It’s Pickle time!! And yes, to get ahead of your question, rain or shine, we still pickle!!

So let’s get the business out of the way.

Tomorrow morning, McCarren Park, 7:30-9:30 am Free Bagels and Coffee, Good Vibes, Familiar Face, Infinite Smiles… and the best way to start your Friday morning:

https://lu.ma/9uxgw8l4

Outdoor NYC TECH PICKLEBALL IS BACK BABYYYYYY (over 1300+ signups!!!)

RAIN OR SHINE WE WILL HAVE A BLAST TOMORROW!

Moving on to the fun stuff!

Pickle fun fact of the week:

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, there's an annual event called the “Picklesburgh Festival,” and it features a giant, inflatable pickle that gets "dropped" during the celebration. It’s not actually a New Year’s Eve drop like the Times Square ball drop, but it’s often mistaken for one because of how dramatic and festive it is.

Here’s what really happens:

• Picklesburgh is a summertime food festival celebrating all things pickled—pickles, pickled vegetables, even pickled cocktails.

• One of the festival’s mascots is a massive 35-foot inflatable Heinz pickle (a nod to the H.J. Heinz Company, which started in Pittsburgh).

• The giant pickle is suspended over the Roberto Clemente Bridge during the event and has become a beloved and Instagram-worthy tradition.

• The festival includes pickle-flavored everything: ice cream, beer, cotton candy, and more.

• They also host a “pickle juice drinking contest” every year. It’s exactly what it sounds like—and surprisingly competitive.

It’s become one of Pittsburgh’s most popular food festivals and draws tens of thousands of visitors every year.

**So who’s coming with me this year???

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

Taco fun fact of the week:

🌮 Estimated Daily Taco Emoji Usage

• According to Unicode, the most popular emojis (like 😂 or ❤️) are used billions of times per year.

• The taco emoji 🌮 ranks around 60th to 70th overall, and top 3 in food emojis, which is quite high.

So here’s a ballpark calculation:

• Let’s say the top 100 emojis account for about 75% of global emoji use.

• If 10 billion emojis are sent per day globally (a conservative estimate based on social media, texting, and apps),

• Then the taco emoji might represent around 0.01%–0.05% of daily emoji use.

That gives us a range of 100,000 to 500,000 taco emoji uses per day globally.

👉 Estimate: 100k–500k daily taco emoji uses 🌮

Wait a second…

Why was there a Taco fun fact of the week in the pickle newsletter you ask?

Great question!

That’s would be because HeyTaco is this months Tech Pickleball sponsor! (I’m also a personal megafan of theirs)

What the heck is HeyTaco you ask?

HeyTaco is the easiest way to show your teammates some love. Drop a 🌮, make someone’s day, and build a better vibe at work—just like that.

Check them out at HeyTaco.com!

**I promise they’re the most fun work app on the planet and yes I will debate you on this

I have more stickers than you can imagine and might have some special swag for you this Friday.

Come up and ask me about it! 👀

Okayyyy moving on from your taco hunger… It’s Job Board time!

Job Board 🔦

We’re starting a section in The Pickle where we give job board updates and updates on cool stuff happening in our communities ecosystem!

Sound cool right? I’ll let you be the judge for yourself:

Here’s what we have this week:

Head of Sales - Shaped

Founder in Residence GTM Innovation - Vanta

Head of RevOps - Apono

Sales Leadership - Hebbia

Head of Sales - Focus AI

Director, Sales Development - Databricks

Stuck in a Pickle: Lessons & Stories from Early Stage GTM Leaders

Why Remote Teams Fail: The Downfall of Bad & Boring Slack Culture

Your company uses Slack, I use Slack, there are 65 million active Slack users (insane)….

BUT

Everyone uses it wrong. Your companies Slack culture probably sucks.

What do most Slack cultures look like?

A series of endless notifications, pointless status updates, or mindless pings that add no value, creates noise, not clarity. A culture where conversations are limited to just “Got it!” or “Thanks!” leaves employees feeling isolated and disconnected. Without proper channels for collaboration and feedback, team morale can plummet.

And obviously that sucks ^ but you know what sucks even more?

HOW BORING EVERYONE’S SLACK CULTURE IS

Nothing sucks more than working remotely and being bored out of your mind at work.

Can’t imagine anything more isolating.

How are you supposed to focus on increasing shareholder value when you’re not having fun?

No gifs, no memes, no smiles.

No tacos!!

Wait, tacos? Huh?

Yes, tacos, what if you had a fun way to gamify your Slack shoutouts and gratification?

Well, did you know HeyTaco is a Slack plugin to gamify hyping up your coworkers? **You’re about to know whether you like it or not 😉🌮

Taco Tuesday?

Taco Leaderboard? I’ll just go ahead and drop this tortilla here for you:
Heytaco.com

NYC Tech Pickleball update

Theme of the week:

So happy Tech Pickleball is back EVERY FRIDAY

Overheard quote of the week:

“I LOVE TECH PICKLEBALL”

Excited to see everyone tomorrow!!

And lastly, The Pickle is never complete without a picture of everyone… enjoy!

Normally, I would be rocking the pickle hat, but tomorrow I have a switch up…. I will be rocking a Taco Hat instead!!! 🤯

If you want to chat, it will be borderline impossible not to be able to find me 😊

Andddd that’s a wrap!

We reallllly value your feedback and want to make this the best newsletter ever to support the community. Plz plz give us your most honest and blunt feedback on how we can improve it. We do this for you ❤️

Ps, know anyone who might be interesting in partnering with Tech Pickleball?? Hit up me, John or Tech Pickleball to discuss! We want to find more creative ways to expand and grow this community through awesome partners 🙂