against a handful of other currencies floated around its low for the year on Wednesday, and investment bank Macquarie believes it could dip even further. One of the bank's strategists told Fortune that moves made by investors banking on Donald Trump winning this year’s presidential election are unraveling as Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign continues to pick up speed. Fortune
U.K. employees could soon sue for late-night emails
The U.K.’s newly-elected Labour government is reportedly drafting legislation that could make it illegal for managers to message employees after hours, per The Times. These fines are already instituted in many European companies. and could bring intense fines for employers. Fortune
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
Meet the $465 million startup UPS acquired that helps solve the ‘free returns’ nightmare that Amazon fueled by Jason Del Rey
Investors pulled nearly $0.5 trillion in 2020’s market turbulence—then missed the rally by Alicia Adamczyk
AI finds a new adversary in Procreate CEO as tides shift against Silicon Valley’s latest craze by Chloe Berger
LVMH’s Bernard Arnault has quietly invested in five AI startups this year via his family office by Prarthana Prakash
Andreessen Horowitz leads $80 million bet on startup seeking to tame AI with copyright by Jeff John Roberts
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Joey Abrams.