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Brittany Chang and Taylor Rains
Boom Supersonic updated its highly anticipated ultra-fast Overture aircraft.
The Overture now has a decreased passenger capacity, more engines, and new fuselage and gull wing configurations.
As of now, the startup only has two customers: United Airlines and Japan Airlines.
Colorado-based Boom Supersonic has unveiled updates to the design its highly anticipated ultra-fast Overture at the Farnborough International Airshow on July 19 …
… bringing the startup one step closer to producing the "world's fastest airliner."
Boom Supersonic takeoff.
The Overture was already designed to fly incredibly fast. But to create a more efficient and quiet aircraft, Boom decreased the Overture's passenger capacity, increased its number of engines, and reconfigured the fuselage and gull wings.
The high-speed aircraft will now have four smaller wing-mounted engines, which will decrease the operational costs and allow it to fly quieter, according to the startup.
These engines will enable the Overture to soar at Mach 1.7 — or about 1,300 miles per hour — over water, faster than the speed of sound.
But because of loud sonic booms, supersonic aircraft legally can't fly at ultra high speeds over land.
Source: FAA
As a result, the Overture will only fly at Mach 1 as it crosses land.
However, the engine isn't finalized just yet: The startup is still shopping around for engine options, Blake Scholl, the CEO of Boom Supersonic, said at a press briefing.
Like the engine count, the design for the fuselage and gull wings has changed from previous iterations.
The fuselage will now be wider towards the front of the plane, minimizing drag and improving fuel efficiency …
… while the new gull wings will decrease engine strain and increase safety as the aircraft flies at lower speeds, according to the startup.
And because most of the Overture will be built using carbon fiber composites, the aircraft will be lighter and therefore more fuel efficient.
The company has been testing a small Overture prototype — the Baby Boom — out of Colorado.
Boom Supersonic engine testing.
So far, the net-zero carbon aircraft has undergone five wind tunnel tests performed in multiple locations. These tests have helped Boom improve the Overtures' performance, control, and fuel efficiency, a spokesperson told Insider.
Boom Supersonic on bridge.
As of now, the startup only has two customers: United Airlines and Japan Airlines. The former ordered 15 Overtures in June 2021.
Production of a full-scale prototype will begin in 2024 in preparation for the aircraft's rollout in 2025.
Boom Supersonic Overture factory.
Boom Supersonic has also partnered with Northrop Grumman to build Overture iterations for government and military use.
Boom Supersonic.
In 2026, Boom will begin flight tests in Mojave, California, a spokesperson said. By 2029, the 65 to 80-passenger Overture could begin passenger service.
When in service, the ultra-fast aircraft could be able to bring passengers from Newark Liberty International Airport to London in 3.5 hours or to Frankfurt, Germany in four hours.
More: overture Boom Supersonic Overture Business Visual Features supersonic
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2022-07-20T10:39:39Z
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Photos: Boom Supersonic's Overture Now Has Gull Wings, 4 Engines
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https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-boom-supersonic-updated-ultra-fast-aircraft-overture-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-boom-supersonic-updated-ultra-fast-aircraft-overture-2022-7
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See the 18-slide pitch deck a genetics startup used to raise $100 million and explore 'the dark side' of the genome
CAMP4 Therapeutics CEO Josh Mandel-Brehm
The genetics startup CAMP4 Therapeutics just raised a $100 million Series B round.
The company hopes to treat disease by drugging a neglected area of the human genome.
The Massachusetts biotech aims to start human testing in 2023.
A Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech has raised $100 million to explore what its leaders call the "dark side" of the genome.
On Wednesday, CAMP4 Therapeutics announced its Series B round, which will help the company start initial human testing next year. The startup, named after the camp closest to Mount Everest's summit, was founded in 2016 and is researching a special type of RNA called regulatory RNA.
There are multiple types of RNA. The most well-known type is messenger RNA — the basis of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines — which acts as a courier within the cell to carry instructions on how to make proteins from DNA. Regulatory RNA, or regRNA, is part of the 98% of the human genome sequence that doesn't make proteins, according to David Bumcrot, CAMP4's chief scientific officer. Instead, these molecules control the expression of the protein-making genes.
Building off research from CAMP4 cofounder and MIT researcher Rick Young, the company is shining light on this neglected part of the genome, its leaders said. The company plans to design drugs to bind to regRNA, effectively controlling how much of a protein is made.
CEO Josh Mandel-Brehm says the company's platform can be applied to more than 1,000 genetic diseases. The startup hopes to ask regulators in early 2023 to start human testing for its lead drug candidate: a therapy for Dravet syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. CAMP4 is also prioritizing partnerships, with early talks ongoing with Big Pharma, Mandel-Brehm said.
"Now that this fundraise is in the bank, we are ready to partner and we are absolutely focused on putting at least one major partnership in place," he said, adding that hopes to strike a partnership deal in the next six to nine months.
See the 18-slide pitch deck CAMP4 used to raise money from VCs including Patient Square Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and 5AM Ventures.
CAMP4 is designing drugs that target regRNA molecules. The startup hopes to treat genetic diseases with this approach.
To do this, the company uses artificial intelligence and genetic sequencing to map out which regRNAs interact with specific genes.
These regRNAs help determine which genes are switched on and off within the body.
CAMP4 is particularly focused on diseases that occur because only one gene is producing proteins. Healthy individuals have two working copies of each gene.
While CAMP4 has yet to start any human testing, it has completed a range of test-tube and animal studies that support its regRNA research.
CAMP4 is led by Mandel-Brehm, a Biogen veteran, and Bumcrot, who previously worked at genetic pioneers Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Editas Medicine.
"For any gene that you are interested in regulating, our platform tells you this is where the regulatory RNAs are going to come from," Bumcrot told Insider.
Transcription factors are special proteins that turn genes on and off. RegRNAs play a key role in binding to nearly half of these proteins, CAMP4 says.
CAMP4 is using antisense oligonucelotides, or ASOs, to bind to regRNA molecules. There are several approved ASO-based medicines on the market, such as Biogen's spinal muscular atrophy drug Spinraza.
In addition to Dravet syndrome, the company is researching how to treat other diseases in the nervous system and liver.
There is currently no cure for Dravet syndrome, which causes routine seizures that typically start within the first few months of life.
Most Dravet cases are caused by a mutation to one of the two copies of the SCN1A gene. CAMP4 is hoping its approach can increase protein production from the functional SCN1A gene.
To produce more SCN1A protein, CAMP4 is hoping to modify regRNA to "remove the breaks" on the working gene. That fix could make up for the non-working copy of the SCN1A gene.
CAMP4's research showed that its approach led to significantly fewer seizures in mice.
CAMP4 has also tested this approach in monkeys. Primates given the experimental drug had higher levels of the SCN1A protein.
CAMP4 estimates its Dravet drug could be a $1 billion-plus market opportunity.
After this recent Series B raise, CAMP4 has a valuation of $280 million, according to the research firm PitchBook. Mandel-Brehm declined to comment on the valuation.
While CAMP4's initial research focus is on liver and central nervous system diseases, Mandel-Brehm said the team is also getting ready to eventually study other diseases. "We're applying our platform beyond just the tissues where you can safely deliver today, because we're betting on delivery getting solved," he said.
CAMP4 Therapeutics' Series B pitch deck
More: Features Biotech Pharmaceutical
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2022-07-20T10:39:45Z
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See CAMP4's 18-Slide Pitch Deck, Raising $100M for Its Series B Round
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https://www.businessinsider.com/see-camp4s-18-slide-pitch-deck-raising-100m-for-its-series-b-round-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/see-camp4s-18-slide-pitch-deck-raising-100m-for-its-series-b-round-2022-7
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The manager of the top-performing large-cap mutual fund of 2022 shares how he's found success in a bear market through dividend investing — and breaks down his 8 favorite stock market opportunities
Daniel Peris of Federated Hermes helps run a top-ranked mutual fund.
Daniel Peris, a senior portfolio manager at Federated Hermes, has dominated this year.
One fund he co-manages is Kiplinger's top-performing large-cap mutual fund for 2022, as of June 30.
Here's an overview of Peris' philosophy, strategy, and favorite stock market industries.
Through the first six months of 2022, Daniel Peris of Federated Hermes has overseen the top-performing large-cap mutual fund in 2022, according to Kiplinger. The senior portfolio manager's fund, the Federated Hermes Strategic Value Dividend Fund (SVAAX), is also in the top 1% of its category this year according to Morningstar.
In a recent interview with Insider, Peris spoke about how he and his fellow portfolio managers have achieved success this year when the stock market has floundered, including his philosophy and strategy, what types of stocks he targets, and his favorite parts of the market.
Investing philosophy and strategy
For the past two decades, the Federated Hermes Strategic Value Dividend Fund has aimed to offer a steady stream of sizable dividend payments to conservative investors in need of income, Peris said.
"What matters to us is delivering a high, rising income stream to grandma over a long period of time," Peris told Insider.
That goal was harder to achieve during what Peris called a "non-dividend" or "dividend-light" market. In theory, one of the main reasons why investors buy a stock is to claim a share of its current or future profits that are issued via dividends. In reality, dividend yields and payout ratios have been low since the 1990s, Peris said.
Given how difficult it's been to find high and rising income streams, many portfolio managers have eschewed the strategy altogether. That opened the door for Peris's fund to be "distinctive," in his own words.
"Usually, the stock market is used by many of the people that you interview to buy low, sell high — outsmart the next guy," Peris said. "There's nothing wrong with that. But we're using it, in many ways, in the way that private business owners would use their investments."
Running the Federated Hermes Strategic Value Dividend Fund is similar to running a real-estate business, Peris said. In both cases, managers study the business's income and income growth, troubleshoot issues within the business, and monitor the business's value periodically instead of worrying about its day-to-day fluctuations.
"We're not really looking at stocks — we're looking at businesses and income streams," Peris said.
Regardless of whether they're thought of as stocks or simply as companies with cash-flow streams, Peris said that there are usually 30 to 50 components in his portfolio.
To make the cut, stocks must offer a solid dividend yield — typically 3% or higher — that steadily grows at an annual rate of about 4% to 5%, Peris said. That sounds simple, but finding firms that offer both isn't easy for several reasons.
First, the opportunity set for dividend stocks is limited because many companies either don't pay a dividend or have dividends with a yield of less than 2.5%, Peris noted. Additionally, firms with high dividends tend to have lower dividend growth rates over time, the portfolio manager said.
"The hard part is delivering a high and rising income stream with a 4% to 5% yield and gross 4% to 5% dividend growth over time," Peris said.
Once Peris and his fellow portfolio managers find stocks that fit that criteria, they tend to hold on to them. The fund's turnover rate has historically been rather low at about 20%, Peris said, though he added that it's been significantly higher at 30% to 40% in the past three years because of how volatile markets have been. Wild swings in the stock market have allowed Peris and his team to take advantage of mispriced income streams, the portfolio manager said.
"If the price of an income stream rises dramatically — the yield for dividend reinvestment or new money declines — we might trim or sell that and buy something where the opposite has happened, where the price of an income stream has declined and the yield increases," Peris said. "And by that, we can generate even more income for grandma."
Top industries to invest in now
Although Peris declined to share his favorite stocks in the fund due to compliance issues, he noted that his fund's top holdings are available online. The portfolio manager was, however, able to speak about the industries that many of his holdings fall into.
These subsectors include electric utilities, phone companies, large-cap pharmaceuticals, food, beverage, & tobacco, household products, pipeline companies, large integrated energy companies, and regional commercial banks, Peris said.
Electric utilities generate a certain yield and dividend growth because of their regulated rates of return, Peris noted. These companies lack sizzle but are steady and predictable, Peris said, which makes them a fit in his portfolio. Phone companies have historically operated much like utilities in terms of their consistency, Peris said.
It cane be trickier to project the success of large-cap pharma companies because they rely heavily on product pipelines that can boom or bust, Peris said, adding that these names tend to see higher turnover rates.
Two other industries that are often home to the types of stocks that Peris targets are food, beverage, & tobacco and household products, the portfolio manager said. In each industry, companies are currently struggling to keep inflation from weighing on their margins.
Peris highlighted a pair of industries within the energy sector — pipelines companies and large integrated energy companies — but for starkly different reasons. The former "could easily be in the utilities space" because of their stable business patterns, while the latter are "more volatile than almost anything else that we have in the portfolio," Peris said. While the swings that can come from integrated energy firms aren't ideal, the portfolio manager said that the group's large dividends make them a vital part of the fund.
Lastly, regional commercial banks are back in Peris' fund after they were blacklisted for about a decade after the financial crisis. While the portfolio manager said that they "go in and out of favor with interest rates and expectations and net interest margins," he believes they serve a crucial role within the fund.
More: Investing Daniel Peris Daniel Peris fund manager Daniel Peris wsj
Daniel Peris federated hermes
SVAAX
SVAIX
Federated Hermes Strategic Value Div A
Federated Hermes Strategic Value Div A SVAAX
top mutual fund
top ranked mutual fund
mutual fund top stocks
Mutual fund holdings
Mutual fund stocks
top fund
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2022-07-20T10:39:51Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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How to Invest in Dividend Stocks: Top Fund Manager of 2022
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https://www.businessinsider.com/stocks-how-to-invest-dividend-strategy-tips-best-investor-manager-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/stocks-how-to-invest-dividend-strategy-tips-best-investor-manager-2022-7
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Meet 13 leaders innovating in the semiconductor industry at Arm, Nvidia, Intel, and more
Dipti Vachani, the senior VP and general manager of automotive and the Internet of Things department at Arm.
Cars, video games, smartphones, and more depend on semiconductor chips.
Given challenges like supply-chain constraints, firms will need sharp leadership at the helm.
Insider compiled a list of 13 power players shaping products and policies in the chip industry.
Cars, video games, smartphones, and more depend on semiconductor chips. The small pieces of silicon power nearly every new piece of technology.
That's been good for chip giants: One of the world's largest supplier of chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, reported record-breaking revenue of $18.16 billion in the second quarter of this year, up nearly 50% from last year.
The need for chips has spurred a massive $52 billion investment from the US government, and that's made room for firms like Intel to plan new chip factories, known as foundries, in the US.
But that growth hasn't been without challenges. The industry is just coming out of a global shortage of chips that disrupted the flow of manufacturing. Companies have started to rethink how they operate, and it will take sharp leadership to guide semiconductor firms through the field's next wave of developments.
Insider spoke with leaders across the processors industry and compiled a list of top players in the field. It includes a wide area of disciplines within the chip industry, including supply chain, design, and engineering.
Here are 13 power players shaping trends, products, and policies in the processors industry:
Ann Kelleher, executive VP and general manager of technology development at Intel
Ann Kelleher, the executive VP and general manager of technology development at Intel.
Ann Kelleher leads the research and development of Intel's next generation of semiconductors as the executive VP and general manager of the technology development.
Kelleher is a 20-year veteran of the firm, starting as a processor engineer in Ireland in 1996. She bounced around after that, managing the firm's plants in New Mexico and Arizona before being promoted to executive leadership in 2020.
But Intel is facing more competition from companies like Apple that have opted to make their own chips. This has prompted CEO Pat Gelsinger to give Kelleher a blank check to lead new development projects.
"We've given Ann an unlimited budget and said, 'Get us on track," Gelsinger said at a shareholder conference earlier this year, The Oregonian reported.
Renee James, CEO of Ampere Computing
Renee James, the CEO of Ampere Computing.
In the world of processors, startups struggle with the high cost of manufacturing and an unproven track record of software compatibility. That, coupled with brushing up against the long-established players like Nvidia and Intel, makes new entry into the field difficult.
Renee James, the founder and CEO of Ampere Computing, is betting that her startup can take on the giants with its specialized chips for cloud servers and processing data closer to the source. Ampere filed an initial public offering earlier this year after investors bet on its focus for cloud-centric chips.
Formerly the president of Intel, James left the chip giant in 2018 to start Ampere. Oracle has pumped over $400 million into the company. Both Google and Microsoft have collaborated with Ampere to bring its chips to those companies' cloud and data centers.
James also served as a member of the president's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee during the Obama administration.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia.
Chip designer Nvidia has had a rough first half of 2022. The firm's plan to acquire Arm fell through, and it's had to revise its growth forecast amid supply-chain woes.
But its CEO and cofounder, Jensen Huang, has helped the company introduce its Hopper chip, designed exclusively for handling data centers. The chip firm has grown its data-center revenue by nearly 100% this year.
Prior to Nvidia, Huang worked for Advanced Micro Devices in the 1990s. He was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2021 for the firm's work in artificial intelligence.
David Keller, president and CEO of TSMC North America
David Keller, the president and CEO of TSMC North America.
TSMC is the world's largest manufacturer of chips, serving clients like Nvidia, Arm, and Apple. Most of the company's operations have been located in Taiwan, but it's scheduled to open a chip-manufacturing plant in Arizona by 2024.
Dave Keller, the president and CEO of TSMC North America, will oversee the manufacturing giant's biggest expansion into North America since 1998, when it opened a small plant in the Pacific Northwest.
Keller has worked in the chip industry for more than 30 years and was promoted to the executive role in 2017.
Lisa Su, CEO of AMD
Lisa Su, standing behind the podium, is the CEO of AMD.
Advanced Micro Devices, a maker of graphics chips for video games, has traditionally provided Sony and Microsoft the chips for their latest consoles.
Now CEO Lisa Su is trying to pivot the firm to manufacturing more custom chips for different parts of the industry. By focusing on expanding into data centers and cloud computing, analysts say the company could double its value within the next three years.
Su was recently the first woman awarded the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Robert N. Noyce Medal for her leadership in the industry.
Dipti Vachani, senior VP and general manager of automotive and the Internet of Things department at Arm.
Dipti Vachani, a senior VP and general manager at Arm.
In late 2018, chipmaker and designer Arm poached Dipti Vachani from Intel to lead its automotive chips and Internet of Things departments.
As senior VP and general manager, she has formed relationships with several automakers like Audi to supply Arm chips and technology for autonomous driving. That partnership has since blossomed into a cross-industry collaborative known as The Autonomous. It now includes VW and its software division.
Vachani also sits on the Women's Leadership Council for the Global Semiconductor Association.
Arthur Chuang, VP of operations and facility at TSMC
Arthur Chuang, VP of operations and facility at TSMC.
TSMC screenshot
Arthur Chuang, the VP of operations and facilities at TSMC, oversees the planning, construction, and maintenance of every new manufacturing plant for the chipmaker.
TSMC is reportedly working on a next-generation 2nm processor. It wants to beat Samsung and Intel to creating a consumer-grade 2nm processor, a smaller and more powerful chipset for smartphones and computers.
Chuang will lead the company's plan to build another huge facility in Taiwan, where the new chips will be made.
Jeremy Rodriguez, director of data center engineering at Nvidia
Jeremy Rodriguez, director of data center engineering at Nvidia.
Chip designer Nvidia's data-center business has seen demand explode, up nearly 100% from last year, according to its latest earnings report. Jeremy Rodriguez is one of the heads of the company's data-center engineering program that's driving that growth.
Rodriguez will be working on the development and rollout of Hopper, Nvidia's next-generation chipset designed for data centers. It's been a bright spot for Nvidia, which has seen massive growth in its data-center business. In its latest earnings report, the firm's data-center division grew at a record pace.
Rene Haas, CEO of ARM
Rene Haas, the CEO of ARM.
Rene Haas was promoted to CEO at the chip-design firm ARM, shortly after Nvidia dropped its plan to acquire it.
Haas has been tasked with turning around the company, including leading a future IPO, which his predecessor once said would kill the company.
Haas told Protocol that an IPO would allow the firm to invest in new technology, though the plan has been put on hold amid the political disruptions in the United Kingdom.
He also wants to push for more acquisitions and move the company into cars and data-center technology, Haas told The Financial Times.
Bob Brennan, VP of customer solutions engineering at Intel foundry services
Bob Brennan, VP of customer solutions engineering at Intel foundry services.
Under Bob Brennan, the vice president of customer solutions engineering, the chipmaker Intel plans to open its manufacturing plants to other clients.
Intel will license out its x86 architecture, the foundational design of its chips, so that clients can make custom chips. This puts the firm in direct competition with various tech companies that look to TSMC to produce its chips.
Intel's goal is to produce more chips amid the global shortage, which will spur competition with rival chipmaker TSMC.
Maryam Rofougaran, founder and CEO of Movandi
Maryam Rofougaran, the founder and CEO of Movandi.
Maryam Rofougaran's mobile-chip-design firm Movandi has been a startup to watch.
The firm just partnered with Qualcomm to bring faster 5G service, known as millimeter wave, to more smartphones. Millimeter wave — the band of radio frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum — allows for faster data-transfer speeds that's crucial to tasks like autonomous driving.
Rofougaran has worked at Broadcomm for more than 15 years and holds over 200 patents. She's worked on several wireless milestones, like the rollout of 3G, before starting Movandi in 2016.
Patrick Little, CEO of SiFive
Patrick Little, the CEO of SiFive.
Patrick Little is the recently appointed CEO of SiFive, a semiconductor startup that works on RISC-V architectures. RISV-V is an open-source blueprint for processor design.
The company just raised $175 million in a Series F round, at a $2.5 billion valuation, with investors like Coatue Capital and Intel's investment arm. Little joined SiFive from the mobile-chip firm Qualcomm, where he led its expansion into the automotive industry.
Intel reportedly wanted to acquire the company but dropped its bid in October, according to Bloomberg.
Debora Shoquist, executive VP of operations at Nvidia
Debora Shoquist, the executive VP of operations at Nvidia.
In it's most recent earnings call, the chip designer Nvidia said ongoing complications caused by the war in Ukraine and pandemic-related factory closures abroad have hurt its financial forecasts.
Debora Shoquist, the executive vice president of operations, manages the moving parts that Nvidia hopes will get it back on track. She joined the firm in 2007 from JDS Uniphase, a network-equipment maker.
As Nvidia navigates how to meet the demand for its product, Shoquist manages its suppliers around the world and works with the firm's chip manufacturer, TSMC.
More: Features Semiconductors Power Players
Chip manufacturers
Chip suppliers
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2022-07-20T12:09:57Z
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Meet 13 Power Players and Leaders in the Chip Industry
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https://www.businessinsider.com/chip-processors-industry-power-players-and-leaders-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/chip-processors-industry-power-players-and-leaders-2022-7
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Priori raises $15 million after growing revenue 250% last year as more companies look to legal tech
Priori cofounders Mirra Levitt, left, and Basha Rubin.
The fast growing legal-tech startup Priori raised $15 million in its A-1 financing round.
The round led by Eagle Proprietary Investments included new investors like Thomson Reuters Ventures.
Companies are turning to legal tech to maximize efficiency as they look to cut costs.
The legal-tech startup Priori is entering a new phase after a year of growth in which the company said its revenue soared by more than 250%.
The startup raised $15 million in its latest round, led by Eagle Proprietary Investments Limited, with new investors including Thirty Five Ventures, Peak6 Strategic Capital and Soma Ventures, and existing investors like Bridge Investments, Great Oaks Venture Capital and HearstLab.
The round will fuel its growth, cofounders Basha Rubin and Mirra Levitt, told Insider. Priori has 33 employees, and plans to double in size this year, growing its sales, product, operations, engineering, and other teams.
Priori's main products are "Marketplace," a tool that allows in-house legal departments at companies to search for new outside counsel, and "Scout" — currently in its beta phase — and meant to help companies manage relationships within their own existing network of outside law firms.
The startup, which launched in 2013, has also worked with companies like Hearst, and the law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe and others to develop a database to help corporate legal departments enlist firms specific to their needs.
"We started this company because we thought that finding the right lawyer or the right law firm was good for lawyers and good for clients," said Levitt, Priori cofounder and chief product officer. "And that was an optimization question that a matchmaking algorithm could really help with, particularly when you had a rich data set about attorney experience and expertise."
Rubin and Levitt graduated from Yale Law School in 2010, and even back then saw opportunities to cater to companies trying to optimize how they hired outside law firms and reduce their legal spending, they said.
At that time, consumer marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb were just taking off and served as inspiration for Rubin and Levitt. "We came to realize that there was an opportunity to bring many of the same advantages to law in a highly industry-specific way," Rubin said.
Deval Dvivedi, head of international at Eagle Proprietary Investments Ltd., recalls meeting Rubin at a parent event at their kids' school in New York City. Eagle's investment in legal tech company ContractPodAI had had Rubin's attention, and they began to talk about legal tech.
Eagle held off on investing during the early months of the pandemic, but jumped at the opportunity to back Priori this round, said Dvivedi.
"We just said, 'Look, we love it, let's stay in touch, we're just not going to do anything until we come out of this thing, one way or another.' Which, to be honest, was a huge mistake in hindsight," he said. "I still joke with Basha and Mirra about that, that I really kicked myself that we should have done this. But hindsight is 20/20, and kudos to them that they've really built this business."
Others said they invested in Priori as changes during the pandemic led to shifts in what companies are looking for from outside counsel.
"The pandemic, remote work, these are all things that have changed the way that we were all working and going about our lives and businesses, and Priori is super well-positioned to take advantage of some of those changes, '' said Joe Dormani, founding principal investor at Thomson Reuters Ventures.
More: Legal tech startups 2022
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2022-07-20T12:10:15Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Priori Raises $15 Million As Companies Look to Legal Tech
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https://www.businessinsider.com/priori-raises-funding-as-companies-look-to-legal-tech-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/priori-raises-funding-as-companies-look-to-legal-tech-2022-7
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Roblox is hiring for hundreds of roles right now and pays up to $450,000 in base salary. Check out the 2022 pay data for engineering, executive, and design roles.
Roblox CEO David Baszucki
Gaming company Roblox is actively hiring for hundreds of roles.
Analysis of foreign-labor-disclosure data for 2022 shows top talent can make up to $450,000.
Here's what engineers, designers, and executives can make.
Online gaming platform Roblox has 292 open roles on its website and is speeding ahead with hiring plans, including for entry- and grad-level roles over the next year.
The platform is wildly popular with teens and children, and currently has 54.1 million daily active users. Like other major technology companies in 2022, Roblox has felt the impact of the current market rout and seen a hit to its share price. But as other tech firms shrink their staff, the firm's chief technology officer Dan Sturman said in a statement the firm is continuing to hire and that it does not have plans to lay off staff or freeze recruiting.
"We are incredibly grateful that we are in the position to continue to hire across hundreds of positions, including product and engineering, as we thoughtfully and strategically grow our team," Sturman said. "Roblox is attracting top technical talent with our investment in innovation, strong business growth, and the long-term vision of ushering in the metaverse — a space we've been in for over 15 years."
Roblox was talking about the metaverse — a persistent digital space — years before Meta, and all of its job postings use the term.
Current roles available range from senior software engineer – virtual economy, machine learning software engineer – avatar, to deep learning software engineer - avatar emotion.
The company pays well into the six figures for top talent, as outlined by previously published foreign-labor-disclosure salary data for 2021.
Insider also combed through Roblox's new foreign disclosure hire data for 2022, which shows a base salary for roles based at the firm's headquarters in San Mateo, California. The job offers span engineering, data science, design and management.
The highest paid person in the set is a vice president of social and apps on a base salary of $450,000.
Here's the breakdown of Roblox's 2022 salary data for foreign hires.
Principal software engineer: $312,000
Software engineer: $184,310 to $275,000
Senior software engineer: $194,000 to $275,000
Application engineer: $184,310
Director of engineering: $425,000
Engineering manager: $312,020
Product manager: $192,160
Executive and corporate roles
Roblox CEO David Baszucki, middle, sits between Nicholas Sontag, left, and CFO Andy Chmyz, right, during a lunchtime meeting in 2017.
Vice president, social and apps: $450,000
Corporate development associate: $162,700
Data scientist, social communications: $275,000
Alice Wilkinson (7) adds a face mask to her character on the game 'Roblox' at her home in Manchester, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, Manchester, Britain, April 5, 2020.
REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo
UX designer: $177,640
More: Features Roblox Metaverse
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2022-07-20T12:10:27Z
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Roblox 2022 Salaries: How Much Engineers, Executives and Designers Can Make
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https://www.businessinsider.com/roblox-2022-salaries-how-much-engineers-executives-and-designers-make-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/roblox-2022-salaries-how-much-engineers-executives-and-designers-make-2022-7
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The good news: Russia will turn the Nord Stream 1 pipeline back on. The bad news: Europe's energy crisis is far from over.
Phil Rosen here, guzzling a midweek coffee in New York City. Moscow's recent maneuvers have included tapering energy flows and circumventing Western sanctions, all while carrying out its war on Ukraine.
Okay — let's talk shop.
Pipes at the landfall facilities of the 'Nord Stream 2' gas pipline are pictured in Lubmin, northern Germany, on Feb. 15, 2022..
The pipeline, which was shut down for maintenance this month, is responsible for more than one-third of Russia's natural gas exports to Europe. But even before it went offline last week, Gazprom had slashed deliveries by 60% — which prompted European officials to accuse the Kremlin of weaponizing energy flows.
And there's good reason for concern. Russian President Vladimir Putin said flows to Europe could be cut further to 20% of capacity due to problems with equipment.
The EU early Wednesday asked governments to be conservative with their energy use, as the IMF warned that in the event of a full Russian gas cutoff, Europe's economies would sink into severe recessions.
However, even as the EU economy teeters, the world's biggest crude exporter seems to be doing just fine. Saudi Arabia is on pace to notch its best oil shipping month since 2020, and China's influx of crude imports have helped the cause.
And to bring it back to Moscow — it's worth noting that Saudi Arabia more than doubled its imports of Russian oil in the second quarter to free up the Kingdom's own crude for exports.
4. These deeply discounted stocks can beat their peers in the travel and service sectors, according to Morningstar's chief US market strategist. Dave Sekera broke down his top picks amid a recession-resistant shift in consumer spending patterns. See his list of 13 names here.
5. China is no longer the top holder of US debt after its total dips below $1 trillion for the first time in 12 years. In May, China held $980.8 billion in US debt, down $23 billion from the prior month and almost $100 billion from a year ago, Treasury Department figures show. Here's what you want to know.
6. It's premature to believe inflation is going to peak and cool down soon, Goldman Sachs' chief equity strategist said. In Peter Oppenheimer's view, most people are still living in a reality where prices are still on the rise. The recent hot inflation data makes him believe core inflation is still accelerating well ahead of expectations.
8. BlackRock equities investment chief said it's time to shift money from US stocks and cash into beaten-down European companies. He laid out the three key reasons why investors should make the move — and exactly what part of the market to buy into now.
9. An investment analyst at a $31 billion firm said home prices are on track to fall back toward their pre-pandemic levels. "The US housing market is due for a reset," said Penn Mutual Asset Management's Michael Cook. He shared three cities where declines will be among the worst in the country.
Netflix stock July 19, 2022.
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2022-07-20T12:10:33Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Russia's Nord Stream 1 to Return - but No End in Sight for EU Crisis
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https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-nord-stream-energy-gas-oil-ukraine-war-eu-crisis-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-nord-stream-energy-gas-oil-ukraine-war-eu-crisis-2022-7
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Hi, Aaron Weinman here. Today I want to highlight startup founders who are using their entrepreneurial expertise to invest in fellow startups.
It's not the easiest environment for a young business right now, but here are 32 founders betting on their peers.
1. Many startup founders are also active investors in fellow startups. They leverage their connections and know-how in getting a business off the ground to help — and pick up a stake in — other budding entrepreneurs with potentially game-changing businesses.
In recent years, more early-stage startups have moved away from large amounts of VC cash, and opted for smaller checks from individual investors. And those individuals often run their own company as a side hustle.
That's not to say it isn't a tough slog for startups right now. Venture-capitalist funds have tightened their purse strings when it comes to investing in early-stage companies, and any prospective startup darling that harbored hopes of going public have likely had to put those ambitions on ice as investors navigate choppy public markets.
But even in a funding crunch, these founders are writing checks for their peers.
In this list, Insider's Melia Russell tapped into a network of founders and investors to identify who runs companies while investing in others.
They all still work at the startup they founded, and to qualify, their startup had to have raised more than $3 million in funding. And finally, to make the list, they needed to have written at least two checks for startups, either as an angel investor or fund manager since January.
Here's a look at 32 active startup founders betting on their fellow entrepreneurs.
2. Banks plowed billions of dollars into these 19 crypto startups since last year. Here's their favorite upstarts, from Blockdaemon to TRM Labs.
3. Twitter won the first round in its legal battle against Elon Musk. The Delaware Chancery Court has granted the social-media platform's request to advance the case on an "expedited" schedule.
4. Financial publisher Euromoney has agreed to a private-equity sale that values the company at about $1.9 billion. Euromoney, known for industry publications like Institutional Investor and Metal Bulletin, will be sold to a consortium of investors led by the French firm Astorg.
5. Jefferies is shedding its last big holdings from conglomerate Leucadia National, the Wall Street Journal reported. An asset sale and a spin off will enable Jefferies to focus on investment banking.
6. Pimco bought a little over $1 billion of Apollo buyout loans from banks, according to the Financial Times. The investment-management firm bought the loans from the banks that underwrote Apollo's takeover of Worldline's payments terminal business.
7. Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge has halted withdrawals from one of its funds as the stock market deteriorates. The Legion Strategy fund also holds 10% in crypto, which has taken a beating lately.
8. A Nike-backed hands-free shoe company picked up $20 million in venture-capital commitments. HandsFree Labs has now raised about $34 million since 2019 as slip-on sneakers become increasingly popular.
9. Healthie, a healthcare startup that's focused on improving virtual care, just nabbed $16 million in Series A funding. Here's the 18-slide pitch deck it used to nab a commitment from Velvet Sea Ventures.
10. Citadel's Ken Griffin is riling up his new Floridian neighbors, according to the Daily Beast. The hedge fund chief executive — whose firm announced in June that it's relocating headquarters from Chicago to Miami — has amassed a swath of land in Palm Beach and his neighbors are having a moan about its "inordinate size."
The American Forest Foundation's affiliate, the Family Forest Impact Foundation, raised a $10 million taxable bond to fund the Family Forest Carbon Program. It's the first green bond structured to support nature-based carbon credits. Morgan Stanley underwrote the deal.
Trilon Group, an Alpine Investors infrastructure portfolio company, acquired engineering firm The Mannik & Smith Group, Inc.
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2022-07-20T12:10:45Z
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Startup Founders Using Their Connections to Invest in Entrepreneurs
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https://www.businessinsider.com/startups-entrepreneurs-venture-capital-investing-chime-b12-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/startups-entrepreneurs-venture-capital-investing-chime-b12-2022-7
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11Alive Investigates spoke to three truckers who said their employers were changing their electronic log times so they could drive over the legal limit.
Truckers told 11Alive Investigates they were pressured to drive for longer than legally allowed.
They said their employers changed logging devices, despite the legal driving limit being 11 hours a day.
One driver told 11Alive his employer would erase his e-log and give him another 11 hours to drive.
Truck drivers said they have been pressured to drive for longer than they're legally allowed to after their employer tweaked their electronic log times, according to a recent investigation by 11Alive Investigates.
Three truckers, who requested to remain anonymous because they're still in the trucking industry, told 11Alive that the companies they worked for at the time lied on their electronic logs, which are devices that record how long they drive for.
Truckers are legally allowed to drive for a maximum of 11 hours a day and take 10-hour breaks between each shift. After eight hours of driving, they're required to take a 30-minute break. Truck drivers are required to log how long they drive for. This tracking process became digital in 2019, however, meaning that hours had to be recorded on electronic-logging-devices (ELDs).
The drivers shared driving logs and text messages with 11Alive, which showed companies tweaking the information on the electronic logs, or letting them drive under another employee's account after the legal limit was reached, per the report.
"Every time I run out of time, he would go on the e-log and erase my previous hours and give me a fresh 11 hours to drive back on the road," one driver, who showed screenshots of his log, told 11Alive.
Another trucker told 11Alive he drove to Alabama, Arizona, California, New Jersey, New York, and South Carolina. "Sometimes four hours of sleep. The most that I drove was about 30 hours straight," the driver told 11Alive.
One of the truck drivers told 11Alive they just did what the company told them to do.
Although the three truckers told 11Alive they weren't too bothered about the long hours because their wages increased, they also said they weren't getting enough money considering the risks they were taking. These included having their license taken away from them and crashing because of tiredness, they said.
A paycheck that one driver shared with 11Alive showed he had driven nearly 6,000 miles in one week. To avoid exceeding his daily limit, 11Alive calculated that he would have had to travel 134 miles per hour for more than 1,400 miles a day.
An employee who assigns shifts at two of the trucking companies — left anonymous in the report — told 11Alive that the truckers' claims were false. The US Department of Transportation (DoT) told 11Alive it has investigated the drivers' claims but it found no wrongdoing.
DoT didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of US operating hours.
More: Truck Truckers Truck driver transport
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2022-07-20T12:10:51Z
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Truckers Say They Were Pressured to Drive for Longer Than Legal Limit
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https://www.businessinsider.com/truck-drivers-forced-drive-legal-limit-employers-change-electronic-logs-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/truck-drivers-forced-drive-legal-limit-employers-change-electronic-logs-2022-7
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Post-pandemic, financial services companies are rethinking their digital architecture. Here's how DirectAsia has done it.
Created by Insider Studios with Tata Communications
In the wake of the pandemic, new ways of working and an increasing focus on technology have meant that forward-looking companies can build back better in terms of their digital transformation journey.
Being digital-first has always been at the heart of travel insurance company DirectAsia's business strategy. Founded in Singapore in 2010, it has been selling products directly to consumers online from the word go, explains Narasimhan Partha, its group chief technology officer. "We have been one of the pioneers in the e-commerce industry in the financial space, as far as insurance is concerned," he said.
Being 'born digital' means DirectAsia is focused on constant optimization rather than requiring digital transformation, according to chief marketing and distribution officer Ronnie Brown. It is dedicated to improving customers' experiences with the brand, and in doing so, ensuring a more efficient and profitable business.
Ronnie Brown, chief marketing & distribution officer, DirectAsia
DirectAsia
"We're making insurance available for people in any place, at any time and across any device. That channel-agnostic approach is what drives the business,"
During the pandemic lockdowns, like most firms DirectAsia needed to swiftly enable all staff to work remotely, and of course cybersecurity was paramount, said Partha. "We have always enabled employees to work from wherever they are, without compromising anything in terms of security," he stated.
A secure focus
DirectAsia is particularly innovative when it comes to cybersecurity — an increasing concern for all businesses, but especially those that handle customers' data. It ranks very highly when it comes to its security score from ratings company BitSight, Partha said. "The security of the pipeline is monitored in real-time to identify and react to any new vulnerabilities, with adequate defenses being implemented to make it secure," he explained.
"Security is something that you don't have a second chance with. And when there is a breach, it hits the organization, in terms of resilience and brand. Potential hackers are waiting for companies to make one wrong move," Partha added.
The company found new ways to combine seamless remote access with security during the pandemic. It has started to implement SASE, which stands for Secure Access Service Edge: A converged and software-defined network and security framework, which couples network capabilities with cloud security to deliver secure and optimized access to all users and applications.
DirectAsia, with its online insurance business, is applying zero trust principles across its networks to implement SASE in its environment. Tata Communications is engaged with DirectAsia to move them from a data center-based network security model to one that is SASE-based.
Tata Communications works across enterprises to power their digital transformation journeys with bespoke SASE solutions. This allows customers to have a more objective view on the anticipated costs and complexities of managing the networking and security infrastructure: A huge advantage, especially as it comes with a lower cost of ownership tag.
Amitabh Sarkar, vice president for Asia Pacific at Tata Communications
"DirectAsia has moved from a world where cloud was not prominent to one that is increasingly becoming cloud-first, and that's an exciting shift.
If one looks deeper into its network and security architecture and design principles, you'll see that the front-end architecture, applications, user access, network visibility, and policy management are all built keeping in mind the way customers will experience the brand DirectAsia," explained Amitabh Sarkar, vice president for Asia Pacific at Tata Communications.
In the wake of the pandemic and the world embracing all things hybrid, Sarkar says that along with focus on zero trust networks and managed security, Tata Communications' key areas of collaboration with their clients are threefold: Improving cost ratios, increasing revenue, and improving NPS by transforming customer experience. "Companies have a clear mandate to become digital first," Sarkar said.
Upgrading customer experience
In May, Tata Communications launched an in-network cloud communications platform, DIGO, which is built on the principles of being converged, contextual, and conversational.
It provides bespoke workflow designs and APIs, integrating components like omni-channel communications, vendor agnostic conversational AI, H2X connectors, and translation capabilities. It delivers customer-facing workflows for customer experience optimization in real-time.
"DIGO helps organizations to build APIs, which integrate into the contact center or the conversational AI platform, or the commerce application – it is device and platform agnostic," Sarkar said. "This gives a new layer of depth for companies like DirectAsia and other financial services businesses in terms of customer experience."
Having top-level security and seamless customer experience is a priority, said Brown. "As an insurance company, we're essentially selling a promise: If things go wrong, we'll help you put them right. Trust and credibility are even more important than when selling a physical product. What we invest in our brand and how we act are crucial in driving trust," he added.
This, of course, applies to claims, which is the main pain point for customers on their insurance journey, and one that DirectAsia makes as seamless as possible: Pre-pandemic it was settling around 95% of claims within 24 hours, and many of those were made over the phone, which customers prefer. DirectAsia also has a 4.7 out of 5 rating on reviews site Feefo. Its approach to digital progress is to test and learn, do things in an inexpensive way initially, and to think incrementally, Brown said.
Narasimhan Partha, group chief technology officer at DirectAsia
Companies must continue to operate "business as usual" while managing their digital transformations, Partha added. "For an organization like ours, we need to fix the bus while it is in motion. That's the nature of the beast and that's why incremental changes go a long way," he said.
This post was created by Insider Studios with Tata Communications
More: Sponsor Post Studios Enterprise Studios Tech Digital transformation
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2022-07-20T13:41:34Z
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How One Insurance Company Built Back Better Online After the Pandemic
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-a-travel-insurance-company-built-back-better-online-after-the-pandemic
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-a-travel-insurance-company-built-back-better-online-after-the-pandemic
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How TikToker and his pet ducks have made about $178,000 from brand deals on Pearpop
TikTok star Anthony Dawson, known to his 17.3 million followers as "TooTurntTony"
Anthony Dawson
Anthony Dawson, known to 17.3 million TikTok followers as "TooTurntTony," is the top earner on Pearpop.
Dawson has made over $178,000 from more than 50 brand campaigns through Pearpop.
Pearpop has paid over $10 million to creators, the company said.
After Anthony Dawson joined TikTok in January 2020, the Michigan resident spent much of his time during the pandemic making content for the platform, uploading two or three posts a day under the handle "TooTurntTony."
Dawson's content, chronicling his antics around family, friends, and pet ducks, has earned him a huge audience, racking up about 17.3 million followers on TikTok.
"I knew if I tried enough different things, eventually, something would stick," Dawson said. "Luckily, a lot of them started sticking, like those of my mom yelling, and it kind of grew into a whole brand."
As his star rose, Dawson was contacted in 2020 by the team at Pearpop, a Los Angeles-based startup.
Pearpop enables creators to pay for shared screen time with TikTok celebrities, as well as connects creators with brands through its online marketplace. Creators can also participate in live challenges, which pay out creators based on how many people view a particular piece of content.
According to Pearpop, creators have earned over $10 million on the platform so far, with 71% going toward creators with fewer than 1 million followers.
"While we are definitely focused on creating opportunities for all creators, we also really believe in fostering community among creators, and especially with some of the bigger names, just give them the right access," Pearpop chief marketing officer Alex Morrison said. "Instead of waiting by the phone for a call from a brand, they can now cruise through the Pearpop app."
While Pearpop has gained traction since launching in 2020, signing up nearly 250,000 users, the startup operates in a very competitive space. In addition to traditional managers and agents who help clients land brand deals, a slew of services, agencies, and platforms exist with a similar purpose. TikTok, for instance, unveiled its Creator Marketplace in 2019, while Instagram began testing its own creator marketplace earlier this month.
Dawson is Pearpop's top-earning creator and has made over $178,000 so far from over 50 brand campaigns through the startup (that's after the 25% fee Pearpop takes for setting up deals). Insider verified the creator's earnings via documentation provided by Dawson. He's followed on the top-earning list by TikTok stars "baileyspinn" ($42,000), "queenvianncey" ($37,065), and "dance.like.andrea" ($19,795). While Dawson has an active conversation with the Pearpop team about deals, other users engage with the startup primarily through its web site or mobile app, which presents influencers to collaborate with and live challenges.
Dawson said he selects collaborations based on whether it matches well with his personal brand.
"It depends on if something comes up, it matches our vibe, we can make a great video with this, and both parties will be happy," Dawson added.
Two of Dawson's most-viewed brand collabs through Pearpop include TikTok videos promoting the Okeechobee music and arts festival this March and last year's Electric Daisy Carnival, or EDC. In the case of EDC, Dawson earned $1,240 for a TikTok video that generated between 4 and 5 million views, as well as an additional fee of $20,000 to secure Dawson's participation.
Dawson's Pearpop earnings account for a small piece of his overall income — the majority comes from other partnerships with brands including Crocs, Celsius Energy Drink, Manscaped, Fireball Whisky, and Beatbox, as well as his OnlyFans page, and merchandise sold on tooturnttony.com. His team, which includes a manager, helps him secure those deals.
With those earnings, the creator plans on buying a new home in Florida.
"I'm trying to look for my own space where I can make more content: a duck farm, essentially," Dawson said.
More: Influencer Creator economy TikTok Social Media
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2022-07-20T13:41:40Z
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How TikToker With Pet Ducks Made Over $178K on Pearpop
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-tiktoker-with-pet-ducks-made-over-178k-on-pearpop-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-tiktoker-with-pet-ducks-made-over-178k-on-pearpop-2022-7
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Anatoly Yakovenko started the multi-billion-dollar blockchain ecosystem that was used to launch at least 7 crypto unicorns in less than 2 years. Here's how he did it.
Solana Labs cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko
Anatoly Yakovenko is the cofounder and CEO of Solana Labs.
The exec explains how he went from systems engineer to exec of the one fastest-growing blockchains.
Solana Labs, per Yakovenko, never had more than 22 months of runway at a time until last year.
Anatoly Yakovenko's startup developed Solana, a layer-1 blockchain that led to a multi-billion dollar crypto ecosystem in less than five years. Solana Labs, which created the layer-1, launched seven crypto unicorns and notched itself as the ninth largest blockchain by market cap in the industry.
The 41-year-old's idea began at a San Francisco cafe with two coffees, a beer, and a night of working until 4 a.m., cofounder Yakovenko told Insider. Crypto's ecosystem looked very different at the time and Yakovenko, who worked as a systems engineer at semi-conductor giant Qualcomm, was taking notes.
Ethereum had gone live just two years earlier and its token was trading near $7 at the start of 2017. Meanwhile, its network was clogged and slowed down by early blockchain game CryptoKitties, better thought of as "decentralized Tamagotchi." And MetaMask, the now-popular Ethereum wallet, couldn't go longer than a few weeks without user complaints.
"I had a eureka moment," Yakovenko said, adding that he could develop something to improve some of the technical issues other blockchains faced. "That's what really pushed me over the edge."
Thus ensues the "proof-of-history" protocol, which is what sets Solana's blockchain apart from Bitcoin or Ethereum. The protocol develops a kind of "synchronized clock that, in essence, assigns a timestamp for each transaction and disables the ability for miners and bots to decide the order of which transactions get recorded onto the blockchain," according to TechCrunch. This, per Yakovenko, allows Solana to have cheaper fees and quicker transactions times.
Solana processes 2,154 transactions per second, while Ethereum can do roughly 30 transactions in the same time frame on its network. Ethereum, however, still has a far larger grasp on the nascent space, as the second largest crypto by market value. The network also has a series of upgrades called The Merge which could give it another boost over its alleged competitor.
Raj Gokal later joined Yakovenko as cofounder, along with Qualcomm alumni Greg Fitzgerald and Stephen Akridge. Yakovenko says part of the reason for Solana's success is attributed to bringing on "rockstars" that he was able to pull from his network.
"We have the best team in crypto at the time, in terms of experience and understanding of how network protocols work and how operating systems work," Yakovenko said.
Solana's do or die moment
The project's success, however, was not linear.
Solana's mainnet went live in March, 2020. It's auction was three days after the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic and the same week of the infamous "Black Thursday" crash, where bitcoin slashed half of its value in a day.
"That was a really, really stressful time. We barely got everything to work and the macro seemed like everything was going to die," he said. "It was kind of a do or die moment for us and for the network."
Yakovenko said the company had no more than 22 months of runway at a time, adding that they were just trying to survive for years before the last bull market.
"We launched at the bottom," he said. "I think that part of the reason why it succeeded was because the people that joined our community were the real like true believers and die hards. They were paying attention to crypto as the world was kind of setting on fire."
Small boutiques were early investors in Solana like Multicoin. And some of the earliest token buyers received a 4,300-fold increase in their investment. Other ventures firms like Andreessen Horowitz began diversifying portfolios with Solana much later in June 2021, when it closed a $314 million private token sale.
In 2021, Solana's ecosystem began picking up traction. Startups with unicorn valuations built on the blockchain including non-fungible token marketplace Magic Eden, move-to-earn game StepN, decentralized exchange Serum, wallet Phantom, and more.
"It's just not something that I expected," Yakovenko said. "I don't know if the momentum is sustainable, but I would love to see more of those trailblazers like these grow really quickly."
Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded Serum, which is built on Solana, previously told Fortune in an email that the layer-1 has a chance to become a key layer of infrastructure for the future of crypto. "They were by far the most serious [layer 1] we talked to about continuing to scale their blockchain and expand its opportunities," Bankman-Fried said.
Price action isn't a sole indicator of market health, but Solana's native token, SOL, has jumped 85.42% in the past year, according to Messari. In tandem with broader crypto markets and the macro environment, the altcoin has declined 56.56% in the past three months.
Critics says Solana's network is too centralized due to its proof-of-history protocol, which gives certain node operators centralized authority. The layer-1 also continues to experience outages for hours at a time. In June, validators in the network were not processing new blocks for several hours, resulting in many Dapps going offline.
Moving forward, Yakovenko is bullish on both the future of crypto and Solana. He says he wants to help onboard the next one billion users into the space with a web3 mobile phone, called Saga.
"Almost 7 billion people use smartphones around the world and more than 100 million people hold digital assets - and both of those numbers will continue to grow," Yakovenko said in a statement on June 23.
NOW WATCH: The CIO of a crypto hedge fund shares the 3 biggest risks of investing in cryptocurrencies
More: Investing crypto Solana
Anatoly Yakovenko
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2022-07-20T13:41:58Z
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Solana Cofounder on How He Built the Multi-Billion Dollar Blockchain
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https://www.businessinsider.com/solana-cofounder-created-multi-billion-dollar-blockchain-ecosystem-crypto-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/solana-cofounder-created-multi-billion-dollar-blockchain-ecosystem-crypto-2022-7
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TikTokers say low payouts from its Creator Fund are affecting their mental health, and some are quitting entirely
@itskiwicvlt / @recycldstardust / @alicia.trautwein / TikTok
Many TikTokers are struggling to make reliable income from the app's Creator Fund.
Some said the low payouts were so demoralizing they dropped out of the program altogether.
"It made me not want to create content anymore," one creator said of the program.
In April of 2021, one of Kevin Yatsushiro's TikToks, which showed him changing out the switches in his keyboard, went viral.
It gained 3 million views with top comments saying it was the first longform TikTok they watched through to the very end.
Yatsushiro, 30, who is better known as @itskiwicvlt, a gaming and anime personality on the app, expected at least a modest financial windfall. But he only saw $12.50 paid through TikTok's Creator Fund for that video.
"When I saw such a low amount of money generated, it really made me feel less about myself," he told Insider. "It was a huge blow to my mental health ... it made me not want to create content anymore."
Several high-profile creators, including Hank Green and MrBeast, have publicly criticized TikTok for low payouts from its Creator Fund, through which it pledged in 2020 to pay out $1 billion.
But Yatsushiro, who has built an audience of over 586,000 followers on TikTok, took it a step further. Last year, he decided to pull out of the Creator Fund entirely. He also took a full-time job at a large corporation doing non-social-media work. Now, he only posts when he feels like it.
He's not the only one to reconsider his participation in the Creator Fund. Other TikTokers like Yutsushiro told Insider that they felt demoralized by their low payouts, with some saying they'd prefer to make no money from TikTok at all.
'You'll have people with millions of views on a video getting 20 to 30 bucks off of it'
Alicia Trautwein has nearly 93,000 TikTok followers, but she's been posting more to Instagram and even Pinterest these days.
"Pinterest and Instagram pay out more than TikTok," she said of their direct monetization programs, like Instagram's Reels Bonuses. "Right now, on Pinterest, I easily make $1,000 to $2,000 more [per month], and on Instagram I'd say it's $4,000 to $5,000 more [per month]."
"TikTok has never had a good Creator Fund," she said. "You'll have people with millions of views on a video getting 20 to 30 bucks off of it." Trautwein spends her time on TikTok for the community, she added.
The most Trautwein has made in a month from TikTok's fund was about $10 from a single video that gained 1.8 million views in October of 2020. Insider has reviewed documentation to verify this and other payouts cited in this story.
Nikki Apostolou, a body positivity TikToker with 145,000 followers, posts at least three videos a day. She's had a few viral hits that have garnered 2 to 3 million views each, but she doesn't feel her earnings value the work she puts in. In fact, she feels like she's burning out.
"Even with viral TikToks I still only receive $20 to $30 on an average month," Apostolou told Insider. "It mentally takes a toll ... It makes me question and doubt myself and it starts to make you feel like your self worth is that Creator Fund. I sometimes feel like a street performer with real talent entertaining for pennies."
She hasn't seriously considered quitting TikTok or pulling out of the Creator Fund because, as she put it, "every penny counts."
But others have. For instance, 26-year-old Yazid Sulliman (@YaziDoe), like Yatsushiro, told Insider he pulled out of the Creator Fund because he was not making enough from the program.
Creators want transparency and a more consistent pay rate from TikTok
Trautwein and Yatsushiro both said they'd flagged these concerns to their TikTok community managers, along with suggestions for how to make the Creator Fund a more competitive and secure program.
One main suggestion they had was for TikTok to standardize its rates, which would more closely tie their earnings to the value generated. Many creators pointed to YouTube as a good model for this. While YouTube payouts can fluctuate based on factors like where the audience views from, creators get 55% of the money paid by advertisers. TikTok payouts, in contrast, depend on a variety of unnamed factors and are also not directly tied to revenue the platform is making.
Currently, many TikTokers said the most profitable way for them to make money off their accounts was by taking brand deals. Creators can set their own rates based on their follower count, engagement, and reach, and be able to negotiate their pay with various brands.
"I hope that TikTok can become better aware of the overall mental health of their creators when it comes to monetization," Yatsushiro said of the Creator Fund. "We'd like to know how TikTok assigns us a monetary value per view and how they make that decision. Ultimately, if we knew how these decisions were made, maybe it could help us best decide how to cater our current content strategies to accommodate making more money and solidifying a career as a content creator."
When asked for comment, a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement that the company understood "how important it is that our creators are appreciated for their work and look to our creator community for valuable feedback to better serve their needs." The statement also pointed to the other ways creators can make money on the platform like its LIVE Subscription, Branded Mission, TikTok Pulse, and the Creator Portal.
More: TikTok Creator Fund Mental Health Earning
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2022-07-20T13:42:04Z
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TikTokers Say Low Creator Fund Pay Is Affecting Their Mental Health
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktokers-say-low-creator-fund-pay-affecting-their-mental-health-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktokers-say-low-creator-fund-pay-affecting-their-mental-health-2022-7
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VCs are placing their bets and dollars on digital marketplaces over direct-to-consumer brands. Here's why.
VCs are bullish on investing in online marketplaces instead of direct-to-consumer brands.
These include platforms like GOAT and Instacart, which connect buyers and sellers.
VCs say the biggest advantage marketplaces have over consumer brands is a network effect.
Over the past few years, direct-to-consumer, or DTC, brands have struggled with surging customer-acquisition costs and supply-chain shortages, and VCs have grown increasingly wary about funding them. Amid a souring market plagued by rising interest rates and inflation, several DTC brands have downsized their workforces.
Glossier, the millennial-friendly cosmetics brand, laid off 80 employees in January, citing its struggles to scale the brand. Tonal, a fitness-tech startup and potential Peloton competitor, laid off 35% of its staff in July in order to become a "self-sustaining business." That's left many VCs keeping an even tighter hold of their purse strings.
Despite the pullback in funding startups, some VCs are still placing their bets on one area of consumer technology — online marketplaces.
Insider spoke to four VCs who said they're gravitating toward investing in marketplaces because of the network effect, meaning when more people use a product or service, its value increases for everyone. Two VCs told Insider said that because marketplaces generate a network effect, they have less difficulty acquiring customers over time than direct-to-consumer brands.
Damir Becirovic, a partner at Index Ventures who led the firm's investment in the clothing-resale marketplace Curtsy, said that with "marketplaces, more buyers attract more sellers and vice versa, once you hit a tipping point of scale."
He's more skeptical of DTC startups. "The business generally gets harder to scale over time as each incremental customer is harder to acquire, and more challenger brands emerge vying for the same customer," he said.
Over the past year, marketplaces have landed some of the biggest deals from VC investors among business-to-consumer companies. Whatnot, the buzzy live-shopping platform, raised a $150 million Series C led by Capital G in 2021, which took its valuation to $1.5 billion. Most recently, Faire, a wholesale marketplace, secured a $416 million extension to its Series G funding in May.
Andreessen Horowitz, which has been publishing a ranking of the fastest-growing marketplaces since 2020, added 37 new marketplaces to its list this year, compared to 24 and 25 in the past two years. New entrants include the trading-card marketplace TCG Player and the luxury-watch platform Chrono24.
Ben Ling, the founder of the seed-stage firm Bling Capital, has invested in marketplaces like Instacart as well as direct-to-consumer retailers like Third Love and Birdy Grey. He believes that effective marketplaces reduce the friction that arises when customers and merchants that don't know each other transact goods online.
He notes that the key to successful marketplaces is the rating and review systems that help buyers and sellers make informed decisions based on their prior transactions. DTC brands have a slightly different problem. These brands have to convince consumers that their brand is superior and the right choice for the consumer, while the consumers often have to look elsewhere for objective reviews about the brand, said Ling.
Other investors that were high on DTC brands over the past few years are also shifting their focus.
Lerer Hippeau, a firm that has invested in several DTC brands like Casper, Allbirds, Rothy's, and Everlane, has accelerated its investments in marketplaces in recent years. The firm was one of the participants in a $36 million Series B round raised by the furniture-resale marketplace Kaiyo this past March.
"With consumer marketplaces, you have to build the technology to support the whole ecosystem. That's obviously more attractive to VCs. There can be higher multiples when you have a true tech platform," Andrea Hippeau, an investor at the firm, said.
Lerer Hippeau also participated in the massive $555 million Series C investment in HeyDay, led by Premji Invest and The Raine Group. The company buys and scales direct-to-consumer brands that have already found traction on the Amazon Marketplace.
Angelina DiPaolo, an investor who led the HeyDay deal at Premji, believes that marketplace-native brands are becoming more central to the future of e-commerce.
"While the last generation of breakout digitally native brands were sold DTC," DiPaolo said, "many important signals, including record-high ad costs on centralized distribution platforms, iOS privacy shifts, and supply-chain havoc, have pointed to the notion that the future is marketplace native."
The caveat here is that a multibillion-dollar marketplace like Instacart only comes along once in a startup generation. It's still rare for most marketplaces to score returns at that level, said Becirovic.
Instacart slashed its own valuation from $39 billion to $24 billion in March. Andreessen Horowitz notes that the company still represents 64.2% of all gross merchandise activity on this year's Marketplace 100 — published just weeks after Instacart's announcement. According to the firm, marketplace categories where suppliers can only offer their goods in a few places at one time, like groceries, usually operate with a "winner takes all" dynamic.
Becirovic believes that dynamic applies to all types of marketplaces. "There tends to only be one or two marketplace winners per sector or product category," he said.
More: Venture Capital Consumers
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2022-07-20T13:42:10Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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VCs Are Turning Their Attention to Online Marketplaces Over DTC Brands
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https://www.businessinsider.com/vcs-investing-marketplaces-startups-direct-to-consumer-brands-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/vcs-investing-marketplaces-startups-direct-to-consumer-brands-2022-7
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Bank of America credits 'healthy' consumer spending for resilient Q2
Bank of America said "healthy spend levels" boosted Q2 earnings, which has been in line with other issuers.
Mounting concerns about high inflation and economic uncertainty are forcing banks to prepare for a possible recession.
By the numbers: Bank of America's Q2 results were boosted by solid growth from card spending despite growing economic uncertainty.
Combined credit and debit card spend reached $221 billion, up 10% year over year (YoY). Credit spend jumped 17%, and debit rose 6% to a record high.
Total payment spend for H1 rose 13% YoY to a record $2.1 trillion, driven by increases in every category.
Average credit card outstanding balances rose 10% YoY to $81 billion, although they were still below the $86.2 billion reported in the same period of 2020. Net charge-offs increased 46% from Q1 to $571 million, driven by loan sales and "other credit decisions."
Consumers opened more than 1 million credit card accounts, a 15% YoY rise.
Quotable: In the bank's earnings call, CEO Brian Moynihan said "the organic growth engine at Bank of America that existed pre-pandemic is back in full," adding that "consumers continue to spend at a healthy pace."
Moynihan noted: "We continue to see shifts in what people are spending on as the quarter took place. … We saw that higher gas spend as well as the continued recovery in the travel categories."
CFO Alastair Borthwick said card loan growth reflected "healthy spend levels" despite higher card interest rates.
The market picture: Other card issuers, including JPMorgan and Citi, also reported strong Q2 volume growth. Record-high inflation likely played a role in those gains by increasing spending on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
Bank of America's results fit this trend, although organic growth may also have contributed to higher volumes. The post-pandemic resurgence in consumer spending on travel and entertainment—which surged 54% YoY in Q1 2022, per Cardlytics—likely boosted volume
What next? Mounting concerns about high inflation and economic uncertainty are forcing banks to prepare for a possible recession. Bank of America made a $523 million provision for credit losses but released $48 million from its bad loan buffer.
In the event of a recession, lenders would also have to contend with shrinking card spend.
Strategies to counter this could include innovative programs to boost payment flexibility, like post-purchase installment plans that mimic buy now, pay later (BNPL) products.
Card issuers could also use credit card apps to drive user engagement for mobile financial management tools.
And issuers can promote practical benefits from cards that consumers will value more, such as rewarding cardholders for paying bills on time or maximizing rewards for household staples.
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2022-07-20T15:03:53Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Bank of America Sees Q2 Volume Growth Despite Economic Uncertainty
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https://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-america-sees-volume-growth-despite-economic-uncertainty-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-america-sees-volume-growth-despite-economic-uncertainty-2022-7
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A new report shows banking customers favor online and mobile messaging, but want a human for complex topics.
Nine out of 10 respondents said they want their bank to proactively offer personalized financial advice, but only three in 10 said they currently receive it.
The news: Banking customers crave seamless digital communication, personalized financial advice, and sometimes a human touch, per a report from Sinch, a Stockholm-based provider of telecom and cloud communications platform as a service solutions.
The report surveyed 2,900 financial services consumers in over 15 countries during the first half of 2022.
Key stat: Nine out of 10 respondents said they want their bank to proactively offer personalized financial advice, but only three in 10 said they currently receive it. Some information that customers said they want include:
An online tutorial on how to increase their credit score
An overview of what to expect on their first credit card bill
A personalized financial assessment that provides information on the right type of education loan
An interactive home buying guide that covers the process after they apply for a mortgage
More on the numbers: Customers are increasingly calling for personalized financial advice, but it's not always clear what that means. Specific examples from this study reveal that they seek financial guidance that aligns with their situational needs.
76% want an educational buying guide based on previous purchases. It seems they want guidance on budgeting and a review of their spending habits to find areas where they can cut costs.
And customers appear to want more than just a report on their financial situation. 83% want an educational video based on a recent purchase. This likely signals that customers value an expert human opinion on spending and saving, or at least hearing a human explanation.
A high percentage of respondents also desire a more holistic analysis of their financial situation.
73% said they want to receive a digital personalized financial assessment. But it's unclear what customers calling for a financial assessment want. It's difficult for a bank to give specific financial information scalably.
And 81% of respondents want a personalized video tour through their financial picture, indicating that banks can capitalize on a blend of technology and human interaction using video calls.
Quick, mostly digital—but not always: 98% of respondents said they want their questions answered quickly, and they are willing to accept guidance and advice in new digital ways. 53% of respondents said they are frustrated that they can't respond to mobile text message alerts they receive from their banks. They also indicated that they are comfortable with using text messaging to perform financial tasks like:
Authorizing a transaction
Paying a bill
Responding to banking alerts
Getting information about financial products
Completing a loan application
But in complex scenarios or when they're frustrated, 95% of people say it's useful to be able to instantly switch from online chat to a phone call, and 54% said they'd be more comfortable speaking with a human about sensitive financial matters.
Our take on personalization: The study provides some examples of what customers are looking for—and it appears to be situational guidance through life events that many people experience, like going to school or buying a home.
General advice for these situations could be relatively inexpensive to produce and provide, as it can be specific but also scalable. For instance, banks could build a content library to educate customers performing certain financial activities.
But more in-depth personalization remains challenging. Our research report, Bank CMOs and Personalization, discusses how complexity grows with scale, making implementing personalized, hyper-relevant messaging challenging to deliver objectively and quickly. Providing financial advice requires specific qualifications and training, and it usually comes at a cost. Implementing it improperly risks opening the door for liability and customer dissatisfaction.
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2022-07-20T15:03:59Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Banking Customers Crave Personalized Financial Advice, Report Finds
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https://www.businessinsider.com/banking-customers-want-personalized-financial-advice-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/banking-customers-want-personalized-financial-advice-2022-7
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According to the most recent air travel consumer report from the Department of Transportation, US airlines mishandled 0.55% of bags checked in April, compared to 0.33% during the same time period last year.
From a wedding dress to the ashes of a loved ones, travelers are sharing lost luggage horror stories as thousands of flights are canceled and delayed around the world.
Two employees at WestJet and Air Canada who handle hundreds of bags each day shared the inside scoop of what they believe is behind the surge in mishandled baggage, and how passengers can avoid getting caught up in the nerve-racking trend.
Both employees spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to protect their careers, but their employment has been verified by Insider. Air Canada did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
According to the most recent air travel consumer report from the Department of Transportation, US airlines mishandled 0.55% of bags checked in April, compared to 0.33% during the same time period last year. While it might look like a small number, that translates to over 200,000 bags that did not make it to their final destination in time.
But the real problem isn't that the airline doesn't know where the bag is, the WestJet employee told Insider — it's that it can take weeks for a passenger to connect with an agent who has access to the correct baggage system.
Many airlines outsource various positions to third-party workers who are often unaware of what's happening on the ground, he added.
"Every bag is scanned and tickets printed. They know where the bag is," he said. "The problem is they can't contact the right person to find the bag again, because we're so understaffed. That person probably is handling hundreds of cases."
Short-staffing also means the same ramp workers are scheduled to load multiple planes back-to-back, so if one flight gets delayed, it causes a domino effect — pushing their entire loading schedule back.
Amid the rampant delays, getting checked bags into the belly of a plane on time is like "trying to hit a moving target," the employee told Insider.
"The use of third-party providers is common practice across our industry, and to correlate any impact guests may experience in tracing their lost or delayed baggage to them is inaccurate," a WestJet spokesperson said in a statement shared with Insider.
"Regarding our airport operations, we have invested in additional oversight roles to support ramp operations at our busiest airports and are currently in the strongest staffing position we have seen since the onset of the pandemic. In addition, to further support our operations, we continue to actively recruit for various positions across our organization," they added.
While passengers can't control these internal issues, here are a few ways to minimize the risk of losing your checked luggage this summer, according to airline workers themselves.
Here are 10 tips to avoid losing your bag this summer
AirTags have become increasingly useful in tracking lost luggage.
Remove all old bag tags from your baggage: "It's not a badge of honor on where you've been and confuses the scanners trying to direct your bag to the correct flight pier."
Don't overstuff your suitcase: "Heavy bags get stuck on the belts and can cause the bag to be misdirected. Baggage movement is timed between sensors and a heavy bag can get stuck easier."
Avoid checking in weird shapes, such as round bags or nap sacks with loose straps: "If unavoidable, make sure it gets sent out in a grey plastic bin or check it as a fragile."
Take those unnecessary decorative bag tags, strings, or bows that could also get caught in the system: "Don't check in boxes and if it's absolutely necessary don't wrap them with rope."
Always put your name and phone number on the bag tags for identification: "Since self checking was started more bags have lost their tags due to improper placement."
If you have a carry-on, be one of the first in line: "They only allow so many checkin bags onboard, after which all bags over get checked below."
Don't put any valuables in your checked bag
Always pack an extra set of clothes in your carry-on.
Put a tracking device like an AirTag on your luggage so you don't have to wait for an agent to tell you where it is.
If you're self-checking your luggage (attaching the tag yourself at a kiosk), make sure it's attached to the bag's handle correctly or ask for help.
More: Airlines Flight Delays Flight Cancellations summer travel chaos
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2022-07-20T15:04:17Z
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Airline Employees Share 10 Tips to Prevent Lost Luggage
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-prevent-lost-luggage-airline-employees-share-tips-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-prevent-lost-luggage-airline-employees-share-tips-2022-7
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3 sports-betting entrepreneurs who have raised money in 2022 share their advice for other startups looking for investment amid the downturn
WagerWire cofounders Travis Geiger, Guy Dotan, and Zach Doctor.
WagerWire.
Sports betting gave rise to a vibrant startup community. But VC money is getting harder to come by.
Insider spoke with three startups that have successfully raised funding in 2022.
They shared their experiences and advice for other early-stage founders.
This time last year, early-stage investors' eyes swirled with dollar signs as they sized up the US sports betting industry.
Money was pouring into the sector's startups. PitchBook tracked in Q3 $397 million worth of US VC deals in sports betting and online gambling, up from $16.6 million during the same period of 2020 and $46.7 million the year before that.
Droves of startups are still innovating in the space. But VCs, regardless of sector, are playing their money close to the vest in 2022 as the economy slumps.
Insider spoke in June and July with three sports-betting and online-gambling startups that have raised money in 2022. They described the current fundraising environment and shared advice for other early-stage entrepreneurs.
'Valuations are being affected massively,' said the founder of Goss
Melani Mercier founded three companies before her 30th birthday.
Her latest venture, Goss, is a free mobile-betting app geared toward women and pop-culture fans. It lets users place bets on things like who's going home next in the popular UK reality series "Love Island" or who will get the next rose in "The Bachelor."
Mercier, who's Canadian and a hockey fan, wanted to take the excitement of sports betting beyond sports. The app, which is available in the US, UK, and Canada, also has a crypto component: Users bet with and earn digital coins.
When Goss raised its previous $3 million in funding, it was still a "founder's market" and money was flowing, Mercier said.
But when the company started fundraising for its Series A this year, things were different. Public sports-betting and online-gambling stocks were cratering amid the economic downturn, and placing pressure on private-company valuations.
Mercier said Goss was in talks with one investor when, two weeks into the KYC checks that typically preceed a term sheet, the startup was "left at the altar." The investor, who Mercier declined to name, said it would be reserving its funds amid the changing market conditions.
"This is definitely the most challenging environment that I've been in," Mercier told Insider. "That froth is completely gone."
Ultimately, Mercier said Goss secured a lead investor, although it took about three months, longer than in her previous experience. The round, which Mercier said is set to close July 30, was also at a lower valuation than Mercier expected.
"The main thing we're seeing is valuations are being affected massively," she said. "This valuation that we have is half of what I ever thought it would be."
Nonetheless, Mercier is grateful to be raising at all, as an early-stage pre-revenue business with the "crypto winter" hanging over it.
"This is still an up round for us," Mercier said. "Lots of companies are not fundraising at all or still doing down rounds."
Her advice to fellow founders: "Get creative and leave no stone unturned."
'Assume it's going to take twice as long to raise,' said the president of Playmaker
David Woodley.
David Woodley
Playmaker is a sports-media company cultivating the next generation of bettors.
The Gen Z-focused brand, which boasts more than 20 million followers across social media, has 24 Snapchat Discover shows and operates accounts including Playmaker Betting, Playmaker, @Sports, Playmaker Hoops, and Playmaker Talent.
The startup raised last year about $375,000 in a pre-seed round after a content deal with NBA Hall-of-Famer Tracy McGrady caught the attention of individual investors.
Playmaker then set out in 2022 to raise a $2.5 million to $3 million seed round. The company pitched over the last 60 or so days six investors, four of whom were interested in investing, president and chief revenue officer David Woodley told Insider in late June. He said the company is now looking to raise between $6 million and $8 million in the round.
"It's been positive, even during this downturn," Woodley said.
One of the biggest checks is coming from a private equity firm, Woodley said. PE isn't an option for all early-stage startups, particularly pre-revenue businesses. But Woodley said Playmaker has three growing and profitable revenue streams, and is building out several other business lines. Snapchat Discover, for example, is one of its biggest moneymakers.
Woodley said that some VCs firms Playmaker spoke with were more interested in high-risk, high-reward businesses with returns of 50x to 100x. Playmaker projects 10x to 20x returns over the next 18 to 36 months, Woodley said.
"It was kind of eye opening some people don't want that," said Woodley, who built his career in media but is new to fundraising side. "We found pretty early on that we sit between conservative PE and aggressive VC and individuals."
Woodley suggested founders who are raising money right now should have a plan B.
"Assume it's going to take twice as long to raise," he said. "Assume it's going to take six months, and figure out what do in that other three months. You don't want to be in a situation where you've lost all leverage and you're desperate."
He also said to try to learn from rejection.
"Don't go back and ask them to reconsider, but genuinely try to forge a relationship with them," he said. "Try to learn a few things. Was the valuation off? Was it the presentation? Get to the real reason on why they said, 'no.'"
'You don't want to raise just 12 months of runway,' said the CEO of WagerWire
Zach Doctor, cofounder and CEO of WagerWire.
WagerWire
When WagerWire closed this year its $3 million seed round, cofounder and CEO Zach Doctor said "the world was shifting under our feet."
The company signed its term sheet in April, when the S&P 500 posted its second correction of the year and fell 10% from recent highs. The close of the round, led by Miami Marlins co-owner Roger Ehrenberg, was announced in early July, as economists braced for a possible recession.
Against that backdrop, the startup sought to raise more money than it needed to give itself at least 18 months before its next fundraising round, which would be its Series A.
"You don't want to raise just 12 months of runway and then have to be back out raising in six months when the market might be down another 10% or 20%, or who knows?" Doctor said.
Doctor cofounded in 2020 WagerWire with college friends and UCLA grads Guy Dotan and Travis Geiger to create a secondary market for sports bets. The startup is building a direct-to-consumer platform where users can buy and sell previously placed sports bets, à la StockX or Stubhub, as well as business-to-business infrastructure that operators can incorporate into their sportsbooks.
They believe this is a natural evolution of the marketplace and the infrastructure is being built today. Waiting wasn't an option.
"It was no trivial thing to get some money raised right now," Doctor said, noting the founders traveled to New York, Las Vegas, and industry conferences like G2E and SBC to meet potential investors. "But we were able to find the right people that are able to go forward regardless of the macro."
WagerWire previously raised in 2021 a pre-seed round worth $360,000 from friends and family. Its cofounders said that process helped them refine their pitch for the seed round. Positioning the startup as an infrastructure play with a business-to-consumer component was crucial to winning over investors.
"The chessboard is being set in the industry right now," Doctor said. "The infrastructure is being built out. So the time to go is now whether the market is down or not."
Doctor said the key was finding a lead investor who believed in their vision and commanded respect in the industry, even in uncertain times. That investor was Miami Marlins co-owner Roger Ehrenberg, who WagerWire met through Ed Moed's Hot Paper Lantern. (WagerWire is part of the agency's accelerator program with Cardinal Sports Capital.) From there, the startup set out to build out a syndicate of investors with expertise in sports, gambling, and technology.
Don't underestimate the power of a warm introduction, Doctor said. The cofounders initially cold messaged industry leaders on LinkedIn to make inroads.
"I wouldn't necessarily recommend just going to the VC's website and submitting your deck," Doctor said. "You're better off looking for the two degrees of separation in your circle that gets you to that warm intro."
More: Sports Betting Startups Sports
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2022-07-20T15:04:53Z
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Top Advice for Startups Raising Money in 2022: Sports Betting Founders
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https://www.businessinsider.com/sports-betting-startups-describe-fundraising-advice-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/sports-betting-startups-describe-fundraising-advice-2022-7
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The lead analyst for Morgan Stanley's top-rated IT hardware team shares 3 stocks he likes most in the industry even as a broader downturn in earnings is expected
IT hardware firms are in a tough spot in a souring economy, says Erik Woodring.
But the Morgan Stanley analyst says 3 firms in particular are well-positioned to weather the storm.
Woodring was recently named one of Insider's Rising Stars of Equity Research.
Erik Woodring acknowledges that firms in the information technology hardware space are in a tough spot right now.
The head of Morgan Stanley's IT hardware research team, which Institutional Investor ranked the top in the sector, told Insider in June that companies in the space face significant headwinds right now given the worsening macroeconomic outlook.
Inflation is at 41-year-high level of 9.1%, and the Federal Reserve is tightening policy aggressively to diminish consumer demand and, they hope, the pace of rising prices. Demand has started to slow as consumer spending begins to fall, but less spending means weaker revenue and profits. Weaker revenue and profits typically mean firms have less to sink back into their businesses.
"Hardware is an industry where the capital outlay is typically considered a capex purchase, a big dollar-denominated purchase," Woodring said. "And when there's belt-tightening going on in the world, whether that's an enterprise limiting its budget, or a consumer deciding to push off a purchase for a year or two, typically hardware feels that moreso than other industries, like the software industry, which might be driven by more recurring, subscription-type purchases."
He added: "For my space right now, the risk is, in the enterprise world, budget cuts; and in the consumer world, tightening wallets as inflation at 40-year highs impacts not only the low-end consumer, but effectively every income demographic."
Many stocks Woodring covers in the sector have gotten crushed over the last year plus. Circuit City is down more than 80%. Logitech is down more than 50%, and so is GoPro. Garmin is down more than 40%.
But there are a few companies that Woodring, who was recently named one of Insider's Rising Stars of Equity Research, remains bullish on in the difficult environment.
Woodring's top picks
The names are safer, high-quality firms with stable revenue, Woodring said.
"Truthfully I am more defensive right now. Hardware is inherently a more cyclical industry, and my research shows that when budgets or consumer wallets tighten, hardware projects tend to be the first to get cut," he said. "And so the companies I like today are high-quality, cash-generative, defensive stocks best-positioned to weather a challenging market environment."
They include electronics maker Apple (AAPL), computer hardware producer IBM (IBM), and CDW (CDW), which supplies technology to businesses.
"Those are three companies that fit those characteristics almost perfectly," Woodring said. "I'm overweight all three of them."
Despite Woodring's bullishness, the firms might not be immune to a broader decline in earnings that some strategists, at banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, expect going forward thanks to inflation and a stronger dollar that weighs on export revenues.
"2Q earnings season will likely be a catalyst for negative revisions as companies offer cautious commentary," said Goldman Sachs' Chief US Equity Strategist David Kostin in a note to clients earlier this month.
Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley's Chief US Equity Strategist, said in a recent note that, "From the standpoint of stocks, the stronger dollar is going to be a massive headwind to earnings for many large multinationals."
He also showed the relationship between a stronger dollar and weaker earnings expectations, and what that has meant for stocks in the past.
On Monday, IBM reported strong Q2 earnings, but the stock fell on news that the firm expects to lose $3.5 billion in revenue thanks to a stronger dollar (Woodring remains overweight on the stock). Bloomberg also reported on Monday that Apple plans to slow down hiring and spending for some areas of their business. As for CDW, Zacks Equity Research recently said that they expect the firm to beat earnings expectations.
More: Investing Stocks to Buy Stock Picks
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2022-07-20T15:04:59Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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3 IT Hardware Stocks to Buy Amid a Slowing Economy: Morgan Stanley
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https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-picks-to-buy-it-hardware-slowing-economy-morgan-stanley-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-picks-to-buy-it-hardware-slowing-economy-morgan-stanley-2022-7
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Tesla, GM, Rivian, and more are dependent on the $360 billion battery business for their ambitious EV plans — but battery makers are struggling to churn out enough supply
There aren't enough batteries to power a world of electric cars — and that's setting up a massive fight for automakers like GM, Tesla, and Rivian.
Visual China Group / Getty
Automakers are desperate for EV batteries, but availability of lithium is not their only roadblock.
Battery makers face multiple challenges in the manufacturing process.
Here's a look at the problems that stand in the way of automakers and their EV plans.
Incumbent and upstart automakers across the globe are spending $526 billion to get millions of electric vehicles on the roads over the next several years. But the road to getting those cars to market looks bumpy.
Having the materials for EV batteries is one thing hobbling the industry right now, said Steve Christensen, executive director at the Responsible Battery Coalition, with manufactures hustling to secure rare earth metals like lithium.
Automakers could actually have enough lithium for the next century's worth of EVs, the coalition says. But it would require the industry to have a 90% recycling rate of batteries and a 90% material recovery rate, which isn't currently in place.
And even if the auto business had the recycling infrastructure to fulfill its battery needs, there's still a second, perhaps more pressing issue: Having the capacity to actually make the batteries.
In the short term, the supply of batteries that the battery manufacturing industry thinks it'll produce are outstripped by the projected demands of automakers.
"When you look at the roadmap of the new manufacturing capabilities that are planned to come online in Europe and North America to meet the EV production goals," said Sean O'Day, founder and president at Titan Advanced Energy Solutions, "you do have to wonder about the mismatch and the timing of when those come online and when these EV product lines can actually hit the road."
Here's a look at three problems that are setting up a massive fight for automakers like GM, Tesla, and Rivian:
Battery makers still can't hit production targets
Automakers like Ford are projecting millions of EVs will be on the road in the coming years. The industry's battery capacity says another story.
The battery industry, which could be over $360 billion business by 2030 per McKinsey, is racing to churn out millions of battery cells to supply to automakers.
But cell makers only yield between 70% and 90% of what they set out to make, according to research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
"When new battery plants are started, it takes a long time for those plants to reach high utilization rates," Benchmark Mineral Intelligence chief data officer Caspar Rawles said.
As US-based companies seek domestic sourcing, many new battery cell plants in North America are just starting to learn what experienced industry players in Asia like CATL and Samsung SDI have had years to perfect.
As a result, there can be defects in cell manufacturing, meaning some batteries come out as "rejects."
EV batteries are harder than smartphone batteries
The GMC Hummer EV has a massive battery.
Second, it's harder to get the same number of battery cells made for EVs out of the manufacturing process compared to making battery cells made for things like smartphones. EV battery cells are larger and more complex.
"That's where the EV supply chain has a problem, because you can't rely on what you've seen historically in terms of utilization rates from the consumer electronics industry," Rawles said.
Car makers are demanding more energy dense (and more complex) batteries
Automakers like Tesla want to bolster their EV batteries' energy density for maximum range.
Third, automakers are desperate for more energy-dense batteries to improve their EV range and get a leg up on competitors' offerings. This means making batteries chock-full of metals like nickel to bolster their abilities.
"Manufacturing those cells, even though the process of manufacturing is going to be similar, there's going to be other challenges that are brought about when you change the chemistry mix," Rawles said.
So what does that mean for EV targets?
The learning curve, the potential for fewer cells, and change-ups have caused a disconnect between what makers can realistically produce and the large number of EVs that automakers anticipate building. But these problems don't mean automakers' EV plans will stall out.
Industry experts say it does mean there are opportunities to tap into. Recycling battery materials is one that's seeing a surge in investment and new approaches. Partnering with experienced cell manufacturers to better guarantee high yield is another. Tesla and Panasonic, GM and LG Energy Solution, and Ford and SK Innovation are just some examples.
Finally, machine learning or other recent technological leaps could be brough to bear to improve the battery-making process, and fast.
"There's potential for using AI or other technology to expedite that learning process and come up with new and novel ways of streamlining battery production," Rawles said.
"There's rapidly escalating demand and building out capacity can't happen quick enough."
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2022-07-20T16:39:59Z
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Three Ways the Battery Shortage Is Setting up a Fight for GM, Rivian, and More
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https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicles-battery-lithium-capacity-shortage-fight-gm-rivian-tesla-2022-7
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Rebecca Cohen and Nicole Gaudiano
Rudy Guiliani has been ordered by a judge to testify as prosecutors in Georgia investigate attempts by former President Donald Trump's associates to throw out the results of the 2020 election in the state.
Guiliani was first subpoenaed earlier this month to appear in a New York court on July 11, but he did not show up. He had been ordered to show cause why he
The former Trump lawyer must appear on August 9, according to court documents obtained by POLITICO.
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2022-07-20T16:40:05Z
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Giuliani Ordered to Testify in Georgia's Probe of 2020 Election
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https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-ordered-to-testify-in-georgias-probe-of-2020-election-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-ordered-to-testify-in-georgias-probe-of-2020-election-2022-7
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How tech creators can score a $12,000 grant from LinkedIn's new accelerator program, part of a $25 million investment in influencers
LinkedIn global head of community management Andrei Santalo
LinkedIn is launching its second Creator Accelerator Program to motivate creators to make content.
LinkedIn will ultimately select 200 tech- and innovation-focused creators from a pool of applicants.
Selected creators will receive coaching from LinkedIn employees, access to new tools, and $12,000.
For LinkedIn global head of community management Andrei Santalo, the platform's first creator accelerator program, announced in September 2021, proved a valuable learning experience.
"One thing we heard over and over again in the learning was — no surprise — creators want community," Santalo told Insider. "They want to be networking with each other. They want to be building relationships with each other. So, having a more thematic approach was always on our radar."
That's why LinkedIn's second creator accelerator program, launching this fall, is taking a different approach this time around. Rather than vetting creators from a wide range of categories, the social network's six-week Creator Accelerator Program 2.0 will cater to creators in the technology and innovation space, offering them coaching from LinkedIn employees and other designated mentors, early access to tools, and a $12,000 grant.
"Tech is our number one industry in terms of jobs where they're hiring for creators," said Santalo, pointing to current trends like web3, cryptocurrency, and the metaverse as the drivers. "We're seeing growth around the conversations happening around tech."
LinkedIn will select up to 200 creators from those who apply through the web site, based on a points-driven scale around criteria including creativity, passion, commitment, and impact. Each creator will be assigned a LinkedIn creator manager who will coach them on ways to develop and share content on the platform. The social network will also grant those creators early access to new tools in development, similar to when LinkedIn enabled members of the first creator accelerator program to use its audio chat feature.
Mentorship will also play a larger role in the program this round, Santalo said. In addition to guidance from LinkedIn employees, creators will also have access to mentors from outside the organization, including YouTube creators and podcast hosts Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry, as well as The Plug's founder and CEO Sherell Dorsey.
LinkedIn's Creator Accelerator Program 2.0 is part of the social network's larger $25 million push to incentivize creators to develop more content for the platform and its user base of more than 830 million members. The professional social network began doubling down on its creator-focused efforts in early 2021, when it debuted a "creator mode" to help members display their content more prominently on the platform.
LinkedIn also hired Santalo, who previously worked at Instagram on product partnerships, to develop a team of creator managers (similar to those at YouTube), which he hired from companies such as TikTok, YouTube, Jellysmack, and Adobe. LinkedIn also launched the LinkedIn Podcast Network in February, offering a slate of podcasts covering a range of topics from Big Tech to diversity and mental health in the workplace.
LinkedIn's efforts to boost engagement appear to be working. The social network's parent company, Microsoft, reported that LinkedIn saw "record engagement" during the company's most recent quarter, with user sessions growing 22% year-over-year.
More: LinkedIn Influencer Creator economy Creator
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2022-07-20T16:40:11Z
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How Creators Can Get $12,000 From LinkedIn's New Accelerator Program
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-creators-can-get-12000-from-linkedins-new-accelerator-program-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-creators-can-get-12000-from-linkedins-new-accelerator-program-2022-7
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How a half-eaten chicken footlong from Subway ended up costing an Australian air passenger $1,844.
A Subway employee holds up a foot-long sandwich.
An Australian passenger who bought a Subway sandwich at a stopover incurred a hefty fine.
Australia has long maintained strict biosecurity standards.
The story went viral on TikTok, and prompted Subway to send the passenger a $1,884 voucher.
Subway is known for its "five-dollar footlong" promotion, but one of the chain's sandwiches ended up costing one Australian air passenger over a thousand dollars in fines.
The Washington Post reported that an Australian flight passenger named Jessica Lee recently ran into trouble after purchasing a Subway chicken sandwich at a Singapore stopover, on the way back from a vacation in Greece. Lee said she ate half of the sandwich on the flight, and then tucked the rest into her bag.
But that decision saw Lee get hit with a fine of 2,664 Australian dollars — or $1,844 — for violating Australia's strict Biosecurity Act. The act passed in Australia's parliament in 2015, and seeks to mitigate both agricultural and human medical biosecurity risks. As an isolated continent boasting unique and fragile ecosystems, Australia has long been stringent about maintaining its biosecurity. Scientific American previously reported on the government's "war" against non-native species.
Australia requires incoming travelers to declare certain foods, plant material and animal products. By failing to disclose the leftover Subway sandwich, Lee ran afoul of the law.
After getting slapped with the fine, Lee went on to share her story on TikTok and with the Washington Post. In response to the viral social media moment, Subway gifted Lee with an assortment of items, including a sandwich voucher for $1,844.
"Now my family calls me 'Subway girl,' " Lee told The Washington Post.
"All my friends and family were sending me screenshots of the news articles, and I was just sitting there thinking, 'Like, yeah, I'm actually on the internet for being an absolute idiot,' " she said, laughing.
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2022-07-20T16:40:53Z
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Subway Sandwich Forces Australian Air Passenger to Incur Major Fine
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https://www.businessinsider.com/subway-sandwich-australian-air-passenger-customs-fine-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/subway-sandwich-australian-air-passenger-customs-fine-2022-7
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A lot of stores have too much stock right now and are offering deals under the radar. Here's how you can cash in.
Many stores have deals on patio furniture.
Early in the pandemic, when many Americans were upgrading their homes, stores stocked up on goods.
With rising inflation, many of those goods are now sitting in warehouses so stores are offering deals.
Look for casual clothing, patio furniture, TVs, and major appliances on deep discount.
Consumer demand — and the goods to satisfy that demand — has been on a roller coaster ride since March 2020. Even as pandemic disruptions are easing, new economic shocks have sent inflation soaring.
But there might be a silver lining for consumers, according to Julie Ramhold, a consumer analyst for DealNews. Retailers ordered extra inventory as insurance against supply chain delays, and now, thanks to inflation and a pull-back in consumer spending, their warehouses are overflowing. For shoppers who know where to look, that could mean big bargains.
When COVID kept most people home, many consumers had extra cash that they weren't spending on eating out, entertainment, or travel. That led to a spike in spending on physical goods at a moment when supply chains were fractured by COVID lockdowns, leaving retailers scrambling to fill orders and keep shelves stocked.
And the disruptions continued past the initial lockdown period. "Basically, 2021 was plagued the entire year by supply-chain disruptions," Ramhold says.
Now, as travel has returned to pre-pandemic levels and people are returning to the office, consumer spending has shifted again. Retailers who stockpiled merchandise as insurance against disordered supply chains are now stuck with excess stock that isn't selling.
The decline in remote work, says Ramhold, "shifted the demand away from things like casual clothing." Plus, she notes, many people have already made big purchases to furnish home offices or upgrade home furnishings, so that demand has dwindled.
She sees consumer focus shifting from big-ticket items to smaller, decorative pieces for the home as people begin to welcome visitors again.
That's terrible news for retailers, but it could be good news for you if you're in the market for those items because you can probably find more significant discounts earlier in the season on the products you need.
Where to find the best deals
"If you're looking for excess inventory, the biggest categories that we're seeing are home furniture pieces and casual clothing," Ramhold says. And you can find savings in other categories as well.
Overstocked sales can give you a double edge on inflation because rising prices "may have affected overstock to a lesser degree because retailers bought those items before prices went up," Ramhold says.
Don't expect promos to announce that a sale is an overstock clearance; just look for deeper discounts and deals during the height of the season, and you're probably benefitting from a retailer's pandemic stockpile.
Here's where to look for the best overstock bargains, according to Ramhold.
Most years, for outdoor furniture, "the really great deals start to come during August and September," Ramhold says. But, this year, "They're already discounting these things well before what we're used to seeing."
That means you could fancy up your patio while it's still outdoor-entertaining weather. Ramhold notes that Target is already offering 30% savings on some items, and Home Depot and Lowe's are doing the same.
If you can wait until fall, when patio furnishings typically go on sale, you might be able to get even larger discounts. However, Ramhold says, "If the price is low enough [now], it's probably not going to go lower even when the sales roll around next month."
An early July sale on major appliances at Lowe's got Ramhold's Spidey sense tingling: Save $750 when you buy a suite of appliances. Home Depot was offering a similar deal, both around Prime Day, and she thinks that's probably a sign that those stores have too many fridges, stoves, dishwashers, and other major appliances in their warehouses.
The chip shortages that led to long waits for appliances for home remodels last year have stabilized, and now Ramhold is seeing discounts of 30% to 40% at some stores.
But not every big box store is giving deep discounts. She notes that Best Buy is offering a much smaller deal: a $100 gift card with a $1,500 purchase. So, it's a good idea to shop around to find bargains.
Black Friday in November is the day Amazon and other retailers traditionally offer huge discounts on televisions, not Prime Day in July.
However, this July's Prime Day deals included huge bargains on TVs, like a 32" Fire TV for as low as $50. "There's a real chance they are trying to get rid of excess TVs," Ramhold says.
Ramhold thinks overstock in TVs might be less due to pandemic supply chain glitches and more that people aren't replacing their sets as often. In the past, new TVs "were literally better than what came out the year before," she says.
Now the technological improvements have "kind of plateaued," and the newer models aren't as significant an improvement over older TVs. That means sets are moving more slowly, and you might be able to save big on the overstock.
"Retailers spent much of 2020 having to deal with casual clothes," Ramhold says, while office-wear sales plummeted. Now, people aren't stocking up on casual wear, so you can get bargains on clothing for summer now rather than waiting until the end of the season to score deals.
For example, Ramhold says, stores like Gap, Target, and Walmart that usually wait till Labor Day for significant markdowns have already started offering deep discounts on summer items. You could score a new swimsuit for a bargain price in time to hit the beach.
More tips for leveraging overstock to help beat inflation
"Don't assume that the overstock issues are just with the big box retailers," says Ramhold. Department stores like Macy's and JCPenney might need to unload some items.
She suggests checking your favorite retailers because you'll more easily recognize a standout deal at a store where you're familiar with their standard pricing.
And don't forget local retailers who also might have excess stock to unload. "Small businesses still need support after the pandemic," Ramhold says. "It's a good time to give them some extra love."
But, if you don't need it, a purchase is not a bargain, even at a steep discount. "Don't buy things just because they are on sale," Ramhold says, and stay within your budget.
More: Deals Overstock Inflation Shopping
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2022-07-20T17:06:28Z
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How to Cash in on Overstock Deals at Big Box Stores
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/overstock-deals-pandemic-inflation-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/overstock-deals-pandemic-inflation-2022-7
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It's 'the hungriest summer in recent history' after Washington cut off stimulus and inflation rages on
Even though employment numbers are back up, many people are worse off now because the government is no longer providing the cushion it did in 2020 and 2021.
Food banks are experiencing increased demand and long lines as inflation raises the cost of groceries.
A food bank CEO says the end of the child tax credit, pandemic unemployment benefits, and stimulus are also responsible.
Higher wages and shrinking unemployment aren't enough to outpace inflation.
Melvin Adkins' family has been using a food pantry in Kent County, Maryland, since the 77-year-old retired a few years ago.
"Food prices going up have impacted everything," Adkins told Insider."You used to be able to get a package of meat for cheap and now it costs you two dollars more, so you have to cut back."
Grocery inflation is currently at its highest point since 1979, while prices for essentials like gas and rent are also on the rise. Prices for food at home, a category that includes groceries, have risen 11.9% in May year-over-year, according to the Consumer Price Index. Milk and dairy prices have gone up even more, with meat and fish up 14.2% and eggs up 32.2% over May 2021.
Many people are joining Adkins in using their local food banks regularly. Paco Vélez, president and CEO of Feeding South Florida, told Marketplace's Samantha Fields that more people are attending his food bank than at the start of the pandemic, when many low-income households became unemployed. In early 2020, he said that the number of visitors they received more than doubled to more than 1.5 million.
"As people started getting back to work, that number started to decrease and stabilize," he said, saying that their regular number of visitors is over a million again. "But then they got hit again, this time with inflation."
Even though employment numbers are back up, many people are worse off now because the government is no longer providing the cushion it did in 2020 and 2021: namely, expanded unemployment benefits, a monthly child tax credit, and stimulus checks.
"All of that helped keep the worst of the COVID-era hunger at bay," Alison O'Toole, CEO of Second Harvest Heartland, a food bank in Minnesota, told Marketplace, adding that spiking inflation means food insecurity has increased again. "We're living through the hungriest summer in recent history."
People are getting higher wages, but it's not enough to combat rising food prices
Although wages have been rising over the past two years as workers have negotiated their way to higher salaries, only a handful of them have managed to secure paychecks that outpace record-high inflation, which hit a 40-year peak in June.
This means Americans are getting less bang for their buck — even less than they were at the beginning of the pandemic.
Americans saw high savings at the start of the pandemic, largely due to stimulus checks from the federal government. Moody's Analytics estimated that households built up an extra cash cushion totaling $2.6 trillion from the beginning of the pandemic through the end of 2021.
But the last stimulus was in March of last year, and other government fiscal aid has ceased as well.
Unemployment funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) ended last September, which the left-leaning Century Foundation estimated to impact 7.5 million workers.
And in January, Child Tax Credits payments stopped due to lack of bipartisan support for President Biden's Build Back Better Act. For six months, parents all over the US had received advanced child tax credit monthly payments of $250 to $300 per child via direct deposit. 3.7 million children slipped into poverty after the payments ended, according to a study from Columbia University researchers.
The end of those income streams — as well as historic inflation — means that people are going hungry.
"It's really impossible to get by now without some help," Tomasina John, a visitor at St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona, told the Associated Press'Anita Snow and Eugene Garcia last week. "The prices are way too high."
More: Economy food banks Groceries Inflation
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2022-07-20T18:11:29Z
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Inflation and End of Government Stimulus Creating 'Hungriest Summer'
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https://www.businessinsider.com/inflation-hunger-food-banks-ctc-child-tax-credit-stimulus-unemployment-2022-7
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Recession alarms are blaring louder than in 60 years, but it doesn't mean a downturn is a given, UBS says
A trader works at the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York, the United States, on March 9, 2022.
UBS's recession probability model shows the US economy slowing the fastest in 60 years.
Still, "it's not at all clear" the country is heading toward a recession, the bank's economists said.
The team views a recession in the next 12 months as unlikely as consumer spending holds strong.
The US economy is dramatically decelerating, but it can still avoid a recession, UBS economists said Wednesday.
The lightning-fast rebound from the COVID recession is over. Americans are starting to spend less as inflation climbs to 41-year highs. Hiring, while still strong, is slowing month by month. Forecasts for second-quarter gross domestic product suggest the economy grew at an anemic pace or even shrank again in the second quarter, burdened by supply-chain snags and waning demand.
The speed of the slowdown is "pretty spectacular," Arend Kapteyn, global head of economics and strategy research at UBS Investment Bank, said in a call with reporters. The economic data the bank tracks for its recession probability model signals the US is experiencing the fastest slowdown in 60 years. Still, "it's not at all clear" the deceleration will result in a recession, Kapteyn said.
"There's still a big buffer. We had a big slowdown, but in level terms ... we're not yet in a recessionary environment," he said.
UBS pegs the odds of a US recession in the next 12 months at 40%, Jonathan Pingle, the firm's chief US economist, later said. That's roughly in line with other banks' estimates. Wall Street generally expects the US to dodge a downturn in the next year, with major banks arguing the labor market's strength and still-healthy demand will buoy the economy as it cools down.
No recession today — but one could soon emerge
Two major risks could still plunge the country into a recession, according to UBS. Consumer spending has so far outpaced inflation even as high prices have chipped away at Americans' disposable income in recent months. That's created a "wedge" between income and spending that's "historically quite rare," Kapteyn said. Excess savings, stimulus, and pent-up demand for services built up that buffer, and it's helped counter some of the economic slowdown.
Yet that wedge "isn't necessarily going to be there forever," Kapteyn said. The bank sees the gap between income and spending shrinking over the next few quarters, and if inflation doesn't cool, that convergence could pull the country into an economic slump.
"It's a bit of a race against the clock," Kapteyn said. "If inflation comes down, real disposable income goes back into positive territory and then consumption stays positive and you don't have a recession. Conversely, if inflation doesn't come down quickly, then consumption could converge on negative real income growth and then you have a consumer-led recession."
Should a consumer-led downturn emerge, it should still make for a "relatively mild recession" akin to the downturn in 2001, with two quarters of economic contraction and a two-percentage-point uptick in unemployment, Pingle said.
The worse of the two downturn scenarios would emerge if prices keep surging and the Federal Reserve has to ramp up its fight against inflation. The Fed raised interest rates at three times its typical pace in June, aiming to ease demand and put downward pressure on inflation. Yet the latest report showed price growth accelerating again last month.
If the Fed has to tighten policy even faster, the US will likely slide into a longer and deeper downturn, Pingle said. UBS expects a Fed-led recession to last about one year and look more like the downturn of the early 1990s.
The more severe scenario would yield a more harmful recession, but relief on the inflation front would likely come fast. When simulating how a downturn would play out, the bank sees job loss and slack in the economy reversing much of the goods demand that's powered inflation higher. The immediate shock would be disinflationary, and once the economy recovers, it will probably find itself in a much more sustainable inflationary environment than it boasts today, Pingle said.
"Even though inflation might be starting from a high level ... you do see the impact on nominal wage growth and prices relatively quickly once employment starts declining," he added.
More: Economy Recessions Recession recession forecast
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2022-07-20T18:11:47Z
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Recession Alarms Loudest in 60 Years, but Downturn Isn't Certain: UBS
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https://www.businessinsider.com/recession-forecast-inflation-outlook-ubs-economists-price-growth-consumer-spending-2022-7
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Natalie Musumeci and John Haltiwanger
Russian President Vladimir Putin's top diplomat said the Kremlin's geographical war goals in Ukraine have changed.
"Now the geography is different," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Russian state media.
The White House has warned that Moscow is planning to annex more territory in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's top diplomat said the Kremlin's geographical war goals in Ukraine have changed as the White House warned that Moscow is planning to annex more territory in the eastern European country.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Russian state media published on Wednesday that Moscow's military mission goes beyond Ukraine's eastern Donbas region where heavy fighting has been occuring amid Putin's five-month-long war with Ukraine.
"Now the geography is different," Lavrov told Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti and the state-owned RT television network.
"This is far from being only the DPR [Donetsk People's Republic] and LPR [Luhansk People's Republic]," Lavrov said, adding, "It is also the Kherson region, the Zaporizhzhia region and a number of other territories."
Lavrov described Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an ongoing "process" that "continues consistently and persistently."
He told Russian state media that if Western countries continue to supply Ukraine with long-range weapons like the American High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), the Kremlin will push its military goals in the country even further.
Lavrov said Russia cannot allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "or who will replace him to have weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of those republics that have declared their independence, those who want their future decide for yourself," according to RIA Novosti.
Russian forces switched their focus to Ukraine's Donbas — made up of the separatist Luhansk and Donetsk regions — after they failed to capture Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv early on in Russia's unprovoked invasion. By early July, Russia had control of Luhansk.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday that Russia is "laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls, in direct violation of Ukraine's sovereignty."
"We're seeing ample evidence in the intelligence and in the public domain that Russia intends to try to annex additional Ukrainian territory," Kirby said during a White House press briefing.
Kirby explained that Russia is "beginning to roll out a version of what you could call an 'annexation playbook,' " similar to when Putin invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Russia is already "installing illegitimate proxy officials" in the areas of Ukraine under its control who will orchestrate "sham referenda" to provide justification for the annexation of Ukraine's territory, Kirby said.
In an interview with Insider last week, top Russia expert Fiona Hill emphasized that Putin's overall goals in Ukraine have not changed — even if the war has morphed into a more grinding, prolonged conflict than he anticipated. "Putin wants to find a way of subjugating Ukraine one way or another," Hill said.
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2022-07-20T18:12:05Z
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Russia's Top Diplomat Says the 'Geography' of Ukraine Has Changed
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https://www.businessinsider.com/russias-top-diplomat-says-the-geography-of-ukraine-has-changed-2022-7
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Sen. Susan Collins talks with reporters following the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon at the US Capitol on June 14, 2022.
A bipartisan group of senators has unveiled a plan to stop Trump-style sabotage in 2024.
The bills would clarify and modernize centuries-old laws governing presidential elections.
Here's what the senators' proposals would do.
A group of senators has unveiled a long-awaited bipartisan plan to prevent a future Trump-style coup attempt in 2024.
The bipartisan group, led by GOP Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, released summaries of two bills on Wednesday that would shore up the laws governing presidential elections to safeguard American democracy against efforts to overturn presidential elections.
The senators proposed some 21st-century upgrades to the Electoral Count of 1887, the once-obscure 19th-century law governing the process of counting Electoral College votes in a joint session of Congress. While the law has held up decently well since then, scholars have long criticized the ECA's language as vague and contradictory, saying it opens the door to partisan exploitation.
That law — and the entire process governing presidential elections and transitions — came into sharp focus during President Donald Trump's election sabotage efforts leading up to and on January 6, 2021. These attempts are now the subject of the House January 6 committee's hearings.
After failing to overturn his election loss at the state level, Trump and his allies marshaled hundreds of members of Congress to object to counting slates of electoral votes for President Joe Biden at the January 6 joint session. Trump and legal scholar John Eastman also aggressively pressured Vice President Mike Pence to disregard the ECA and unilaterally "send back" slates of Biden electors.
Pence refused to do so, and Biden was eventually affirmed as the winner. But the tumultuous two months between the election and January 6 revealed numerous vulnerabilities in a system ripe for exploitation. The group of senators is endeavoring to address these weaknesses before the next presidential election.
Here's how the two bills would make a coup much harder:
The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act:
Makes clear that the vice president's role is ministerial: The ECA, as is, doesn't give the vice president power to singularly reject presidential electors or "send back" slates to state legislatures, as Trump and Eastman suggested. The Senate bill goes further by clearing up the ECA's antiquated and vague language to clarify that the vice president's role overseeing the count is only ceremonial.
Raises the threshold for objections to electoral votes: Currently, it takes just one House member and one senator to object to counting a state's slate of electors, which triggers two hours of debate per objection. The hours that Congress spent debating objections to Arizona and Pennsylvania's electors gave rioters more time to mount their siege on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The senators' proposal would require 20% of the House and Senate to raise an objection and trigger debate.
Gets rid of a "failed election" loophole: The legislation eliminates an antiquated provision of federal law that allows state legislatures to appoint presidential electors if a state "fails" to make a choice on Election Day. Experts say the provision was intended to accommodate states who held runoffs for presidential elections, but the meaning of a "failed" election has never been tested in court and could be abused in the future.
Thwarts fake slates of "alternate" electors: In seven states that voted for Biden, groups of Trump supporters, including many state and local GOP officials, designated themselves alternate electors for Trump. Those fake slates of electors held no legal weight whatsoever in the election process. But the senators' bill would designate the state's governor as the sole official responsible for submitting a certificate of electors (unless otherwise specified), to make it even harder for losing candidates' supporters to submit falsified electoral slates.
Updates the Presidential Transition Act of 1963: The bill tweaks the 1960s-era law to allow multiple candidates to access funds and resources for their presidential transition in case of a contested or disputed election. The 9/11 Commission report found that the protracted election dispute between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 delayed the transition and left the US' national security apparatus less prepared.
The Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act:
Enhances criminal penalties for threatening election workers: The legislation doubles the federal punishment for threatening election workers, poll watchers, and political candidates from a maximum of one to a maximum of two years in prison.
Addresses mail voting: The bill tasks the US Postal Service with cultivating new standards for handling mail-in ballots. Mail voting has become an increasingly popular way for voters to cast their ballots over the last several years, and the practice skyrocketed in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reauthorizes the EAC: The bill formally reauthorizes the Election Assistance Commission and orders the agency to include cybersecurity testing in its certification of voting systems.
Protects election records: The bill reiterates that electronic election records must be properly preserved, and beefs up criminal penalties for destroying or tampering with voting systems and electronic election records.
Collins is hopeful that both pieces of legislation will earn 60 votes in the Senate, which is also preoccupied with judicial nominations and a bipartisan semiconductor competitiveness bill. From there, the legislation will go the House of Representatives.
More: Congress Senate 2024 election
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2022-07-20T18:12:11Z
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What's in Senate Plan to Stop 2024 Trump Election Sabotage, Coup Attempt
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https://www.businessinsider.com/whats-senate-plan-stop-2024-trump-election-sabotage-coup-attempt-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/whats-senate-plan-stop-2024-trump-election-sabotage-coup-attempt-2022-7
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Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge, which just halted withdrawals in a crypto-exposed fund, is set to launch a venture fund investing in Web3 and cryptocurrency startups
SkyBridge Capital is set to roll out a Web3 venture-capital fund.
The firm plans to market the fund at its annual Salt conference on September 12.
Earlier this week, SkyBridge's Legion Strategies fund suspended client redemptions.
Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital is set to roll out a fund investing in Web3 and cryptocurrency startups in September, according to people familiar with the firm's plans.
The plans come as Scaramucci, who is famous for his 11-day stint as President Donald Trump's communications director, is facing investor withdrawals from some of his funds after losses due to sharp declines in stocks and cryptocurrencies.
SkyBridge's new traditional venture/growth equity style fund will invest in privately held Web3 fintechs and in growth and late-stage crypto companies, sources told Insider. The fund, which the firm is planning to announce at its annual Salt conference on September 12, will be open to accredited investors.
Sources familiar with Scaramucci's plans said SkyBridge wanted to be at the forefront of decentralized finance and sees opportunities in companies that are trading at attractive discounts on the secondary market, as well as companies that are continuing to raise primary rounds.
SkyBridge has pivoted heavily into crypto from its traditional hedge fund of funds business. Since January 2021, SkyBridge-managed funds have invested approximately $425 million in 12 private companies, including $275 million in nine crypto companies such as FTX, a source familiar said.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported SkyBridge's $250 million Legion Strategies fund suspended client redemptions on the grounds that 20% of its holdings were in privately held companies. Legion also had exposure to digital assets through other funds managed by SkyBridge, including vehicles focused on bitcoin, ethereum, and algorand, according to regulatory filings. The fund is down 30% year to date, Scaramucci told CNBC Tuesday.
One person familiar with Scaramucci's plans told Insider that SkyBridge expected some of these private bids to go public this year but that the downturn in the market had slowed initial public offerings. Once the portfolio begins to have more liquidity, the firm will let investors out, this person added.
SkyBridge's flagship fund, the Multi-Adviser Hedge Fund Portfolios, is also experiencing redemptions. Scaramucci told The New York Times' DealBook that investors were looking to withdraw as much as $890 million from the fund, which had $2 billion at the end of March. The fund is up roughly 6% for the month of July, according to a person familiar with the fund's performance.
Despite the redemptions, Scaramucci is still bullish on crypto.
"I am not smart enough to time the market," he told DealBook. "But we've done a tremendous amount of research and we think anyone who has will see that blockchain technology is good and is the future."
More: Hedge Funds Skybridge Capital Cryptos
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2022-07-20T19:42:29Z
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Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Set to Roll Out Web3 Venture-Capital Fund
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https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-scaramucci-skybridge-crypto-web3-venture-capital-fund-2022-7
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An air traveler looks at Ryanair aircraft as it lands at Edinburgh Airport.
Passengers are struggling to collect baggage at an outdoor facility at Edinburgh Airport, BBC News reported.
Many had to wait hours in sweltering heat, as temperatures reached a record-breaking 104 degrees on Tuesday.
The airport recently suspended its customer service hotline to protect staffers from verbal abuse.
Passengers at Edinburgh Airport waited outside for hours in sweltering heat on Tuesday to pick up their luggage, as temperatures reached record highs in the UK.
According to BBC News, travelers were given the option to either endure a long wait, or come back at a later time to collect their bags from a temporary outdoor facility set up by Swissport, one of three international cargo handlers serving the airport.
However, the outdoor space — which was intended to help alleviate growing international luggage backlogs — quickly descended into chaos.
One passenger recalled the scene as a "free for all," in which "hundreds" of people were searching aimlessly for their bags.
"Nobody helped us find our luggage we just had to rummage around," the passenger told the BBC.
—Stevie (@orionv75) July 19, 2022
Edinburgh is one of many international airports struggling against extensive luggage backlogs brought on by high demand for travel and ongoing global labor shortages. According to a recent study from insurer Mapfre SA, lost-baggage claims increased 30% this summer compared to 2019.
On Tuesday, as frustrated travelers searched for their bags outside, it was reportedly 104.2 degrees — the highest temperature on record in a region not accustomed to extreme heat.
"People here are not really trained to deal with the heat as somebody from a southern country would," George Havenith, professor of environmental physiology and ergonomics of Loughborough University, told Insider earlier this week.
The incident also comes after the Edinburgh Airport suspended its customer service helpline Monday because of verbal abuse from frustrated travelers, and after reports that Swissport was storing hundreds of unclaimed bags at the airport.
—Luke McDonnell (@Luke_mc89) July 16, 2022
A representative for Edinburgh Airport said luggage is managed by the airlines and cargo handlers, and directed Insider to Swissport for comment.
In a statement shared with Insider, a Swissport spokesperson said it is is collaborating with its partners "to reunite passengers with their baggage as soon as possible."
"We would like to sincerely apologize to the passengers who were not able to collect their baggage at our Edinburgh Airport holding area," the spokesperson said. "Challenging conditions at this peak travel period led to a delay transferring the baggage from the airport terminal and this was not properly communicated."
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2022-07-20T19:42:42Z
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Edinburgh Airport Travelers Wait for Luggage Hours Outside in Heatwave
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https://www.businessinsider.com/edinburgh-airport-travelers-waited-luggage-hours-heatwave-2022-7
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A 25-year-old earns $30,000 a month from his Shopify apps. Here's how he built his business.
Mat De Sousa is the founder of two Shopify apps, WideBundle and WideReview.
Mat De Sousa
Mat De Sousa's two Shopify apps generate nearly $30,000 in net revenue a month.
He shares his insights about building Shopify apps with a growing audience of developers.
De Sousa said the community's helpfulness was his favorite part about Shopify.
Mat De Sousa, an entrepreneur in France, runs two Shopify apps, WideBundle and WideReview, that together generate nearly $30,000 in net revenue a month. Now that he's found success, he shares his business tips in his newsletter and in tweet threads that get shared widely among the e-commerce-software community.
But De Sousa's Shopify-app career was not an overnight success.
He had to kill his first three app attempts, one of which he was forced to shut down when Shopify stopped allowing for custom tech solutions at checkout, he told Insider. In 2017, he even became convinced that building Shopify apps wasn't for him and started working on more traditional software.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit three years later, he realized how much he had learned about coding in his time away from the Shopify App Store, he said. He decided to launch apps that would help merchants grow their sales, but he also wanted to help other developers stand out among the more than 7,000 available Shopify apps, while building a community around the process of creating third-party apps.
De Sousa launched the product-bundling app WideBundle and the customer-reviews app WideReview in 2020. Both continue to grow, he said. WideBundle allows merchants to offer products at various discounts depending on the amount of items a customer is buying. WideReview gives merchants the ability to display customer reviews more prominently on product-listing pages. Both operate on a monthly subscription model, with WideBundle costing $20 a month and WideReview costing $10.
WideBundle has about 2,500 users, while WideReview has about 250, De Sousa said.
He hired two developers to work on WideReview but still does the development work for WideBundle. He also hired a customer-support representative and someone to work on marketing.
These days, he shares his best tips for launching apps on the Shopify App Store with a growing audience on Twitter. He also has a newsletter with about 600 subscribers.
"What I always say today is just that I want to be the guy I wanted to meet when I started," De Sousa said.
I've built 5 Shopify Apps. And it makes me $340K+ per year.
So if you're interested in Shopify Apps
Here is my perfect process for launching a new app 🧵👇
— Mat De Sousa (@DsMatie) July 11, 2022
On a website he recently built just for this purpose, he shares dozens of tips, including: "Make changes to the images you use on your listing and see how it impacts your conversion rate," and, "Create a clear and good onboarding. Shopify App users usually install many apps, so they don't have time to figure out how your app works."
But one of his biggest pieces of advice is to make sure your app idea is uniquely suited to fit a very specific merchant problem.
De Sousa said he did that by engaging with merchants in Facebook communities, in Slack channels Shopify hosts for its partners, and at live e-commerce events.
"At some point, you will realize that they want something that doesn't exist, or it doesn't exist exactly the way they want," he said. "You might find, like, two, three, four people having the same problem, and so that's when you know that there is something you can build."
De Sousa runs a website that displays tips for running a Shopify app.
myapp.tips
"After you've built a very basic version of the app, keep engaging with the people whose problems you were trying to solve with it," De Sousa said.
He added that app developers should ask early users to make suggestions for how to improve it and to put them in touch with others who might be interested in trying it.
'Everyone was helping each other'
De Sousa is one of many entrepreneurs looking to build a community around the process of creating third-party apps for use by Shopify merchants. Others, like Dennis Hegstad and Gil Greenberg, have attracted followers by building their businesses out in the open and tweeting their takeaways while they do it.
⚡️Here's a quick demo of a "true" one-click upsell in Shopify's checkout using @CheckoutBlocks checkout extensions.
It detects if there's a more expensive variant and offers the customer to upgrade. Add a discount and 🚀
Can't wait to share more soon! pic.twitter.com/aQaTbM8muH
— gil greenberg (🛒,🗽) (@gilgNYC) July 19, 2022
momentum only stops when you stop being consistent
consistency is one of the most crucial parts of hitting your goal(s)
— dennis hegstad (@dennishegstad) July 17, 2022
That openness is part of what drew De Sousa back to Shopify, he said.
"Everyone was helping each other. Everyone wanted to build a business," De Sousa said. "That was the first time I met people like this because usually I was alone in my room, doing my stuff, trying to make money with it, trying to build a business and everything, but I didn't find a community that was that engaged, that wanted to help each other."
Getting its third-party developers excited about building for its platform is a key strategy for Shopify. Many times throughout its history, the company has referred to its mission as "arming the rebels" against Amazon's empire.
And the opportunities are huge for developers — Shopify has more than 1.75 million merchants using its platform, and the average merchant uses six apps to run their online store, the company previously told Insider. The better tools there are for merchants, the more sales merchants can convert and the better that Shopify does overall.
A recent thread by De Sousa was even retweeted by Shopify's cofounder and CEO, Tobi Lütke, earlier this month.
"Having your work valued and highlighted by the founder of Shopify," he said, "was an honor."
More: Shopify Apps Shopify App Store
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2022-07-20T19:43:36Z
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Shopify App Developer Shares Advice for Building App Business
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2022 was supposed to be the year social shopping took off in the US but results have been mixed. Here's what Instagram, YouTube, and other major platforms have done to woo influencers and brands.
Marta Biino, Sydney Bradley, Amanda Perelli, Dan Whateley, and Lindsay Rittenhouse
Platforms are ramping up their social shopping features.
TikTok; YouTube; Meta; Amazon; Getty/Insider
In late 2021, industry insiders predicted that 2022 would be the year of social shopping in the US.
Social media platforms launched a number of new shopping features for creators and brands.
But over halfway through the year, platforms have had mixed reactions to their efforts.
2022 was supposed to be the year of social shopping in the US.
Platforms from Instagram to Pinterest revamped and added features like in-app storefronts, native affiliate-marketing tools, and live-shopping tech in the hope of becoming America's new shopping malls. Some industry insiders predicted these bets would pay off, with eMarketer forecasting 24.9% year-over-year growth in US social commerce, bringing the market from $36.6 billion to $45.7 billion.
But over halfway through the year, platforms have had mixed reactions from creators, marketers, and consumers.
Some influencers testing Amazon's live-shopping feature — several of whom are ditching it altogether — said they struggled to find an audience on the platform. Advertisers on TikTok and YouTube told Insider that shopping tools have yet to convert into meaningful sales. And TikTok's experiment with shopping in the UK fell apart earlier this year after the company reportedly set unrealistic sales targets, raising into question whether it will be able to pull off ecommerce in the US, according to a June Financial Times report.
But the problem may go beyond any platform and features — creators and consumers in the US may just not be ready for social shopping.
"Consumers are not thinking, 'I will go on TikTok in order to make a social commerce purchase,'" Ian Whittaker, managing director of the media consultancy Liberty Sky Advisors, said.
While 45% of consumers say social media influences their shopping, only 11% have purchased directly through social media, according to a May 2022 McKinsey report.
"The industry is trying to run before it can walk," said Sarah Penny, content and research director at influencer-marketing platform Influencer Intelligence. "It's still quite alien to a lot of audiences."
US tech platforms want to replicate social shopping success in Asia
The concept of using social media to shop isn't new.
For years, upstarts such as LTK (formerly RewardStyle) and MagicLinks have been in the social-shopping game, primarily through affiliate programs that pay creators commissions based on the sales that they drive via posts on social media.
More recently, platforms like Instagram and TikTok have made moves to own the shopping process by adding integrated checkout functions, product tagging, and other ecommerce tools.
They are all hoping to replicate the success of tech companies in China and Southeast Asia, where social shopping accounted for nearly half of the $109 billion ecommerce market in 2020, and to poach business from startups in the space.
Getting a cut of ecommerce sales could also be key for companies like Meta Platforms whose ad businesses have taken hits in the wake of Apple iOS privacy changes.
Social platforms are hungry for shoppers, but US consumers aren't showing up yet
While social shopping is still in its infancy in the US and consumer appetite could shift in the coming years, platforms face a series of headwinds as they look to bring in-app purchases into the mainstream, experts told Insider.
One reason is the technology, itself, which is different in Asia and in the US. Chinese consumers are used to single apps like WeChat, sometimes referred to as "super apps," that allow users to perform a variety of tasks like sending messages, ordering food, and hailing cars.
Execs at companies like Snapchat-maker Snap Inc. have expressed interest in building super apps, and Instagram's former director of product for Instagram Shopping told Insider in November 2021 that the company wanted to build "an ecosystem, versus a feature."
But US tech companies have yet to build a super app, which may be holding them back in social shopping.
"Consumers in Western markets, when they want to buy something, they think about specialized sites," Whittaker said. "In places like Russia and China, they're more accustomed to actually buying all their needs through one particular social site."
US consumers' willingness to hand over payment information to big tech platforms, some of which have faltered in protecting user data in the past, could be another hurdle.
"There's still lots of people who don't want their credit cards stored online in multiple places," marketing strategist Sonia Elyss said.
Plus, the growth of ecommerce in the US during the height of the pandemic created unrealistic expectations for social shopping.
According to the McKinsey report, in-store shopping saw 8% year-over-year growth in March 2022, compared with approximately 5% in early 2021. Meanwhile, ecommerce growth has fallen since the height of the pandemic.
"Not as many people are going to be flooding to shop [online] as we may have wanted when we were mid-pandemic and seeing how many people were shopping from home," Elyss said. "Now we're just in a completely different economic climate, and I think that's what has slowed the development of this a lot."
Advertisers, for their part, are waiting for more widespread adoption before they buy into the trend. Some pointed to the fact that the majority of the social shopping tools have only recently launched or are still being built or tested.
This is true of most platforms, like YouTube, where certain existing shopping features are only available to a closed group of creators, and TikTok, which is testing a dedicated "Shop" tab in select markets, but not the US.
Those advertisers who have tested social shopping tools said they haven't been able to prove the tools are driving sales yet, making them hesitant to spend more money there.
For creators, the integration of social shopping tools is helpful, but some are worried that the increased focus on shopping will alienate their audiences.
Anna Crollman, a creator and blogger, said that there is a frustration that comes with creators being perceived as sellers.
"You are constantly recommending, you are constantly saying 'Buy, buy, buy,'" she said. "Sometimes I don't want there to be a link, I don't want people to buy something, I just want you to feel good and get a resource."
Insider spoke to 25 marketers, brands, and creators to hear their thoughts on social shopping.
Here is what features platforms have introduced in 2022, and how industry insiders are reacting. The platforms are listed in alphabetical order.
Amazon is paying influencers to go live, but some are struggling to find an audience
Gracey Ryback, an Amazon influencer, holds several livestreams a week marketing Amazon products.
Amazon was one of the first platforms to embrace live shopping: In 2019, the ecommerce powerhouse launched a live-streaming tool, Amazon Live.
Those who use this capability earn between 1% and 10% of sales driven with links shared during their Lives, and some creators also work with brands on sponsored Lives.
Since 2020, the ecommerce giant has been recruiting popular TikTok and YouTube creators to use the live-shopping feature by offering additional payments — on top of standard commission rates — to creators who post live-shopping videos. The rates ranged from $2,000 to $9,000 per month, according to emails viewed by Insider.
But Amazon Live has struggled to win over some influencers, who say it's hard to build an audience on the platform, despite promoting their Lives on Instagram and other platforms. Most of the influencers Insider spoke with said they didn't find success in viewership or sales.
Aside from Amazon Live, the company also runs a program called Creator Ads that allows influencers to appear on shoppable Amazon ads across social platforms. The creators earn a commission every time someone buys something from those ads.
Kolin Klevano, SVP of addressable media at Tinuiti, said if any platform has the makings to succeed in social commerce it's Amazon because the company has made its features easy for brands to use and consumers to shop through.
"Amazon is wildly successful because they nailed the logistics," Klevano said. "They made it easy for brands to set up shop and frictionless for the consumers to use."
While influencers agree that Amazon's shopping features are easy to use, some said they did not like spending their time simply selling products — which points to the bigger problems that social and live shopping face in the US.
"I didn't like that it was basically just me selling stuff," one creator, who gave up using the feature after one month, told Insider.
While Facebook was early to live shopping, it's been slower to embrace creators
Facebook launched "Live Shopping Fridays" in 2021.
Like many platforms, Facebook has its own live-shopping feature — and it's been around since 2018.
That year, Facebook began testing a live-shopping tool that let small businesses and shop owners sell products, according to TechCrunch. In 2021, the platform expanded its live-shopping tool to content creators within the "Marketplace" section of the Facebook platform.
Today the live-shopping feed mostly comprises small boutiques and nano influencers promoting products like jewelry and clothing, per an Insider review of "Popular Live Shopping Videos" on Facebook.
Creators who want to start selling and advertising their own products on Instagram also have to use Facebook and make a Facebook Business page.
Contrary to what some advertisers have found with other forms of social commerce, Enda Conway, head of connections strategy at ad agency BBDO, has seen some of his clients' efforts using Meta's social shopping tools drive actual sales.
"It is totally dependent on the client and item we are trying to sell," said Conway, declining to talk about specific clients. "Meta's products have given us huge success when delivering dynamic catalog assets. … These tools allow us to marry some of our main strengths — creative, strategy and marketing science — to deliver on social commerce at scale."
Instagram is testing its own affiliate program, but it's competing with top startups
Shopping on Instagram is closely tied to the rise of influencers on the Meta-owned platform.
Instagram took its first leap into social shopping in April 2019 with "Shopping from Creators." The program, which featured famous fashion and lifestyle influencers such as Aimee Song, Camila Coehlo, and even a few Kardashians, let creators tag products in Instagram posts. Those products could be purchased through Instagram — though creators did not automatically earn a commission.
Since then, Instagram's dive into shopping has gone in many directions, from shoppable livestreams to a native affiliate-marketing program.
Instagram began testing its own affiliate tools in June 2021. These allow creators to earn commissions by tagging products in in-feed photo posts, Stories, livestreams, and Reels. Creators can also curate "collections'' of products. The affiliate program is still in testing and is invite-only.
Bethany Everett-Ratcliffe, a creator who has been in the program since it began testing, uses the features regularly. She keeps a stories Highlight on her Instagram account titled "Tap to Shop" where followers can tap through her past stories to find out what she is wearing.
Influencer Tiffany Battle recently started to test out Instagram's shopping tools.
"Not all brands are represented there, so it's not as robust as, say, a RewardStyle," said Battle, referring to the firm now known as LTK. "But I see the benefit in it and similar to live shopping, as you're talking about something, someone can get it right then."
Although some features are just tests, two social-shopping features are globally available. Link stickers in Instagram Stories were rolled out in October, and in March, Instagram expanded the ability to tag products in posts.
Adding links in stories is a "game changer," said Jessa Reus, VP of marketing at affiliate-platform ShopStyle Collective. "That allows micro influencers to start driving revenue and driving sales through the platform."
The problem for Instagram is that those links are often not platform native — instead, influencers use links from affiliate platforms like ShopStyle, LTK, or MagicLinks.
Plus, getting everyday users and creators to start tagging products — without the option to make money via commission — is another tough sell.
Pinterest is investing heavily in live shopping with Pinterest TV
Pinterest Seasonal Shopping Spotlight
Pinterest describes itself as the platform where people come to "turn inspiration and ideas into realization" — with shopping being one expression of that "realization," Chief Content Officer Malik Ducard told Insider.
The platform has been focusing on shopping for the past four years and slowly integrating features.
In 2021, it rolled out product tagging in posts, allowing creators with a business profile to tag products and link to external websites where users could make purchases. Pinterest does not have a native affiliate program in place, so creators only earn commissions if they have affiliation with the website they link.
In 2022, the platform introduced several new features, like AR capabilities for selling home decor and an integrated checkout beta test for select Shopify merchants. It also acquired AI shopping service The Yes, which creates tailored product recommendations to users based on their shopping habits.
The platform has also invested in live shopping with Pinterest TV, which features daily, shoppable, live events produced in-house by Pinterest and hosted by creators. During the events, creators can activate a shopping toolbox, which allows them to display products on the screen, conduct product drops, and offer limited-time discounts.
This feature, which launched at the end of 2021, is currently being tested in beta, and only select creators in the US have access to it. Creators are not currently being paid to host shows.
Sarah Burk, a social media manager and content strategist who focuses on Pinterest marketing, told Insider that the platform is so focused on shopping that she worries it might alienate users and businesses who currently use it for non-shopping purposes.
Snapchat is leaning into its own area of expertise: AR
Snapchat announced on Monday it plans on introducing mid-roll ads in select Snap Stars' public stories.
Snapchat's social-shopping efforts have focused on augmented reality, employing the technology to allow users to virtually try on clothes from brands like Puma, Gucci, and Balenciaga.
"We believe that helping people find the right size and improving the try-on experience could both increase conversion rates for purchases as well as reduce the rate of returns for online shopping," CEO Evan Spiegel said in a 2021 earnings call.
In 2022, the company has focused on improving the AR-shopping experience by introducing a dedicated in-app hub called Dress Up, where users can virtually try on clothes from different brands and retailers can integrate their shopping websites.
Another feature called Screenshop allows users to find similar products using screenshots of looks they have saved in their camera roll.
"At Snap, we're building our AR technology not only to improve the Snapchatter experience, but to empower our community to explore immersive opportunities, like shopping," Carolina Arguelles Navas, Snapchat's global AR product strategy and product marketing lead, told Insider in a written statement.
According to Snapchat, about 250 million users have tried on products 5 billion times using the app's AR shopping experience.
This is in line with advertisers' desires for platforms to improve their AR and VR features. Tinuiti's Klevano said Snap has been leading efforts on that front. He said he'd like to see its features developed even further to, for example, allow consumers to see how a furniture item like a chair would look in their living room.
"I would love to see that more prominently," Klevano said.
BBDO's Conway also said he's started seeing Snap's social shopping tools driving sales for clients.
TikTok is trying to replicate the success of its sister app in China
TikTok's sister app Douyin has seen widespread adoption of its live-shopping features.
VCG/VCG via Getty Images.
TikTok announced its entry into social shopping during a splashy marketing event in September.
The company said it was releasing in-video product links for merchants and livestream shopping features for brands, and that it was working with a slew of ecommerce platforms like Square and Shopify to help sellers connect their product catalogs to its app.
Its push into social shopping was predictable. Live shopping has been a boon for TikTok's sister app Douyin in China, and features that are successful on Douyin often end up on TikTok next.
But the company's attempts at launching live shopping in the UK and Europe have faltered, according to a June investigation by the Financial Times. Experts told Insider that customers in western countries aren't used to going to livestreams to shop.
"We've definitely had a change with the pandemic," said media analyst Ian Whittaker. "There's definitely been a step up in terms of ecommerce. People looked at new ways of purchasing. But most consumers tend to purchase in quite a traditional way."
Carly Carson, head of social for digital marketing agency PMG, said TikTok slowing down its live shopping expansion signals that there will be challenges getting brands on board. She said most brands, who are typically risk-averse, view live shopping as a risky buy, because there's no set of best practices or widespread consumer adoption. But she's still optimistic about the potential of live shopping, saying it will be up to creators to make that conversion.
"There will be a place for live shopping in a brands' social commerce toolbox," Carson said. "I predict that influencers and publishers will be the key to getting brands on board by taking advantage."
Jess Crow, an artist, woodworker, and content creator who has tested out TikTok's live-shopping and in-video product link tools, said she's struggled to get direct sales via the app.
"People might click and take a look, but then they circle back to my website or my home base to do the actual purchase of the items," Crow said. "People have been reluctant overall to enter information, especially purchasing information, through TikTok."
Still, TikTok, along with Instagram, remain important marketing tools for her business.
"Whether they click through or not, it does help you get your brand awareness out there," she said. "I would really encourage creators, if they do have the opportunity, to utilize tools that these companies are putting forward. They really should at least give it a try. Maybe they will find that magic button that works for them and their audience."
Adam Sulton, president and cofounder of creator content studio Fallen Media, said he's tested live shopping and similarly found that the feature is good for building brand awareness. But what brands want is to see their efforts result in sales increases.
"I don't see them driving sales," Sulton said. "We tell brands that we can't promise convergence."
YouTube believes shopping is "a huge opportunity" for creators — but it has kept its shopping program small
You’ve got two ways to add chapters to a YouTube video.
YouTube made shopping one of its central focuses for 2022, tapping managing director Bridget Dolan and VP of product management David Katz to lead its social-shopping push last year.
"Shopping is a huge opportunity for YouTube and for creators," Katz previously told Insider.
A YouTube Shopping beta program launched in 2021.
For now, only about 1,000 creators and 20 brands are part of the program, Katz said in April. The effort is focused on video-on-demand, with livestreaming and Shoppable Shorts as areas of potential expansion.
Two creators with access to the beta program told Insider that they are able to tag products within a YouTube video, which viewers can shop from. While they do not get affiliate commissions, they said YouTube pays them a monthly fee for using the feature.
For the time being, placing a link in video descriptions is still how most creators are driving sales, influencer manager Erin Cutler from Neon Rose agency told Insider in an email.
In May, the company announced that advertisers would be able to make their ads on YouTube Shorts more shoppable, and in mid-July, the company released a new feature allowing creators to link their Shopify stores to their YouTube channels.
Advertising consultancy R3, which advises marketers on where to spend money, said YouTube Live is the leading platform in North America and Europe for live shopping because of its user adoption. The firm said, based on its own research on non-gaming content, that 45% of US livestream viewers aged 18 to 34 used YouTube Live.
While R3 advises its brands to use products like product tags, Super Chats, and the Merchandise Shelf, the firm said that viewers are rarely making purchases.
More: Features Advertising social shopping
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2022-07-20T19:43:48Z
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What Brands, Creators Think of Instagram, YouTube Social Shopping Push
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https://www.businessinsider.com/what-brands-creators-think-of-instagram-youtube-social-shopping-push-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/what-brands-creators-think-of-instagram-youtube-social-shopping-push-2022-7
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T Turovska/Getty Images
BA.4 and BA.5 infections in children can look different than adults.
Gastrointestinal issues like diarrhea and vomiting can be a tell-tale sign of infection, especially in younger kids.
But fevers and sore throats are still the most common COVID symptoms, overall.
The most telling symptoms of a COVID-19 infection with variants BA.4 and BA.5 may not always look the same in young kids as they do in adults.
With the two Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 now responsible for an estimated 90% of US cases, it's safe to assume if your child has COVID, it is probably one of these highly infectious versions of the virus.
Dr. Julianne Burns, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford Children's Health in California, says that symptoms of COVID this summer haven't differed too much from what she saw with Omicron in the winter and spring.
"We've seen less loss of taste and smell," she told Insider. Instead, both kids and adults have been experiencing "cold symptoms, like sore throat, runny nose, cough," fatigue, fever, headaches, and body aches, she said.
But one major difference between kids and adults that Burns has noticed lately is that kids are experiencing more stomach issues with COVID than adults do — and sometimes these are the only tell-tale signs that youngsters are infected at all.
"Gastrointestinal symptoms can be more common in children," she noted. This is especially true in younger kids, who may have tummy issues as their most prominent COVID symptoms.
Gastrointestinal issues kids may experience with COVID include:
and loss of appetite
Still, the most common COVID symptoms kids experience, overall, are quite similar to those of adults, and include:
and runny nose
Avoid people with common cold symptoms, experts say
Tim Spector, who runs the highly regarded Zoe COVID study in the UK, has been seeing the same trends as Burns has lately in data he collects on the most common COVID symptoms. These symptoms are reported by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages across the UK, via their smartphones:
Data current as of July 14, 2022.
Because some of the top COVID symptoms right now look a lot like a common cold, Spector suggests you "make sure you're in a well-ventilated place — don't go near anyone with cold-like symptoms, please," and wear a well-fitted mask when in public indoors to avoid catching and spreading the virus this summer.
NOW WATCH: What coronavirus symptoms look like, day by day
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Kids BA.5 Omicron Symptoms: Diarrhea, Upset Stomach
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https://www.businessinsider.com/kids-ba5-omicron-symptoms-diarrhea-upset-stomach-2022-7
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A McDonald's and a Dairy Queen in Missouri are trading insults on their restaurant signs, and now other local businesses are joining in on the beef
A McDonald's and Dairy Queen in Marshfield, Missouri, have started a sign war with each other.
The DQ said it was a "shocker" the McDonald's ice cream machine worked, and the McD's called the rival "salty like our world famous fries."
Other local businesses, including a Wendy's, a Mexican restaurant, and a fruit stand, have joined in too.
There's some beef between a McDonald's and a Dairy Queen in Marshfield, Missouri, and it's not just in their burgers.
The local fast food joints have been trading barbs with the help of their giant restaurant signs.
It all began when the McDonald's location used its sign to say, "Hey DQ! Wanna have a sign war?"
The Dairy Queen responded, "We wld but we're 2 busy makin ice cream."
McDonald's clapped back, "That's cute. Our ice cream makes itself."
DQ took a jab at McDonald's ice cream machines, infamous for often being broken, replying, "You mean it actually works, shocker."
In turn, McDonald's followed with, "Wow, salty like our world famous fries."
DQ delivered another zinger, taking aim at the McDonald's mascot:
The store also went after McDonald's for its beef:
But the McDonald's and Dairy Queen aren't the only Marshfield businesses jokingly going after each other.
The Marshfield Area Chamber of Commerce, which is documenting the back-and-forth in a Facebook post, has been adding photos daily of new entries in the sign war from various local businesses.
An area Wendy's recently joined in on the fun, taking a dig at McDonald's with the message: "Hot and crispy fries don't arch."
Wendy's, which famously advertises that its beef is "fresh, never frozen," also called out the competition's cooking practices:
Other businesses — from a local Mexican restaurant, fruit stand, temp agency, Domino's, Sonic, and more — have all given their two cents too.
The Domino's made a cheesy joke:
Sonic, where customers receive their food in drive-ins, wrote on a sign, "My milkshake brings all the cars to the yard." The store also referenced the feuding food joints, adding, "We have ice for these burns!"
McDonald's threw some shade back, calling out Sonic's drive-in model:
Las Cazuelas, the Mexican restaurant, wrote on a neon sheet of paper in its window, "Nacho average sign. P.S. We have fried ice cream."
The people at Arvest Bank went for a pun as they grabbed the proverbial popcorn: "Just CHECKING in on the sign war."
More: Retail McDonald's Dairy Queen Wendy's
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2022-07-20T21:18:12Z
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Missouri McDonald's, Dairy Queen Start Sign War Among Local Businesses
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https://www.businessinsider.com/missouri-mcdonalds-dairy-queen-start-sign-war-insults-local-businesses-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/missouri-mcdonalds-dairy-queen-start-sign-war-insults-local-businesses-2022-7
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Visual representation of the digital cryptocurrency bitcoin
Emma Rose Bienvenu serves as the chief of staff at crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital.
A big part of her role includes talking to regulators and lawmakers about the crypto landscape.
Emma Rose Bienvenu wears a lot of hats at one of the oldest cryptocurrency- and blockchain-focused hedge funds in the industry.
As chief of staff of $5 billion Pantera Capital, Bienvenu spends half her time working directly with the firm's chief investment officer, Joey Krug, helping to deploy capital and keeping a close eye on the markets. The other half is dedicated to interfacing with regulators and elected officials to help them understand how the cryptocurrency landscape intersects with securities law.
"It's very hard to find people that both understand securities law and CFTC stuff and also understand that the tech and a lot of the proposed rules are based on kind of inaccurate assumptions about how the technology works," Bienvenu told Insider.
Emma Rose Bienvenu is the chief of staff for Pantera Capital.
Pantera Capital's funds invest across blockchain companies, venture equity, and directly in digital assets, such as Bitcoin. The firm was founded by Tiger Management alum Dan Morehead in 2003 with just $1 billion in institutional assets.
A lawyer by trade, Bienvenu worked for multiple law firms before getting into finance. She previously spent time working for Canadian pension giant Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, conducting due diligence on private investments, and drafting and reviewing deal and contract agreements for M&A and synthetic derivatives teams.
One of Bienvenu's favorite parts of her current role is to help regulators and politicians shape cryptocurrency policy and regulation.
"There's a bit of a trope, I think in pop culture, that crypto people are all Libertarians that just want the government to go home," she said. "I don't think that's true at all, right? I think serious people in the ecosystem are desperate for regulatory clarity and sound policy, but obviously concerned about striking a balance between protecting consumers from fraud or abuse. But also not killing innovation or sending talent overseas. That's the delicate balance and the needle that needs to be threaded."
Bienvenu works both sides of the aisle
Typically, employees of senators and representatives will call Bienvenu to better understand the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and how the industry would react to proposed laws and regulations.
Politicians look to Bienvenu as she has experience working on a bunch of Pantera's portfolio projects on legal-related issues.
"They need to understand the legal structure as we know — what is the securities law and the CFTC regulation that is relevant to them? Where is there the gray area, where's like the lack of clarity? And then given that, how can they best position themselves to be compliant, given how we expect things to turn out on the regulatory front," Bienvenu said of her work at Pantera.
On the flip side, this allows Bienvenu to inform regulators and politicians about main issues the cryptocurrency industry is facing, whether it be what's stopping people from buying certain products or more clarity about the inner workings of the industry.
Bienvenu believes that the industry does need better disclosures in certain areas, particularly for centralized lenders. Since the crypto market has plunged, crypto lenders and their counterparties have grappled with staying afloat. Celsius and CoinFlex halted customer withdrawals due to the current market cycle. Celsius eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
She believes forcing these types of banks to disclose how long it would take customers to get their money back and implementing disclosures that retail investors would actually understand — even if they're one-pagers — would be healthy for the cryptocurrency space.
Bienvenu is also keeping a close eye on stablecoin regulation, which is expected to roll out sometime this year, according to CoinDesk. The federal law is expected to "require stablecoin issuers to have proper reserves and disclose their holdings," the publication noted. Bienvenu is working with staff members of a few senators that are rolling out the rule.
"I think it's a pretty healthy step to require audits and disclosures of collateral," she said.
More: Hedge Funds Pantera Capital Bitcoin Blockchain
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2022-07-20T21:18:18Z
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Pantera Capital's Emma Rose Bienvenu Helps Shape Crypto Policy
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https://www.businessinsider.com/pantera-capital-emma-rose-bienvenu-helps-shape-crypto-policy-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/pantera-capital-emma-rose-bienvenu-helps-shape-crypto-policy-2022-7
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What is annual travel insurance?
What does annual travel insurance cover?
How much does annual travel insurance cost?
When should you buy annual travel insurance?
Should you get annual travel insurance?
Annual travel insurance may save you money on protecting the multiple trips you take over the course of a year.
Annual travel insurance protects all of your trips within a one-year period.
It provides medical coverage and reimbursement for damages like lost luggage and trip delays.
Annual travel insurance generally considered less comprehensive than single-trip insurance.
Travel has started to bounce back after its steep pandemic decline. But that doesn't mean COVID-19 — or other potential snags — won't disrupt your travel plans.
Fortunately, coverage is available that can soften the financial blow if you get sick, lose your luggage, or experience some other hiccup while abroad. If you're taking multiple trips, you may want annual travel insurance, which covers all your trips throughout the year.
Annual travel insurance, also called multi-trip insurance, is a type of insurance policy that protects you from potential losses on all trips in a 12-month period.
While there's no limit to the number of trips an annual travel insurance policy will cover, these plans do limit how long each covered trip can last. This threshold varies from provider to provider, but generally it's up to a maximum of 90 days.
"During the coverage period, a traveler can move between countries and remain covered on the same insurance policy," says Rajeev Shrivastava, chief executive officer at VisitorsCoverage, a travel insurance marketplace. "With 30-day coverage, the plan is no longer valid on day 31. The traveler needs to return to their home country — resetting the 30 days and allowing them to resume travel."
Annual travel insurance can be a smart option for regular travelers — those who travel for business, for example, or journalists who regularly cover assignments abroad. Rather than purchasing single-trip insurance for every trip, annual insurance covers them for all their travels.
Note: Some annual travel insurance policies only cover trips a certain distance (say, 100 miles) from your residence or farther. Make sure to note these limitations before purchasing your policy — particularly if most of your travel is domestic.
Annual travel insurance coverage varies by plan and provider, but it is generally less comprehensive than a single-trip policy.
Annual policies typically include coverage for emergency medical care, medical evacuations, trip delays, and lost or stolen baggage. Most basic plans do not cover trip cancellations (though a few more comprehensive ones do). If you're looking for cancellation reimbursement, you may want to purchase a single-trip plan with cancel for any reason coverage.
Here are just a few things a basic annual travel insurance plan might include:
Emergency medical expenses
Medical evacuation
Rental car damage or theft
Lost or stolen baggage
Baggage delays
Depending on your provider, you may be able to add coverage for adventure sports injuries, as these are not covered by most policies.
"Annual travel insurance doesn't cover losses that arise from expected or reasonably foreseeable events," says Daniel Durazo, director of external communications at travel insurer Allianz Partners. "If your trips involve high-risk adventure — like skydiving, caving, mountain climbing, or participating in any athletic competition — your annual policy may not cover medical care if you sustain injuries."
Note: Some annual travel insurance policies will cover the costs associated with treating and diagnosing COVID-19 while traveling. Others may also cover cancellation due to getting the virus. They won't cover cancellation because of fears around getting COVID-19 on your trip. This would require cancel for any reason coverage.
For a 30-year-old US resident taking an estimated eight trips per year, all for fewer than 30 days each, annual travel insurance plans cost roughly between $125 and $700, according to an analysis of plans on travel insurance comparison platform Squaremouth. Your age, the number of trips you plan to take, where you live, and other factors will figure into the cost of your coverage.
The plan's deductible and coverages will affect your cost, too. For example, a plan for a 30-year-old US resident taking eight trips in a year from Trawick International varies between $155 for the most basic coverage and $675 for the "annual executive" plan.
"The per-trip length of coverage is usually a determining factor of the cost," Shrivastava says. "The longer the trip duration, the more expensive the policy can be."
Note: With most providers, you'll need to pay for your policy in full at the time of purchase — you won't be able to pay in installments.
Since annual travel insurance plans cover you for a full year, consider purchasing your policy right before your first trip. While this could help you stretch your coverage period to cover more travels, take into account the drawbacks of this approach.
First, you could forget. A lot goes into preparing for a trip, so leaving your travel insurance until the last minute could cause it to fall through the cracks. If you do opt to wait, make sure you set an alarm or calendar reminder.
Additionally, if you wait too long, your policy may not cover any pre-existing medical conditions. Some travel insurance companies will only cover pre-existing conditions if you buy your policy within 14 days of making your first trip payment.
As Durazo puts it, "Whether you're choosing an individual or annual policy, the best time to purchase insurance is always at the same time as you book your travel."
Annual travel insurance isn't right for everyone, but if you travel often, it might be a good fit. Before you take out your policy, have an idea of what travels you'll take in the next year, and use the following chart to help guide your decision.
Consider annual travel insurance if…
Reconsider annual travel insurance if…
You plan to take multiple short trips throughout a year
You travel internationally often and need medical coverage overseas
You aren't concerned about trip cancellations
You don't want to purchase separate policies for all your trips
You do a lot of last-minute traveling and want to be covered for all of your trips
You will only make a few trips in a year
You plan to take a long trip (90+ days) that may not be covered in an annual plan
You need the option to cancel your trip if necessary (cancel for any Reason insurance may be better)
Most of your trips are domestic, so your health insurance will typically cover most costs
"These plans are ideal for frequent travelers such as business travelers, digital nomads, or other avid travelers," Shrivastava says. "They aren't a fit for travelers who are only taking one or two trips per year or someone looking for a more comprehensive range of benefits."
More: Insurance Travel Allianz travel insurance pfi
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2022-07-20T21:18:30Z
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Annual Travel Insurance: Cover Multiple Trips for One Price
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/annual-travel-insurance
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Are buyer love letters illegal?
Buyer love letters could violate the Fair Housing Act
Buyer love letter best practices
6 better ways to make your offer stand out
Some homebuyers send love letters to help their offer stand out — but they could run afoul of fair housing rules
It's possible that both the seller and their agent could face legal action if protected class information contained in a love letter is used to choose an offer.
DreamPictures/Getty Images
Buyer love letters often include personal information about the prospective buyer and their family.
Choosing an offer based on protected class information revealed in a buyer letter could violate the Fair Housing Act.
Sellers should think twice about accepting buyer love letters, and buyers should look for more effective ways to strengthen their offer.
Some homebuyers send "love letters" to the sellers of homes they want to buy to try to sway the seller into picking their offer. The theory behind this practice is that in a market where homes get multiple offers, sometimes well above the asking price, a personalized letter plays to the seller's emotions and gives the buyer an edge, even if they aren't able to outbid other offers.
But real estate experts are increasingly advising against these love letters, because the have the potential to violate fair housing laws.
While it's not illegal to send or receive homebuyer love letters, the content could get sellers into trouble if they make their selling decisions based on certain information contained in the letters they get.
When homebuyers send love letters, they'll often write about the things they like about the home and how well-suited the home, property, or location is for their family. They might mention how excited they are for their young kids to play in the backyard or that the kitchen is perfect for entertaining their family and friends. Sometimes, they'll even include a picture of their family.
The goal is to create an emotional connection with the seller. But the information a buyer shares in their letter could encourage housing discrimination. Because of this, the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the top trade organization for real estate professionals, discourages this practice.
Housing discrimination occurs when an individual is denied access to housing based on certain protected characteristics. The Fair Housing Act is the federal law that bans housing discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, familial status, or disability.
Your state or city may have its own fair housing rules that you'll need to be aware of as well.
"If the seller's choice of buyer is influenced by the buyer's race, national origin, religion, or other characteristic protected by law, the seller could violate fair housing law," says Patrick Newton, a spokesperson for NAR.
In a video advising real estate professionals on buyer love letter best practices, NAR senior counsel and director of legal affairs Charlie Lee gives the example of a buyer sending a letter with a picture of their family in front of a Christmas tree, which reveals their religion and creates a potential fair housing issue for the seller.
Newton says that NAR isn't aware of any fair housing complaints based on buyer love letters, likely because prospective buyers have no way of knowing what the seller's decision-making process looked like, or why they chose one offer over another. But it's still enough of a risk that NAR discourages the practice.
In 2021, Oregon attempted to ban buyer love letters, but in May 2022 a federal judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional.
Selling decisions should be based on the financial aspects of the offer. If you're a seller who's considering accepting love letters from prospective buyers, you might want to consult with a lawyer and thoroughly document your decision-making process.
It's possible that both the seller and their real estate agent could face legal action for choosing an offer based on protected characteristics.
"The seller could be liable if it could be shown that the seller chose an offer based on the buyer's protected personal characteristic," Newton says. "If the listing agent were of aware of the seller's decision-making process and continued to facilitate the deal, the listing agent may be held liable as well."
If you're a buyer looking for a competitive edge in a hot market, it's much safer and likely more effective to work on putting forward your strongest offer on the home you want. If you do write a love letter, focus on objective information about the home.
To avoid violating fair housing laws, Newton says that love letters need to be "silent on all personal characteristics covered by federal, state, and local fair housing laws."
Remember that a home purchase is ultimately a financial transaction — even with all the emotions that are tied up in it. There are plenty of ways buyers can sweeten the deal and make a more attractive offer without appealing to the seller's emotions.
Some options to help your offer stand out include:
1. Offer more money if you can afford it: Don't start with a lowball offer. Sellers often receive multiple offers within a few days of listing, so put in your highest offer from the start.
2. Waive contingencies: Standard purchase offers come with certain contingencies baked into the contract, such as an inspection contingency, which allows the buyer to negotiate or back out of the sale if a home inspection reveals serious issues. Waiving some of these contingencies can make your offer cleaner and assures the seller that you're less likely to back out of the sale — but be sure you understand the financial implications of doing so.
3. Be flexible on a closing date: It's natural to want to close on your new home as soon as you can, but working with the sellers to meet their preferred date can give you leverage if you aren't able to offer more money.
4. Put up a larger earnest money deposit: When your offer is accepted, you'll put down an earnest money deposit. This sum shows sellers that you're serious about buying the home and acts as insurance in case you back out of the sale for a reason not stipulated in your contract. Offering a larger earnest money deposit can make your offer more attractive.
5. Include an escalation clause: An escalation clause states that you're willing to increase your offer by a certain amount if the seller receives a higher bid, up to your stated maximum.
6. Offer free occupancy after closing: If the seller needs to stay in the home for a little longer after closing, consider offering them free occupancy while they prepare to move out or complete their own home purchase.
PERSONAL FINANCE 6 common house-hunting mistakes to avoid
PERSONAL FINANCE How much house can I afford?
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More: homebuying home selling Mortgages Personal Finance Insider
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Can Homebuyer Love Letters Be a Legal Liability?
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/are-buyer-love-letters-illegal
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/are-buyer-love-letters-illegal
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Two common approaches to stablecoin collateral
How do people use stablecoins?
Stablecoin: What to know about the digital coins designed to ease volatility in crypto investing
One popular way that people use stablecoins is to participate in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, such as crypto lending and borrowing platforms.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are designed to maintain a stable price over time.
Stablecoins are often pegged to fiat currency, such as the US dollar, and backed by collateral.
People primarily use stablecoins on DeFi platforms and to hold money within the crypto ecosystem.
While cryptocurrencies and the crypto ecosystem may present interesting and rewarding opportunities, many cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile.
You might not want to spend a bitcoin if you think its price could increase 10-fold within a year. Or you may not want to borrow a cryptocurrency with a value that could drop after you receive the funds. Additionally, it can be difficult and costly to move money between traditional financial systems and cryptocurrency networks.
Stablecoins help crypto users address both of these concerns.
As the name implies, stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are designed to offer stability within a cryptocurrency system. They're often pegged (i.e., have a fixed exchange rate) to a fiat currency, such as the US dollar.
"In an ecosystem like cryptocurrencies, where volatility is typically high, this is an important property," says Paul Brody, principal and global blockchain leader at Ernst & Young. "If you want to take advantage of blockchain technology without exposing yourself to the volatility in crypto prices, this is the way to do it."
For example, one USD Coin (USDC) is intended to always be worth $1. While the dollar's purchasing power could change over time, it's much less volatile than cryptocurrencies.
There are also stablecoins that are pegged to a commodity, such as gold or oil, but fiat-pegged stablecoins are currently the most popular options.
A stablecoin's pegged value is what makes it useful within the world of crypto. But that's possible only if coin holders can be assured they'll be able to cash out their stablecoins. To ensure this can happen, stablecoin creators hold onto reserves of other currencies or assets.
"This is called collateralization," explains Stephen Stonberg, CEO of Bittrex Global, a cryptocurrency trading platform. "Apart from being tied to another asset, collateralization also includes the buying and selling of affiliated assets through algorithmic mechanisms."
For instance, a stablecoin issuer may promise to hold $1 in a bank account for each of the cryptocurrency coins it creates. As long as the collateral — or reserves — are available, coin holders know that they'll be able to exchange a coin for $1. However, there's a risk that the stablecoin issuer doesn't actually have enough reserves.
Government agencies have discussed ways to regulate stablecoins, and have taken action against organizations that may have misrepresented their reserve holdings. And stablecoin issuers may share some details about what and where they're holding their reserves.
Still, if you're considering buying stablecoins, a lack of proper reserves is one potential risk to be aware of. "In my view, the only really acceptable answer is with an independent audit," says Brody. "Not only do you need to know what assets are backing a particular token, if it's an asset-backed token, but you also need the assurance that those assets are not pledged against other liabilities."
Stablecoin issuers can choose how they want to hold the collateral for their stablecoins in reserves. The specifics vary depending on the stablecoin, but most fall into two categories:
Off-chain or asset-backed collateral. Asset-backed stablecoins maintain reserves in non-blockchain assets. The safest options may be those that hold fiat currency in regulated accounts. But some may hold commodities, such as gold, in reserve. Or some keep part of the funds in fiat currencies and invest the rest of the collateral. "There's a bit more risk here because major price changes in those assets could threaten the ability of token-holders to cash out," says Brody.
On-chain or crypto-backed collateral. Crypto-backed stablecoins use cryptocurrencies as collateral. You can deposit and lock other cryptocurrencies to create these stablecoins, and they're generally over-collateralized to account for volatility. For instance, the stablecoin DAI is pegged to the USD (one DAI equals $1). But you could have to lock up $150 worth of ether (ETH) to create $100 worth of DAI.
"Another variation of stablecoins are on-shore and off-shore stablecoins," says Stonberg, a reference to whether the stablecoin issuers keep the reserves within our outside the US, which could impact regulatory oversight. "Ultimately, there will be a market for both types of stablecoins."
Quick tip: While creating crypto-backed stablecoins may require over-collateralization, you can swap cryptocurrencies for stablecoins or buy stablecoins through an exchange. Because new stablecoins aren't being created — they're only changing hands — you don't need to offer additional cryptos or payment.
There's another type of stablecoin that doesn't have any collateral. Instead, they use automated algorithms to try to create or decrease supply and hold a steady price. However, these algorithmic or "seigniorage-style" stablecoins haven't caught on.
Stablecoins are primarily used in two ways.
First, you might want to keep money in the cryptocurrency system, but you don't think it makes sense to invest in bitcoin (or a different cryptocurrency) right now. Holding the funds in a stablecoin could limit your risk. It's a bit like keeping cash in a brokerage account while waiting to make an investment.
The other and perhaps more popular way that people use stablecoins is to participate in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, such as crypto lending and borrowing platforms. Minimizing the volatility risk for users could make it easier to understand the cost (or profit) that can come from these transactions.
"For most companies and individual users, the ability to use stablecoins to manage risk while accessing DeFi and other online services is going to be the key value proposition and it's certainly what our enterprise users are interested in," says Brody.
For individuals and institutions alike, stablecoins let people stay in the crypto world without the risk that's commonly associated with cryptocurrencies. In Stonberg's eyes, "what's unique and important about stablecoins is they represent the bridging of two worlds — cryptocurrencies and traditional finance."
However, if you're considering buying stablecoins or using them to lend or borrow money through a DeFi platform, know that there's still risk involved.
Asset-backed stablecoins might not actually hold enough assets to fully collateralize their outstanding coin balance. And even if they're over-collateralized, crypto-backed stablecoins could run into trouble if other cryptos experience major downswings.
More: cryptocurrency Stablecoins service graphics Rachel Mendelson
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2022-07-20T21:18:48Z
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Stablecoin 101: Definition, Collateral, How They Work
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/stablecoin
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/stablecoin
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When to buy annual travel insurance
When is it too late to buy travel insurance?
Buy travel insurance as soon as possible after booking your travel arrangements.
Travel insurance covers medical emergencies and financial losses while on a trip.
It's best purchased right after booking your trip, as some coverage options are time-sensitive.
Purchasing early is smart if you may need to cancel or want coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Travel insurance protects you against financial losses and medical emergencies while on a trip. If you want the highest level of protection, it's generally best to book this coverage as soon as you know your trip details.
However, this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, and there may be times when you want to wait to purchase your policy. Here's what you need to know about travel insurance and when you should buy it.
Travel insurance provides medical coverage and will reimburse you for things like lost luggage, trip delays, and sometimes even trip cancellations. It's typically a smart option if you're going somewhere your health insurance won't cover you or if a lot of your charges are non-refundable.
Though you can buy travel insurance at any time before your trip, it's generally best to purchase shortly after booking, once you have a good gauge on your total costs.
Buying quickly after booking also allows you to:
Purchase cancel for any reason coverage, which reimburses you for 60% to 75% of your costs if you back out on your travel plans. This must be purchased within 15 to 21 days of putting down the first deposit on your trip.
Guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions. Many travel insurers won't cover pre-existing conditions unless you purchase coverage within two weeks of booking your trip.
Cancel your travel insurance if you're not happy with it. Most plans allow you to cancel your insurance and get a refund — as long as you do so within 15 days and your trip hasn't started yet.
As Michelle Osborn, a travel agent and owner of Outta Here Travels, explains, "Most travel insurance policies have a time limit of when you can purchase to get the maximum benefits."
If you're unable to purchase your travel insurance right after booking, you should still qualify for a policy. Most companies allow you to buy insurance until the day of your trip, you just won't have access to CFAR or pre-existing condition coverage.
You may not need to buy travel insurance at all
Travel insurance is often a good idea to protect your investments on your trips, but you don't always have to have it. Here are some scenarios where you might not need it:
You have adequate coverage through your credit card or health insurance
You're taking a low-cost domestic trip
The hotel or airline you've booked with has a flexible cancellation policy
Annual travel insurance, sometimes referred to as multi-trip insurance, covers you for all your trips over an entire year.
This type of travel insurance may be a good option if you regularly travel for work or have at least a handful of trips — particularly international ones — planned for the next 12 months.
"Travel insurance should definitely be purchased anytime you travel out of the United States," Osbon says. "The main reason is most US health insurance policies don't cover treatment internationally."
You may want to buy annual travel insurance just before your first trip begins. Since these plans last 365 days, this would allow you to stretch your policy to cover the most travel.
However, this may limit the coverage you're able to obtain, so tread carefully. For example, you may not be able to get medical coverage for pre-existing conditions.
"In the case of a pre-existing medical condition, you'll need to meet a few requirements to be covered," says Jeff Rolander, director of claims at Faye Travel Insurance. "Faye's travel protection covers pre-existing conditions as long as you purchase your plan within 14 days of your initial trip deposit and are medically able to travel when you purchase your plan."
Important: Cancel for any reason coverage is not available on annual travel insurance plans. This add-on can only be purchased for single-trip policies.
You should be able to purchase travel insurance any time before the date of your trip. Once the day of your departure rolls around, the window will close. You also can't purchase travel insurance during your trip or after an injury or loss has already happened.
The moral of the story: It's always better to buy sooner rather than later.
"Right when you book your flights or hotel stay is when you should get your trip covered," Rolander says. "The sooner you buy coverage for your trip, the sooner your coverage starts."
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2022-07-20T21:19:00Z
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When Is the Best Time to Purchase Travel Insurance?
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Top Army officials say the army has only reached 50% of its recruiting goals, with just over two months left in the fiscal year.
Top Army officials say the force may shrink by as many as 30,000 soldiers in the next two years.
Officials said they are facing a "challenging recruiting environment."
The Army has reached just 50% of its recruitment goals for 2022, with just two months left in the fiscal year
A senior US Army official told a House Armed Services subcommittee on Tuesday that the service will fall short of its planned 2022 end strength, and prospects for next year are looking even worse. Amid these challenges, the service is looking at cutting its force size.
Gen. Joseph Martin, the vice chief of staff for the Army, said the service estimates it will end this fiscal year with a total force of 466,400 — nearly 10,000 soldiers short of the expected 476,000 — and the Army could end 2023 with as few as 445,000 soldiers.
Members of the congressional subcommittee, including House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel chair Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), called the possible reduction "alarming."
Martin cited "unprecedented challenges" with COVID-19 and competition with private companies as the main reason recruitment and retention levels are falling. He said that while the Army doesn't need to worry about adjusting its force structure right away, "if we don't arrest the decline that we're seeing right now in end strength, that could be a possibility in the future."
With just over two months left in this fiscal year, the Army has only reached 50% of its recruitment goal of 60,000 soldiers, a spokesperson for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement. In March, the Army lowered its annual recruiting target by 15,000 recruits.
"The Army is facing our most challenging recruiting environment since the inception of the all-volunteer force," Wormuth told the Associated Press. "We are facing a very fundamental question, do we lower standards to meet end strength or do we lower end strength to maintain a quality, professional force?"
Wormuth said the Army will prioritize quality over quantity. In January, the Army began offering maximum enlistment bonuses of $50,000 to highly skilled recruits who agree to join the force for six years.
Amid concerns over recruitment, the Army may also face losing another 20,000 soldiers, in regular and reserve forces, who have refused to get vaccinated for COVID-19, but a spokesperson for Wormuth said no decision has been made yet.
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2022-07-20T21:19:24Z
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US Army Could Cut Force Size Amid Serious Recruitment Challenges
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Rebecca Cohen and John Haltiwanger
Ukraine's First Lady invoked 9/11 as she asked Congress for more weapons to aid in the war against Russia.
"America unfortunately knows from its own experience what terrorist attacks are and has always sought to defeat terrorism," she said.
She said the weapons would only be used to "protect one's home and the right to wake up alive in that home."
Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska invoked the 9/11 terror attacks as she implored Congress to send more weapons to Ukraine amid Russia's ongoing invasion of the eastern European country.
"America, unfortunately, knows from its own experience what terrorist attacks are and has always sought to defeat terrorism," she said in an address to Congress. "Help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians, and this will be our joint great victory in the name of life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness of every person, every family."
Zelenska opened her address by telling Congress she was speaking as a "daughter and as a mother" rather than as the wife of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, noting that she would be "asking for something know I would never want to ask."
"Russia is destroying our people," Zelenska said to Congress. "You help us and your help is very strong. While Russia kills, America saves."
She continued: "I am asking for weapons. Weapons that would not be used to wage a war on somebody else's land, but to protect one's home and the right to wake up alive in that home."
Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, launching a full-scale military assault on the former Soviet republic. After failing to take Kyiv in the early days of the conflict, Russia began focusing on conquering Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
Its efforts have nearly stalled, though, with a top US general saying Wednesday that Russia has only gained "maybe 6 to 10 miles" of land since shifting its attention to the east roughly 90 days ago. That said, Russia by early July was able to seize control of Luhansk, which along with Donetsk is one of two provinces that comprise the Donbas.
Meanwhile, Russia is continuing to target Ukrainian cities in other regions with strikes, which has frequently resulted in civilian casualties.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday condemned Russia for its "relentless shelling" of Ukraine, decrying it as a "cruel tactic that harkens back to the horrors of World War I."
"Ukraine needs the firepower and the ammunition to withstand this barrage and to strike back," Austin said. Correspondingly, the Pentagon chief on Wednesday announced that the US would provide Ukraine with four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) as part of an upcoming military aid package.
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Daniel Vogel, Bitso's cofounder and CEO.
Bitso is Latin America's leading crypto exchange, with over 4 million users across five nations.
A virtual-currency ad on March 17 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Ricardo Ceppi/Getty Images
Eight years later, Bitso is one of the only internationally regulated crypto platforms in Latin America, offering low-cost remittance options — the ability for migrants to send digital currency back home — and 35 cryptocurrencies to its 4 million users in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina.
A Chivo sign in El Salvador.
Camilo Freedman/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Then-President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a bilateral meeting on June 28, 2019.
Francis Fukuyama characterized a Trump comeback as advantageous to Russia in a new interview with DW.
"Russia will have achieved its major objectives simply by this change in American politics," Fukuyama said.
He cited Trump's apparent commitment to "pulling the US out of NATO."
Francis Fukuyama, one of the US's most influential political scientists, in a new interview with DW warned that Russia would benefit immensely if former President Donald Trump is reelected in 2024.
Throughout his presidency, Trump repeatedly criticized NATO — often taking aim at allies over their defense spending — and at times raised fears that he would move to withdraw the US from the alliance. Trump's first impeachment also occurred, in part, as a result of him withholding congressionally approved military aid from Ukraine as it fought an ongoing war with Kremlin-backed rebels in the eastern Donbas region of the country.
Along these lines, Fukuyama — a Stanford professor known for arguing that Western democracies are the end point of all political and economic systems — characterized a Trump comeback as dangerous for Ukraine and potentially fatal to the unified front the West has put up in the face of Russia's unprovoked invasion.
Western countries have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, moving to isolate the Kremlin both economically and politically. But the war and related sanctions have not come without a cost to the West, with inflation and energy prices soaring across the globe. There are open questions as to whether the West has the political will to continue its unwavering support of Ukraine as the economic hardships place more pressure on governments.
Meanwhile, NATO is on the verge of adding two new members — Finland and Sweden. Congressional Republicans who are allied with Trump have expressed opposition to adding the two Nordic countries to NATO, underscoring the ongoing sway the former president's worldview holds over the GOP.
"That's why I think it is really important that Ukraine make some progress and regain military momentum over the summer, because unity in the West really depends on people believing that there is a military solution to the problem in the near term," Fukuyama said. "If they feel that we're simply facing an extended stalemate that's going to go on forever, then I think the unity will start breaking, and there'll be more calls for Ukraine to give up territory in order to stop the war."
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley on Wednesday said that the conflict in Ukraine is likely to continue as a "grinding war of attrition" for the time-being. Last month, former US ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer told Insider that some assess the war could last into 2023 or 2024. This means that the fighting in Ukraine could still be going on amid the next US presidential election.
Though Trump hasn't made a formal announcement, the former president is expected to run again in 2024.
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An M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System fires an MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile on South Korea's East Coast, July 5, 2017.
US Army/Staff Sgt. Sinthia Rosario
People watch a TV broadcast about a North Korean missile launch in Seoul, June 5, 2022.
A South Korean Hyunmu-2 ballistic missile is fired during an exercise on September 4, 2017.
South Korea's first sub-launched ballistic missile is test-fired from a submarine in South Korean waters, September 15, 2021.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in front of an ICBM in a photo released by the Korean Central News Agency on March 24, 2022.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.
Seong-Joon Cho/Bloomberg/Pool/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
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A former advisor to Mike Pence said he has long "desired" to make a run for the Oval Office.
Olivia Troye's comments to CNN come as Pence made his first visit to Capitol Hill since 2021.
The visit further stoked further speculation about a possible Pence 2024 presidential run.
Mike Pence has presidential aspirations, one of his former advisors said Tuesday as the former vice president stoked further speculation about a 2024 bid during a visit to Capitol Hill this week.
Olivia Troye, who worked for Pence during his four years in the White House, told CNN that her former boss has long aimed to hold the nation's most powerful position.
"It is a known thing in Pence's orbit and those of us who worked for Mike Pence," she told the outlet. "I think he desired to make a run for the Oval Office. I think that's partially why he joined the Trump administration on his ticket."
Troye's comments come as Pence made his triumphant return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, his first visit since leaving office in January 2021. The former vice president met with the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative congressional caucus. Members of the group praised Pence for upholding his constitutional duty on January 6, 2021 and certifying President Joe Biden's win over former President Donald Trump.
Pence's visit adds further fuel to the speculative fire over whether or not he'll make a 2024 presidential bid.
The conservative lawmakers on Tuesday encouraged Pence to make a run for president, according to multiple news reports. Pence, himself, however, avoided the subject, saying instead that he is focused on helping Republicans succeed in this year's upcoming midterms.
Troye said the former vice president could be weighing some of the likely challenges to a campaign.
"I know he has aspirations to do so, and I think we'll have to see how this plays out for him given where the Republican base is right now and how much of a stronghold Trump has on the party," she told CNN.
She said Pence on Tuesday aimed to focus on more traditional Republican issues, such as the national debt and foreign affairs, as opposed to frequent Trump talking points like the 2020 election.
"I think you'll see him continue to tout some of the policies he supported that he felt were a success," Troye said of Pence. "I think you'll see him run on that while also trying to carefully balance, obviously, this conflict he has ongoing with the former president."
Since the insurrection, Pence has distanced himself from Trump, refusing visits to the former President's Mar-a-Lago resort and maintaining no communication for more than a year. The Congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack presented testimony earlier this month that Trump said "Mike deserves it" when rioters inside the Capitol that day chanted "hang Mike Pence."
Trump also continues to tease a 2024 run, albeit, more overtly than his former running mate.
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Mike Pence Has 'Aspirations' to Run for President, Says Former Advisor
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At a security conference in Aspen, CIA Director William Burns spoke candidly about Vladimir Putin.
He said that after two decades of studying him, he is still difficult to predict.
Burns also dispelled rumors about Putin's health, saying the Kremlin leader is "too healthy."
In a rare, candid interview, CIA Director William Burns dispelled rumors about the state of Russian leader Vladimir Putin's health and said the Kremlin leader is very aware of the brutal war he has been waging.
While speaking at the Aspen Security Summit, Burns said that after monitoring Putin's strategies for over two decades, he still is hard to predict, according to CNN White House reporter Natasha Bertrand.
Burns said that Putin's "appetite for risk has grown," in the lead-up to the Ukraine war, maintaining that Putin keeps a small circle now but that in the past, he used to have advisors that challenged him.
"There's virtually none of that now," Burns told the crowd.
Experts previously told Insider that Putin's purging of his inner circle throughout the Ukraine war has largely backfired, creating misinformation and an inflated sense of confidence.
Burns was quick to shoot down long-standing rumors about Putin's poor health, which have been amplified since the start of the war. In June, Putin addressed the rumors, saying that they are "greatly exaggerated."
"There are lots of rumors about President Putin's health, but as far as we can tell, he's entirely too healthy," Burns said at the conference.
In Aspen, Burns also said in his last meeting with the Kremlin leader in November, "Putin made no effort to deny the planning," of the Ukraine war.
"He believes it's his entitlement, it's Russia's entitlement, to dominate Ukraine," Burns said in Aspen.
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CIA Director Dispels Rumors About Putin's Health: 'He's Too Healthy'
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Florida governor Ron DeSantis released a survey asking school board members and candidates to share their view on controversial education policies.
Lis Smith offered her take on attack campaigns against Republicans like Ron DeSantis.
The Democratic campaign veteran said the landscape has changed since she worked on Obama's campaign.
A story by WaPo or NYT "might have been seen as the ultimate coup" 10 or 15 years ago, she said.
A star Democratic campaign strategist said the best strategy for defeating Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is to hit them where it hurts most: conservative media.
In a Wednesday episode of Vanity Fair's "Inside the Hive' podcast, political campaign strategist Lis Smith talked about attacking political opponents in a campaign, drawing on lessons she learned in her days working on the Obama team.
Podcast host Joe Hagan asked Smith about campaign staff being tasked with getting "as many negative stories about Mitt Romney published as possible."
"If you're doing that today, and somebody said, get as many negative stories about Ron DeSantis published as possible, where do you start?" Hagan asked during the podcast.
When former President Barack Obama was running in 2012, Smith said it fell upon her to "place stuff that would put" Mitt Romney "at odds with his primary base." If she were to employ the strategy today, the "biggest" way to do so would be through the "very, very vibrant, right-wing news ecosystem."
"What I would try to do is try to launder stories through there — Breitbart, Fox, Newsmax, Daily Wire, Daily Caller, Free Beacon, those sorts of sites — because I think what we've seen increasingly is that those types of sites are less likely to pick up from mainstream media," Smith said.
"If you get a negative story about [DeSantis] in The Washington Post or New York Times maybe 10 or 15 years ago, that might have been seen as the ultimate coup," she continued. "But today, if you really want something to take root, and especially among Republican primary voters, I would go straight to the right."
DeSantis has been floated as a potential 2024 hopeful, though the Florida governor hasn't officially announced a run for the Oval Office.
"I'm sure that there are things from his time as governor that would put him at odds with the Republican base and potentially hurt his standing with them there," Smith said, should DeSantis decide to make a presidential bid.
Former President Donald Trump previously said in an interview that if DeSantis were to run, he thinks he would win. But some, including former White House counsel Kellyanne Conway's husband George Conway, even believe that DeSantis has a chance at beating the former president at becoming the Republican presidential candidate.
A Detroit News poll of likely Republican voters suggested DeSantis and Trump would be neck and neck in a potential White House bid.
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Meet 26 rising-star fintech VCs excited about what's next in the sector — even during a market and investing pullback
Paul Kigawa, Solomon Hailu, Medha Agarwal, and David Zhang.
Fintech startups have been hit hard by the market downturn, and growth in subsectors has slowed.
But some VCs are still enthusiastic about the sector and think it's integral to people's lives.
Insider caught up with 25 investors in fintech who are still bullish on the market.
Financial technology remains a focus for many investors despite a market downturn. Several fintech startups that soared during the pandemic — like Klarna, a once hot "buy now, pay later" startup — have taken huge hits to their valuations and announced significant layoffs.
Venture capitalists have predicted that certain areas of fintech will get much of investors' attention as they evaluate strategies to support companies they believe might weather the storm. But even as interest in fintech slows, some VCs see opportunities, especially as founders focus on differentiating themselves.
Mercedes Bent, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said that even during a market downturn, fintech has much to offer consumers.
"Fintech is still a big need for the everyday person," she said. "If you think about the market structure, why do consumer fintechs exist? It's because old-school banks haven't innovated as much as the end users want."
Insider spoke with 25 fintech-focused VCs about what they see on the horizon for the sector and how they're weathering the downturn. Their responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity. Here they are, listed alphabetically by last name.
Medha Agarwal, Redpoint
Medha Agarwal, a partner at Redpoint Ventures.
Redpoint
What are your investment interests?
I've been at Redpoint for six years, focusing on early-stage fintech companies. There are a lot of different ways that fintech is defined and categorized. It can definitely get confusing and overwhelming for those that are newer to the sector! I generally view the industry across three different areas: consumer, B2B, and infrastructure. All these categories interest me, but I'm particularly focused on infrastructure, B2B payments, and crypto enablement.
As someone who is long fintech in the long term, I believe it's too expensive and time-consuming to launch and operate a fintech company. Every startup seems to reinvent the wheel, but we're still in the early innings of fintech, and as the industry continues to develop I believe there will be a whole class of companies specifically built to make it faster and easier to build a fintech.
Are there any areas within fintech that you're focusing on these days because of the looming economic downturn? Why?
In an environment like this one, I think fintech infrastructure becomes even more important, because as time to market and short-term costs are increasingly top of mind, the "build versus buy" decision is clearer. It's usually easier to buy off the shelf to speed up time to market and also allows a company to avoid having to hire an expensive team of people to then go build, which would take more time. Any companies that are making essential processes faster and cheaper will continue to be important.
Croom Beatty, Menlo Ventures
Croom Beatty, a partner at Menlo Ventures.
Menlo Ventures
How did you start in venture capital?
I started my career in tech investing kind of right out of undergrad. I worked at Susquehanna Growth Equity, where I started focusing on the capital markets, technology, and then payments and banking infrastructures. I worked on special projects around banking structure and then worked with expanding into different countries and worked with small and medium businesses.
Then I went to Payoneer. It was a great experience, but I really wanted to get back into venture. The one complaint about being in venture is that you're, like, an inch deep and a mile wide — sometimes when you're operating, you're an inch wide and a mile deep. So I really missed the somewhere in between; this was what I was looking for, where you're able to kind of talk to entrepreneurs who are solving different problems.
What areas do you normally focus on?
I do everything in fintech, although if you look at my investments I would say it's more on the enterprise side of things. I naturally gravitate more to B2B companies. But when you really look closely, a lot of those companies end up looking a little bit more like consumer-facing ones. Some companies provide software for solo entrepreneurs or resellers, contractors, and the like, so they look a lot like consumer solutions.
Are you still seeing some strength in the fintech sector?
I think some of the pullback was expected, because a lot of the companies were valued like software businesses when they were not software businesses. If you look at insurance and lending companies, they were treated like very expensive software-as-a-service businesses. There's also the case of Robinhood and Coinbase where they experience feedback loops, so when asset prices are rising and more people are interested in the assets that trade on their platforms, they make more on each trade — but the prices are dropping, so they're making less.
Ultimately, though, where I'm bullish about fintech is in areas that know there are so many people who have no access to best-in-class tools. Cash, checks, and the wire are still dominant. There are these really old legacy systems that are still in place, and so much of their functionality is past its time. It's amazing when you look at B2B trade networks like distributors, manufacturers, and all that where invoices are still pen and paper. There are still a lot of areas that are changing, so I'm very bullish on that.
Mercedes Bent, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Mercedes Bent, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
What got you into fintech investing?
My passion for fintech investing started early and really focused on giving individuals the ability to build wealth and access to financial services. My whole investment thesis revolves around people getting access to wealth-building products, tools, and skills. So whether that's career mobility, the creator economy, or crypto — which I also invest in, in addition to fintech — I've explored these spaces because of that passion. To me, they all fall under the same thesis, and a quarter of my portfolio revolves around those four themes. I think they're all helping build an individual's wealth and giving them more autonomy and flexibility with how they do it.
What do you look for in a founder?
I am always looking for founders who are exceptional learners, meaning that they're trying to turn every moment, every opportunity into a learning moment. They walk what I call the vulnerability-versus-confidence line that precedes the trade-off. They are very good at walking in but showing confidence while also being vulnerable and saying, "I don't know something," and they would want to use that opportunity to learn.
A lot of founders are too nervous to say they don't know — and when they don't, they don't learn a lot. So I look for founders with that level of humility and vulnerability and competence and learning aptitude. I also meet founders who are moving really fast and understand how speed informs learning cycles. And then in addition to that, I'm looking for founders who are just super spiky in one area, meaning they do one thing better than, you know, anyone else in the world.
Have you changed your investment focus as the downturn moves forward?
No, I haven't changed my sector focus within fintech. I still continue to focus on consumer fintech and believe there are still really good opportunities there. I haven't worked with companies that have had ridiculously high acquisition costs. But I would say the way I have changed my investing is not so particular to fintech. It's more focused on companies that are looking to build healthy unit economics.
Fintech is still a big need for the everyday person. If you think about the market structure, why do consumer fintechs exist? It's because old-school banks haven't innovated as much as the end users want. And I also invested outside of the US. There are great companies in Europe and especially in Latin America — there's even less innovation from the institutional banks. So it's still a good value proposition for the customer.
Mark Fiorentino, Index Ventures
Mark Fiorentino, an investor at Index Ventures.
Will you be moving away from some sectors of fintech?
Last year was basically a fintech party. There was an explosion of fintech companies. But now we're, like, in a fintech hangover. There are still category winners, and it's important to remember that our job as investors is actually almost being contrarian, in a sense, because some of the most interesting opportunities are found when the markets are in a downturn.
While some fintech investors may shy away from entire subsectors right now, in my opinion this is how real category-defining investments are either made or missed. I'm still very excited about tech, but we do need to do a better job of separating out which ideas and themes and companies have truly sustainable business models and efficient unit economics.
What are the trends you're seeing in the next few months?
There's, of course, infrastructure — but another one is how to use payments as a top-line and retention driver. We're seeing an interesting play on this with the brick-and-mortar side of the world too. Think about Starbucks, where they have the resources to build their own loyalty program, but there are a ton of cafés, fast-casual restaurant chains, and other kinds of multilocation retailers that can't spin up their own loyalty programs. Tools are being developed for a loyalty-program-in-a-box sort of thing.
The next theme I'm excited about is helping small and medium businesses, who typically struggle with amassing the purchasing power they need to buy from suppliers. There's going to be a crop of interesting new businesses with the financial tools to ease purchasing for many small businesses. So these are tailoring corporate cards to small businesses. And then there's the reconciliation of books that can also be tailored to them too.
Ross Fubini, XYZ
Ross Fubini, a managing partner at XYZ Venture Capital.
Why do you invest in fintech?
My interest in fintech persists all the way through because, just like it was 13 years ago, money — and access to money — is everything. Whether it's a small business and it's part of your distribution, or it's a consumer that wants a better set of services, or if it's pricing and climate like carbon credits, it's core to our companies. It's also a place that is rife with inefficiencies all at different layers.
With the downturn affecting crypto, why are you still interested in putting money in the space?
For two reasons. One is that we're in the first innings of technology companies needing different parts of fintech. And then second is that these other platforms will enable a whole new set of products.
The other thing that we're seeing is many of these trends are international. I think it's really exciting that we're seeing these international companies getting built on better new infrastructure.
Mike Giampapa, Bessemer Venture Partners
Mike Giampapa, a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners.
What are your investment interests? What trends in fintech are you seeing now?
I'm passionate about the intersection of financial services and crypto. I believe money is fundamentally changing; it's becoming digitized, programmable, and decentralized. The first wave of fintechs mostly focused on delivering the same financial products digitally and with better user experiences. Crypto provides an opportunity to rearchitect things from the ground up, which over time could create a system with more liquidity and transparency, with lower fees and systemic risk — a system that is also more real-time, global, and inclusive. This will play out over several decades, and we certainly have a long way to go and many issues to address.
Despite the recent crypto-market pullback, I believe bringing core aspects of the global financial system on-chain is still one of the most exciting macro shifts in fintech. In the near term, I'm exploring technologies that help developers design more robust and secure protocols and provide increased safety/risk management for users and institutions.
What brought you to fintech investing? Why is it attractive to you as an investor?
I was drawn to fintech investing because of the scale and impact the industry has on the world. Financial services are a meaningful percentage of the global GDP and have largely been left behind in terms of digitization. This is an attractive backdrop for startups looking to disrupt incumbents or simply arm the incumbents with modern software to reinvent themselves. In terms of impact, we know providing access to basic financial services like a bank account, a loan, an insurance policy, or simple financial advice can change the course of a family's life. There aren't many verticals that can have this type of impact.
John Gianakopoulos, Scale
John Gianakopoulos, an associate at Scale Venture Partners.
Scale Venture Partners
How did you get into fintech investing?
I spent four years in product management on the fintech side of things. Then I started my own fintech company before joining sales. The focus of my career to date has been on fintech, on both the consumer-lending and enterprise side of things — that was the initial draw. I've always felt there are a lot of opportunities to build different applications across a variety of payment layers.
What areas of fintech do you see going strong even with the downturn?
The trends that I'm seeing and I'm excited about are independent of what's going on in the broader macro environment right now. I think you get a lot of value when you just verticalize software. There are really massive companies that are just horizontal fintech companies. If you build purpose-built verticalized software within different sorts of sectors fintech serves — like maybe in wholesale, or foodstuffs, or construction, or shipping and logistics — you can actually generate a ton of value and get a lot of adoption.
Lending has not typically been a really good investment; you can count on one hand the number of really successful venture-backed lending companies, and they're getting crushed right now. But when you factor looking at a completely different profile of lending, it's interesting. For example, Walmart or McDonald's is the borrower on one end, and you're the vertical software provider distributing your software to a bunch of logistics providers — you can enable them to very easily manage all their cash flow through a factoring solution. I think that is a really interesting distribution model.
There's another sector that I think is super interesting, which is what I term the war on interchange. Interchange is massive. Visa and Mastercard made la lot of money last year on the interchange. Then you also have all the issuing banks that made another $50 million in fees, and all that's just routed to credit-card companies and users, and the merchant takes a hit, right? And there are a lot of different companies that are saying, "Hey, we can make account-to-account payments. We can route all that saved revenue back to the merchant and provide it back to the user in terms of rewards." This all happened in the UK, like, four years ago, with all their open banking, and now they've got some startups that have raised billions of dollars going after this opportunity. It's a little more nascent in the US.
Solomon Hailu, March Capital
Solomon Hailu, a partner at March Capital.
March Capital
What makes fintech exciting these days?
Fintech has been an exciting area for the last five or 10 years. Most of the excitement has been around the consumer angle. If you look at the IPOs of Lemonade, Coinbase, and Robinhood, a lot of those companies were transformative because they've meaningfully changed the customer experience. And now that we have great experiences there, I think the challenge is how do you support and build infrastructure that upgrades the financial-services industry. The pandemic really highlighted some of the challenges, especially when e-commerce took off and we saw that a lot of the solutions in place weren't enough.
What kind of companies attract you?
A lot of it is how you build a product that you can integrate with little friction. The infrastructure we have was state-of-the-art when it was first built, but it just wasn't built in a way where it could get software upgrades like any other kind of code today. I look for businesses that are more API native and are more wrapped around current systems versus rip and replace, which is a much more challenging thing to do. Within our portfolio, one example of that is a company called Extend. They provide card infrastructure for an issuing bank, such as AmEx, as well as fintechs. And they've integrated with processors and networks. Businesses like that are incredibly exciting to us. There are other businesses that are trying to do more B2B payments and working on ACH or real-time payments.
Grace Isford, Lux Capital
Grace Isford, a principal at Lux Capital.
What areas of fintech are you interested in?
I am focused on software infrastructure, investing broadly with a focus on three main areas: fintech infrastructure, crypto infrastructure — which abuts fintech infrastructure quite directly — and third is developer and data infrastructure, which can often dovetail into crypto.
What are the trends you're seeing now?
One big trend is the developer infrastructure stack and how you can make crypto more reliable. It's picks and shovels of building the developer framework, monitoring, scaling, security, and smart-contract platforms. I've seen a lot of companies working with data in and out of the blockchain.
Another trend is the movement of money in crypto. We've seen on a lot of the on-ramps, but once that money is in, how is it moving through the system, and, ultimately, how are you getting that money out? For example, changing crypto back to fiat.
The third one is compliance, fraud, and risk. So these are companies that are enabling either a user or company to better assess fraud and risk — those building a better risk engine to understand who your users are and their anti-money-laundering protections to protect their platform or their users from bad actors.
Paul Kigawa, Norwest Venture Partners
Paul Kigawa, a senior associate at Norwest Venture Partners.
What are you looking for in an investment?
At its core, investors have always fixated on the founder, market, and product or product vision for very early investments. Fintech investing is no different, though I've found the focus on the founder and team to be especially critical here. Financial services are challenging to navigate given the complexity of money movement. The most successful founders I've met have toiled in that corner of the financial-services landscape prior to launching their new venture. From this vantage point, they have felt the acute pain points, understand the market's limitations (and therefore opportunities for alpha), and have the right networks for hiring industry vets and winning new deals.
Beyond that, I focus a lot on unit economics and business models. In a rising-interest-rate environment, startups are being asked to do more with less — and the best teams are optimizing their business models for a handful of metrics: net/gross revenue retention, contribution margin, sales efficiency, and burn multiples. It can be a tough process now, but I think the market will reward these companies with premium multiples at exit.
What areas of fintech are you focusing on right now?
There's no question that the public market has rotated from growth to profitability or the near-term path to profitability, and we expect the private markets will continue to follow suit. That's not to say startups will need positive cash flows to raise venture dollars — rather, they'll need to have efficient business models and healthy unit economics to stay competitive in the fundraising game. And whereas VCs were previously focused on growth, even if efficiency took a hit, everyone is now looking at the bottom line.
In terms of areas of interest, I believe the digitization of payments is a powerful macro trend that will unfold over the course of our lifetimes. Of course, payment volume can fluctuate based on the economy — so the most resilient payments companies will drive revenue from both recurring SaaS relationships as well as a take rate on present value. Beyond B2B and B2C payments, I'm still very bullish on infrastructure-level plays in fintech, automation of finance-related work within the enterprise, and KYC and fraud prevention in Web3 financial applications.
Sheena Jindal, Comcast Ventures
Sheena Jindal, a partner at Comcast Ventures.
I believe that financial security is a core driver of stress for many Americans. If we can make financial services easy to understand, relatable, and accessible, we have a better chance of building enduring security for all. I think this holds especially true for small and medium enterprises as they're just starting to digitize many business functions. This provides new access to data that can help them make informed decisions that foster efficiencies and allow them to focus on operating and optimizing their business instead of low-value-add tasks.
For example, thinking about the breadth of services the millions of small businesses in the US often need — from lending and cash-flow management to insurance, people management, and exit pathways — these all can provide tremendous opportunities for the next wave of financial-services startups.
What trends are you seeing in the next six to 12 months?
I believe we're going to see consumers being more mindful of costs and seeking more efficient options for their day-to-day lives due to inflation. Similarly, businesses of all sizes are going to think about managing cash flow and finding efficiencies that make them more profitable. Startups are also exploring new ways to help SMBs increase accessibility and streamline filing for public-sector support, such as via grant programs and tax credits. There's also a lot of excitement about the legal industry leveraging digitization to provide lower-cost services to businesses and consumers, increasing accessibility.
We'll also see embedded financial services continue to rise as businesses seek alternative go-to-market approaches and look to combat rising acquisition costs and seek a wider customer base. As businesses and consumers seek a more holistic view of their financial status, embedded services and a more consolidated option for financial services will be desirable.
Gina Kirch, The Venture Collective
Gina Kirch, a founding partner of The Venture Collective.
The Venture Collective
We're interested in many areas of fintech. We've invested in companies in the US and Europe including Knoma, which is a "buy now, pay later" solution in Europe. We also invested in Jefa, a neobank that's specifically for women in Latin America and that looks for alternative ways to onboard customers — for example, using birth certificates rather than IDs to open an account. We're also investors in Ellevest. So we look at all stages of companies.
What makes a startup interesting for you to invest in?
We really focus on the intersection of positive impact and transformation. One core pillar for us is human empowerment, and this is where a lot of fintech comes in, because that sector works with financial equalization. Since we also invest in other sectors, we also look at biotech and digital health, and then world preservation, so climate and sustainability.
The diversity of the team is really important to us, but we also invest in people who have experienced the challenges they want to solve. There are the types of people who understand and empathize with the community they're working with. The other thing is, obviously, the impact is incredibly impactful. It's pretty clear transformation is really important. So we really look at people with a different perspective on the world.
Samantha Lewis, Mercury Fund
Samantha Lewis, a principal at Mercury Fund.
Mercury Fund
What do you focus on?
I lead the power theme at Mercury. Power is about rethinking the way we as individuals access capital and opportunity, build wealth, and ultimately how we are organized as a society. So that's very much fintech. I've been in blockchain since 2016, and I was actually brought in here to grow our Web3 practice.
How did you get into blockchain and Web3?
I was at Rice's business school at the same time as the founders of Topple when they were doing their Ph.D.s. I got to know them, and they were a critical part of my journey. They were building their own blockchain, and I saw how they wanted to solve the big problems in global transactions.
Why did you decide to focus on financial inclusion?
I come from an agricultural family and understand how complex agri-food supply chains can be. There's a lack of transparency there, so I started a food company in my earlier days after undergrad and before business school. I wanted to imagine a world where I could go get my breakfast tacos, and I can scan a QR code that tells me the entire story of the family and the farm, and this makes me want to tip them. It's that idea of connecting global supply chains. I like being able to help the people who sometimes get left behind when it comes to the value that technology has created.
And while Mercury is not a heavy consumer-facing fund at all, we do a lot of B2B enterprise software that also plays into this generational shift. Gen Z and millennials care about the products we buy, where money comes from, who we work for, and where we spend our money. Technology tools allow legacy financial institutions, like a bank, to offer things their employees or customers want.
What trends are you watching?
One of my favorite trends is how legacy companies are going to start interacting with the benefits of Web3. There are some really valuable companies in Web 2 that want to allow people to control their data and do trustless transactions, which Web3 can enable. I'm seeing and thinking about the bridges between Web 2 and Web3 and enabling companies to figure out the best way to access these.
Connor Love, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Connor Love, a partner at Lightspeed.
I have a super nonstandard background. I don't come from venture. I don't even come from an entrepreneurship background. I spent nearly seven years as an intelligence officer in the military. Oddly enough, I was deployed in northern Iraq in 2019, and I had just accepted a position at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. I wanted to transition out of the military. It was about 11 months before starting business school.
I had a broad interest in entrepreneurship and was more of a fintech tourist. But as I started looking into it, I started to understand the core of what was happening. I'm a statistician by training, so I've always been fascinated by businesses and spaces with really deep data, and that's why I gravitated towards fintech naturally.
Have there been any differences in the fintech sector from several years before?
If you look at the first wave of fintech, a lot of it was neobanks. I do not want to knock those in any way, but I think what's happening with a lot of these consumer-facing fintechs is the cost of things has been increasing, such as customer acquisition. The problem is that there are so many traditional banks now offering the same kind of digital-first customer experience. So if your product isn't distinctly unique, your cost is going through the roof, and now you're competing against all these other services. The longer-term path is to be able to cross-sell and layer multiple financial services to really be able to operate at a large scale. A good example of this is SoFi, where they started with student loans and now they obtained a banking charter.
Where are other opportunities in fintech?
Most of the expansion will happen globally, but I think there's still room in the US for growth. Look at an area like real estate — there's still a huge amount of people paying their rent by check. Fintech has not fully touched a lot of areas, like, say, construction. There are still bespoke verticals that fintech can still enter and disrupt.
Senofer Mendoza, Mendoza Ventures
Senofer Mendoza, a general partner and founder of Mendoza Ventures.
Why did you start in venture capital?
We focus on AI, fintech, and cybersecurity. We are also the first Latinx-founded VC firm on the East Coast; my cofounder is Mexican American. So we're probably very different from a typical VC. We started the firm in 2016, and when we exited one investment, we thought we could either buy a three-bedroom in Brooklyn or we could fix this broken venture-capital system. We want to create a lot of transparency in the capital stack.
As an investor, what are you interested in?
We love it when our three focus topics crash together. One of our companies is called FiVerity, and it's AI fraud detection for banks. And then we bring in a diversity-and-inclusion lens to that. I'm a product of financial inclusion. I went to a state school. So we're really passionate about that direction the industry is going in. I think we're at this really beautiful moment now where you see these large financial institutions working with startups and creating a space where we can collaborate.
Sarah Morgenstern, Flourish
Sarah Morgenstern, a principal at Flourish Ventures.
Flourish Ventures
I moved to China for a couple of years and saw that exposure to financial inclusion in that context, seeing the power of financial services and the role and the contribution it can make in both helping individuals achieve opportunities and macroeconomic development firsthand. I did an MBA at Wharton and worked in corporate finance at McKinsey. I was doing private-equity work and consulting, so I could fuse those two things in investing.
I relish working with extraordinary founders who are intent on building commercial leases, successful companies that have a mission and are animated by a desire to help people manage their day-to-day cash flows in a way that's going to help them be more resilient and seize opportunities. I think with the wave of mobile innovation in financial services we have this real inflection point where you could leverage technology to reach more people at lower costs with better services. And so it's been incredibly fortuitous to be a part of this space over the last five years, because tech-lead innovation can make a contribution.
What continues to make fintech a strong investment even in a downturn?
COVID has reinforced and shone a spotlight on what motivated us to do the work in the first place. Nearly 70% of Americans struggle with financial health, and many live paycheck to paycheck. At the same time, underserved groups are spending more than $300 billion a year in interest and fees. So there is a compelling commercial opportunity and meaningful impact to be made to innovate better products at lower costs for that large underserved market.
The pandemic really accelerated the adoption of digital financial services, and around it a number of the structural trends we were already seeing underway. For example, embedded finance and consumer shifts, things we thought were going to be big in several years, accelerated within weeks because everybody was trying to figure out 'how do I keep living?' In parallel, smartphone penetration marched on to growth globally. It's opened up new avenues for financial-service providers to reach.
Tyler Norwood, Antler
Tyler Norwood, a managing partner at Antler.
How are you dealing with the downturn?
In general, we're very excited about early-stage venture because it's the most insulated from the macro shifts. What we're seeing right now is the effects on the VC market as a whole or coming from a massive reduction in multiples on publicly traded technology companies. There's a level of insulation just because we're at this stage and our valuations are not determined at all based on public-market comps. We are not slowing down, and we think that the most important thing to do in a recession or in a downturn like we are in right now is to continue to invest in innovation.
What do you think makes this downturn different from others?
The good news is that we've at least passed the barrier of this being 2008 in terms of where the dominos fell. Public-market comps came down on the fear of inflation, and crypto had its big moment in the sun. That's one thing people are watching out for. There's a huge impact on crypto, but what everyone's been waiting to see is how connected crypto is to the rest of the financial world. So far it seems to be relatively insulated from mainstream financial markets. I think it's totally fine for a highly speculative, very narrow investment scope. It's easy to assume that the whole world knows what crypto is, that the ice-cream parlor on Main Street talking about crypto, but it's not true at all. It's a very small portion of the population that's investing in crypto and an even smaller part of the population that's doing it in a highly speculative way.
Nnamdi Okike, 645 Ventures
Nnamdi Okike, a managing partner and cofounder of 645 Ventures.
I cofounded 645 with my partner, Aaron Holiday, due to our strong belief that there is significant inefficiency in early-stage venture and that a data-driven investment model can generate significant alpha by helping to identify, select, and add value to exceptional companies. This model has been validated by the top-quartile performance of our first two funds.
Before cofounding 645, I spent eight years at Insight Venture Partners. As a senior member of their investment team, I made 18 investments and had nine exits, including four IPOs and five M&As.
Fintech is a key area of focus for me as an investor and for us as a firm. Fintech companies fit within three of 645's investment themes: SaaS for the second wave, citizen professionals, and personalized consumer technologies. We're looking at companies selling software to simplify, improve, and secure the process of adopting crypto and DeFi; vertical software companies providing embedded fintech solutions; and software companies that provide personalized fintech services to consumers.
I'm spending a great deal of time looking for areas within Web3 and crypto that require "arms merchants" to enable a product or service to reach mass adoption and large revenue scale. Despite the market downturn and crypto crash, I am a long-term believer in the growth of Web3 and crypto technologies, and I firmly believe that there will be a new wave of companies providing the infrastructure and rails that enable the long-term growth of the crypto market. These companies will be in areas such as lending, custody, DeFi infrastructure, and regtech, among others. These companies will speed the adoption of core blockchain technologies as well as make it easier for traditional companies to adopt blockchain-based products and services.
In addition, I believe there will be exciting new companies providing decentralized fintech products and services created after the current crypto winter period. These businesses will have stronger business models than the companies created in crypto to this point and will likely be more resilient.
Christian Ostberg, Fin Capital
Christian Ostberg, an investment partner at Fin Capital.
Fin Capital
First and foremost, we are fintech nerds! Outside of that, I tend to gravitate toward earlier-stage companies — companies that are within the $1 million to $25 million revenue stage really grasp my attention. At this stage, they have found product-market fit and are entering the complex and exciting phase of early growth. I am able to build long-term relationships with these companies and make a real impact on what they will become.
I started in venture as a generalist, as an undergraduate student working with early-stage companies. Over the course of my early career in finance and operating roles, I aligned with the thematic belief that software would fundamentally change financial services. When it came time to step into a VC role and select a focus, my belief in the category led me to take a dedicated focus on fintech.
I focus exclusively on B2B because of the fundamental advantages of the business models. From a revenue-growth perspective, our companies are solving for efficiency in a large, well-funded sector, with significant budgets dedicated to the problems our companies are solving. The companies we are investing in are less susceptible to macro factors. We're also not investing in businesses that have balance-sheet risk. Pure SaaS models that are efficient and selling to institutions are going to continue to grow. Valuation multiples may be affected in the short term, but we take a long view of our companies that extends far beyond a market cycle.
Healthy growth plans and realistic valuations have been a necessary and welcome change. We are actively investing across our focus areas, doubling down in our portfolio, and have a positive outlook for what the market shift means for B2B fintech as a whole. The market leaders in our space are going to accelerate out of this cycle, and some of the next foundational technology companies are being created.
No surprise: We're going to see lower valuations and fewer companies establishing funding rounds. There is going to be a healthy shift toward longer diligence processes, including building deeper relationships off cycle.
Cameron Peake, Financial Venture Studio
Cameron Peake, a partner at Financial Venture Studio.
Financial Venture Studio
My career has been focused on launching, building, and scaling fintech companies. I was previously the cofounder and CEO of Azlo, a neobank for SMBs, where I grew the company to 150 employees and nearly $1 billion in deposits. Prior to that, I launched digital banking and payment products in places like Zimbabwe, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Haiti. I made the transition to early-stage fintech VC because I am passionate about supporting fintech founders on their journeys, especially in the challenging and fun early period of building a company.
After I stepped back from Azlo, I followed the "standard" path of a recovering founder: I took some time off, did some angel investing, and advised other founders. And I came to realize that I was incredibly passionate about working with early-stage founders and supporting them to more quickly launch and grow based on the knowledge I'd accumulated about operating within fintech and starting and running a company.
Fintech as an investment theme is just a new iteration of the sector I've devoted my career to. What draws me to fintech is the juxtaposition of money as foundational to pretty much everything we do, but it's a system that continues to have misaligned incentives, broken structures, and antiquated ways of operating.
At a high level, I think we're going to see a lot more new founders enter the ecosystem as a result of layoffs and/or the realization that the value of the equity they hold is not worth as much as they once thought it was. We saw this among small businesses at Azlo after COVID hit, and I absolutely expect to see it again on the startup side. And with new entrepreneurs come new perspectives and use cases we as an industry can't imagine today.
That said, there are a few industry trends that I do think we'll see play out. These include deeper verticalization of fintech as more industries that have been insulated from fintech innovation will have their financial transactions digitized and improved; mainstreaming of crypto and Web3 despite the current "crypto winter"; and further embedding of finance.
Seth Rosenberg, Greylock
Seth Rosenberg, a principal at Greylock.
Greylock
I'm excited to invest in the next wave of fintech and Web3, where digitally native experiences no longer resemble legacy products. Lending risk should be exponentially reduced as income and assets are digitally verified and collateralized rather than promised via PDFs. Personal finance should be completely automated. International payments should be seamless. Opportunities for startups exist across the stack: data networks and APIs to enable connectivity, intelligent consumer applications, and new rails built on Web3. I expect a world where finance enables global GDP to grow faster and takes a smaller share. The transfer to the new guard represents trillions of market opportunities.
An economic downturn is an accelerant for most areas of fintech because it will offer cheaper, more accessible, and intelligent alternatives for investing, lending, saving, and paying. Two areas that may struggle in the near term are high-frequency, self-directed trading, and subprime lending. The latter has a caveat, as the need for capital increases during downturns, and capital will flow to the most efficient provider.
Bob Rosin, Defy
Bob Rosin, a partner at Defy.
I've been a founder and entrepreneur as well as a senior exec at several companies that have achieved iconic stature: Skype, LinkedIn, and Stripe. From my experiences building three startups and raising capital from investors including Sequoia Capital and Marc Andreessen, I'm intimately familiar with what it feels like to walk in the shoes of the founder and in building from zero through to a successful outcome. And I've been fortunate enough to learn what it means to be truly world class from some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation.
My investment interests tend to align closely with areas I worked on in my operating roles: I love all things fintech, B2B SaaS, as well as enabling infrastructure for the creator economy and emerging markets. My interests are eclectic, and I love meeting great founders who are doing their life's work through a startup.
Many fintech companies are building products that actually we would expect to see increased demand during times of economic stress like we are experiencing today. For example, Empower Finance, Ava Finance, Capchase, and GajiGesa are all well positioned to help businesses and consumers get faster access to capital when they need it most.
Looking at the startup ecosystem as a whole, one obvious trend, given the current uncertainty in the markets, is that we are seeing companies become much more measured about pacing their growth to ensure they will have the staying power to get through this challenging time. Looking back historically, we know that times like these are when the best companies get started, and I'm excited to try to identify some of those future industry leaders that are being built today.
And there are definitely key areas for investment in fintech. Building intelligence on top of raw money-movement rails. It is still early days in building the SaaS workflow-plus-payments apps for every industry, and the entire world of financial services needs to be rebuilt in a DeFi context. The work has only just started.
Jayni Shah, Fifth Down Capital
Fifth Down Capital partner Jayni Shah
Jayni Shah
What areas of fintech do you invest in?
I do fintech and SaaS, but I spend a lot of time on fintech, given I used to be in corporate development at PayPal. So I wear my Paypal hat a lot because when I was on the corporate development team, we looked at both B2C and B2B for PayPal, and I was on the deal team that acquired Braintree and Venmo.
These days, I spend quite a lot of time on a few different areas in fintech. One of them is banking-as-a-service like embedded APIs and white label banking. I also look at commerce enablement, the sort of low code, no code commerce APIs that are the tools that help platforms integrate new features without being very dependent on Shopify. Given my PayPal days, I love looking at different payments businesses, and I think there's so much room for disruption there. And then there's the more 'boring' stuff like compliance and compliance-as-a-service.
What makes you confident this year will be good for many fintech founders?
I think this will be one of the best vintages for early-stage investors. I'm so excited to be able to find sort of excellent founders in this environment. And frankly, when I don't have to invest in crazy, crazy prices, that makes my job a lot easier. A lot of great stuff comes out of this environment, similar to what happened after the 2008-2009 crisis when Airbnb was born, and then a lot of incredible $100 billion companies started.
Yes, people get more conservative in recessions and don't want to lose or change their jobs and play it safe. But for people who are going to be generational founders, they're risk takers. I can imagine it's probably not fun to be at companies like Coinbase or Robinhood, where employee morale might be pretty low. So I think many great founders will come out of these fintech companies. And as the industry becomes less focused on vanity milestones and looking toward the fundamentals, it will separate the good from the great. And I'm really excited to find those people.
Tyler Sosin, Menlo Ventures
Tyler Sosin, a partner at Menlo Ventures.
What got you into fintech investing? What areas of fintech do you invest in?
I joined Menlo in 2008 after Stanford as an analyst. It was more of a classic venture-capital training. Three years into that, I moved to London and worked for Accel Partners and developed my interest in fintech investing. I sourced investments for Accel in GoCardless, a payments company that was pan-European and is now in the US, and PeerTransfer, which turned into Flywire and went public last year. I also worked on other markets like remittances, and we worked on an investment called WorldRemit. We also invested in an infrastructure company called Calastone and the credit company Funding Circle. That was a fruitful three years.
I decided to rejoin Menlo Ventures and now lead our fintech practice. I lead our investments in Bluevine, which is a small-business neobank and lender, as well as Bread Financial, a company providing infrastructure for buy-now-pay-later that was sold to Alliance Data Systems. I've also invested in different verticals that sort of touch financial services, like an insurance company in India called Qualia and a real-estate company, HomeLight.
Why is enterprise or fintech infrastructure fascinating for you as an investor?
I think there are different types of B2B investments. There's the infrastructure side, and then there's the sort of software and service providers. There are a lot of attractive attributes to focusing on that market. Typically they can be more enduring businesses because they usually have very deep relationships with their customers, they have long annuity streams, and customers don't really churn. And I think the most successful fintechs have been sort of infrastructure companies, primarily payments companies like Stripe and Marqeta.
What impact does this downturn have on fintech investments?
I think there's less interest in investing in B2B companies largely because to grow efficiently in the B2B environment a lot of companies benefited from developer tailwinds. If you look at banking as a service, most of the clients being served are seed and Series A venture-backed companies, maybe some Series B and C companies. Every single one of those companies is going to face a harder fundraising environment. It's a two-way street; as an infrastructure provider, you benefit from the growth of your customer. I think you have to be a lot more discerning about where in the market you want to invest in infrastructure technologies.
I think fintech businesses are wonderful businesses, especially if they can get to scale. The fintech market was way overfunded in the last five years, and so I don't think there's necessarily any category of fintech right now that's going to be prosperous in this environment. The best that happens is that fewer companies get funded, there are fewer competitors in each of these subverticals, valuations normalize, and it generally gets healthier.
Nima Wedlake, Thomvest
Nima Wedlake, a principal at Thomvest Ventures.
Thomvest Ventures
Which areas of fintech do you focus on?
It's always been my viewpoint that over time most consumers will transition to using technology, and that includes fintech, because everyone interacts with finance and banking. One area I've been focused on is finding lending applications or inserting credit or lending in areas where it wasn't before. So think of banking as a service or embedded finance. I've also been looking at housing finance and how people need to expand access to mortgages.
What opportunities does the downturn present in the sector?
With fintech, I saw a massive market opportunity and great talent. This was a growing area in investing pre-downturn, but honestly I don't think anyone is really isolated here. The bar has been raised, and performance matters more than ever.
But a downturn can act as a tailwind because during periods of distress large banks focus on good delivery of services. For example, banks stopped focusing on mortgages before the downturn, which create a gap, and that's when you saw companies like Rocket Mortgage. So we're probably going to see more moments like that.
David Zhang, TCV
David Zhang, a partner at TCV.
When I joined TCV, I saw that fintech touched everything. So I'm interested in the sheer size of opportunities that are available. Financial services have been around forever, but many don't have the ability to optimize technology in different ways. There are opportunities in the sector, and if you notice, it's consumer-facing companies that tend to lead. But we're seeing a lot of interest in B2B, so I am focusing more and more on the infrastructure side too.
What trends are you seeing now?
There are two trends that we've invested behind. The first is what people call consumer fintech, the notion of the superapp for consumers. If you look at China and what Alipay has built there, it's phenomenal. People use it for everything — not just payments, but also for loans. And that's happening in Brazil and even here in the US, with some apps becoming that for a certain segment of the population. But certainly this is something to watch over a five- to 10-year trend.
The second trend that I think is really prominent — and this underpins our investments in Brex and in Qonto in France — is what we call the office of the CFO and CIO. It's not very different from the consumer theme in that it finds a solution for several different problems. When you think about a company, you know they need some sort of banking solution — payments, expense management, tax, payroll, and all of that. Ask any CFO, and they will say that's what keeps them up at night. So these companies look to simplify all of that through their platforms.
More: Features Fintech BI Graphics
Ventue Capital
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2022-07-21T09:24:24Z
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26 Rising Fintech VCs Still Excited About the Sector
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https://www.businessinsider.com/rising-fintech-vc-still-excited-about-startups-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/rising-fintech-vc-still-excited-about-startups-2022-7
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The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, accounts for about 90% of the world's chip output,
The US faces a "deep and immediate recession" if its access to Taiwan chips are cut, said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
The US buys 90% of the leading-edge chips it uses from Taiwan.
The Senate voted on Tuesday to advance a $50 billion bill aimed at boosting US chip production.
The US would face a "deep and immediate recession" if the country's access to made-in-Taiwan chips were cut off, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday.
"If you allow yourself to think about a scenario where the United States no longer had access to the chips currently being made in Taiwan, it's a scary scenario," Raimondo told CNBC's Sara Eisen on Wednesday. "It's a deep and immediate recession. It's an inability to protect ourselves by making military equipment. We need to make this in America."
Raimondo's comments came after the Senate on Tuesday voted 64-34 to advance a $50 billion bill aimed at boosting semiconductor manufacturing in the US.
"We need a manufacturing base that produces these chips, at least enough of these chips, here on our shores because otherwise we'll just be too dependent on other countries," Raimondo told CNBC.
Although many of the chips the US uses are designed at home, the country purchases 90% of leading-edge chips from Taiwan, where they are made. This poses a national security risk as such chips are used in a wide range of applications, including military, Raimondo added.
"You can't have biotech industry, or artificial intelligence, or quantum computing, or really any innovation without semiconductors," said Raimondo. "Semiconductors are a cornerstone technology necessary to underpin every other innovation-based industry."
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company accounts for about 90% of the world's chip output, according to Reuters, citing industry estimates.
This poses a risk to US national security as China claims self-governing Taiwan as its territory and Beijing has not ruled out using military force to "reunify" with the island.
Tensions between the US and China ratcheted up after President Joe Biden said in May that the US would defend Taiwan militarily if China attacked the island. An unnamed White House official later said Biden's comments were not out of line with the existing US policy on China that "has not changed."
The US is already facing recession risks due to decades-high inflation rates and the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes, which make it more expensive to buy big-ticket items like property and cars.
More: united states Taiwan semiconductor chips Recession
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2022-07-21T09:24:30Z
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US Faces 'Deep and Immediate Recession' If Taiwan Chip Supply Cut
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https://www.businessinsider.com/us-faces-deep-immediate-recession-taiwan-chip-supply-cut-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/us-faces-deep-immediate-recession-taiwan-chip-supply-cut-2022-7
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We got an exclusive look at the 25-slide pitch deck Fonoa, a tax automation startup founded by ex-Uber employees, used to raise $60 million in a round led by Coatue
Hasan Chowdhury and Callum Burroughs
Fonoa founders Davor Tremac, Filip Sturman and Ivan Ivankovic.
Fonoa
Fonoa has raised $60 million in a Series B round led by Coatue for its tax compliance platform.
The startup helps companies understand and manage their tax obligations in different jurisdictions.
We got a look at the 25-slide pitch deck Fonoa used to raise the fresh funds.
Fonoa, an Irish tax automation startup founded by three former Uber staffers, has raised $60 million in a round led by hedge fund Coatue.
The Dublin-based firm, set up in 2019, helps companies understand and manage their tax obligations in different jurisdictions through an API. Zoom, Booking.com, Remote, and Bolt are among the company's users. Insider reported in April that Fonoa was in talks to raise the Series B round.
Tax rules and reporting requirements are overseen by authorities and can differ from country to country, making accurate compliance an often timely, costly, and difficult task to complete.
Fonoa has developed an API that takes care of everything from validating tax ID numbers and determining the indirect tax treatment of global transactions to issuing locally compliant tax invoices and creating and submitting tax returns data to local governments.
Davor Tremac, CEO and founder of Fonoa, said that businesses were increasingly looking to manage their indirect taxes at a time when countries are cracking down on issues like VAT gaps by bringing in new regulations.
"Fonoa is the only tax software solution built for the digital age and means that companies can focus on what they do best while we make sure they charge the right amount of tax, in the right place, at the right time," Tremac said.
Coatue, an investor in Tesla, Amazon, and Rivian, led the round with new funding coming from Dawn Capital, Index Ventures, OMERS Ventures, FJ Labs, and Moving Capital. The fundraise comes eight months after the startup closed a $25 million Series A in November.
"We have a complete focus on providing an end-to-end experience for tax managers, creating a one-stop-shop platform for managing tax obligations globally," said Filip Sturman, cofounder and chief product officer at Fonoa.
To achieve its ambitions, the company said it would look to double in size by the end of the year as it seeks to hire people for engineering and sales roles.
Check out the 25-slide pitch deck Fonoa used to raise the fresh funds below:
More: Features Fintech Coatue
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2022-07-21T10:59:49Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Fonoa: Tax Automation Startup Lands $60 Million in Round Led by Coatue
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https://www.businessinsider.com/fonoa-tax-automation-startup-lands-60-million-round-led-by-coatue-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/fonoa-tax-automation-startup-lands-60-million-round-led-by-coatue-2022-7
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Tech stock picker Alex Umansky ran the world's best mutual fund for years. He told us what he's done to position himself to get back to the top after a deep downturn.
Alex Umasky has repositioned his top-performing fund to focus on long-term growth.
Baron Funds
Alex Umansky of Baron Funds was one of the world's best growth stock pickers for years.
The stocks Umansky specializes in have fallen dramatically out of favor in 2021 and 2022.
He told Insider what he's bought, sold, and how he's tweaked his approach to turn things around.
Buying growth stocks is about having the conviction to invest in long-term ideas — and for Alex Umansky of Baron Funds, the steep sell-off in growth stocks over the last few months was a good reason to focus on only the ideas he was most sure about.
As of late 2020, Kiplinger rated Umansky's Baron Global Advantage Fund as the best global stock fund over one-, three-, and five-year spans. Even when the tech turmoil of early 2022 began, Morningstar said his returns were beating 99% of similar funds.
While his longer-term results are still better than most of his peers, Umansky doesn't mince words about 2022, comparing it to being "punched in the face." But asked about his plans to get his returns back to where he wants them to be, he says it comes down to concentration.
Over the last couple of years Umansky added 20 or 25 stocks to his portfolio as money flowed into the fund and valuations soared, making bargains harder to find. Those wound up being "lower conviction ideas" that were trading at cheap prices.
"We could not add fresh capital to some of our favorite long term names because valuations were extended," he told Insider. "There were companies where we thought we were getting 90% of quality for 50% of the price."
Now he's selling those kinds of stocks and trimming his holdings of older and more mature companies like Amazon and Alphabet. He also closed a position in Meta Platforms at the end of 2021.
"It's the younger, more exciting companies that have longer duration of growth, where we are allocating new capital to now," he said. "We would rather get the leaders, and we would rather get the companies where we have the highest conviction that they will emerge as the winners."
Even in a market where investors' attitudes have changed and where interest rates are climbing, he says shares of Tesla, security companies Cloudflare and CrowdStrike, cloud service names Snowflake and Datadog, and e-commerce company Shopify have dropped to attractive prices that belie those companies' long-term prospects.
He remains bullish on electric car maker Rivian as well, arguing that it's plunged from $170 a share to about $30 just based on sentiment, but without any fundamental change to the company or the opportunity for electric and autonomous vehicles.
"Buying these stocks 50% lower than six months ago, 70% lower, 80% lower, is compelling. To us it is compelling. Even with the cost of capital rising, even with the increased uncertain economic environment," he said. "Can you name a single bear market in the US, or a single meaningful correction, that did not prove to be a buying opportunity over the longer period of time?"
More: Investing Stocks Stock Picking
stock pickers
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2022-07-21T11:00:07Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Finding the Best Growth Stocks in a Bear Market: Alex Umansky
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https://www.businessinsider.com/investing-best-stocks-bear-market-recession-growth-recovery-baron-funds-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/investing-best-stocks-bear-market-recession-growth-recovery-baron-funds-2022-7
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Mortgage rates started the week high but have since trended down and appear to be holding steady at their current levels. Today, average 30-year fixed mortgage rates remain relatively unchanged, while other fixed and adjustable rates have inched down slightly.
Rates have been volatile in recent weeks due to inflation and uncertainty surrounding the possibility of a looming recession.
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2022-07-21T11:00:25Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Today's Mortgage, Refinance Rates: July 21, 2022 | Rates Steady
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/best-mortgage-refinance-rates-today-thursday-july-21-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/best-mortgage-refinance-rates-today-thursday-july-21-2022-7
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Airline tells some passengers changing planes in Amsterdam not to bring check-in luggage
Some passengers aren't able to bring check-in luggage on KLM flights passing through Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.
Angel Di Bilio/Getty Images
KLM passengers transfering in Amsterdam to a European flight cannot check in bags on Thursday.
The airline blamed the decision on technical problems with the airport's baggage system.
Schiphol has flights to about 300 destinations and is a major transfer hub.
Some passengers changing planes in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Thursday have been told they cannot check in luggage.
KLM said all passengers traveling to European destinations with a connection in Amsterdam can travel "with hand luggage only" due to technical problems with the airport's baggage system.
Dutch news outlet NH Nieuws reported that Schiphol's baggage system was brought down by a malfunction on Wednesday that was later resolved.
Schiphol is one of Europe's busiest airports. It has flights to about 300 destinations and is a major transfer hub, with almost 44% of its passengers changing planes last year.
Some Twitter users have shared screenshots of what appears to be emails from KLM saying that only customers whose final destination is either Amsterdam or outside Europe could bring hold luggage.
"Due to a major disruption of the baggage system at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol we are facing an unmanageable situation which is beyond our control," the airline said in the email. One passenger said she had less than 24 hours notice of the disruption.
Affected passengers have the option to rebook their flight or obtain a travel voucher, the airline said.
"I cannot guarantee whether there will still be a disruption tomorrow," a KLM representative said on the company's Twitter account.
Schiphol and KLM didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The malfunction at Schiphol comes as passengers face mounting travel chaos. A combination of understaffing and soaring demand for travel means that airlines and airports are delaying and canceling thousands of flights, losing luggage, and facing huge lines for check-in and security.
Some passengers have complained on Twitter that their check-in luggage never made in onto their KLM flights.
More: klm KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Schiphol Airport Amsterdam
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2022-07-21T11:00:31Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Don't Bring Check-in Luggage, Airline Tells Some Amsterdam Passengers
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https://www.businessinsider.com/schiphol-amsterdam-airport-hold-bags-klm-travel-chaos-flight-netherlands-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/schiphol-amsterdam-airport-hold-bags-klm-travel-chaos-flight-netherlands-2022-7
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From left, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon announce a draft bill that would decriminalize cannabis on a federal level.
Sens. Schumer, Wyden, and Booker just unveiled their long-awaited cannabis reform bill.
It would decriminalize weed, add new taxes and FDA regulations, and expunge federal criminal records.
It's most likely doomed in Congress because 60 senators don't support making cannabis widely available.
Three Democratic senators on Thursday released a long-awaited, sweeping cannabis reform bill, planting their flag into a issue that enjoys support from most voters but that nevertheless is likely doomed this Congress.
The bill from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer; Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee; and Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, would end the federal prohibition on marijuana, implement criminal justice reforms, and add new taxes and regulations on cannabis products.
The bill, called the Cannabis Administration And Opportunity Act, is unlikely to become law in this Congress because 60 senators don't support making cannabis more widely available — including not just most Republicans but many Democrats — and the White House has voiced unspecified support for more limited reforms.
Their stance on the matter is out of step with most of the public. Gallup polling finds 68% of voters, including half of Republicans, say marijuana use should be legal.
On top of that, most people who live in the US already live in a state where some form of cannabis is legal. In total, 18 states and Washington, DC, have legalized adult-use cannabis while 37 states now have medical marijuana programs.
Customers wait to have their orders filled at a RISE dispensary in Bloomfield, New Jersey, on, April 21, 2022 — the day recreational cannabis sales for adults 21 and older started.
Despite inadequate support, Thursday's bill is part of growing momentum on the issue and industries are taking notice.
A major lobbying operation has taken hold that includes not just tobacco companies but alcohol and tobacco interests that want a share of the market, as well as investment banks, companies like PayPal, and even from health and veterans' groups.
All have been eager to shape regulations, taxes, and other reforms that would affect businesses. Wall Street analysts say the US cannabis market could be worth over $100 billion by the end of the decade.
Cannabis bill would add new taxes and FDA regulations
The new 296-page legislation would end the federal prohibition on cannabis by removing it from the list of controlled substances. From there, states would be allowed to make their own laws but would have to limit use to people over age 21.
The bill would also allow the Food and Drug Administration to set new federal standards for cannabis products, including how they're labeled. The products would be regulated similarly to alcohol and tobacco, and face an excise tax set by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which is part of the US Treasury Department.
The bill would automatically expunge federal cannabis convictions, bolster research on how cannabis affects health and public safety, and set limits on how many products people could buy.
Housing and student loan programs could not deny benefits to people found to have used cannabis. The bill says most federal employees would no longer face pre-employment or random drug tests, though reserves the right for testing people in national security, law enforcement, and commercial transportation jobs.
Congress might have a better shot with more incremental actions
Schumer, Booker, and Wyden first unveiled a discussion draft of their bill a year ago. Since then, they've gathered more than 1,800 comments, according to Booker's office.
The Cannabis Administration And Opportunity Act's introduction marks a flurry of action on cannabis reform.
In May, the Democratic-led House passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, or the MORE Act, another sweeping cannabis decriminalization measure. The Senate has not taken up that bill.
On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, which Booker chairs, will hold a hearing on federal cannabis reform.
Despite the momentum for sweeping reforms, the bill that has the most support in the Senate is the bipartisan Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act, or SAFE Banking Act, which would help cannabis companies access the banking system.
In this July 1, 2017, file photo, a cashier rings up a marijuana sale at a cannabis dispensary in Las Vegas.
The bill's provisions — which were also tucked into the Schumer-Booker-Wyden legislation — would allow more consumers to use credit cards for cannabis products rather than rely on cash or debit cards, an arrangement that can put proprietors at risk for burglaries.
But civil-rights and criminal-justice reform advocates have urged lawmakers to go further to ensure the transition to legal cannabis is equitable. They want legislation that will protect and restore the rights of communities most hurt by harsh sentencing laws that sprouted from failed US drug wars.
It's not clear whether the White House will extend support to the Democrats' bill. The Daily Beast reported that the White House pushed out and sidelined some staffers for disclosing their past recreational use of marijuana.
President Joe Biden has previously expressed skepticism about all-out legalization but this week said he was working on fulfilling a campaign promise to free people who are incarcerated for marijuana.
"I don't think anyone should be in prison for the use of marijuana," Biden told reporters in response to a question from the New York Post.
Among his 80 acts of clemency as president, Biden has pardoned or commuted the sentences of 79 people who were incarcerated over drug offenses, at least nine of which were marijuana-related.
More: Cannabis Chuck Schumer Cory Booker Ron Wyden
Drug Legalization
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2022-07-21T11:00:37Z
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Senate Democrats Unveil Marijuana Legalization Bill Set to Fail
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https://www.businessinsider.com/senate-democrats-unveil-marijuana-legalization-bill-set-to-fail-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/senate-democrats-unveil-marijuana-legalization-bill-set-to-fail-2022-7
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Rebecca Knight and Catherine Henderson
Knowing the warning signs that your job is in jeopardy can help you prepare.
Industries including tech and finance are starting to see mass layoffs, and workers are nervous.
Experts say there are warning signs that your job may be on the line — and some are harder to spot.
Insider spoke with career experts about how to prepare for layoffs in an uncertain economy.
Layoffs are sweeping American businesses as recession fears mount. Peloton, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, and the real-estate brokerage Redfin are among the companies that have cut jobs so far this year.
If you're jittery, you're not alone. According to a recent survey from Insight Global, 78% of employees surveyed said they are worried about their job security if the US enters another recession.
Layoffs don't happen out of the blue. Experts say there are warning signs that your job is in jeopardy. Some, like a lousy performance review, are obvious. Others might be harder to pick up on at first. Your manager might start putting long-term projects on hold or canceling meetings altogether.
"It's important to know the factors that make you potentially more vulnerable — especially in an economy like this one," Roy Cohen, a career coach and author of the "Wall Street Professional's Survival Guide," said. "You need to be able to deconstruct what's happening and examine your situation so you can get a sense of whether your role is secure."
Insider spoke with four career experts about how to read the signals that your job may be on the line — and what you can do to prepare so you're ready if the worst happens.
Keep tabs on the news
Signs of trouble in the economy are hard to miss these days. News feeds are full of bleak headlines — slowing growth, rising inflation, and companies cutting costs.
Even though it can be stressful, experts say it's important to pay close attention to the news. Stay in the loop about broad macroeconomic trends and what they might mean for your industry. If your company's closest competitor announces that it's restructuring, for example, that could spell trouble for your firm, too.
According to Cohen, it doesn't mean that layoffs at your company are inevitable, but job cuts at a competitor could be an indication that business is slowing. "You need to connect the dots," he said.
Pay attention to your company's business results
It's tempting to keep your head down and grind in a tough economy, but that won't protect you. You need to stay attuned to your organization's business results and keep your eyes and ears open for clues. Consecutive quarters of lower profits do not bode well for employees. Similarly, mergers and acquisitions almost always result in companies cutting jobs.
If your company starts to slow hiring or announces a hiring freeze, that can be a sign of layoffs on the horizon, Eli Joseph, a professor at the Columbia University School of Professional Studies and author of "The Perfect Rejection Résumé" said. He also advised paying attention to team shakeups and employees moving around; it could mean that the company is unsettled about its direction.
Joseph said that if you're not sure what to make of the things you're seeing, ask. "Always ask for feedback and ask to see if everything's OK with your work."
Pick up on subtle clues
Other signs that you may be on the chopping block are more subtle.
For better or worse, your performance is tied to your boss's performance so you could be vulnerable if your boss is transferred, fired, demoted, or forced to retire. Getting "layered" — when the company moves someone new between you and your boss — is also cause for concern. The same goes for when you're assigned a new boss who's been hired from outside the company: New managers often want to recruit a new team.
Cohen said to also watch for signs about how your superiors are perceiving your individual performance. If you're getting feedback that's more critical than usual, it could be because your boss is under pressure to force rank employees. If you're getting moved off key assignments or given legacy work — being assigned to older products or doing maintenance on systems — it could mean that you're not seen as driving the future growth of the company.
"Feeling isolated, out of the loop, and being left off emails are bad signs," Cohen said. "You would have been included if you were important enough. Or it could mean that they want you to fail, and they want to justify that you aren't valuable."
There are ways to prepare for a layoff — or even turn things around at your job.
When you start to feel anxious, Lindsey Pollak, the author of "Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work," said it's a good time to check in on people at your company to stay connected in your organization. Focus on what you can control: doing your best at your current job, staying active on LinkedIn, and taking care of your mindset.
Having a backup plan is critical if the worst happens, Miriam Spinner, a career coach in Phoenix, Arizona, said. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date and be sure to continue to network on and offline. Cultivate relationships in your industry by becoming more active in professional organizations or volunteering in relevant associations. If it's clear you're in danger of losing your job, research your severance benefits and reduce your spending.
"There's a saying that you need to put on a new roof when the sun is shining," she said. "In other words, don't wait 'til it rains to start thinking about this stuff. Be proactive."
More: Layoffs Tech layoffs recession 2022 job security
Career experts
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2022-07-21T11:00:43Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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4 Signs You Are at Risk of Being Laid Off, According to Career Experts
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https://www.businessinsider.com/signs-laid-off-career-experts-recession-tech-layoffs-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/signs-laid-off-career-experts-recession-tech-layoffs-2022-7
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Amid the uncertain economy, here are the 5 things workers should do if they're laid off from their jobs
Tech companies have announced over the past few weeks that they're instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees.
Nearly 56,000 technology workers have been laid off this year, according to Layoffs.FYI.
There are five steps two career experts say workers should take if they've lost their job.
They suggest taking time for yourself, looking into legal counsel, and posting on social media.
Nearly 56,000 technology workers have been laid off in 2022, according to the tech-industry-layoffs tracker Layoffs.FYI.
Many of these 55,698 former tech employees hail from big-name companies such as Peloton, Netflix, Coinbase, and Twitter. And experts say rough roads may lie ahead for other trades.
As the US appears to be hurtling toward a recession, workers are worried about falling victim to the next round of layoffs in their industries: In a survey of 1,004 working US adults in June by the staffing-solutions firm Insight Global, 78% of employees said they were scared of losing their jobs in the next recession.
Liz Tilia, the founder of life-coaching company Fem Home Ec., and Toni Frana, a career-services manager with the remote-job search platform FlexJobs, listed five steps people should take if they've been laid off.
One of the first things someone should do after learning they've been laid off is nothing, the career experts said. Workers need time to process their emotions before diving into the logistics of their severance and job hunting.
Whether an employee saw their layoff coming or they were blindsided by the announcement, the split will have an emotional effect on them, Frana said.
"Allowing yourself some grace and some time to process is important," she said.
2. Seek legal counsel
After you get laid you off, human resources will likely give you a document to sign, Tilia said. This document usually serves two purposes: to waive your right to sue the company and to give the company control over what you say about them.
Signing this document is optional, and companies should provide at least a few weeks for you to obtain your own counsel to review it, Tilia said. Counsel can fight the terms of a nondisparagement clause and advocate for you in negotiations.
"If you can, I always recommend utilizing legal counsel," she said. "If people can't afford legal support because they're being laid off, there are plenty of free clinics online that they can find."
3. Negotiate your layoff
Once you've taken time to read through the offer HR provides, you can counter with your own offer, Tilia said.
"Negotiate the terms of your departure, just like you would negotiate the terms of your arrival," she said.
For instance, she recommends workers ask for a letter of recommendation explaining they were laid off and not fired, severance pay, career-coaching services, stock options in lieu of unused paid time off, an extension of insurance into their transitionary period, and for the official reason of termination to make them eligible for unemployment.
Additionally, severance — which should be equivalent to at least four weeks of pay for each year you worked for the company — should be collected through multiple payments and not one installment, Tilia said.
"I, unfortunately, negotiated a $25,000 severance payout that I got paid in full, and I got $11,000 taken out in taxes," she added.
4. Forward-thinking job hunting
While employees who were laid off are likely eager to find work, Tilia encourages her clients to embrace the "lazy man's" way of finding a job: setting their professional profiles to "open to work" and searchable by recruiters, along with uploading their résumés to LinkedIn, Indeed, and CareerBuilder. This is on top of actively applying to open positions, she said.
And, unless the job posting you applied for has a date for when the firm will stop accepting applications, follow up with the company after a week or so for a status update, Frana said.
If you make it to the interview stage of the application process, you want to control the narrative of why you are no longer with your previous employer, Frana added. Applicants should not dwell on their layoff, and they should use words like "downsizing," "merger," or "restructuring," she added.
For example, Frana said a job seeker can say this in their interview or add this to their cover letter: "Due to my company downsizing, I was part of a group layoff and am looking forward to pursuing new opportunities."
5. Build connections
One of the best ways to get a new job is to rely on your old connections, Tilia said. To get your network's attention, you can publish a social-media post about the situation.
In recent months, some LinkedIn users have posted about losing their jobs at companies such as Amazon, Twitter, and Netflix. Some of these posts have gone viral.
If an employee decides to post about their situation, Tilia and Frana agree that they should recognize what they gained from their old job and let people know they're looking onward to opportunities.
"Saying something negative about the situation or about your employer will not look good to potential new employers," Frana added.
More: Fired Laid Off Recession job seekers
Negotiate
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2022-07-21T11:01:03Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Here's What You Should Do If You Were Laid Off From Your Job
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https://www.businessinsider.com/what-should-you-do-laid-off-from-your-job-severance-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/what-should-you-do-laid-off-from-your-job-severance-2022-7
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Hi Aaron Weinman here. Weak investment-banking revenues held back banks' recent earnings numbers.
A big part of the slump in dealmaking can be attributed to the corporate-credit market. It's where I cut my teeth as a reporter and thought I'd spend today unpacking what's happening there.
1. Investment-banking revenues slumped last quarter as dealmaking slowed. High-yield bond issuances are down almost 80% this year compared to this time in 2021, and investment-grade deals are down about 17% for that same period, Tom Joyce, capital markets strategist for MUFG, said during a media roundtable on Wednesday.
Market volatility, increased borrowing costs, and soaring inflation have left dealmakers hamstrung as companies avoid a more expensive public bond and loan market.
"Many of the corporations that we speak to don't need to issue debt for the next one or two years," Joyce said.
While the slowdown in deals is worrying, it's important to remember that companies made hay while the sun shined in 2020 and 2021. The Fed's decision to keep rates near zero meant that borrowers raised debt for anything from acquisitions to refinancing old debt.
So it shouldn't be a surprise that deals have slowed down, and many bankers are fretting over the security of their jobs. During the good times of lower-rate bonds and loans in 2020 and 2021, many companies were quick to raise debt that doesn't mature until 2027 or 2028.
Indeed, just $95 billion in investment-grade bonds fall due this year, and only $13 billion worth of high-yield debt, and $15 billion of leveraged loans mature this year, according to Fitch Ratings. This increases to $258 billion next year in investment grade, but maturities are less than $50 billion each in high-yield bonds and leveraged loans for the next two years.
"Companies were able to extend their runway in terms of liquidity needs," Steven Oh, the global head of credit at PineBridge Investments, told Insider. "Only those that are under significant stress might need access to the market in the coming months."
And accessing the market right now is tough. A high-yield bond that might have charged about 4% or 5% in interest is now costing some borrowers more than 10%, capital-markets bankers said.
Another pain point for these bankers is the debt they've had to hold on their balance sheets. Typically, a bank will underwrite a deal for a client and then sell that debt to institutional investors through a bond or loan. Banks marked about $1.3 billion of losses last quarter on corporate-debt commitments that are yet to be sold to investors, Bloomberg reported.
Opportunistic investors also know the ball's in their court right now and can pick this debt up on the cheap.
Take Cornerstone Building Brands. Private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice agreed to buy the company for almost $6 billion in March. It's currently raising about $1 billion in loans and bonds to support the buyout, but the debt is being offered to investors at 90 cents on the dollar, and a yield of about 11%, a banker familiar with the transaction said.
You can also look at Elon Musk's Twitter saga. These very markets are what he would need if he were to complete his purchase of Twitter. Some $10 billion of that $44 billion deal would be raised in the corporate-credit space, but right now — whether he has to buy Twitter or not — it's no easy feat.
"Borrowers are just going to have to accept that this is the new rate of funding," Viktor Hjort, global head of credit strategy and analysts at BNP Paribas, said during a press conference at the French bank's New York offices earlier this month.
2. Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge is launching a venture fund focused on Web3 and crypto. The fresh fund plans come just days after SkyBridge's Legion Strategies fund halted client withdrawals.
3. The do-good investing phenomenon is under the microscope. While firms remain committed to ESG strategies, regulators are cracking down on greenwashing and the market downturn is hurting ESG funds. Insider has been tracking all things ESG investing and sustainable finance.
4. A day of reckoning could be on the horizon at Goldman Sachs. The bank and a group of women suing Goldman have reached an agreement to unseal their allegations of harassment and discrimination, according to this report from Capital & Main.
5. Emma Rose Bienvenu, chief of staff at crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital, is influencing policy on digital assets. Here's how she goes about dealing with lawmakers and regulators.
6. BlackRock is buying Vanguard Renewables for $700 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Massachusetts-based firm works with dairy farmers and food companies to convert food waste and cow manure into an energy source.
7. JPMorgan is taking on the direct-lending business, according to the Financial Times. The bank's leveraged-loan unit will underwrite and hold debt for some middle-market deals rather than syndicate the money to third-party investors in the bond market.
8. Tesla, GM, and Rivian are banking on the $360 billion battery business to support their electric-vehicle plans. But battery makers are struggling to churn out enough supply.
9. Gerd Kommer, founder of Kommer Invest and one of Germany's best-known financial experts, shared why "factor investing" garners solid returns. The asset manager and ETF expert also explained why picking stocks might not be worth the hype.
10. Food-tech ChowNow's Chief Executive Chris Webb went "cold turkey" on venture capital. He told Insider that he grew "addicted" to cheap venture capital, but to prepare for a recession, he fired 97 workers last week.
Alpine Investors has acquired Boston-based FEV Tutor, the K-12 research and online tutoring platform.
Investcorp has agreed to sell its stake in United Talent Agency to EQT Private Equity. Investcorp first invested in UTA in 2018.
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2022-07-21T12:30:55Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Bond and Loan Issuances Are Down As Banks Offload Debt on the Cheap
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https://www.businessinsider.com/capital-markets-earnings-banking-bonds-loans-deals-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/capital-markets-earnings-banking-bonds-loans-deals-2022-7
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Top of the morning, markets people. Phil Rosen here, writing to you from a humid and glistening New York.
Growing up, when I heard adults talk about "refinancing," it sounded awfully boring. But since covering Wall Street, I've learned that there's real drama in housing markets.
Today I'm breaking down what's going on with US mortgages, and why you should care.
US households have built up $26 trillion in home equity, the largest share of the overall housing stock since the 1980s.
1. Mortgage demand is at a 22-year low. That means the last time Americans were this discouraged by the housing market, George W. Bush was starting his first term and a gallon of gas was about $1.50.
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage demand slipped 6.3% last week as high prices throttled US residential real estate. That makes three consecutive weeks of declines, and suggests more downside ahead.
"Purchase activity declined for both conventional and government loans, as the weakening economic outlook, high inflation, and persistent affordability challenges are impacting buyer demand," the MBA's economic forecaster said.
There's a lot at play here. For one, mortgage rates have roughly doubled this year, from about 3% in January to close to 6% this month.
But prices aren't coming down — at least not yet. Despite declining sales, last month marked another all-time high for median home prices.
The MBA's refinancing index, meanwhile, plummeted 4% over the last week and 80% over the last year.
And soaring inflation hasn't helped. High prices and surging rates are weighing on buyer sentiment. In turn, homebuilders are more pessimistic about the market than at any point since the start of the pandemic.
Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi even warned the housing market is about to enter a "deep freeze," as first-time homebuyers can't afford to buy in.
The takeaway from all of this is that the housing market has certainly cooled, but not quite enough for buyers to be able to cope with higher mortgage rates on top of prices that appear to still be climbing.
2. US stock futures traded mixed early Thursday. Meanwhile, oil tumbled by 4% and European stocks fell as investors brace for the European Central Bank's meeting later today, with the bank set to hike interest rates for the first time in over a decade. Here are the latest market moves.
3. On the docket: Philip Morris Inc., Blackstone, and more, all reporting. Plus, look out for the unemployment insurance weekly claims report from the US department of Labor.
4. The manager of the top-performing large-cap mutual fund of 2022 shared how he's found success in a bear market through dividend investing. The portfolio expert talked about the philosophy and strategy he uses to secure gains. These are his eight favorite stock market opportunities right now.
5. The Fed will focus on taming hot inflation as the strong labor market still points to a lower recession risk, Bank of America analysts said Wednesday. In a note to clients, BofA said solid employment data suggests the economy has steady underlying momentum, which reduces the risk of a downturn. Here's what you want to know.
6. Russia resumes flows of fuel through Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The pipeline closed for a 10-day maintenance program and concerns had grown that operations would not resume. But the return of flows has temporarily eased fears of an immediate energy crisis in Europe.
7. Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham forecasted that weak earnings are going to drag on stocks. What's more, the market historian and GMO cofounder said the slump in asset prices could be prolonged — and added that the S&P 500 might plunge another 25%.
8. Morningstar's chief market strategist said these stocks offer safe and stable gains during the bear market. Defensive stocks have been overlooked in recent months, but Dave Sekera said now is the time to invest in the asset class to secure profits. See his 9 picks.
9. Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried said the crypto market may have reached the bottom. He broke down why the next phase of digital assets will be about user-friendly apps and institutional money — and what developments he's most excited about next.
Tesla stock July 21, 2022.
10. Shares of Tesla rose after the EV giant reported earnings after the bell Wednesday. Second-quarter earnings beat Wall Street estimates, despite a factory shutdown in China. Tesla said it sold 75% of its bitcoin holdings, after spending $1.5 billion on the cryptocurrency in 2021. Check out how the stock is moving this morning.
More: 10 Things Before Opening Bell Newsletters Newsletter Markets
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2022-07-21T12:31:19Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Here's Why Mortgage Demand Is Cratering - and Why You Should Care
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https://www.businessinsider.com/mortgage-demand-housing-inflation-lumber-why-explainer-refinance-commodities-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/mortgage-demand-housing-inflation-lumber-why-explainer-refinance-commodities-2022-7
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15Five helps the likes of Spotify and Mailchimp boost employee performance and retention. Check out the 10-slide pitch deck it used to raise $52 million.
The California-based startup offers a central hub for HR managers.
15Five has raised $52 million to help HR managers grapple with the rapidly changing world of work.
The California-based startup offers companies like Spotify a platform to manage employee performance.
Check out the 10-slide pitch deck 15Five used to raise the fresh funds below.
A HR startup used by the likes of Spotify and Mailchimp to boost employee performance has raised $52 million to help managers retain top performers in the battle for talent.
California-based 15Five, founded in 2011, has developed a subscription-based platform for managers that uses coaching and training tools to improve productivity and engagement. The startup has also built a suite of tools to improve performance reviews, such as goal tracking software.
HR departments have been spurred to act and prioritize employee development and well-being as the pandemic has triggered a wave of resignations among employees feeling dissatisfied with their employer's approach to management in a changing world of work.
15Five aims to keep employees more connected to their companies with engagement surveys and feedback tools that it says allow managers to "tap into the pulse" of their organization and figure out what's working and what's not.
David Hassell, CEO at 15Five, said one of the startup's founding beliefs was that the best companies in the future would be the ones that "figured out how to motivate their people and unlock their potential."
"We believe that managers are the keystone of high performance, not just in overseeing the work, but in helping to tap into the unique strengths and passions of every member of their team," he said.
The funds were raised in a Series C round led by New York-based Quad Partners, with additional funding from existing investors including Next47, Origin Ventures, Matrix Partners, Point Nine Capital, and New Ground Ventures, three years after its Series B round.
The funds will be used to invest further into the company's R&D operations to improve the way performance is measured as well as drive forward with growth expansion plans as it eyes up new markets and potential acquisitions.
Check out the 10-slide pitch deck 15Five used to raise the fresh funds below:
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2022-07-21T13:58:01Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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15Five: HR Startup Raises $52 Million to Boost Employee Performance
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https://www.businessinsider.com/15five-hr-startup-raises-52-million-to-boost-employee-performance-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/15five-hr-startup-raises-52-million-to-boost-employee-performance-2022-7
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Bill Gates at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November.
A Republican lawmaker demanded that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates testify before an agriculture committee over his US farmland purchases.
Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota wrote a letter on Wednesday to the House Agriculture Committee chairman David Scott, asking him to call the billionaire philanthropist to give evidence about his acquisitions, according to a copy of the letter reported by Fox News.
Gates owned 242,000 acres of farmland as of early 2021, according to the Land Report. He spent $13.5 million in November buying about 2,100 acres in northeast North Dakota, angering locals.
"I believe that Mr Gates' holdings across much of our nation is a significant portion that the committee should not ignore," Johnson wrote in the letter to Scott.
"The committee should be interested in Mr Gates' ownership and plans for his acreage, as he has been a leading voice in the push for 'synthetic meat'," Johnson wrote. "In 2021, Mr Gates was quoted to say 'all rich countries should move to 100 percent synthetic beef' to combat climate change."
Johnson tweeted he was "curious" about Gates' plans for his farmland since the billionaire said in the past that people in countries such as America shouldn't eat red meat.
"How are his land purchases related to those aspirations?" Johnson tweeted.
Representatives for Gates did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gates' recent $13.5 million purchase of the farmland in North Dakota was cleared by the state's attorney-general who said it complied with an archaic Depression-era law, The Associated Press reported.
More: Bill Gates Tech Tech Insider Republican
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2022-07-21T13:58:37Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Rep. Lawmaker Demands Bill Gates Testifies Over Farmland Purchases
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https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-lawmaker-demands-bill-gates-testifies-agriculture-committee-farmland-purchases-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-lawmaker-demands-bill-gates-testifies-agriculture-committee-farmland-purchases-2022-7
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Tesla earnings: Time to top-up on shares in Elon Musk's car maker or bail out? 3 experts weigh-in on its prospects and reveal an updated price target.
CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk speaks at the Tesla Giga Texas manufacturing "Cyber Rodeo" grand opening party on April 7, 2022 in Austin, Texas.
The world pays attention to whenever Tesla puts results out, and this quarter is no different.
The car maker has sold off 75% of its bitcoin but other aspects of the update are more important.
3 analysts have weighed in on the results and one has revealed a new price target.
There are a handful of companies that the world pays attention to whenever they put results out, and Tesla is certainly among them.
From being involved in an exciting area of tech through to the iconic nature of the brand and massive profile of its chief executive Elon Musk, people care about Tesla. Particularly equities investors.
After hours on Wednesday, the company revealed its second-quarter results and the reception has been mixed. The numbers appear to have held up well though despite global supply chain issues persisting and the company's factory in China being hit by another COVID lockdown.
Tesla's eye-catching revelation that it sold off 75% of its bitcoin last quarter garnered a lot of attention, but the more important numbers were a 42% rise in revenue to $16.9 billion, operating income up 88% to $2.5 billion despite higher raw material costs, and a 25% rise in vehicle production. Free cash flow was flat on last year at $621 million.
These positive updates were tempered by margins being squeezed from 28.4% a year ago to 27.9%.
"Tesla posted sequentially lower numbers but all key P&L numbers surprised positively with earlier price hikes feeding through average revenue per unit (ARPU)," said Philippe Houchois, equity analyst at Jefferies. "Cashing in bitcoin avoided a write down."
"Manufacturing challenges persisted through the quarter, limiting the ability to run gigafactories at full capacity. The shutdowns in Shanghai persisted for most of the quarter, resulting in higher per-car costs."
"As expected, working capital constrained free cash flow on high quarter-end inventories set to reverse in Q3," Houchois added. "Tesla continues to set new manufacturing benchmarks with installed capacity now at 1.9m units. Q2 beat and management comments on record second half production suggest 5-7% upside to current EBIT (earnings) consensus."
Jefferies' updated price target for Tesla shares is $1,050 and it is rated as a "buy". At Wednesday's close the shares were at $742.50.
'Tepid reception for sturdy results'
"Tesla's second quarter results received a tepid reception from investors despite growing operating margins in an increasingly challenging environment," noted Laura Hoy, equity analyst at stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown.
"However, the focus was on a decline in automotive gross margins, which fell from 32.9% in the first quarter to 27.9%. The more cars that rattle through Tesla's enormous gigafactories the lower the per-unit costs, so the disappointing delivery numbers released earlier this month meant investors had already braced themselves for a step down in profitability."
"On the bright side, this should be a short-term problem," she continued. "As we saw in the first quarter, fully functioning factories send dollars straight to the bottom line. Once supply chain bottle necks ease and the factories are humming along at full capacity, margins will get a boost."
Hoy noted that Tesla's much-talked about crypto play has been a distraction rather than a major financial issue, but it does raise questions for investors.
"Elon Musk's affinity for cryptocurrency also chipped away at profits, with the group calling out bitcoin impairments as a thorn in its side," she said. "It's unclear exactly how much the group lost to the sell-off in crypto, but with 75% of its holding now converted into more stable currency, most of the damage has been recognized."
"However, the bitcoin losses point out an important part of the Tesla investment case—its eccentric owner. While Musk's impressive innovation has served the company well, his personal flair is starting to raise governance questions."
Mark Crouch, an analyst at eToro had a relatively bearish take, noting the "strain" from a difficult global economy is now showing.
"Tesla had once seemed to weather the global chip shortage and supply chain crisis where other car makers were struggling, but its latest quarterly earnings show it is now also feeling the strain," he said.
"On an annual basis, the firm has managed to grow revenue by 42% and earnings by 57%. However, both financial measures are down significantly between the first and second quarters, demonstrating that Tesla is far from immune from the production issues other manufacturers are facing."
He added that the reopening of Tesla's Shanghai factory will help, but materials shortages are something the entire industry is contending with and there is no easy or quick remedy. For that reason he said he is not expecting a sharp uptick in performance in the third quarter.
More: Stocks to Buy which stocks should I buy? stock recommendations 2022 stock tips 2022
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2022-07-21T13:58:43Z
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Tesla Earnings: 3 Experts Weigh-in on Elon Musk's Car Maker
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-earnings-q2-stock-should-i-buy-sell-elon-musk-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-earnings-q2-stock-should-i-buy-sell-elon-musk-2022-7
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An Airbnb interior designer who's revamped 20 homes shares 4 keys to decorating a quality short-term rental
Jody Carmichael helps Airbnb hosts decorate their spaces.
Courtesy of Jody Carmichael
Jody Carmichael is a baker turned interior designer in the beach town of Wilmington, North Carolina.
Carmichael, who started out decorating her own Airbnb condo, has upgraded 20 vacation rentals.
She broke down four secrets to a five-star listing, from window treatments to pillow selection.
Jody Carmichael, a decorator in North Carolina, used to own a bakery. Now she adds flourishes to living rooms instead of making wedding cakes.
Carmichael has designed and furnished nearly 20 Airbnbs for clients in her hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, a beachy retreat 90 minutes north of Myrtle Beach.
There are 1,500 short-term rentals in the Wilmington area, up from 1,100 at the same time last year, according to the industry data firm AirDNA. The influx of Airbnb hosts isn't limited to Wilmington: Available listings hit a record high of 1.5 million this year, according to AirDNA.
Airbnb designer Jody Carmichael.
Jody Carmichael
Carmichael, 41, said she wanted to warn the flood of rookie hosts across the country against common decorating oversights and mistakes.
Her experience with Airbnbs started in 2017, when she revamped a condo she and her husband bought while their house was being renovated. After moving back to their house, they listed it on the short-term-rental platform.
Carmichael previously worked as an interior designer at Ethan Allen for five years. She approached the designing of Airbnbs like any other home, unlike the purely economical approach she'd seen other hosts take.
Instead of finding the cheapest products, she sought out a quality mattress and high-end bedding. It's the main principle that still guides her projects.
"I really am trying to create a space that I would want to live in," she told Insider. "Everything is something that I would feel comfortable in myself."
It's been a slow summer for many Airbnb hosts: Booking rates have fallen from historic highs, and analysts for the short-term-rental market predict hosts will have to contend with a more competitive landscape.
Investing in good design helps short-term rentals weather downturns and offseasons, Carmichael said. When prices get slashed everywhere, she added, the nicest units stand out.
Carmichael shared her four keys to a well-designed unit.
1. Remember the window treatments
Bare windows can make an Airbnb feel less hospitable, Carmichael said.
Couches, rugs, and tables might be the obvious first purchases when decorating an Airbnb.
But don't forget to look up — bare windows or just blinds can make a space feel soulless rather than cozy, Carmichael said.
"People think about filling the space with furniture but not necessarily the vertical space," she told Insider.
2. Stock the kitchen thoughtfully
Guests tend to choose Airbnbs over traditional hotels because they like to cook, Carmichael said.
A full kitchen can sometimes be the main draw for an Airbnb guest, Carmichael said.
"If people are coming to an Airbnb, a lot of times, it's because they like to cook," she told Insider.
Stocking a kitchen intentionally can make a huge difference for guests.
Carmichael said she recently stayed in a Florida home that didn't have enough supplies for a big group.
"There were 16 of us in a house, and we could only find one pot holder," Carmichael told Insider.
If your listing is intended for large groups, she said, invest in items beyond the standard cookware set and think about getting multiples of daily utensils.
"If you have a house that sleeps six, but you only have six forks, somebody's going to have to wash the dishes a couple of times a day," she said.
Likewise, if your listing is intended for just couples, think about wine glasses or luxury coffee items, like a grinder and a carafe for pour-over brews.
"Think about who the guest is and what kind of little extras they might need," Carmichael said.
3. Add blankets and books
Habitat for Humanity ReStores are one place Carmichael looks to buy books in bulk.
Carmichael's projects are never done until she's added books and blankets, she said.
"Those are the things that make it feel like a home versus, like, a generic Airbnb," she said.
To source inexpensive books, Carmichael relies on the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, where she says she's been able to buy bags of books for as little as $5. She also keeps her eyes peeled for places that might getting rid of their books. One time, she happened to be in a West Elm store that was clearing out a display that had books.
Etsy has higher-end options for those looking for collections that are color-coded or organized around themes, like classic female protagonists.
And Carmichael always makes sure to have a basket full of blankets near a couch, within easy reach for guests.
"At some point, somebody's going to want one," she said.
4. Provide 2 pillows per person — but not just any 2 pillows
Two pillows with different levels of firmness are key for the bedroom, Carmichael said.
Carmichael swears by placing two pillows per person on each bed: one soft and one firm.
First, she said, more pillows make for a better photograph.
Second, offering one pillow that's fluffy and one that's more structured means guests will be able to choose their comfort level, rather than being forced into a sleepless night.
"Everybody gets two pillows with different firmnesses," she said.
She was inspired to present pillow choices after one too many sleepless nights at hotels.
With pillows, though, there's no need to go overboard with 20.
"They'll just be tossed on the floor," she said.
More: Real Estate AirBnB Short-Term Rental Interior Design
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2022-07-21T13:58:49Z
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A Designer of 20 Airbnbs Shares 4 Key Things Many New Hosts Forget
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tips-for-decorating-airbnbs-for-five-star-reviews-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tips-for-decorating-airbnbs-for-five-star-reviews-2022-7
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It's looking a lot like the US is past the gas-price peak. Getting back to normal levels, however, won't happen so quickly.
Average gas prices have now fallen for an entire month. The nationwide average fell to $4.49 in the week that ended Monday, according to the Energy Information Administration. That's down from the mid-June peak of $5.01 and marks the lowest level since the first week of May.
Daily readings from AAA's gas-price tracker are just as encouraging. The company's national average fell roughly three cents to $4.44 on Thursday. Averages in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas now sit below $4.
One Colorado gas station even sold gas for $2.99 per gallon on Tuesday, according to GasBuddy.
Just don't expect prices to fall as quickly as they rose. Gasoline is perhaps the best example of asymmetric pricing in the real world, a term that's more casually known as "rockets and feathers." The dynamic is used to describe how prices can soar higher like rockets but decline with the urgency of a falling feather. And although it's unclear what exactly is behind the trend, various signs point to "greedflation."
Blame companies that don't want to lower prices too much
The nationwide decline is a welcome relief for tens of millions of American drivers. Prices launched higher through the first half of 2022 to hit numerous record highs. Russia's invasion of Ukraine hobbled global supply chains for crude oil. That strained supply quickly clashed with drivers' sky-high demand as Americans looked to return to pre-pandemic travel.
The very factors pushing prices higher have since reversed course. Gas demand ticked higher but held below levels seen earlier in the summer, according to EIA data. Domestic gasoline stocks, meanwhile, continued an upward climb, bringing overall supply closer to typical levels.
Tumbling oil costs also pulled gas prices lower in recent weeks. West Texas Intermediate crude futures traded just below $100 per barrel Wednesday afternoon, down from the June highs of $122 per barrel. Should the downward trend hold, cheaper crude will weigh heavily on pump prices.
Though the decline is only five weeks old, the rockets-and-feathers phenomenon is clear as day. Many of the weekly increases seen in May and June are larger than the past few weeks' declines. The same dynamic can be seen in the crude oil market as well, with prices typically cooling at a much slower rate than they rally.
The trend has been chalked up to a range of factors. Some economists point to the energy industry's complex supply chain as a reason for gas stations' slow and cautious reactions to changing prices. Others argue that, since gas stations often raise prices well after oil costs climb, they leave prices high to recoup lost profits when costs swing lower.
Democrats blame gas companies' "greedflation," arguing firms are keeping prices high to boost prices. President Joe Biden has repeatedly urged gas stations to lower prices to levels that "reflect the cost you're paying for the product." Yet the relatively small number of nationwide gas companies could be delaying such relief.
The rockets-and-feathers dynamic seems to be most powerful in areas where gas stations "face relatively little competition," Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said in a July 8 column in The New York Times, hinting that consolidation is contributing somewhat to the slower decline.
"Monopoly power isn't the principal cause of inflation, which has been driven by an overheated economy plus external shocks like Russia's invasion of Ukraine," he said. "But there's a reasonable case that monopoly power is a cause of inflation."
Several signs point to the gas-price recovery continuing in the coming weeks. But as travel season continues and lower prices lure Americans back to their cars, getting back to pre-crisis prices will likely take more than a few months.
More: Economy Gas Prices Gas Station oil prices
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2022-07-21T15:34:21Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Gas Prices Are Falling, but Companies Don't Want to Lower Prices Too Much
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https://www.businessinsider.com/gas-oil-prices-falling-inflation-relief-slow-rockets-feathers-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/gas-oil-prices-falling-inflation-relief-slow-rockets-feathers-2022-7
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Kiersten and Julien Saunders, a couple who retired in their 40s, say there are three types of spenders.
Fast spenders can't hold onto their cash, while financially insecure people worry about spending money.
Most people are in the middle, but they still might be too scared to pursue financial independence.
There's tons of advice online about building wealth and retiring early, but it's hard to know which approach works best for your specific circumstances.
Kiersten and Julien Saunders, a couple who retired in their 40s and host the popular podcast rich & REGULAR, suggest finding out what kind of spender you are before creating your wealth-building plan.
In their new book, "Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away," the couple explains that there are three different types of spenders.
Are you financially insecure, a fast spender, or somewhere in the middle?
The financially insecure: These are people who have experienced financial hardship in the past, who now live paycheck to paycheck. The Saunderses write, "They've grown accustomed to this way of life, and their goal is simple: to have enough."
The fast spenders: Fast spenders tend to be high earners who spend money extravagantly and quickly. "They get an all-encompassing, full-spirited rush from spending money, and the desire to do it over and over sets the tone for their lives," they write.
The middle: "Life for the middle isn't as painful as that for the financially insecure nor as sexy as the life of fast spenders," the Saunderses write. In fact, the middle uses the experience of the other two groups as a cautionary tale to shape their conservative spending and saving habits.
In the book, the Saunderses say that understanding the true motivations fueling your current spending habits can help you choose a wealth-building plan that actually works for you.
For the financially insecure: Invest your money
The Saunderses point out that the financially insecure typically have difficult circumstances to navigate that make it harder for them to actually save and invest any money. "Because of this, they adopt a worldview based on the grim realities of life they experience every single day," the couple writes.
The financially insecure are more likely to equate their self-worth with their ability to perform well at work. They are always striving for higher-paying jobs, living paycheck to paycheck, and struggling to feel like they have enough.
To counteract the impulse to keep grinding hard at a 9-to-5 job, the Saunderses remind their readers that a salary is never going to outperform investing in the stock market.
The couple writes, "You must believe your income can work harder than you can. Instead of working for your money, you must adjust to managing your money so that it can multiply over time to serve your future wants and needs."
For the fast spenders: Track your income
Of fast spenders, the couple writes, "Money both comes in and goes out at such a fast pace there's no time to build an emotional attachment to it and little incentive to try tracking it."
The couple writes about a friend of theirs who would rather go out for expensive drinks and indulge in luxury vacations instead of funding his retirement. "Plus, he believes that if he wanted to, he could start saving money tomorrow. The problem is, tomorrow never comes."
The book contains "richuals," simple guidelines that help readers change their relationship with money. A good "richual" for fast spenders is to track your income and how you feel when you earn that money. The couple writes, "A dollar earned doing something you enjoy is always better than a dollar earned doing something you don't."
For the middle: Redefine your income's purpose
The Saunderses say that the financially insecure and the fast spenders are less common than the group they've named the middle. They write, "People in the middle often have enough income and are even saving for retirement, but they have no idea what they're saving for, how close or how far they are to achieving that goal, or why they're even doing it."
While their book speaks primarily to those in the middle, they recommend that all spending types create a distinct purpose for their income. The couple writes that income should first be used to gain security. Next comes flexibility to spend and save in alignment with your values. Then independence — meaning, earning money is completely optional.
After achieving the first three purposes of money — security, flexibility, and independence — you can then use your income to achieve financial freedom.
For the financially insecure, financial freedom might be getting a better job or becoming free from a financial obligation. For the fast spender, it can be a state of emotional acceptance around your money, or selling a company that you built from the ground up.
For the middle, however, it can be hard to define what financial freedom actually looks like. This is why it's important to envision why you're trying to build wealth in the first place, and how you're going to assign purpose to your income to achieve those goals. The couple writes, "Financial freedom isn't a number; it's a feeling."
PERSONAL FINANCE I want to retire early as a millionaire, so financial planners say I need to do 5 things right now to manage risk
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2022-07-21T15:34:39Z
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How to Build Real Wealth, According to What Kind of Spender You Are
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/build-real-wealth-spending-type-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/build-real-wealth-spending-type-2022-7
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Catherine Neilan and Henry Dyer
Rishi Sunak speaks to Conservative MPs for his campaign in the Thatcher Room in Parliament.
Simon Walker for Ready4Rishi Photos/Flickr
Rishi Sunak may have breached rules by using a room on the parliamentary estate for his campaign.
Sunak booked the Thatcher Room to shoot a film with various MPs saying why they are backing him.
One MP branded it "careless", while another said it was "questionable" behaviour.
Rishi Sunak may have breached parliamentary rules by using a room on the estate for his leadership campaign, and could face a probe into whether he misused facilities.
The former chancellor, who on Wednesday became one of the last two candidates to succeed Boris Johnson as UK prime minister, gave a celebratory speech in a committee room that was filmed and posted on Twitter.
The video, which includes a large "Ready for Rishi" poster, sees Sunak welcoming and taking photographs with various MPs, several of whom go on to explain why they are backing him.
However, under parliamentary rules, rooms can only be booked for "purposes connected to the parliamentary duties of members or grey passholders… or relevant to the work of Parliament."
—Ready For Rishi (@RishiSunak) July 20, 2022
Despite Sunak giving his speech to an audience of MPs and aides, the contest had by that point moved beyond Parliament.
The final stage involves seeking the votes of Conservative party members in the head-to-head contest between Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. One MP said in the video that he is "looking forward to introducing him to my members".
Insider identified the location as the Thatcher Room – likely a signal to would-be supporters that he intends to channel the former prime minister. The room in the launch video matches archive footage of the Thatcher Room, which is distinctive because of its artwork on the walls.
In a op-ed for The Daily Telegraph, Sunak vowed to be "the heir to Margaret Thatcher", and described himself as a Thatcherite six times.
He is attempting to best rival Truss, who has long tried to project similar parallels, including wearing a virtually identical outfit to one worn by Thatcher during a recent leadership debate.
Sources, given anonymity to speak frankly about the leadership contest, told Insider that the move had provoked outrage among Conservative MPs, as well as MPs from other parties.
One backbencher said it was "careless", while a former minister said the whole process had been "questionable".
The former minister said: "Is the [1922 committee] using room 14 to hold the election connected to parliamentary duties? What about the hustings? All held in committee rooms. It could all be challenged."
Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, told Insider: "Using the parliamentary resources for an internal party election looks and feel qualitatively different to party wide meetings to deal with parliamentary business and the rules on this need to be made clearer."
A spokesperson for the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone said: "The House of Commons provides offices to MPs and their staff to enable them to carry out their parliamentary duties.
"Any use of such facilities must be in support of those duties, as specified in the Code of Conduct. Any allegation of misuse of House provided facilities will be taken seriously and may lead to a formal inquiry by the Commissioner."
There is less demand for committee rooms than usual with ministers pulling out of Parliamentary scrutiny sessions.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business and energy secretary, became the latest to say he could not attend a select committee hearing on Wednesday.
Sunak's team did not respond to requests for a comment at the time of publication.
More: News UK Rishi Sunak Liz Truss Conservative leadership contest
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2022-07-21T15:35:10Z
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Rishi Sunak May Have Breached Rules With Parliament Backdrop for Video
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https://www.businessinsider.com/rishi-sunak-may-breached-rules-thatcher-parliament-backdrop-video-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/rishi-sunak-may-breached-rules-thatcher-parliament-backdrop-video-2022-7
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Mark Matousek and Tim Levin
Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, can't seem to avoid controversy.
From its Autopilot software to allegations of racism at its California factory, the electric-car company has faced questions about seemingly every aspect of its business.
Tesla has missed deadlines for several vehicle launches.
Tesla is one of the most divisive companies on Wall Street.
While it's earned a passionate fanbase and a sky-high stock price, the electric-car maker and its CEO, Elon Musk, can't seem to avoid controversy.
From Musk's unfiltered tweeting to concerns about a toxic culture at its California factory, the company has faced questions about seemingly every aspect of its business. That may explain its perennially volatile stock price.
These are 15 controversies that Tesla has faced in recent years.
Have you worked for Tesla? Do you have a story to share? Contact this reporter at tlevin@insider.com or tlevin@protonmail.com
A tweet about taking Tesla private
Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been at odds for years.
The agency sued Musk in September 2018 after he tweeted that he had secured the funding necessary to take Tesla private at $420 per share, alleging that Musk had misled investors about the likelihood of a go-private deal.
A few days after the lawsuit was filed, the parties settled.
Musk didn't admit or deny the allegations in the agency's lawsuit against him but had to step down as the chairman of Tesla's board of directors for three years. Musk and the company each had to pay a $20 million fine, and Tesla lawyers are required to vet any of Musk's social media posts that could be relevant to Tesla shareholders.
In the years since, the SEC has accused Musk of not following the agreement after various tweets. Musk is trying to get out of it.
Autopilot crashes
KTVU via Associated Press
Multiple drivers have been killed while using Autopilot, Tesla's advanced driver-assistance system. The fatal accidents have raised questions about Autopilot's capabilities and how intently drivers pay attention to the road when using the feature.
When switched on, Autopilot keeps a Tesla centered in its lane and maintains a set speed while keeping distance from the car ahead. It isn't autonomous, and Tesla says drivers need to keep their hands on the steering wheel and pay attention, but owners have been known to abuse the system.
More advanced versions of the software can navigate highway interchanges and automatically change lanes.
NHTSA is currently investigating incidents in which Teslas using Autopilot features crashed into stopped emergency vehicles.
Tesla maintains that vehicles with Autopilot engaged have lower accident rates than the average. But Tesla's data should be taken with a grain of salt.
Tesla Model S Plaid fire.
Vehicle fires have become a point of controversy for Tesla because of incidents that have occurred both after collisions and without any known impact.
There's no hard evidence that electric vehicles are more likely to catch fire than gas-powered ones, and a 2017 study from NHTSA found that the fire risks were comparable to or lower than traditional vehicles.
Musk has said the company's vehicles are less likely to catch fire than gas-powered ones.
But EV fires tend to be severe and difficult to put out. Once a vehicle's battery pack starts to overheat — from crash damage or a defect — fires can be challenging for first responders to contain. In June, a Tesla sitting in a junkyard in California ignited, requiring 4,500 gallons of water to put it out.
Drivers using Autopilot irresponsibly
Twitter/SethWageWar
Numerous of drivers have been filmed using Autopilot without sitting in the driver's seat or while sleeping.
Consumer Reports confirmed last year that it's possible to drive down the road using Autopilot without sitting in the driver's seat or holding the steering wheel.
Musk's aggressive promises for self-driving tech
Patrick Fallon / Reuters
In 2016, Musk said autonomous-driving technology would likely arrive in less than two years. Since then, Tesla has passed multiple deadlines set by Musk to send a self-driving vehicle across the US.
Musk has long promised that Tesla owners would soon be able to earn passive income by deploying their cars as autonomous robotaxis, but that vision appears a long way out.
Tesla released a prototype of its Full Self-Driving software to public streets
A Tesla Model Y SUV.
In October 2020, Tesla released a prototype version of its so-called Full Self-Driving software for a limited number of owners to test on public streets. Today, more than 100,000 Tesla owners have the beta software.
Some safety advocates oppose the move, arguing that unleashing the experimental technology poses an unreasonable risk to other drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
"They're using consumers, bystanders, other passengers, pedestrians, and bicyclists as lab rats for an experiment for which none of these people signed up," Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer advocacy group, told Insider.
Indeed, since the Full Self-Driving Beta went out to customers, dozens upon dozens of video clips have popped up online of the system driving dangerously or unpredictably. It has forced drivers into oncoming traffic, nearly crashed into concrete pillars, and had close calls with pedestrians.
Workplace safety concerns
Injury statistics and reports from media outlets have raised questions about worker safety at Tesla's factories, though concerns about workplace safety are not unique to Tesla in the auto industry.
Bloomberg reported in March 2019 that workers at Tesla's auto plant in Fremont, California, spent twice as many days away from their jobs due to work-related injuries and illnesses, after adjusting for workforce growth, in 2018 than in 2017, citing a report Tesla filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Tesla received more citations from OSHA related to vehicle manufacturing than Ford, General Motors, or Fiat Chrysler from 2017 through the end of 2018. And reports from Reveal published in 2018 claimed that Tesla misreported workplace injuries, avoided using safety markings for aesthetic reasons, and failed to give injured employees proper medical care.
Tesla has denied that it has misreported workplace injuries and failed to use safety markings for aesthetic reasons.
Racism and sexual harassment in the workplace
Tesla's Fremont factory.
Current and former Tesla employees have filed more than 40 lawsuits in the last five years alleging a work environment that fosters racism, sexism, and sexual harassment, an Insider analysis found.
The lawsuits detail a workplace where human resources regularly failed to address worker concerns about slurs and harassment. Experts told Insider the number of lawsuits should be a cause of concern for Tesla, though the company pushed back against the notion that it faces an unusual number of lawsuits.
In February, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Tesla, alleging that it discriminates against Black workers and allows racial harassment to run rampant at its Fremont, California, factory. The automaker called the lawsuit "unfair" and "misguided" in a blog post.
Quality issues
While Tesla's vehicles have received enthusiastic feedback from customers and automotive critics, they have also been subject to reports of poor quality and reliability.
In February 2019, Consumer Reports pulled its recommendation of the Model 3 due to problems with door handles, loose interior trim and molding, paint defects, and cracked windows.
A Tesla representative told Insider at the time that it had fixed "the vast majority" of the Model 3 issues cited by Consumer Reports subscribers. Tesla owners continue to complain about quality issues in their new vehicles.
Former employees file whistleblower tips with the Securities and Exchange Commission
Max Whittaker / Getty Images
Martin Tripp, a former technician at the company's battery plant in Nevada, filed a tip that alleged that Tesla used batteries with puncture holes in vehicles meant for customers. (Tesla has denied the claim.) Tripp also claimed that the company was wasting raw materials.
Later in the year, two former security employees, Karl Hansen and Sean Gouthro, claimed that Tesla did not disclose to shareholders the theft of raw materials and the unauthorized surveillance and hacking of employee cellphones and computers at the Nevada factory, according to Meissner Associates, the law firm that represented them. (A Tesla representative denied those claims.)
Tesla has also faced allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers, some of whom claimed the company fired them for raising issues with management.
Smoking marijuana on camera
Joe Rogan Experience/YouTube
In a September 2018 interview with Joe Rogan, Musk was filmed smoking marijuana. (Recreational use of marijuana is legal in California, where the interview was filmed.)
Before his interview with Rogan, Musk told The New York Times in August that marijuana hurts one's ability to work.
"Weed is not helpful for productivity. There's a reason for the word 'stoned.' You just sit there like a stone on weed," Musk said.
Long wait times for repairs
Since the release of the Model 3 in 2017, customers have complained about poor communication from Tesla's service centers and long wait times for repairs. Musk has blamed third-party body shops for some of the issues, but he has acknowledged that Tesla needs to improve service quality in North America.
Tesla owns and operates its own network of service centers rather than relying on a vast network of third-party dealers. It also has a mobile service technicians that perform repairs in customers' driveways.
Missed production targets lead to investigations
Kyle Grillot/Reuters
The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2018 that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was investigating whether Tesla misled investors about Model 3 production.
While Musk said in July 2017 that it appeared Tesla could make 20,000 Model 3s per month starting in December 2017, Tesla made just 2,685 Model 3 vehicles in 2017. In 2016, Tesla said it would make 500,000 vehicles in 2018, but ended up making 254,530.
The SEC also launched an investigation into Tesla's Model 3 production predictions in 2018.
"When we started the Model 3 production ramp, we were transparent about how difficult it would be," a Tesla representative told Insider in 2018. "Ultimately, given difficulties that we did not foresee in this first-of-its-kind production ramp, it took us six months longer than we expected to meet our 5,000 unit per week guidance."
Tesla's acquisition of a struggling solar company raises questions
YouTube / Tesla
In 2016, Tesla acquired the solar panel company SolarCity for $2.6 billion. In the aftermath, a group of Tesla shareholders sued Musk, arguing that the move was a financially unwise bailout of a business operated by two of Musk's cousins, Peter and Lyndon Rive. Musk was the chairman of SolarCity's board of directors before Tesla purchased the company.
Musk won the lawsuit in April.
The controversy around Tesla's residential-energy business has dragged on. Tesla only began installing its Solar Roof product on homes in 2019, a delay Musk blamed on the complicated rollout of the company's Model 3 sedan.
Tesla significantly raised the price of Solar Roofs in 2021, leading to lawsuits from customers who felt blindsided by the increases.
Delays in major products
Tesla revealed the Cybertruck pickup in 2019 but hasn't started production yet.
Tesla sells four vehicles: the Model S and Model 3 sedans along with the Model Y and Model X SUVs.
In recent years, Tesla has announced multiple new models that haven't seen the light of day. The Semi truck debuted in 2017 and production was supposed to start in 2019. The Roadster supercar was announced during the same event with a targeted on-sale date of 2020.
Tesla announced the Cybertruck pickup truck in 2019 and aimed to launch it to customers in 2021. All vehicles have raked in preorders from eager fans.
Tesla has pushed all three vehicles down the road multiple times and now says they'll go into production in 2023.
More: Cars Features BITranspo Tesla
BI Select
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2022-07-21T15:35:16Z
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Tesla's Biggest Controversies, From Musk's Tweets to Autopilot
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-problems-2019-autopilot-elon-musk-tweets-2019-6
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https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-problems-2019-autopilot-elon-musk-tweets-2019-6
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Juliana Kaplan and Áine Cain
Layoffs and hiring freezes are sweeping the nation across industries, from automotive to big tech.
Reza Estakhrian/Getty Images
Over the last year, companies have been hiring at a rapid clip as workers job switch.
But now, layoffs are brewing, and companies are letting go of some of their new workforce.
Just as workers might have a "Great Regret" over quitting, companies regret some of their hiring.
When recession fears began to surface this spring, big companies like TikTok, Redfin, and JPMorgan wasted no time announcing layoffs and hiring freezes.
That's because they realized they'd made a big mistake — they hired too many people.
In Walmart's May earnings call, CEO Doug McMillon said the company's "weeks of overstaffing" cut into profit. The company had previously hired an influx of new employees in 2021 to cover COVID-19 staff shortages.
It's not the only one.
"I said we wouldn't lay people off unless we had to. We have to," Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman wrote in a blog post announcing that the firm was shedding 8% of its workfore. "A layoff is always an awful shock, especially when I've said that we'd go through heck to avoid one, and that we raised hundreds of millions of dollars so we wouldn't have to shed people after just a few months of uncertainty. But mortgage rates increased faster than at any point in history."
Now that the economy is slowing down due to due to inflation, the war in Ukraine, and waning consumer and investor confidence, companies across industries have already made cuts. It comes after a year of millions of workers quitting at near-record rates every month. Companies, banking on continued growth like they saw during the pandemic, were eager to hire them.
A wave of layoffs is sweeping the country as companies cut costs
In May alone, 2.8% of the workforce — 4.3 million people — handed in their resignation letters.
Companies were waiting in the wings: In June, the US added 372,000 payrolls, higher than economists surveyed by Bloomberg had been estimating. That comes after adding 384,000 payrolls in May, and 368,000 in April — all signs pointing to a robust jobs recovery.
For some workers, the Great Resignation has meant better conditions, higher wages, and even more flexibility. Indeed, a Pew Research Center survey from February 2022 found that 56% of Americans who quit in 2021 and found a new role are making more money.
But it's still a more complicated picture: There's a limit to how much power workers can actually get, and that's by design in our labor market. In a country where there's no guaranteed access to things like food, healthcare, and housing, workers still depend on companies to provide them with the income to afford those things — and companies know that.
Some workers are regretting making the jump. The regret may also go both ways, as the recent economic downturn doesn't align with the growth businesses have been banking on.
Sure enough, a tsunami of layoffs has been sweeping the country. The firms eager to hire and poach are suddenly confronting a potential recession — and workers will bear the brunt of tightening budgets.
A number of high-profile companies have already made cuts, including Tesla, Gopuff, Re/Max, Coinbase, and Microsoft. Layoff rumors have plagued the banking world owing to sluggish growth and declining profits. Other firms, like Apple and Goldman Sachs, are kicking off hiring freezes, Fortune reported.
Reasons for the mass layoffs include skyrocketing labor costs and slowed growth across the economy.
In some instances, like in the case of JPMorgan's home-lending department, teams associated with now-struggling markets got the cut. In the case of other companies like TikTok or Coinbase, the layoffs were touted as a measure to keep the underlying business healthy.
According to the Harvard Business Review, layoffs have become an increasingly common occurrence in the US since the 1970s, and are often ordered in response to financial uncertainties.
For firms that want to hold on to their current workers, an economic slowdown might be good news — although not very beneficial for employees looking to earn more, or switch into a different role.
"Particularly if we're forcing a slowdown, then employers aren't going to be as desperate to find workers," Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, told Insider. "They may hold onto the workers that they have. But they may not have to work so hard to do that if there aren't as many opportunities for workers."
More: Economy Layoffs Layoff Recession
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2022-07-21T17:00:39Z
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Companies Have 'Great Regret' Over Too Much Hiring, Turning to Layoffs
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https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-have-great-regret-over-too-much-hiring-layoffs-recession-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-have-great-regret-over-too-much-hiring-layoffs-recession-2022-7
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The managing director of Westchester County's startup accelerator, Element 46, reveals his best tips to get accepted to the program's next cohort
Managing director John Lynn (third from right) and the Element46 accelerator team pose outside of the Nasdaq marquee.
Element 46 is a new startup accelerator focused on bringing new jobs to Westchester County, NY.
Its managing director, John Lynn, also runs Cela, a company that builds out accelerators.
Here are Lynn's best tips for founders to make their Element 46 application stand out.
While bigger accelerators like Y Combinator and Techstars attract tens of thousands of applications a year, smaller accelerator programs can be targeted to local communities or interest groups and offer more intimate, personalized mentorship.
That's at least the pitch that John Lynn is making.
Lynn is the managing director of Element 46, an accelerator focused on attracting more high paying tech jobs and talent to the Westchester County, New York area. Startups who apply to Element 46 must be based in Westchester County or agree to relocate there after completing the accelerator program.
Lynn. is also the cofounder of Cela (short for accelerator), a startup that builds accelerator programs in partnership with entities like universities, city governments, or business networks. He reviews hundreds of startup applications in a single year, and has developed a framework for evaluating the best pitches no matter the sector.
"When reviewing pitches, I look for what I call the six point 'PPTMTA' acronym: Problem, Product, Traction, Market, Team, and the Ask," said Lynn.
The admissions team should be able to quickly understand what problem the startup is solving and how the product solves that problem. Then, the pitch should show how the team has been able to get into market or otherwise progress so far, said Lynn.
Next, the pitch should show a clear market opportunity over time and why the founding team is the right group to get there.
"It's tempting for founders to really emphasize the technical direction in the application, but it's hard to say if your tech play will be successful five to seven years from now," said Lynn. "A lot of the reason that accelerators look at the team is that the team will be pivoting as the market evolves."
Finally, founders should be able to explain what they specifically want to get out of the accelerator, said Lynn.
"The 'ask' is, what is your goal? Are you trying to fundraise? Are you trying to get your first big customer? Are you looking for a brand partner? Are you looking to find a cofounder? There needs to be some sort of specific outcome that's targeted in any pitch," said Lynn.
Unlike other programs, Element 46 does not directly invest in startups in its cohorts, but facilitates introductions to mentors and other investors through the local community and the Cela network.
Interested applicants fill out a short form on the Element 46 website. If their application is picked, team members from the accelerator will do a 15-minute intro call with each applicant they think will be successful. If a startup makes it to the next round, they then do a 45-minute call with all of the members of the Element 46 team. After that, the founder will do another call with one of the mentors directly, and then be notified if they are selected to join.
The cohort runs for three months starting in mid-September and is currently accepting rolling applications for up to fifteen startups.
Lynn urges founders to challenge the accelerator to be specific about what connections they can make for them, whether it be advisors, VCs, or corporate partners. "After the interview, we look at ourselves and ask do we have the mentor network to help this founder accomplish this goal?" Lynn said.
More: Careers Strategy Startups
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2022-07-21T17:01:21Z
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Here's How to Get Your Startup Into Accelerator Element 46
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-startup-into-westchester-county-accelerator-element-46-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-startup-into-westchester-county-accelerator-element-46-2022-7
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7 signs your computer has been hacked, and 5 ways to prevent it
There are several common indications that your computer has been hacked.
You can tell your computer has been hacked if you see frequent pop-up messages, mass emails sent from your account, or unexpected programs appear.
If your computer has been hacked, you run the risk of losing data, having your identity stolen, or suffering financial losses.
Here are seven signs that your computer has been hacked and five steps you can take to prevent hacking.
Computer hacking doesn't only happen in the movies. Unless you take precautions and make your computer's security a priority, it's possible you can get hacked, which can result in lost or stolen data, ID theft, and worse.
But what does getting hacked actually look like? The signs might be subtle, but they're often easy to identify. You might find unexpected changes to your computer, sudden slow performance, and an increase in unwanted behavior like pop-up windows. Here are seven of the most important signs you've been hacked, as well as tips on how to protect your computer from getting hacked.
Common signs of a hacked computer
There's no single set of signals that you've been hacked, mainly because there are a lot of different ways you might be attacked. Here are seven ways to tell that you might have been hacked.
Watch for pop-up messages and antivirus warnings
Pop-up windows warning you about viruses and malware attacks sound helpful in principle, but be sure you're seeing an authentic message from the antimalware software you actually have installed before responding to or acting on its recommendations. The reality is that many of these messages are evidence that your computer has been hacked — infected with malware that's masquerading as antivirus software.
If you see any kind of unexpected warning message, don't click. Instead, close your web browser and run your computer's antimalware software to look for the presence of malicious software.
Unauthorized email sent from your account
One common goal of hackers is to infect as many computers as possible. One way to do that is to take control of email apps and email services, and use them to send infected email messages to as many people in the hacked address book as possible. A serious signal that you've been hacked: hearing from friends and colleagues that they've received spam from your email account.
New programs installed on your computer
It's not surprising that there are more programs installed on your computer than you regularly use. Your computer vendor may have pre-installed a lot of apps, for example. But if you suddenly discover unexpected apps running when you start your computer, or you see new programs in the taskbar or notification tray, then it's likely you've been hacked or infected with malware, and these unknown programs are performing malicious acts on your PC.
You can inspect the list of startup apps on your computer to see if there are any new or unexpected ones installed.
If the uninstaller does not work or you can't otherwise remove these unknown programs, there's a very good chance your computer has been compromised.
Password and access changes to apps and services
In most cases, you should get an email or text message notification when your password or access settings change for common online apps and services — especially banking and other financial services. If you get emails notifying you about changes to your account settings that you didn't request or authorize, that's an enormous red flag that you've been hacked. Contact the financial institution or other service to see if you still have control of the account.
Be very careful, though. A common phishing trick involves sending a fake email about a password reset or some other account change. If you click a link or call the phone number in the message, you could be reaching out directly to the hackers, who will milk you for personal information and possibly get enough information to hack your account for real. When you follow up on a possible hack, always contact the service using an email or phone number you have found in the service's app or on its website.
Slow performance and frequent crashes
As your computer ages, it often starts to feel like it's running more slowly than when you first brought it home, whether because Windows slows down or the hard drive fills up and doesn't access data as efficiently. But if your computer suddenly starts acting weird — it slows down, crashes frequently, seems to get hotter than usual while running — then that might be a sign that your computer has been hacked and is running malware. Malware is typically buggy and inefficient, which can lead to poor performance and lots of crashes.
Changes to your web browser
Did your web browser's home page change without your permission? You might be hacked. Also, watch out for unexpected browser toolbars, plugins, and extensions, as well as a sudden increase in the number (and kind) of ads that your browser displays. Any of these are signs that you've lost exclusive control of your computer and hackers are installing malware in your browser.
Unusual webcam activity
Your webcam has a status light that comes on when it's in use. If you see your webcam come to life unexpectedly — such as when you are not using any web chat software — it probably means you've been hacked. Criminals may turn on the camera to see if they can read passwords as you enter them on the keyboard or see other personal information.
How to prevent your computer from getting hacked
Even though there are serious risks from hackers, a few common sense and simple precautions can protect you from hacks like these.
Keep your operating system up to date. First and foremost, make sure that your computer's operating system is up to date. Modern PCs and Macs install updates automatically, so make sure you don't pause, disable or interrupt that process. For best results, don't power off your computer after hours; put it to sleep so updates can install automatically when you are not using it.
Check your computer to make sure all the latest OS updates are installed.
Run antimalware software. Every computer should have antimalware and firewall software installed and kept up to date automatically. You don't need an expensive third-party antivirus app; as long as you use the Windows Defender software that comes with Windows or XProtect for the Mac, you should be adequately protected.
Always use strong passwords. When you create accounts for apps and services, always use strong and unique passwords. That means not repeating the same password on multiple accounts — if your online storage account is compromised, for example, hackers shouldn't be able to use that login info to get into your banking app. And a strong password is a long string of numbers, letters, and symbols.
Implement two-factor authentication (2FA). No matter how good your password is, take advantage of two-factor authentication for any app or service that offers it. This keeps someone who cracks your credentials from being able to access your account without having physical access to the device (like your phone) that you use for authentication. Any kind of 2FA is good, but using an authenticator app that generates one-time codes every time you want to log in is especially secure.
Use two-factor authentication with an app like Authy to ensure you can't get hacked using a username and password alone.
Don't use public or unsecured WiFi. Most public WiFi networks are unsecured, which means your data can be intercepted while you're online. Avoid using public WiFi, but if you must be especially wary of logging into services that require entering a password for access, and in particular avoid using banking and financial services.
TECH How to protect yourself from data breaches and what to do if your personal data is compromised online
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2022-07-21T17:01:27Z
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7 Signs Your Computer Has Been Hacked, and 5 Ways to Prevent It
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How to invest in a Gold IRA
Pros of Gold IRAs
Cons of Gold IRAs
Alternatives to investing in a Gold IRA
Gold IRAs can be invested in bullion bars and coins, which are off-limits to regular IRAs.
ayala_studio/Getty Images
A Gold IRA is a type of individual retirement account that allows investors to hold physical gold or other precious metals, unlike standard IRAs.
To hold gold in an IRA, you need to create a self-directed account, administered by a specialist custodian who handles and stores the metal.
While convenient, keeping gold in an IRA carries high fees and doesn't take full advantage of IRA tax benefits.
Ah, the glittering appeal of gold: a tangible, durable asset that traditionally keeps or increases its value during inflation, political upheavals, and cratering stock markets. Even if they don't think such calamities are on the horizon, many investors who want to diversify their individual retirement accounts (IRAs) beyond the usual suspects — stocks, bonds, and mutual funds — might want a stake in the physical yellow stuff.
In fact, gold is one of the few commodities that the IRS allows IRAs to invest in. But before you go on a bullion buying spree, you should understand the ins and outs of a Gold IRA.
If you want to hold physical gold in an IRA, it can't be your regular account. It has to be a separate, special one, called a Gold IRA.
Also known as a precious metal IRA, a Gold IRA works pretty much like a standard individual retirement account: the same contribution limits and distribution rules. However, instead of holding paper assets like stocks and bonds, the Gold IRA is earmarked for holding physical bullion — that is, coins or bars of gold and other approved precious metals, including silver, platinum, and palladium.
Gold IRAs can also contain gold stocks (shares of gold mining/production companies), gold mutual funds that invest in bullion or stocks (or both), and gold ETFs that track gold indexes.
If you want to hold physical gold in an IRA, the first step is to open a self-directed IRA (SDIRA) — one that you manage directly — with a custodian. The custodian is an IRS-approved financial institution (bank, trust company, brokerage), but many financial services and mutual fund companies who handle regular IRAs don't do the self-directed version.
You also need to select a precious metals dealer that will make the actual gold purchases for your IRA (your custodian may be able to recommend one).
Keep in mind that not every self-directed IRA custodian offers the same investment choices, so make sure physical gold is one of their offerings before you open an account. You can set up the SDIRA as either a traditional IRA (tax-deductible contributions) or a Roth IRA (tax-free distributions).
The next step is to fund the account with a contribution (subject to contribution limits, of course), a transfer, or a rollover from a qualified plan, such as 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan.
After that, you can select investments for the account, and your custodian and metals dealer will complete the transactions on your behalf.
You can't just buy any bar or ingot, either. Physical metals must meet IRS "fineness" standards as their purity and weight, and be stored in an insured IRS-approved depository. When it comes to coins, you are limited to bullion coins issued by certain government mints.
As with any investments, there are pros and cons to Gold IRAs. Some of the advantages include:
Tax benefits. Gold IRAs offer some of the same special tax treatment as standard IRAs: Contributions made to traditional self-directed IRAs are tax-deductible. And qualified withdrawals from Roth accounts are tax-free.
Long-term hold. Physical gold isn't very liquid, but then neither are IRA holdings. Given that it's a long-term, buy-and-hold sort of investment, gold is well-suited to an IRA, whose assets you often don't touch for decades – usually until you retire.
Greater control. Gold IRAs are always self-directed, which means you directly manage your holdings and make all the investment decisions.
If you're interested in a gold IRA, be sure to consider these drawbacks.
No tax-advantaged income. Gold bullion doesn't pay interest, dividends, or other returns. So it doesn't really take advantage of the tax-free growth aspect of IRA investing. You'd only get a break on any capital gain resulting from selling your gold at a profit.
Higher fees. You can't keep your gold at home or in a bank's safe deposit box. Instead, you must pay a custodian to store and insure, as well as buy, ship, and transport, the precious metals you hold in the IRA. Gold IRA custodial fees tend to be higher than regular IRA management fees, too.
Funding restrictions. You're not allowed to move any precious metals you already own into your Gold IRA. Nor are you personally allowed to buy precious metals and send them to your IRA. A custodian must take care of all the transactions on your behalf.
If you want to invest in gold — but not via a Gold IRA — other options exist. The main ones to consider include:
Investing in gold stocks or funds, which can be held in a regular IRA or brokerage account
Trading gold options in the commodities market (again, through a broker or trading platform)
Just buying bullion or coins and storing them on your own (though you should pay to insure them)
Investing in gold has risks that you should consider before making any decisions. Still, a Gold IRA can be a good option for investors who want to diversify their retirement accounts, and also take advantage of the hedging benefits that the yellow metal offers against other financial assets, like paper currency and stocks.
Many financial experts recommend keeping 5% to 10% of a portfolio in gold.
"It's simply advantageous to weigh and think about acquiring gold — and silver and other precious metals — to serve one well within a diversified, well-rounded investment portfolio," says Collin Plume, president and CEO of Noble Gold Investments, a precious metals dealer and depository. "The operative word being diversified."
PERSONAL FINANCE Commodities are tangible, everyday goods you can invest in to hedge against inflation or sinking stock prices
More: gold ira Gold IRA self directed ira
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2022-07-21T17:01:51Z
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What Is a Gold IRA? How It Works, Advantages, and Risks
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/what-is-a-gold-ira
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/what-is-a-gold-ira
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Robert Costello represented Bannon in dealings with the House January 6 panel.
Steve Bannon has spoken outside court after each day of his trial, but he won't take the stand.
Bannon also will not call his lawyer Robert Costello, who was identified as a possible witness.
His lawyer David Schoen confirmed in court that the defense would not present a case.
Steve Bannon will not testify in his own defense or call any witness at his trial on contempt of Congress charges, a lawyer for the longtime ally to Donald Trump said in court Thursday.
As the fourth day of Bannon's trial began, his lawyer David Schoen confirmed that the onetime top Trump advisor would not take the stand to recount his dealings with the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Bannon had identified Robert Costello, a lawyer who represented him before the House committee, as a potential witness ahead of trial. But Schoen said the defense team would not call any witnesses.
"You're not intending to put on any evidence to the jury?" asked Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee confirmed in 2019.
The question of whether Bannon would testify hung over his trial, as defense lawyers protested being "handcuffed" by a series of rulings that limited their potential arguments. Among the arguments Nichols prevented was any claim that executive privilege excused Bannon's refusal to appear before the House January 6 committee.
While he elected not to testify in court, Bannon has displayed no bashfulness outside of it. After each day of his trial, he has emerged from the courthouse and railed against the House January 6 committee, calling its leader — Rep. Bennie Thompson — a "disgrace" and accusing the panel's members of lacking the "guts" to testify against him.
Bannon's decision not to present a defense means that closing arguments could unfold as early as Thursday afternoon. The jury will begin deliberations following those arguments and instructions from Nichols.
A grand jury indicted Bannon in November on a pair of contempt of Congress charges, within weeks of the House voting to hold him in contempt over his defiance of the nine-member panel investigating the Capitol attack and Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
On Wednesday, prosecutors rested their case after calling a top lawyer for the House committee, Kristin Amerling, and FBI agent Stephen Hart to testify. In their questioning of Amerling, prosecutors sought to underscore the House committee's interest in Bannon based on his activities leading up to January 6.
Bannon's lawyers, in their own questioning of Amerling, raised his recent offer to testify before the House committee after months of stonewalling the panel. Explaining the reversal, Bannon pointed to a letter from Trump — about a week before trial — purporting to waive executive privilege.
Prosecutors objected to Bannon's defense team raising the recent offer to testify after all before the House January 6 committee. But after it came into evidence, they attempted to turn it against Bannon, underscoring how he only made the offer as his trial on criminal charges drew near.
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2022-07-21T17:02:03Z
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Steve Bannon Will Not Testify or Call Any Defense Witness at His Trial
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https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-defense-not-testifying-trial-contempt-congress-trump-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-defense-not-testifying-trial-contempt-congress-trump-2022-7
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Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ).
Last year, the Education Department announced temporary reforms to PSLF.
Sen. Menendez and Rep. Norcross introduced a bill to make reforms permanent for public servants.
Their reforms include student-loan forgiveness for those in public service prior to 2007.
Two Democratic lawmakers want to ensure public servants have all the time they need to access the student-loan forgiveness they were promised.
On Thursday, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez and New Jersey Rep. Donald Norcross introduced the Second Chance at Public Service Loan Forgiveness Act, which aims to permanently reform the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, intended to forgive student debt for government and nonprofit workers after ten years of qualifying payments. Specifically, the legislation would codify recent — but temporary — reforms President Joe Biden's Education Department implemented last year to ensure any borrower who qualifies for the program will get loan forgiveness.
"From day one, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program has been plagued with issues and inadequate oversight, resulting in less than ten percent of applicants being approved for loan forgiveness despite their dedicated service to our nation," Menendez said in a statement.
"This legislation aims to fix these long-standing issues and deliver on the promise of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program by repaying those who dedicate their lives to serve and improve our communities with student loan forgiveness," he added. "This legislation will also improve recruitment and retention in key public service fields that have and continue to experience severe workforce shortages."
Leading up to Biden's presidency, 98% of borrowers who applied for PSLF were denied due to paperwork errors and student-loan company mismanagement of the program. That's why Biden's Education Department announced reforms to the program in October, including a waiver through October 31, 2022 that allows any prior payments — including those deemed ineligible — to count toward loan forgiveness progress. Menendez and Norcross' bill would codify some of those reforms and further improve the program by:
Allowing public servants with loans or any work in public service before 2007 (when the program was created) to qualify for PSLF
Eliminating the 120 payment requirement and only requiring ten years of public service work
Expanding current PSLF waiver beyond October 31, 2022
Ensuring borrowers or parents with PLUS loans who are also in public service can qualify
Clarifying full-time employment is at least 30 hours a week and ensuring adjunct or part-time higher education faculty can qualify
Expanding the definition of a public servant to include all eligible workers
And allowing teachers to simultaneously qualify for PSLF and the Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program.
The legislation gained the support of major unions including the American Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union, and it comes as the Education Department is working through the rulemaking process, which includes proposed reforms to programs like PSLF that are set to be implemented next year.
PSLF has gotten the attention of other Democratic lawmakers, as well, who are hoping to make up for the years of flaws within the program. For example, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Jeff Merkley introduced legislation last month that would cut the number of qualifying payments in half and allow any prior payment to qualify toward forgiveness progress.
While many advocates and lawmakers are hoping the PSLF waiver won't expire anytime soon, Education Department officials have maintained messaging that borrowers should make use of it while they can. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has frequently encouraged borrowers on Twitter to use the waiver now, and while Federal Student Aid head Richard Cordray previously said he is "pushing hard to get approval if we can get it extended," he noted doing so could face challenges due to limits in executive authority.
—Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) July 19, 2022
Meanwhile, Biden is also in the process of making a decision on broad student-loan forgiveness for federal borrowers before payments are set to resume on September 1. As Insider previously reported, the Education Department has a lot on its plate over the next few months, and some lawmakers and advocates hope the expiring PSLF waiver won't be one of them.
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Democrats Want to Make Temporary PSLF Student-Loan Relief Permanent
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https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-debt-relief-pslf-waiver-permanent-menendez-norcross-education-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-debt-relief-pslf-waiver-permanent-menendez-norcross-education-2022-7
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Founder Finances: The 24-year-old entrepreneur behind a blog and events company breaks down the exact monthly budget that turned it into a 6-figure business.
In this story, the founder of a blog and events company shares her $5,000 budget.
Investments in cross-platform marketing have allowed her events business to thrive.
At 11 years old, Alexa Curtis was in search of a community: Her family struggled with legal issues and she was being bullied at school, she said. She sought a passion project that she could pour her time and energy into building.
Curtis was inspired by the prominent fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson and created her own blog in 2011, when she was 12. "Life in the Fashion Lane" originally shared outfit inspiration, but seven years after launching, she pivoted to focus on entrepreneurship and fearlessness — and renamed the blog "Life Unfiltered."
"I wanted to be that figure that I didn't have growing up — someone who was approachable, relatable, and had done something cool," she said.
Curtis has since expanded her blog into a marketing company, podcast, mentorship program, and event series, called the Be Fearless Summit, where she partners with colleges to host panels and conferences with students. Last year, her business booked six figures in sales, which Insider verified with documentation. Curtis said it costs her $5,000 a month to run her company, more than half of which is allocated toward marketing for her events.
Curtis shared her exact monthly budget with Insider and shared tips on how to invest in a company to turn it into a six-figure business.
Building a personal brand from scratch
Alexa Curtis, the founder of the Be Fearless Summit and Life Unfiltered blog.
Curtis moved from Connecticut to Brooklyn when she was 17. In an effort to continue making content, she pitched beauty companies ideas about their social-media posts. When one responded, offering her $1,500 for an Instagram takeover, she started building a network of brands.
Today she realizes the value of crafting a cohesive and intentional personal platform. She spends about $350 each month on a branding coach who helps her decide what message she wants to project through her work.
As she continues to build an entrepreneurial portfolio, Curtis said she also invests in looking polished and professional. "A lot of how I make money is my personal brand, so I'll hire someone to do my makeup and hair if I have a brand partnership or event that day," she said, adding that it's important to create content that is both authentic and aspirational in order to grow organically.
Read more: Founder Finances: How a 30-year old entrepreneur uses a $2,000 monthly social-media marketing budget to build a thriving side hustle selling loungewear
Investing in growth opportunities
Students attend Curtis' Be Fearless Summits at colleges around the country.
courtesy of Curtis
Curtis' Be Fearless summits are the arm of her company that she hopes to grow in the next few years.
The summits typically earn her around $10,000 in sales but often cost nearly $10,000 over several months to organize. However, she expects to net a profit soon: The summit slated for September should generate more than $15,000 in sales — thanks to a combination of booking fees and event sponsorships — while costing less than $7,500 to organize.
Curtis attributes her projected increase in sales to her marketing investments, which include hiring a graphic designer, video editor, and photographer, along with purchasing swag for ambassador giveaways. Each component helps spread the word to her followers and adjacent audiences.
Read more: Founder Finances: A baker shares the $15K budget she's using to relaunch her business after stepping away to fight cancer
Company mergers are another way to grow
Curtis presenting at a TEDx event.
Curtis also recently merged her company with another, called GrasshopHer, in order to widen her audience. GrasshopHer is a mentorship program designed to help young women connect with other professionals. With the merger, Curtis is stepping further into the tech and career-development mission of the business.
"It's becoming less of a personal brand," she said. "I'm more focused on removing myself from the equation because I want to build up this company and sell it."
She hopes small steps, like organically increasing followers, establishing collaborative partnerships, and structuring strategic mergers, will help her scale her company, she said. Her main piece of advice for other entrepreneurs is to focus on the daily building blocks, not just viral content.
"I try not to get too caught up in it because there's always going to be a new platform at this point," she said of social-media virality. "That can feel debilitating to a future generation of entrepreneurs because that's not how it works."
More: Entrepreneurship Small Business financial advice
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How Much Entrepreneurs Should Spend on Marketing and Advertising
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Bus driver Felix Martinez drives route 73 on Wadsworth Boulevard in Lakewood, Colorado in December. Martinez has been RTD bus driver for 18 years.
A rise in retirement among city bus drivers is "throwing transit systems into crisis," according to a new report.
At the same time, transit agencies are struggling to find younger talent to replace retirees.
The American Public Transportation Association found that 71% of 117 transit agencies have cut or delayed services.
The US is facing a critical bus driver shortage, as cities dependent on public transit struggle against a rapidly aging workforce and ongoing national labor shortage.
According to a new report from TransitCenter, an organization focused on improving public transit in cities around the US, the bus driver shortage is "throwing transit systems into crisis." The findings show the declining number of city bus drivers is the result of rising retirements, paired with a growing difficulty to recruit younger staffers to fill the void.
In 2021, the average transit worker was 10 years older than the average American worker, at 52.7 and 42.2 years old, respectively, TransitCenter reported. As older workers increasingly hang up their hats, agencies are struggling to find replacements due to a variety of factors, including concerns over compensation, safety, and scheduling.
"While once a desirable and valued middle-class job, transit operations jobs have increasingly failed to keep pace with how work has evolved," TransitCenter wrote in its report, citing low starting salaries and slow pay growth as primary barriers to attracting new staffers.
Instead, many younger drivers are seeking to work with private companies and taking on jobs as truck or delivery drivers that offer better pay and increased flexibility. According to TransitCenter, nine in ten public transit agencies reported difficulty in filling positions, noting that bus driving roles were the hardest to hire.
Prospective bus drivers are increasingly turning to more lucrative roles like truck driving.
As a result, bus services across the country have been forced to reduce services. A February study conducted by the American Public Transportation Association found that 71% of the 117 transit agencies surveyed had to either cut or delay services as a result of labor shortages.
And while the pandemic played a significant role in speeding up the dip in bus drivers, TransitCenter's findings show it would have happened regardless due to the aging bus driver workforce. Concern over increased retirements first arose in 2015, when transit agencies first began noting the aging workforce and seeking ways to counteract it.
Still, TransitCenter said the dearth of drivers is not beyond repair, and will require significant system improvements, and collaboration among both state and federal organizations.
"While the problem is multifaceted, many of the solutions are well within the control of relevant agencies," TransitCenter wrote. "By taking steps to improve the quality of the job now, agencies can develop a stable, healthy, and satisfied 21st-century workforce."
More: Transportation Bus bus drivers labor shortage
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2022-07-21T18:36:10Z
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Bus Driver Shortage Worsens Due to Aging Workforce, Lack of New Hires
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https://www.businessinsider.com/bus-driver-shortage-public-transit-hires-workforce-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/bus-driver-shortage-public-transit-hires-workforce-2022-7
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Walmart employees describe chaotic, overcrowded back rooms and outdoor storage units stuffed with unsold goods — and say automatic re-orders are jamming even more excess inventory to stores
Towering boxes at a Walmart store.
Walmart finished last quarter with a 32% increase in inventory, causing stores to need more space.
Employees describe nearly unwalkable back rooms filled with pallets and outdoor storage trailers.
Industry analysts say the retailer will have to work through the inventory for months into 2023.
After finishing last quarter with a 32% increase in inventory due to inflation and supply-chain issues, Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, vowed the company would "work through" excess goods "over the next couple of quarters."
Just as it did for many other big-box retailers, the pandemic created a stocking whirlwind for Walmart. What started as runs on products like toilet paper — leaving Walmart's shelves empty of many items — turned into the world's largest retailer ordering a surplus of goods above their customers' overall demand.
On the ground floor, Walmart store employees are wrestling with the consequences of this overstock, and analysts say it may be another year before Walmart gets the situation under control.
Insider spoke with six current employees who work in the back rooms of Walmart stores across the country. They described myriad pallets rendering floors nearly unwalkable, towering boxes that have blocked access to places like private breastfeeding rooms and bathrooms, and outdoor trailers stuffed with excess inventory. All spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Their identities are known to Insider.
A Walmart spokesperson told Insider that "nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our associates and customers."
"As inventory has become an issue for all retailers, we've increased our focus on creating a safe working environment," the spokesperson said.
'Getting slammed with nonstop freight'
Walmart excess inventory blocking a private breastfeeding room.
While inflation, supply-chain issues, and changing consumer behavior have caused many of Walmart's overstock woes, the retailer's new inventory system seems to have exacerbated the problem.
Walmart's new inventory system has automatically ordered supplies the stores already have, according to several Walmart employees and posts on employee message boards.
"Right now at my store, we are getting slammed with nonstop freight," an employee who works at a Walmart store in Minnesota said. "We have hit a terrible point where the system auto-orders more of the stuff we already have."
According to the Minnesota employee, the new system does not account for items that employees do not label or place in bins when they arrive at the store. The employee said that given the glut of packages, associates don't have time to process the packages in a timely manner — leading the system to automatically order more of the same items.
A Walmart spokesperson said the company started widely rolling out new RFID technology in 2020 to track merchandise. The RFID technology serves as one data point for whether an item should get replenished, but the spokesperson disputed the characterization of it as an automatic-ordering system. In a 2006 press release, the company said "the benefits of RFID, especially with regard to reducing out-of-stocks, as well as reducing excess inventory," had been documented in a study by the University of Arkansas that the school released in 2005.
Meanwhile, employees say they are paying the price for the excess inventory. According to an employee who has worked at a Walmart store in Ohio for about a year, the back room is so full that the store "has people standing on the pallets they're putting freight on because there's no room — it's nuts."
"I can't even get close to the pallets I need," another employee who works at a Walmart store in Indiana said. "Our store has never looked this bad. It's just overwhelming at this point."
Freight deliveries have also remained unpredictable, according to several employees who said they wish the company would briefly pause sending GM, or general merchandise, trucks so they could process their current inventories.
An overnight employee who has worked at a Walmart store in Arizona for about six years said their managers "would give us 'one-truck nights' to help relieve some of the pressure, but after two days of having one truck, they would hit us for five days in a row with two trucks of GM products as well as apparel."
"Honestly, if they stopped sending GM trucks for a week, we may be able to dig ourselves out," the employee from Minnesota said.
The overstock conundrum has forced Walmart to find extra storage space. Four employees Insider spoke with said their stores have had to use trailers to store the excess supply. An employee who has worked at a Walmart store in Mississippi for over a decade said that their store is currently using five trailers for storage. The employee from Arizona also said their store is using five trailers, mostly to store apparel.
"My store and a few other stores in the area have had to rent shipping containers to store all this extra stuff until we can get some kind of control over it," the employee from Minnesota said.
Another employee who has worked at a Walmart store in Georgia for about two years said inventory has been an issue since they started working at the store.
But now, the email said, the overstock is "at its worst" and they "have no solutions."
"I'm pretty close to quitting," the Ohio employee said. "Morale is at an absolute low."
How long will Walmart have excess inventory?
Pallets spread all across a Walmart back-room floor.
While overstock is plaguing Walmart store associates, analysts are cutting the retail giant some slack.
Michael Rofman, a partner with Mazars, told Insider that supply-chain disruptions forced Walmart and other retailers to change their inventory mindset from "just-in-time" to "just-in-case."
And for companies like Walmart, he said, "I don't think it's possible to not have enough inventory — this is how they became who they are."
"It's very hard to prospectively anticipate changes because you see the growth and want that to continue," Rofman said. "Everyone was a little drunk off the stimulus, and we've gotten to a situation of imbalance, and the pendulum swung."
To battle the overstock, Walmart leaders have said they are utilizing rollbacks, or discounts on products for a certain period of time, in hopes of selling more items at a faster pace.
That approach has been more favorable with analysts than that of Target, which announced that it would be canceling some orders from suppliers and slashing prices in June, three weeks after the company fell short of its profit expectations at the end of the first quarter.
John Zolidis, the president of Quo Vadis Capital, blasted the move at the time, writing in an analyst note that "nearly all hard-fought goodwill earned from investors over the previous three years has possibly evaporated in just three weeks" for Target.
As far as when Walmart might resolve this overstock issue, Rofman thinks it will take until March 2023 — longer than Walmart predicted.
"Things will change," he said. "Usually, they'll order excess inventory going into January-February, in order to get it on the ship in time. This way, the time between the holidays, it could potentially fix itself."
"But then we enter into our next cycle of placing orders for summer and back-to-school."
Do you work at Walmart or have insight to share? Contact reporter Ben Tobin via the encrypted messaging app Signal +1 (703) 498-9171 or email at btobin@insider.com. Check out Insider's source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.
More: Walmart Inventory Technology Overstock
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2022-07-21T18:37:26Z
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Walmart Employees Describe Inventory Issues, Overstocked Stores
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https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-employees-describe-inventory-issues-overstocked-stores-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-employees-describe-inventory-issues-overstocked-stores-2022-7
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Blackstone COO Jonathan Gray says rental housing and logistics are 'two of the best sectors in the entire economy,' and rents will continue to rise
Blackstone President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Gray
Drew Angerer/Staff/Getty Images
Blackstone's Jonathan Gray said rental housing and logistics were two of the best investments now.
With short supply and steady demand for housing, those who can't afford to buy will rent, he said.
E-commerce growth is buoying logistics properties, like warehouses.
For everyday people, securing a place to live has turned into a grueling and expensive task.
As home prices climb and the highest mortgage rates in more than a decade make homeownership more expensive, many would-be buyers have been priced out of the market. They are turning to rentals, which are getting pricier, too.
But for Blackstone — one of the world's largest investors — these rising costs are a ray of sunshine in an otherwise shaky economic picture.
The company is betting that the constrained supply and rent growth for apartment buildings and logistics properties such as warehouses — which make up a large portion of Blackstone's $280 billion real estate portfolio — is only going to continue.
"These are probably two of the best sectors in the entire economy around the world," Jonathan Gray, Blackstone's president and chief operating officer, told analysts on the company's second-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday.
Both sectors boast low vacancy rates, and inflation has made it even harder to build new homes, said Gray. Construction has slowed, dimming the outlook for supply even more.
On top of that, mortgage rates surged last quarter in response to rising inflation and the Federal Reserve's aggressive monetary policy. The rates have since stabilized but remain at levels that make homeownership less attainable, and rental demand has increased as a result.
"People still have to live somewhere," Gray said.
In the logistics sector, the popularity of online shopping has continued to increase and companies are seeking "redundancies" in their real estate, he said. Backup space is important for companies that want to avoid disruptions caused by supply chain crises, like the current one, he added.
Indeed, rents have risen rapidly. Between June 2021 and June 2022, they rose 14.1%, according to Realtor.com's most recent rental report. Asking rent for logistics rose 11.8% year-over-year in the first quarter to a new record high, according to commercial real estate services provider CBRE.
Gray said that Blackstone doesn't expect rents to keep rising as fast they have been.
These two sectors are also favored by Blackstone because they, along with properties built for the life sciences industry, are providing enough income to "outrun inflation," Gray said during Blackstone's first quarter earnings call. In some markets, Blackstone expected housing rental increases two to three times the rate of inflation, which hit 9.1% annually in the US last month, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Blackstone's strategy isn't unique. Last year, investors swarmed rental properties to renovate by borrowing cheap debt, projecting huge upticks in rents over the next few years.
More: Real Estate Blackstone jonathan gray
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2022-07-21T20:07:23Z
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Blackstone's Jon Gray: Rental Housing Is One of the Strongest Sectors
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https://www.businessinsider.com/blackstone-rental-housing-jonathan-gray-logisitics-rent-inflation-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/blackstone-rental-housing-jonathan-gray-logisitics-rent-inflation-2022-7
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'I hate that Black bitch!' Donald Trump's lawyer recently shouted about NY AG Letitia James: lawsuit
Alina Habba, left, and Michael Madaio, attorneys for former president Donald Trump, in Midtown Manhattan on May 9, 2022.
Matthew Cronin / Insider
Donald Trump's busiest lawyer, Alina Habba, is being sued for alleged racist behavior by an ex-employee.
Na'Syia Drayton alleges Habba recently called the NY AG who's investigating Trump's business a 'Black bitch.'
Habba is on tape dropping 'N' bombs while singing along to rap to 'energize' herself before hearings, Drayton's lawyer alleges.
A lawyer for Donald Trump is being accused of "racist" office behavior by an ex-employee, including allegedly shouting "I hate that Black bitch!" about the New York Attorney General Letitia James after losing a court case.
The New Jersey-based attorney, Alina Habba, is also on tape dropping "N" bombs while rapping bombastically along to gangsta rap recordings that blasted in her Bedminster law offices, according to the lawyer beyind a lawsuit filed this week in Middlesex County, New Jersey.
The audio tapes — duets, apparently, which also feature Habba's law partner Michael Madaio rapping along — may become public as part of her client's new lawsuit, said Jaqueline Tillmann, the Princeton lawyer repping former Habba employee Na'Syia Drayton.
"We are contemplating ammending the complaint and adding one of two of the recordings as exhibits," Tillmann told Insider Thursday.
Habba, arguably the former president's busiest lawyer, made the "Black bitch" slur two months ago, in the midst of representing Trump in contentious, high-stakes litigation surrounding James' ongoing probe of the Trump Organization,
Habba identifies as Arab American; law partner Madaio is white; their firm is based in the same weathy Jersey town as the Trump National Golf Club.
The AG is Black, as is the former Habba employee who is bringing the lawsuit, Drayton, 27, of Fords, New Jersey.
Drayton's lawsuit says she was racially harassed and discriminated against; she seeks unspecified back pay, lost future wages and other damages.
"When Defendant Alina Habba learned that she lost her matter," the lawsuit says of an unspecified April court loss to James, "and that the Judge rejected her legal argument, Defendant Alina Habba emerged irate from her office, (where she and Defendant Michael Madaio were meeting) and shouted, 'I HATE THAT BLACK BITCH!'" the lawsuit says.
"Thereafter, Defendant Alina Habba began parading around the office seething about the judge, and complaining that she had lost her argument," the lawsuit says, leaving Drayton feeling "appalled" and "astonished."
"Na'Syia was shocked that her supervisor would say that, and feel comfortable saying that around her," said Tillmann, of Lewis Tillmann Law Offices.
The racism accusation has flown both ways: April also happens to be the month that Trump twice accused James of being racist, including in a bizarre "Happy Easter" post online that provided no basis for the label.
The "that Black bitch!" slur is presented in the lawsuit as the final straw of inappropriate behavior at Habba's lawfirm, prompting Drayton's resignation on June 14.
"You people like fried chicken," Habba once told her loudly while perusing the menu during a staff luncheon, Drayton alleges.
In another instance, a Jewish co-worker was allegedly casually referred to by Habba as "a cheap Jew."
Habba and Madaio also had the "inappropriate and offensive" habit of dropping "N" bombs while "loudly" rapping along to "booming" rap music in the office, something the two engaged in to "energize, motivate and otherwise 'pump themselves up' prior to making court appearances," the lawsuit alleges.
The partners' playlist included "what is generally perceived and classified as gangster and hip-hop music," including Ruff Ryders Anthem by DMX; Niggas in Paris by Kanye West and Jay-Z; and Rich Ass Fuck and Lollipop by Lil Wayne.
The "racially offensive and sexually inappropriate" lyrics to the songs were attached to Drayton's lawsuit as "Exhibit A."
Drayton's concerns, once voiced, were met with "emotional, animated, and aggressive" combativeness by Habba, she alleges, including criticism for her being "hyper-sensitive" and "ungrateful."
"I am a fucking minority myself!" Habba allegedly shouted back at Drayton. "I'm not white," Habba allegedly continued. "I used to be bullied because I am Arab."
The lawsuit says Habba vehemently defended her right to enjoy hip hop in the office, declaring, "Everybody listens to Kanye West — and I'm not allowed to?"
Habba allegedly went on, "Do you understand how I feel now?! I love hip hop — always have, always will ... I'm taking serious offense to this, frankly."
"She really fully expected that when she complained, Alina would take corrective action," Drayton's lawyer told Insider. "She didn't believe that Alina would agree with her, but she expected a change in behavior. This was an easy fix for any employer who was reasonable.y sensitive."
Just which legal loss to James may have prompted the alleged "that Black bitch!" remark was left unstated in the lawsuit. Drayton's lawyer said her client wasn't privy to the details.
But April was a busy month for litigation between Trump, the Trump Organization and the AG's office, with Trump on the losing end of much of it.
The AG is wrapping up a three-year probe of what her office has called a decade-long pattern of financial misstatements in documents used by Trump to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans and tax breaks.
In one noteworthy loss, Habba argued unsuccessfully against Trump being ordered held in contempt of court for failing to fully comply with James' subpoeana for his personal business documents.
Habba made no secret during hearings over the contempt matter of being irritated by the AG's document demands — and even by the demands of the judge.
"If you would like a bunch more affadavits, you can order that," Habba snapped angrily at New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, during a March hearing on the matter. "You can order anything you like."
"I don't want to do this dance back and forth," she told a pair of James' lawyers at another hearing. "I don't have more documents to to give you so you can fine us for ten months but you're not going to get any more documents from Mr. Trump."
Habba has accused James, a Democrat, of singling out Trump for political reasons, and on a Newsmax appearance in January she called James "a sick person."
In addition to the AG probe, Habba reps Trump as a defendant in lawsuits filed by Michael Cohen and by protesters of Mexican heritage who allege Trump sicced his security on them outside Manhattan's Trump Tower in 2015. The latter case is set for jury selection in the Bronx on Monday.
Habba also reps Trump as a plaintiff, including in his failed federal lawsuit seeking to shut down James' probe, and in his massive lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, alleging an "unthinkable plot" to tie his 2016 presidential campaign to Russia.
But it's doubtful the ex-employee's accusations — which are being strenuously denied by Habba — will have any impact on the probe, which has already been delayed by the death of Trump's first wife, Ivana.
A new date for court-ordered depositions by Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr., originally set for this week, has yet to be set.
Habba is strongly denying the allegations of racism in the lawsuit, which was first reported by the Daily Beast.
"Na'Syia is someone we love and care about and have for years," Habba said in response to the lawsuit. Drayton had also worked with Habba at a previous Jersey law firm.
"Na'Syia had never made a single complaint to anyone until she had decided to quit and ask for an exorbitant amount of money in return. I am disappointed by this lawsuit and the allegations which are simply not true."
More: Donald Trump Letitia James Alina Habba Racism
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2022-07-21T20:07:35Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Donald Trump's Lawyer Called Letitia James a 'Black Bitch': Lawsuit
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https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-lawyer-called-letitia-james-a-black-bitch-lawsuit-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-lawyer-called-letitia-james-a-black-bitch-lawsuit-2022-7
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This leaked document shows exactly how Amazon managers evaluate employee performance and decide pay
Amazon has a controversial performance review system many feel leaves employees in the dark.
Insider reviewed the company's latest talent evaluation guide, shedding light on the process.
The leaked document shows exactly how Amazon managers evaluate employee performance and decide pay.
A common complaint among Amazon corporate employees is the lack of transparency in the annual review process — promotions and raises are tied to a set of criteria that insiders have said is secretive and keep employees guessing on where they stand.
Insider has viewed a copy of the latest version of the four-page document Amazon provide to Amazon managers to guide them through the evaluation process, shedding some light on the process. Amazon declined to comment for this story.
As Insider reported last year based on internal documents, Amazon has a controversial performance review and coaching process, including an turnover quota called "unregretted attrition rate" and an expectation to rank a certain percentage of employees in each performance tier.
Employees have criticized that last practice as effectively being a form of stack ranking, a managerial practice infamous for creating a cutthroat culture. Indeed, similar documents from last year's review cycle showed percentages of employees managers were expected to rank in each performance tier. Notably, however, the 2022 document does not contain those percentages.
Amazon's 2022 Talent Evaluation Guide — viewed by Insider and shared with principal engineers, managers, and human resources employees — gives managers instructions for evaluating L4-L7 employees, meaning levels from entry to principal that make up most of the company's workforce.
Amazon evaluates employees annually through a process called Forte, which determines future pay. The document instructs managers to evaluate employees based on the company's leadership principles, performance compared to peers, and future potential.
Internal Amazon document
The document instructs managers to consider what an employee delivered through the year compared to expectations for their particular role and level, gather feedback from peers and self-evaluations, and data from informal sources like notes from check-ins with the employee and a list of accomplishments provided by the employee.
Managers choose as many as three of the company's leadership principles to "represent each employee's strengths and growth areas," then select one of three summaries describing how they demonstrate those principles from "development needed" to "role model." Amazon considers leadership principles to be "a critical input to evaluating their performance and potential."
Then, the manager needs to determine performance and potential ratings that make up an employee's overall value score. The document said the behaviors in the rubric are not meant as a comprehensive checklist, but an example of behaviors to guide a manager's evaluation.
More specifically, performance scores are determined by a combination of two factors: what an employee delivered, and how they delivered it.
Under the rubric provided in this document, the "what" factor is evaluated based on criteria including the simplicity of the solutions they generate, the quality of their judgment when faced with balancing speed and risk, whether they seek improvement, and how they approach problems.
An employee who "needs improvement" is deemed to generate overly complicated or simplistic problems, demonstrate questionable judgment, and inconsistently seek improvements. On the other hand, an employee who "exceeds high bar" generates new and simplified solutions, demonstrates excellent judgment, and pushes improvements.
Managers evaluate "how" an employee delivered by their ability to identify customer needs, take on tasks and problems, share knowledge, and respond to other viewpoints. An employee who needs improvement "argues too much or does not speak up enough." An employee who "exceeds high bar" provides "strong arguments/pushback, but thoughtfully incorporates other points of view."
Managers are asked to evaluate the "what" and the "how" to come up with a score from one to seven (one to three is "needs improvement," four to five is "meets high bar," and six to seven is "exceeds high bar." This is half of the equation that determines an employee's "overall value" score, which in turn informs their compensation.
Amazon tells managers to evaluate an employee's potential at the company by how they navigate unfamiliar situations, approach new challenges, respond to urgent issues, and deliver on goals with limited resources.
An employee with "limited" potential is someone who struggles with unfamiliar situations, is unwilling to take on new challenges, and rarely offers ideas that represent new ways of thinking. An employee with "very high" potential, meanwhile, thrives in unfamiliar situations, proactively takes on new challenges, and provides unique ideas and depth of thinking.
Potential is evaluated from one to four (one is "limited" potential, followed by two for "moderate," three for "high" and four for "very high.")
As Insider previously reported, Amazon has a separate coaching system for employees labelled as underperformers. Those employees go through a multi-step coaching process that's opaque and often unrealistic, dozens of employees who spoke with Insider said. The program has several parts, including an initial "Focus" section, followed by "Pivot," and possibly an internal Amazon jury that decides the employee's ultimate fate.
Are you an Amazon employee or do you have insight to share? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@insider.com).
More: Amazon Amazon Web Services Enterprise Software Cloud Computing
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2022-07-21T20:07:47Z
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Leaked Document Shows How Amazon Managers Decide Performance and Pay
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https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-document-shows-how-amazon-managers-decide-performance-and-pay-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-document-shows-how-amazon-managers-decide-performance-and-pay-2022-7
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Republican lawmakers aren't pleased that Democrats are supporting President Joe Biden's broad student-loan forgiveness plans.
During a House education subcommittee hearing this week on tribal colleges and universities, some Republican lawmakers on the committee used the time to criticize Democratic lawmakers for failing to hold a hearing to fix "the spiraling student-loan catastrophe," as subcommittee Republican leader Mariannette Miller-Meeks put it. Following the hearing, Democratic Rep. Leger Fernandez said that the "minority has decided to hijack this hearing to score political points about student loans."
The Republicans on the committee later responded in a blog post, slamming Democrats' student-loan relief plans.
"Republicans understand something Democrats, evidently, do not: America's wealthiest, who can pay their own loans, do not need a handout from taxpayers. These policies are unfair to those who have already paid back their loans or never even went to college," they wrote, adding that "forgiving the loans of students and graduates today, but handing out more loans tomorrow, makes no logical sense. But logic has never been Democrats' strong suit."
Biden is nearing a decision on broad student-loan forgiveness for federal borrowers, and he's reportedly considering $10,000 in relief for borrowers making under $150,000 a year. With student-loan payments set to resume on September 1, a White House spokesperson confirmed to Insider that the president is still hoping to announce any broad relief before that date. While Democratic lawmakers are hoping the relief will be expansive without any thresholds, Republicans do not want to see any relief at all and accused Democrats of keeping "their heads in the sand as President Biden steamrolls Congress to grant mass student loan forgiveness."
They have frequently used the argument that canceling student debt will benefit the wealthiest, rather than those who need the relief the most, and have said that addressing tuition costs is more important than debt forgiveness. Democrats and left-leaning experts have pushed back on that, with a report from the Roosevelt Institute last year finding that 61% of students with incomes of $30,000 and under who began college in 2012 graduated with student debt, compared to the only 30% of students with incomes $200,000.
For now, it's still unclear what Biden will actually decide to do when it comes to broad relief. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a recent interview that the issue is more complicated than it might seem and "it's not a question of yes, you have the authority or no, you don't have the authority, there's a lot of hoops we have to go through." The department has maintained that regardless of relief, borrowers should still prepare to resume payments in just over a month.
More: Policy poltiics Economy Student Debt
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2022-07-21T20:07:53Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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It 'Makes No Logical Sense' to Cancel Student Debt and Disburse Loans: GOP
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https://www.businessinsider.com/no-logical-sense-cancel-student-debt-hand-out-loans-gop-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/no-logical-sense-cancel-student-debt-hand-out-loans-gop-2022-7
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Deep cleaning 5 filthy vehicles
Melissa Estrada
These five dirty vehicles were transformed through deep cleans.
A hoarder's car collected grease, trash, food, and even bugs before deep cleaning.
A farmer's tractor was transformed from a muddy mess to showroom-ready.
Narrator: This car underwent an extreme deep clean to remove years of damage from a leaky sunroof. WD Detailing received this car after it sat for six years growing grass and mold.
The transformation started with an ozone machine being placed in the vehicle to kill any bacteria. Then a vacuum and other tools were used to bring the mold-stained carpet back to its original color. The seats and plastic surfaces received the same deep-cleaning treatment, starting with Tri-Clean, a strong all-purpose cleaner used to kill bacteria. Every pore, nook, and cranny was treated to kill off as much bacteria as possible.
A buildup of grime and mold on the exterior was treated using a power wash, degreaser, and foam cannon.
This car, covered in grease and gunk, was previously owned by a hoarder. The team at WD Detailing deep cleaned this car, transforming it for someone in need.
The deep clean started after airing out the car for 4 days. An ozone treatment was used to make the working environment safe. The carpet was covered in food, garbage, and layers of pet hair. Bugs were found in the back of the car. The deep clean called for the removal of the car's seats and middle console.
The cleaning process took multiple go-throughs. The carpet had to be power washed and extracted four times, and the grease-stained seats were cleaned twice. For pesky carpet stains that still wouldn't come out, a sprayable black dye was applied for a clean finish.
A flood left almost every part of this Pontiac Firebird WS6 covered in mud. Most of the interior parts had to be removed before the cleaning process could begin. The seats and shell were power washed, along with the carpet, which alone took 45 minutes to clean.
After all of the mud was removed, the carpet underwent another round of cleaning with carpet soap, an agitator brush, and an extractor. This process released any dirt and stains in the carpet fibers, making it easier to remove with the extractor. With a spray, brush, and towel, the seats were cleaned and restored back to their original state.
Reece King, the owner of Satisfying Clean, details local farmers' tractors for free.
The nearly three-hour cleaning process of this tractor started with an assessment of the cab. Reece always works from top to bottom to avoid any need for double cleaning. A fingernail brush, all-purpose cleaner, and cloth were used for the surfaces. Garbage was picked up along the way.
The floor of the tractor was the next step. The mud-packed pedals were scraped and vacuumed. A vacuum was used to clean the entire floor and remove soapy water for the detailing. The interior was finished with a polish on all surfaces.
This farmer's truck came to Satisfying Clean filled with rocks, hay, and sand, most of which had to be removed by hand. The truck was cleaned from top to bottom. A vacuum removed all of the sand and debris from the seats and floor.
The dirt was cleaned from the pedals and floor. The process of spraying, brushing and vacuuming was repeated on all of the interior. A detailing brush was used to clean the smaller areas. To complete the deep clean, a polish was applied to the interior plastics for a shiny finish.
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2022-07-21T20:29:01Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Deep Cleaning Mold, Mud and Trash From 5 Different Vehicles
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https://www.businessinsider.com/5-satisfying-automotive-deep-cleans-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/5-satisfying-automotive-deep-cleans-2022-7
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How effective annual interest rates work
How to calculate an effective annual interest rate
Effective annual interest rate example
Effective annual interest rate vs. APY
Effective interest rates reflect the real cost of loans or returns on deposits with the effects of compounding
The effective annual interest rate is usually discussed in the context of what a borrower pays on loans.
The effective annual interest rate (EAIR) takes compounding into account.
Effective annual interest rates reflect the real cost of borrowing or returns on deposits.
Understanding how effective annual interest rates work lets you compare financial products to find the best deal.
Interest, at its core, is the money you pay on a loan or earn on deposits and investments. But not all interest rates are calculated equally. There are several types, and the cost of borrowing or amount of returns can look different depending on which one you're using.
One of the most commonly discussed is the effective annual interest rate (EAR). It's the rate of you will pay or earn after taking into the account the impact of compounding.
The effective annual interest rate reflects the actual cost of a loan or returns on deposits after figuring in the impact of compound interest.
Compound interest occurs when previously earned interest is added to the principal amount invested or borrowed. It can work to your advantage as your interest-bearing accounts and investments grow over time, but can be detrimental if you're paying off debt, like credit cards.
"Compounding interest is calculated periodically (daily, monthly, quarterly etc.) and the amount is immediately added to the balance, so with each period going forward, the balance continues to get larger meaning the interest paid on the balance gets larger as well," explains Shazia Virji, general manager of credit services at Credit Sesame.
"Think of it as paying interest on your interest. The more often interest is compounded, the higher your rate will be"
Compound interest can work for or against you. If borrowing money, compounding will lead to more debt owed to the lender. If investing money, compounding will help you grow funds faster. The effective annual interest rate helps you determine what your actually paying or earning.
Quick tip: The impact of compounding can really add up. For example, a $10,000 initial investment with a rate of return of 5% will grow to $12,840 in five years with daily compounding.
You can run the numbers to determine the effective annual interest rate.
The formula is:
Effective annual interest rate = (1 + i/n)^n -1
i = the nominal interest rate (the rate of interest before adjusting for inflation)
n = the number of compounding periods
Calculating the effective annual interest rate for yourself lets you compare offers to find the best deal. Let's consider an example.
Let's say you're shopping for an investment product. Bank 1 is offering 5.25% interest, compounded daily. Bank 2 is offering 5.35% interest, compounded semiannually. In these offers, the advertised interest rates are the nominal interest rates.
Here's how the numbers shake out:
Bank 1: (1+5.25/365)^365-1 = 5.3899%
Bank 2: (1+5.35/2)^2-1 = 5.3702%
In this case, Bank 1 has the better offer. Although the nominal interest rate is lower, more frequent compounding leads to a higher effective annual interest rate.
Quick tip: Run the numbers to determine the effective annual interest rate of potential investments before committing. The effects of compounding mean that you could find a higher effective annual interest rate, even if the nominal interest rate suggests otherwise.
Annual percentage yield, or APY, is the rate of return you earn in one year on a deposit account. A few examples include certificates of deposit (CDs), money market accounts, and savings accounts. The advertised APY does take the effect of compounding into account.
The difference between it and the EAR is usually just in the context in which they are discussed.
"The APY is usually used when referring to savings or investments where the consumer is making money from the compounding interest," Virji explains. "The EAR is usually used when referring to the amount the consumer owes. Both of these types of interest incorporate the compounding effects of interest, unlike the stated interest rate."
The next time you are shopping for a loan or investment product, always make sure you understand which interest rate it is that's being advertised and what it tells you. The effective interest rate will provide a full picture of the costs you're incurring or the returns you're receiving.
"When you take the fees, interest, and compounding nature of the debt, or investment into account it shines a light on the true cost of buying something on credit, or what to expect from an investment," says Charles Bulthuis, president of Reformation Asset Management. "This allows you to make a fully informed decision on whether or not the debt, or investment will be a wise use of your hard earned dollars."
PERSONAL FINANCE Understanding what APY is and how it can be used to grow your money
PERSONAL FINANCE Nominal interest rates reflect borrowing costs or investment returns before inflation
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2022-07-21T20:29:25Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Effective Interest Rates: Definition, Formula, Where They're Used
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/effective-interest-rate
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https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/effective-interest-rate
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Make sure you have cellular coverage
Try dialing voicemail the old fashioned way
Make sure you have enough free memory
Check your call forwarding settings
Update your app
Visual voicemail not working? 7 ways to troubleshoot on iPhone and Android.
If your visual voicemail is not working on your iPhone or Android, there are a number of easy troubleshooting steps you can try.
Make sure your voicemail service is online by dialing it manually.
You should also make sure you're not using Call Forwarding and your phone has enough memory for visual voicemail to work properly.
When Apple introduced visual voicemail in the iPhone, the feature was nothing short of a revelation, displaying a list of your messages so you didn't have to listen to each and every one. Most Android phones offer it as well now, and it has become an essential part of most people's daily communication.
But like any tech, sometimes visual voicemail doesn't work the way it should. If your visual voicemail is not working, here are seven ways to troubleshoot it and get back up and running quickly.
If visual voicemail has only recently started to misbehave, or it doesn't seem to work properly in certain locations, make sure you have a solid, reliable cellular signal. Without a wireless connection, visual voicemail won't work properly. Check the signal strength bars in the status bar at the top of your phone screen, and if it's not working properly, try toggling Airplane mode on and off to reset the cellular connection. To do that, swipe down from the top of the screen to see the Control Center or quick shortcuts on your phone, and tap the Airplane mode button. Wait a few seconds, and tap it again.
Are you having a problem with visual voicemail, or is the problem more pervasive? To see if there's an issue with your voicemail service, try dialing your voicemail the old fashioned way. Usually, you can do that by calling your own mobile phone number from your phone, and then entering your PIN to access messages. If you can't access your voicemail, you should contact your service provider.
No matter what kind of smartphone you own, your visual voicemail can encounter problems — and in fact stop working entirely — if you are very low on free memory. If you've run your phone out of space entirely, expect visual voicemail to stop storing or playing back messages properly.
T-Mobile, for example, recommends having no less than 15% free memory on your phone for visual voicemail to work properly. If in doubt, you can free up some space on your iPhone or clear space on your Android device.
Check to make sure you're not dangerously low on memory.
If new messages aren't finding their way into your visual voicemail list, it's possible that you've set up call forwarding and incoming calls are being redirected rather than going to voicemail. If so, you might want to disable call forwarding so your phone can collect your voicemails again. The exact procedure depends both on the kind of phone you have and your cellular carrier — here's how to edit your call forwarding on iPhone, and here's how to adjust call forwarding on Android.
Make sure you aren't inadvertently forwarding calls so they don't go to voicemail.
It's also possible that your visual voicemail might be glitching because of a temporary software glitch, something easily solved by simply rebooting your phone. If you've tried everything else in this list and your visual voicemail is still not working properly, restart your phone.
Here is how to restart any iPhone. If you have an Android, you can generally swipe down from the top of the screen and tap the Power icon, or press and hold the Power button on the side of the phone until you see the shutdown screen.
While it's not likely the reason for your problems, it's possible that a bug or software incompatibility is keeping your visual voicemail from working properly. On the iPhone, you should make sure your Phone app is fully updated. If you have an Android phone, you'll want to make sure the Phone app is up to date, but you might also have a standalone visual voicemail app — be sure it's up to date as well.
Last but not least, if visual voicemail persists in not working, resetting your phone's network settings might solve the problem. Unfortunately, this will erase all your network settings, including any saved Wi-Fi network passwords and paired Bluetooth devices, so save it for last.
If you have an iPhone, here is how to reset your network settings. The process to reset network settings on an Android are similar, though the specifics might vary slightly depending on which Android phone and OS you have.
TECH 8 ways to fix your iPhone's voicemail when it isn't working properly
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TECH How to set up voicemail on your Android phone
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2022-07-21T20:29:31Z
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Visual Voicemail Not Working? 7 Ways to Troubleshoot
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https://www.businessinsider.com/visual-voicemail-not-working
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President Joe Biden stopped short of officially declaring a climate emergency on Wednesday.
President Joe Biden expanded federal programs for climate resiliency and developing offshore wind.
The actions fell short of a climate emergency declaration that Senate Democrats are demanding.
Policy uncertainty could slow growth in renewable energy, analyst says.
President Joe Biden said he views climate change as an emergency but stopped short of officially declaring it one on Wednesday. That move could come in the days ahead when Biden said he would unveil more executive actions to combat the crisis.
For now, the president took more limited steps including spending $2.3 billion on climate-resiliency grants to help states and tribes prepare for natural disasters, making it easier for low-income families to purchase air conditioners, and paving the way for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico.
Senate Democrats and climate activists want Biden to go further by declaring a national climate emergency. It's one of the few options his administration has left to tackle the crisis after Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia last week dashed hopes that Congress would pass more than $300 billion in clean-energy tax breaks and other climate spending before November's midterm elections.
Manchin's vote is critical in an evenly divided Senate, where Democrats are trying to push through Biden's economic agenda by using a budget maneuver that skirts a Republican filibuster.
The blow followed the Supreme Court's decision earlier this month to limit the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants. The agency is expected to draft narrower rules, but without new legislation, it's all but guaranteed the US won't slash planet-warming pollution in half this decade — a promise it made under the Paris climate agreement.
Current policies put the US on track to reduce emissions by between 24 and 35% below 2005 levels by 2030, according to an analysis by the Rhodium Group.
By declaring the climate crisis a national emergency, Biden could redirect government funding to renewable-energy projects in places like military bases and to the electric-vehicle industry. It also could empower Biden to reinstate a ban on crude-oil exports and provide some legal cover to stop offshore oil and gas drilling, though such moves are unlikely against the backdrop of high gas prices and inflation.
Biden has already invoked the Defense Production Act to boost manufacturing of solar parts, energy-efficient heat pumps, and equipment to make clean fuels and use critical minerals. The list could be expanded to more EV technology.
For years, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon has been urging Biden to declare a climate emergency. A staff member for Merkley told Insider that the administration was still considering the move but acknowledged that it wasn't a panacea for a climate crisis fueling deadly heat waves and wildfires in Europe and other natural disasters around the globe. A national climate emergency must be paired with new legislation and regulations, the staffer said.
"The inaction by Congress and the SCOTUS decision means Biden has a narrow path for anything meaningful," said Safak Yucel, an assistant professor of operation management at Georgetown University. "Renewables are doing well even without strong support from any administration because the economics makes sense, but all this policy uncertainty is hampering growth."
Yucel added that even if Biden took executive action, future administrations could unravel the measures.
"Will the policy be in place for a year, two years?" he said. "That's the biggest concern I have."
More: Sustainability Newsletter Sustainability Joe Biden climate policy
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2022-07-21T21:38:47Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Biden Stops Short of Declaring a National Climate Emergency
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https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-stops-short-of-declaring-a-national-climate-emergency-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-stops-short-of-declaring-a-national-climate-emergency-2022-7
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PlayStation Stars is an upcoming rewards program for PS4 and PS5 owners — here's how it works
When does PlayStation Stars launch?
How do you earn points?
What can you redeem with your points?
Does Microsoft have a rewards program for Xbox?
Sony announced a new loyalty rewards program called PlayStation Stars.
PlayStation owners will be able to earn reward points by playing games and participating in activities.
Points will be redeemable in the PlayStation Store to buy games and other content.
Gamers on PlayStation consoles will soon be able to turn their in-game achievements into rewards with Sony's new PlayStation Stars loyalty program. The program will let players earn points towards games and other downloadable content in the PlayStation Store by completing a variety of challenges and participating in activities.
This is the first loyalty program specifically for PlayStation customers, and the new offering is similar to the Microsoft Rewards program that's currently available to Xbox owners. Sony also recently updated its PlayStation Plus gaming subscription service to better compete with Microsoft's GamePass, and PlayStation Plus members will get some added benefits when using the new loyalty program.
Sony announced PlayStation Stars in a blog post on July 14, but the exact launch date of the program hasn't been confirmed beyond the promise of late 2022. When it launches, the service will roll out to different regions in phases.
PlayStation Stars will be free to join and will not require any kind of subscription fee.
How do you earn points with PlayStation Stars?
You'll be able to earn PlayStation Stars points and rewards as you complete campaigns and activities on your PlayStation console. Some will be as simple as logging into a game once a month, while others will require you to finish specific in-game achievements.
Sony says players will also be able to earn rewards while participating in community events and competitions. In addition, if you're a PlayStation Plus member, you'll automatically earn points when you purchase games from the PlayStation Store.
What can you redeem with PlayStation Stars points?
PlayStation Stars points will be primarily redeemable for PlayStation Network gift cards and other digital rewards. Once live, PlayStation Stars will also introduce a new set of digital collectibles that players can earn; the collectibles will include digital statues and art from popular PlayStation franchises.
The blog post mentions that a handful of other PlayStation Store products will be redeemable with points, but it's not clear if that means hardware like controllers and consoles, or other merchandise.
Does Microsoft have a rewards program for Xbox consoles?
Yes, Microsoft has a similar rewards program that Xbox owners can take advantage of right now. Xbox gamers can participate in the Microsoft Rewards program, which gives customers points for using the Microsoft Store, completing online activities, and using Bing as their search engine of choice.
Subscribers to Xbox Game Pass for console and Game Pass Ultimate can also complete in-game quests that offer additional rewards. Microsoft rewards can be used to buy gift cards to other stores, hardware like controllers and consoles, and digital content like games.
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ADVERTISING Sony is cooking up plans to run ads in PlayStation games as rival Microsoft plans a similar program with Xbox
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2022-07-21T21:38:53Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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PlayStation Stars: Price, Release Date, Rewards, How to Earn Points
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https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/playstation-stars-loyalty-program
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https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/playstation-stars-loyalty-program
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Here's an exclusive look at the 12-page pitch deck that Covey, a blockchain-based community for money managers, used to raise a $2.5 million seed round
Covey founder Brooker Belcourt
Covey is a community of money managers that aims to democratize access to investing.
It raised a $2.5 million seed round from investors like Social Leverage and Portage Ventures.
Here is an exclusive look at their pitch deck Covey used to raise its seed round.
Covey, a social platform for money managers, raised $2.5 million in seed funding as it seeks to build out its product and release a token it will grant its top-performing stock pickers.
Social Leverage and Portage Ventures led the round with participation from Cue Ball and BoxOne.
The platform is open to all stock analysts globally – from hobbyists to professionals – to share their investing strategies and potentially earn monetary rewards. The company said in a statement that it hosts over a hundred analysts on the platform. Using blockchain technology, Covey tracks the stock picks of the top performing money managers and portfolios eligible to receive the Covey token.
The top 10% of performers are then invited to act as money managers in Covey's copy trading fund, which essentially allows Covey to mirror the strategies of the platform's top investors. The company said the investors also have the potential to earn from the returns of those using their approach.
Covey's founder, Brooker Belcourt, said the new capital would not only help the company build out its platform, but also help it launch its own cryptocurrency token and its copy trading fund. He expects the token to debut this fall and the fund to begin operating in 2023. Covey is also planning to double its headcount by the end of the year.
Belcourt said the platform helps to democratize trading more and reveal the best analysts, no matter where they come from.
"Covey is allowing everyone the opportunity to test their strategies and those with the best performance can become money managers based purely on merit," Belcourt said. "We've seen from recent events fueled by retail investors, that when smart, strategic investors work together, they can beat the market, and we're excited about scaling this community."
Check out the 12-page pitch deck Covey used to raise its seed round:
Covey pitch deck
More: Features Fintech Start-Up
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2022-07-21T21:39:17Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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The Pitch Deck Investment Community Covey Used to Raise $2.5 Million
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https://www.businessinsider.com/pitch-deck-investment-community-covey-used-raise-seed-funding-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/pitch-deck-investment-community-covey-used-raise-seed-funding-2022-7
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Charles R. Davis and Bryan Metzger
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., dons a message reading My State is Banning Exceptions Protect Contraception, before the House passed the Right To Contraception Act in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, July 21, 2021.
The House on Thursday voted 228-195 to pass a bill that would protect access to contraceptives.
Eight Republicans joined 220 Democrats in supporting the legislation.
The bill would empower the Justice Department to take civil action against states that restrict access.
Eight Republicans broke from their party's ranks to support a Democratic proposal Thursday that would prevent states from limiting access to contraception.
By a 228-195 vote, the House of Representatives passed a measure that states access to contraception "is a fundamental right." The bill, which now heads to the Senate, was introduced following the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and rescind the federal right to abortion, with Justice Clarence Thomas arguing that the decision should also lead the court to reconsider past rulings on same-sex marriage and birth control.
In the Senate, the fate of the bill is unclear. It would need the support of at least 10 Republicans and all 50 Democrats to pass, and it's uncertain if Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will bring the bill to the floor.
Although no states currently ban contraception, experts have told Insider that some forms — such as Plan B and IUDs — could be construed as terminating a pregnancy and fall under new, restrictive abortion bans that define "life" as beginning at the moment of fertilization.
The Republicans who backed the Democratic bill include moderates as well as at least one social conservative:
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania
Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio
Rep. John Katko of New York
Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois
Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida
Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan
Two other Republicans voted "present":
Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio
Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania
Speaking to reporters, Rep. Mace, an anti-abortion conservative, said her vote was informed, in part, by efforts in her state to ban the termination of a pregnancy with no exceptions.
"If you're gonna have a state that bans abortion for women who are victims of rape and incest, you have to ensure protected access [to contraception]," Mace said. "I can't imagine a world where you would have otherwise, especially for those women that have been through that kind of trauma."
The lawmaker spoke while wearing a jacket with a message taped on the back: "My state is banning exceptions," it read. "Protect contraception."
More: Contraception Roe v Wade Congress Nancy Mace
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2022-07-21T21:39:29Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Here Are the 8 Republicans Vote to Protect the Federal Right to Contraception
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https://www.businessinsider.com/the-8-republicans-vote-to-protect-federal-right-to-contraception-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/the-8-republicans-vote-to-protect-federal-right-to-contraception-2022-7
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Blake Dodge and Shelby Livingston
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has shared his bold ambitions for the company's healthcare business.
Amazon; Reuters; Marianne Ayala/Insider
Amazon just announced its third-biggest acquisition ever.
It's buying the primary care startup One Medical for $3.9 billion.
The move shows that Amazon is leaning into care delivery to supercharge its healthcare growth.
On Thursday, Amazon said it plans to buy One Medical, a primary care startup, for $3.9 billion, its third-largest acquisition ever.
Amazon's long been interested in healthcare. Its projects range from moving health system's data to the cloud to strapping Prime members into wearables that can track their heart rate.
But primary care has been an elusive target for the trillion-dollar tech giant, and the One Medical deal solidifies the true scope of Amazon's ambitions: It wants to help fundamentally transform how we all go to the doctor.
In a press release on Thursday, Neil Lindsay, who's heading up health services at Amazon, bemoaned the typical consumer's primary care experience: booking an appointment with a physician, waiting weeks or months for it, taking time off work, parking, waiting, seeing a rushed provider, then making another trip to the pharmacy.
Other big tech companies have tried and failed to break into care delivery, or shied away from it entirely. But by buying One Medical, Amazon inherits a full-fledged healthcare business with 188 clinics, 767,00 members, and 8,500 employer clients — a much larger footprint than what Amazon's achieved with in-house projects.
Daniel Grosslight, a senior healthcare analyst at Citi, told Insider that a combination with One Medical makes a lot of sense for Amazon and represents a broader phenomenon in healthcare. Amazon launched virtual care for companies last year, but thus far hasn't had significant in-person resources.
"That's the next step in the evolution of telehealth," he said. "How do you combine both in-person care and virtual care more efficiently?"
One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin.
Amazon's long history of experimentation in health
In 2018, Amazon banded together with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan to try to address rising healthcare costs, a venture later named Haven. While it shut down in early 2021 after a lot of internal confusion, that effort seemed to give way to another.
In 2021, Insider reported that Amazon was growing its own primary care business, Amazon Care. Companies pay Amazon monthly fees for employees to be able to use an app manned by care teams. It's seen slow progress, struggling to solidify deals with health plans, for instance, as Insider reported last summer.
But Amazon's been positioning itself internally to further prioritize health.
In December, it moved Lindsay, the former Prime boss, to head up Amazon Care; the new testing venture Amazon Diagnostics; and Amazon Pharmacy, a team that grew out of the tech giant's PillPack acquisition in 2018 and offers Prime members discounts on their prescriptions. The pharmacy business has also been slow to gain ground, as Insider reported in March.
Lindsay brought in Aaron Martin, the former chief digital officer of Providence, a Washington-based health system, in March, who's now overseeing Amazon Care and a new organization called "Health Storefront and Shared Tech," an employee who was not authorized to speak to the press told Insider.
Around the time when Lindsay took the helm, these efforts became part of a larger brand "Amazon Health Services." It's similar to Google bringing its health projects under one umbrella, "Google Health," and giving them a single leader, Dr. David Feinberg, in 2019.
Amazon might end up succeeding where Google failed because a big bet was placed on a unifying strategy: delivering care both in-person and virtually. Many people access the healthcare system through primary care. Owning that front door gives companies more control over where people go for additional healthcare services and how much they spend. From Amazon to Walmart to CVS Health, companies are increasingly jockeying to own this part of the patient journey.
"This is another datapoint in the arm's race for primary care," Tom Cassels, the CEO and president of Rock Health, an investment and advisory firm, told Insider.
Providence St. Joseph Health chief digital officer Aaron Martin
Why Amazon wants to buy a primary-care startup
There are a number of ways scooping up One Medical can benefit Amazon's healthcare business.
The deal would give the tech giant an easy way to expand its primary-care clinic footprint fast without having to take on the arduous task of building out brick-and-mortar locations and recruiting doctors to staff them, as One Medical's already done that, Brian Tanquilut, a healthcare analyst at Jefferies, told Insider.
Stephanie Davis, an analyst at SVB Securities, said it would also give Amazon an opportunity to own the consumer relationship in healthcare. People are guarded with their healthcare relationships, and the deal would allow Amazon to side-step having to build trust with those consumers, she said.
"There's been a lot of value in owning the consumer relationship. We've seen that across health tech, and this is the closest you can get to a consumer – it's a physical relationship where you see them in person," Davis said.
One Medical could boost Amazon's patient-facing technology, Cassels said. The startup built a lot of its technology, aimed at more easily tracking patients, in-house. Amazon could also gain more business for AWS through the health systems that pay One Medical to manage certain patients, he added.
The deal would also give Amazon a foothold in the lucrative business of caring for older people enrolled in Medicare Advantage. While One Medical provides in-person care and virtual visits mostly to people who receive access to its services as a health benefit through their jobs, it also services people enrolled in Medicare Advantage thanks to a $2.1 billion acquisition of Iora Health, a primary-care company that gets paid set fees upfront to care for such members, in September 2021.
Medicare Advantage is the private alternative to the federal Medicare program that provides health coverage to people 65 and older. Health insurers and providers alike have clamored for a bigger piece of that market as Americans age into the program at a rapid clip.
Even though just 39,000 of One Medical's 767,000 members were enrolled in Medicare, that program contributed more than half of the company's revenue in the first quarter of 2022.
Industry observers have been waiting for Amazon to break into the health insurance industry. In a way, the deal with One Medical moves the tech giant in that direction. Through Iora, One Medical takes on financial risk for certain patients, just like a health plan does.
Combined with the physical sites, potential for pharmacy benefits, and referrals to certain hospitals, its easy to imagine Amazon building a kind of "network," Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, the chief medical officer of Contigo Health, a healthcare startup, told Insider.
"The potential becomes very powerful," he said.
Integrating One Medical into Amazon's business
Given Amazon plans to spend nearly $4 billion for One Medical and intends to keep its CEO Amir Rubin, per the release, the startup is set to continue as a separate brand. But previous Amazon acquisitions can offer clues as to how the startup will eventually plug into other resources like Amazon Care.
One Medical could follow the Zappos playbook and stay a separate business, or the Whole Foods playbook, where Amazon shoppers get benefits from their Prime memberships.
Either way, it could send more customers to the other health ventures at Amazon. One Medical physicians could help design a meal plan for someone who's prediabetic and send them coupons to Whole Foods, Grosslight said. Clinics could offer patients prescriptions through Amazon Pharmacy, Tanquilut added.
"I think this is just part of the broader Amazon strategy of expanding the offering into a physical location, the way they did it with Whole Foods," Tanquilut said. "I think that this is a way to put physically on the ground those Amazon Health services lines that they've already put out."
More: Amazon Care Amazon amazon pharmacy
Amazon Diagnostics
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2022-07-21T21:39:41Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Why Amazon Acquired One Medical to Supercharge Its Healthcare Push
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https://www.businessinsider.com/why-amazon-acquired-one-medical-to-supercharge-healthcare-push-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/why-amazon-acquired-one-medical-to-supercharge-healthcare-push-2022-7
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The crypto world is riled up over an insider trading lawsuit against a former Coinbase product manager. Here's why.
The crypto industry is up in arms over an insider trading case involving a former Coinbase product manager. Here's why.
Ex-Coinbase employee Ishan Wahi and others are accused of trading tokens before they were listed.
The SEC said 9 of the tokens he traded were "securities," which Coinbase immediately rejected.
Companies can be fined for trading and dealing in securities without following SEC rules.
Insider traders might not be the only ones worried by Thursday's news that a Coinbase employee was arrested for allegedly leaking information to his brother and a friend.
Federal prosecutors charged Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi with fraud, saying he shared information about the Coinbase's tokens before they were listed on the crypto exchange.
It's one of the first crypto insider trading cases brought by US law enforcement. Yet, the industry appeared more concerned about a parallel civil case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission because it asserted that nine of the tokens that Wahi and his co-defendants traded were "securities."
That label, which the Department of Justice didn't use in its case, could create serious problems for people and entities who enable crypto trading, lawyers said. The SEC can punish securities brokers and exchanges that don't register and follow its rules.
It set off a series of criticisms, including from Jake Chervinsky, a lawyer and head of policy for the Blockchain Association and Caroline D. Pham with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Even Coinbase, which praised the prosecution of Wahi, wasn't totally happy with the news.
—Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) July 21, 2022
"No assets listed on our platform are securities, and the SEC charges are an unfortunate distraction from today's appropriate law enforcement action," Coinbase said in a blog post.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler and other regulators have been warning crypto market participants for years that many digital assets are securities and must be treated like stocks and bonds. In May, Gensler testified that Coinbase lists dozens of tokens that "may be securities," and the SEC has proposed redefining an exchange to possibly include more digital asset trading platforms.
But token developers and digital asset exchanges often complain that the SEC's guidance has been vague. While it has sued sellers of specific tokens, like Ripple Labs, which created the XRP token, hundreds or thousands of projects doing similar things haven't gotten so much as a concerned letter from the agency. The regulator has issued extensive guidance and beefed up its crypto enforcement staff, but it generally doesn't give its blessing to specific digital assets.
—Caroline D. Pham (@CarolineDPham) July 21, 2022
"I do believe what this [enforcement action] should say is that the SEC is looking closely at a wide variety of tokens," said Joshua Ashley Klayman, a lawyer at Linklaters who advises clients in the crypto industry. "There's a responsibility to ensure that digital assets on your platform are not securities."
There is precedent for the SEC to go after crypto exchanges. It has taken action against at least one crypto company, Poloniex, accusing it of running an unregistered securities exchange. But the SEC's order didn't specify which of the digital assets Poloniex allowed users to trade were securities.
Poloniex, which sold its platform and is now a subsidiary of Circle Internet Financial Ltd., paid about $10 million to settle the case.
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2022-07-21T21:39:47Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Why Ishan Wahi's Insider Trading Case Has Coinbase Riled up
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https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ishan-wahis-insider-trading-case-has-coinbase-riled-up-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ishan-wahis-insider-trading-case-has-coinbase-riled-up-2022-7
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How to turn off the camera shutter sound on an iPhone in 2 ways
There are two ways you can turn off the camera "shutter" sound on your iPhone.
To turn off the camera sound on your iPhone, flip the Ring/Silent switch to Silent.
You can also silence the shutter noise by enabling the Live Photos feature before taking a picture.
Since Live Photos are essentially mini-videos, they will take up more storage space than still photos.
Sometimes, you just want to snap pictures on your iPhone discreetly. Unfortunately, the camera's shutter sound can give you away. And the annoying part is that there's no setting you can change to silence it – a major design oversight on Apple's part.
Luckily, there are two workarounds that can allow you to turn off the shutter noise your iPhone camera makes. That way, you can be a photo-snapping ninja.
How to turn off the camera sound on an iPhone with the ring/silent switch
The easiest way to silence the Camera's shutter sound is to put your iPhone in Silent mode.
Just flip the Ring/Silent switch – located on the left side of your phone – down, revealing the orange color behind it, and the camera won't make noise when taking a picture.
Flip the Ring/Silent switch to Silent mode.
Quick tip: On older iPhones, you'll have to flip the Ring/Silent switch away from you instead of down.
The trade-off here is that this will silence the iPhone's ringer as well, meaning you'll have to rely on vibrations to alert you of notifications and calls.
How to turn off the camera sound on an iPhone with Live Photos
If you don't want to put your iPhone in Silent mode but still want to turn off the shutter noise, you can take a Live Photo — a picture that is a seconds-long mini video with audio — instead.
Here's how to take a Live Photo on an iPhone:
Quick tip: You can only take Live Photos on iPhone 6S and newer.
1. Open the Camera app on your iPhone.
2. Check the concentric circles at the top of the screen. If they're yellow, the Live Photos feature is on. But if they're white with a slash running through them, it's off – tap those white circles to enable it.
When the concentric circles at the top are yellow, Live Photo mode has been enabled.
3. Tap the Shutter button, and you'll notice that the camera will take a picture without making the shutter sound.
Tap the "Shutter" button.
Note: Live Photos take up a lot more storage space on your iPhone, so if you're tight on space, you may not be able to use this method for long.
Steven John is a freelance writer living near New York City by way of 12 years in Los Angeles, four in Boston, and the first 18 near DC. When not writing or spending time with his wife and kids, he can occasionally be found climbing mountains. His writing is spread across the web, and his books can be found at www.stevenjohnbooks.com.
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2022-07-21T23:09:59Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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How to Turn Off Camera Sound on iPhone in 2 Simple Ways
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-turn-off-camera-sound-on-iphone
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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-turn-off-camera-sound-on-iphone
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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel just issued a new warning for the digital advertising industry, saying demand has 'slowed significantly' due to a slowing economy, inflation, and rising competition
Advertising has continued to decline this year, negatively impacting Snap's business.
Businesses are reducing ad budgets given inflation and a slowing economy, CEO Evan Spiegel said.
The company in May revised its outlook downward and implemented a significant slowdown in hiring.
Snap expects its business to deteriorate as demand for advertising falls further due to multiple headwinds, including inflation, a slowing economy, and rising competition.
CEO Evan Spiegel, discussing the company's second quarter in a letter to investors, said demand for advertising "has slowed significantly" over the past three months.
"The combination of macroeconomic headwinds, platform policy changes, and increased competition have limited the growth of campaign budgets," Spiegel said. "In some cases, advertisers have lowered their bids per action to reflect their current willingness to pay." He added that business in some industries are reducing marketing budgets, even if their growth is strong, due to inflation. Others he said are "reassessing" all of their investments.
Snap's stock fell 25% after hours. Shares of Facebook and Google, with businesses also almost entirely reliant on digital advertising, fell by 5% and 3%, respectively.
Derek Andersen, Snap's CFO, said during a call with analysts that "we've seen a pretty significant deceleration in demand over the last 90 days," But, he added, demand has been slowing for almost a year, starting when Apple implemented changes to privacy policies for its devices, letting people opt out of ad tracking.
To combat the reduction in ad spending, Spiegel said Snap is working to build out its direct-response advertising platform. A direct response ad is one where a user is prompted or asked to do something, like click a link, which gives advertisers a more immediate sense of whether and how well ads are working.
Spiegel said the second quarter "proved more challenging than expected" and the company did not provide any guidance for next quarter given the "uncertainties" at play.
In addition to working to reinvigorate its ads business, Snap is clamping down further on hiring and expenses. Spiegel said the company intends to "substantially slow our rate of hiring, as well as the rate of operating expense growth."
"We may incur transition costs in the near term as we execute on these changes, but we expect to emerge with a more focused cost structure as a result," he added.
Andersen, the CFO, said the hiring slowdown will "effectively pause growth" in Snap's headcount. "The rate of revenue growth has slowed significantly and we must adapt our investments," he added.
Snap in late May implemented a slowdown in hiring, insisting at the time it was continuing to hire for most roles. At the same time, it revised downward its financial guidance given the "aggressive deterioration" in its ads business.
This year so far, visits to Snap's online ad portal, where digital advertisers go to price and purchase ads for placement on Snapchat, is down more than 18% compared to last year, according to new research from SimilarWeb.
Are you a Snap employee with insight to share? Got a tip? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267 or on Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.
More: SNAP Snapchat Evan Spiegel
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2022-07-21T23:10:13Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel Says Demand for Ads Has 'Slowed Significantly'
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https://www.businessinsider.com/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-says-demand-advertising-has-slowed-significantly-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-says-demand-advertising-has-slowed-significantly-2022-7
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Amazon's drone delivery program is further behind schedule as regulators raise questions about new crashes
Amazon's Prime Air drone
Amazon must complete 7,000 flights of its autonomous delivery drone to meet a federal licensing requirement.
Regulators have said none of the flights Amazon has completed so far this year are valid to meet that goal.
Amazon's plan to launch a drone delivery beta test this year has drawn concern from some potential customers.
Amazon's goal to launch a nationwide autonomous drone delivery program is again facing roadblocks.
The company had aimed to complete 7,000 flights this year of its Prime Air autonomous delivery drone to meet a federal regulatory requirement that's a step towards expanding the service nationwide, Insider previously reported.
But so far, regulators have not counted a single Amazon drone flight towards that goal, according to three people with knowledge of the situation and an internal document seen by Insider.
Amazon needs to rack up thousands of test flights in order to complete so-called "durability and reliability" testing, proving to the Federal Aviation Administration that its drones operate safely and predictably over time. Such testing is necessary in order for Amazon to receive federal approval to fly its drones over cities and towns.
The FAA, though, has not yet signed off on the start of the test flight campaign, in part due to concerns about crashes, according to two current employees. The FAA has also questioned whether all the drones in Amazon's fleet conform to the company's written specifications, one current employee said.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said that the company is "working through an evolving drone certification process and the FAA routinely requests additional information to conduct their safety analysis. In fact, this is the exact same FAA process for all applicants." Amazon has always provided the FAA with all of the information it has requested, the spokesperson said.
An FAA spokesperson declined to respond to questions, saying the agency does not comment on "pending certification projects or discussions with companies."
One crash on July 2, described in an FAA report as a "hard landing," involved Amazon's latest drone model plummeting 180 feet out of the sky. The drone "just blew apart when it hit the ground," said a person with knowledge of the crash. Amazon's spokesperson did not respond to a question about why the crash occurred.
The crash "involved a routine experimental operation over a test site, which is a controlled, unpopulated area," the spokesperson said in a statement. "We use our experimental authority to test our systems up to their limits and beyond in controlled environments and in accordance with regulatory requirements.
"With rigorous testing like this, we expect these types of events to occur, and we apply the learnings from each flight towards improving safety," the spokesperson continued. "No one has ever been injured or harmed as a result of these flights, and each test is done in compliance with all applicable regulations."
The regulatory holdup puts Prime Air months behind schedule. Amazon had hoped to complete nearly all 7,000 of the flights necessary to prove that its drones are safe to fly by this month, according to an internal document from earlier this year seen by Insider. Even though the agency has not yet approved the start of Amazon's durability and reliability campaign, Amazon has kept flying the drones, racking up roughly 3,000 test flights this year, a current employee said.
This delay is only the latest in a long string of setbacks that have plagued Prime Air since its launch in 2013. At that point, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted that the company would be delivering packages by autonomous drone in a handful of years.
Prime Air has taken one major public-facing step forward in the past months, announcing a beta test of its drone delivery service for some residents of the central California town of Lockeford and in College Station, Texas. An Amazon spokesperson said the company is "on track" to launch those delivery programs this year.
Some residents of those two towns have expressed a degree of nervousness about the idea of drones flying overhead, gesturing to reports of crashes.
"This kind of 100-pound object falling from the sky onto our home, onto our car, onto our children… We may not have enough data, enough history on it, to say this is a great idea," College Station resident Amina Alikhan said at a public hearing last month. "It's all well and good to be part of something new. But in fact, it's a test zone. We are being used as the test site."
Amazon's spokesperson pushed back on the characterization of the Lockeford and College Station delivery programs as "test sites."
"The deliveries in Lockeford and College Station will not be experimental or testing operations. Instead, all of our commercial drone package delivery operations will be conducted under an air carrier certificate issued by the FAA that shows our comprehensive processes meet the FAA's high safety bar," the spokesperson said. "We're also providing these facts to the community to help them understand that our drones will conduct drone delivery operations under the highest safety bar issued by the FAA, an air carrier certificate, akin to that of an airline."
Amazon has been hosting informational "Welcome Picnics" in Lockeford and College Station, pitched to residents as ways to "learn more about how our drones can safely navigate through the sky and conveniently deliver packages right to your backyard," according to an invitation to the Lockeford picnic seen by Insider.
More: Amazon Drone Prime Air
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2022-07-22T00:41:17Z
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Amazon's Delayed Delivery Drone Crashed Again This Month
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https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-air-test-flights-faa-crash-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-air-test-flights-faa-crash-2022-7
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Lunchbox cuts 33% of staff. The food tech startup had raised $72 million to give restaurants an alternative to Grubhub and DoorDash.
Lunchbox bought delivery service Spread in summer 2021.
Lunchbox offers digital ordering, loyalty, and marketing services for restaurants.
The startup is led by industry provocateur Nabeel Alamgir, who got his start as a New York busboy.
On Thursday, the CEO told Insider that the company had grown "bloated" and had to cut 60 employees.
Lunchbox, a New York-based food-tech startup whose CEO is known for speaking against the anti-restaurant tactics of delivery apps like Grubhub and DoorDash, laid off 33% of its employees Thursday.
The company, which has raised $72 million in less than three years, went from 180 to 120 full-time employees on Thursday. One-third were notified in a Zoom call. The other 40 workers were sent messages to their personal emails, Lunchbox CEO and cofounder Nabeel Alamgir told Insider late Thursday.
The layoffs come as food tech investors pressure well-funded startups to trim bloated operations amid turmoil in the capital markets.
"We are all drunk on VC capital, and we needed to sober up," Alamgir told Insider.
Other food-tech companies downsizing workforces and shoring up operations include Nextbite, ChowNow, Reef Technology, Gopuff, and Sunday. SoftBank backs many of these startups.
Alamgir said Lunchbox, like other VC-backed companies, had grown too quickly. He said the layoffs hit all divisions, especially engineers and tech roles.
Over the last few months, Lunchbox has acquired companies such as NovaDine to help automate restaurant onboarding. The CEO said that Lunchbox could operate with a much leaner staff now.
"We were all bloated," Alamgir told Insider. "We no longer are growth at all costs. I'm no longer going to be dependent on investors. We're now working towards being in cash positive."
Alamgir, whose company is entirely remote, said he has Zoom calls set for Friday and the weekend to talk to those who were notified of their job loss by email.
He said the company is investing $700,000 in severance packages, and he's personally trying to find jobs for those who got cut.
"It still feels like crap. I'm responsible for a lot of people, and I'm gonna get to have to sleep tonight knowing that."
Nabeel Alamgir is the CEO of Lunchbox. He laid off 60 people on this birthday - Thursday, July 21, 2022.
Well before the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation in March 2020, restaurant operators began sounding the alarm about the economic hardships they face when working with third-party delivery apps like Grubhub and Uber Eats.
Alamgir, then a marketing chief at Bareburger, often screamed the loudest. He left Bareburger to start Lunchbox in 2019 to erase what he called "injustices" restaurants faced at the hands of delivery apps. Alamgir said it's always been his mission to help mom-and-pop restaurants reduce their dependence on third-party delivery companies.
Besides offering online restaurant ordering, Lunchbox's services include loyalty and marketing programs for brands like Mexicue, Fuku, and Bareburger. Last year, Lunchbox launched a NotGrubhub website to promote direct orders from 120,000 New York restaurants. It also introduced Citizens Go, an online ordering app for virtual brand company C3.
Last year, Insider named him among 33 restaurant tech power players. Today, Lunchbox works with nearly 4,000 restaurants and still plans to grow through acquisitions, Alamgir said.
In June, Lunchbox began offering its basic online ordering software for free to mom-and-pop restaurants. Despite today's layoffs, that free offer remains, Alamgir said. "Restaurants need it now more than ever."
Kristen Hawley contributed to this reporting.
More: Restaurateur Restaurants Fast Food
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2022-07-22T00:41:41Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Lunchbox Lays Off Employees As Food Tech Startups Face Downturn
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https://www.businessinsider.com/lunchbox-lays-off-employees-as-food-tech-startups-face-downturn-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/lunchbox-lays-off-employees-as-food-tech-startups-face-downturn-2022-7
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Lawmakers played footage of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley running on January 6.
According to the January 6 committee, Hawley was sprinting away as rioters breached the building.
Hawley gave a now-infamous raised fist to protesters earlier in the day.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley fled during the attack on the Capitol just like the rest of his colleagues, the House January 6 committee pointed out in a juxtaposition between the famous photo of the Missouri Republican raising his fist to protesters compared to a new security camera video showing him sprinting to safety.
The panel then played previously undisclosed Capitol security footage showing Hawley, circled in case viewers didn't recognize him, running away. There was audible laughter in the hearing room as the footage was played.
Hawley has repeatedly defended his actions on January 6, 2021, including his decision to encourage protesters by gesturing to them. A possible 2024 presidential candidate, the Missouri Republican's actions have received significant attention.
"Some of them were calling, so I gestured toward them," Hawley previously told The Washington Post, per the Hill. "They had every right to be there. … When I walked by that particular group of folks were standing there peacefully behind police barricades."
He has also condemned the fact that later in the day protesters violently stormed the Capitol. A spokesperson for Hawley did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Some of Hawley's own colleagues yelled at him as senators sheltered in place during the riot. The Post previously reported that Sen. Mitt Romney, the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee, yelled at Hawley.
"You have caused this!" Romney reportedly said.
Earlier this year, Hawley's campaign began using the fist-pumping photo on campaign swag.
"It is not a pro-riot mug,"Hawley told HuffPost. "This was not me encouraging rioters."
More: January 6 committee Capitol Siege Josh Hawley Congress
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2022-07-22T02:13:05Z
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Video: Josh Hawley Fled the Capitol on Jan. 6 After Raising His Fist
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https://www.businessinsider.com/video-josh-hawley-fled-capitol-january-6-after-raising-fist-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/video-josh-hawley-fled-capitol-january-6-after-raising-fist-2022-7
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Twitter users seized upon a now-deleted tweet from the House GOP that appeared to label the content of Thursday's January 6 hearing as "heresy" instead of "hearsay."
The House GOP's Twitter account appeared to tweet, then delete a response to the January 6 panel's eighth public hearing.
In a now-deleted tweet posted at 8.45 p.m. on Thursday — 45 minutes into the hearing — the House GOP's official Twitter account posted a message reading: "This is all heresy."
The message was posted during a segment of the hearing covering former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's recorded deposition.
During the testimony, Hutchinson spoke about how her office had received information on January 6, 2021, about the mob at the Capitol chanting that they wanted to hang then Vice President Mike Pence.
The tweet was left up for nearly 45 minutes before it was deleted. The GOP then tweeted another message that read: "All hearsay."
Twitter users seized upon the tweet, calling out what might have been a potential misspelling.
A representative for the GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
The House GOP's Twitter account on Thursday also tweeted and deleted an apparent attack on Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House deputy press secretary, labeling her a "liar" and a "pawn" of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Matthews, who testified before the January 6 panel, is still a GOP staffer on the House GOP's climate crisis committee.
More: january 6 capitol riot January 6 commitee hearings
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2022-07-22T03:43:44Z
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GOP Tweets 'This Is Heresy' About Jan 6 Hearing Instead of 'Hearsay'
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https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-tweets-heresy-response-jan-6-panel-hearsay-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-tweets-heresy-response-jan-6-panel-hearsay-2022-7
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Sarah Matthews, former deputy White House press secretary, testifies before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th on Thursday.
The House Republicans' official Twitter account on Thursday attacked a staffer who currently works for a House Republican as she testified before the House January 6 committee. The tweet was later deleted.
"Just another liar and pawn in Pelosi's witch-hunt," the @HouseGOP account wrote in a now-deleted tweet.
The staffer in question, Sarah Matthews, previously worked as a communications aide in the Trump White House. She is now the communications director for Republicans on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
The tweet quoted a previous message that Matthews posted on her own account that thanked former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence "for your service to the American people" and for the opportunity to work alongside them. She published the tweet on January 20, 2021.
The Twitter account belongs to the House Republican Conference, which is run by Rep. Elise Stefanik's office, according to Politico.
Stefanik, a New York Republican, became the No. 3 House Republican after the GOP ousted Rep. Liz Cheney from her perch for her refusal to stop criticizing Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection.
A deleted tweet sent by the official House Republicans' Twitter account
A House GOP spokesperson said that the tweet was "sent at the staff level."
"The tweet was sent out at the staff level and was not authorized or the position of the conference and therefore was deleted," the spokesperson said in a statement.
Cheney, of course, is now the top Republican on the House January 6 committee.
Matthews testified before the January 6 committee on Thursday that she clashed with some fellow Trump staffers about the need for Trump to condemn the violent attack on the Capitol.
More: Sarah Matthews House january 6 committee Capitol Siege january 6
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2022-07-22T03:43:50Z
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House GOP Attacks Jan. 6 Witness That Still Works for House Republicans
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https://www.businessinsider.com/house-republicans-official-twitter-account-attacks-january-6-witness-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/house-republicans-official-twitter-account-attacks-january-6-witness-2022-7
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Uncollected suitcases at London Heathrow Airport on July 8, 2022.
The golfers may have left Scotland after the Open Championship golf tournament ended on Sunday — but many of their bags never made it out of Edinburgh Airport.
—Bradley Neil (@BradleyNeil1) July 18, 2022
The Edinburgh Airport did not respond immediately to Insider's request for comment that was sent outside regular business hours but told the Scottish Sun that it had received far more golf clubs than it had expected and was working with handling agents and airlines to send the bags back to their owners. It also apologized for any inconvenience caused.
More: Golf Transportation Aviation Airports
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2022-07-22T06:46:25Z
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Travel Chaos: Piles of Golf Bags Stuck in Scotland After the Open
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https://www.businessinsider.com/travel-chaos-golf-bags-lost-scotland-edinburgh-airport-british-open-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/travel-chaos-golf-bags-lost-scotland-edinburgh-airport-british-open-2022-7
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30-year-old billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried breaks down how he decides to bail out crypto companies amid a market rout – and explains why it's okay to make a 'moderately bad' deal right now
Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder of crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research.
In a chat with Bloomberg's Matt Levine, he said FTX keeps its treasury in dollars to curb risk.
Some companies in bailout talks couldn't provide numbers on their own balance sheets, per SBF.
Amid the crypto market rout, the 30-year-old billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is on a dealmaking spree.
Bankman-Fried, commonly known as SBF, announced on June 21 that FTX would provide a $250 million credit injection to troubled lender BlockFi. Zac Prince, the company's CEO, had said a week earlier that BlockFi was cutting roughly 20% of its staff, citing volatile "macroeconomic conditions worldwide."
In June, SBF's quantitative trading firm Alameda Research extended a $500 million line of credit to crypto brokerage Voyager Digital. The publicly traded company later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 6, where documents revealed that lender Alameda actually owes Voyager $377 million as well.
Earlier this month, SBF said in an interview with Reuters that FTX still has "a few billion" in cash to bail out other players in times of crises.
"Sam Bankman-Fried is the new John Pierpont Morgan," Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital, said in June. "He is bailing out cryptocurrency markets the way the original J.P. Morgan did after the crisis of 1907."
'The test' and making a 'moderately bad deal'
At the Bloomberg Crypto Summit on Tuesday, SBF explained how he decides which troubled firms to help out.
In talks of potential bailouts, the exec initially assesses how bad the financial situation is for the other party, asking simple questions like what figures are on their balance sheets. Some of them didn't even know or wouldn't provide numbers on their own balance sheets.
"Some failed that test," the exec told Bloomberg's Matt Levine at the summit. "We think either they're not being transparent with us or they don't know their own business."
Per a Financial Times report, FTX could not justify bailing out centralized lender Celsius, which later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a $2 billion hole in its balance sheet.
Second, the bailout process includes comparing the companies assets to its liabilities, and if its roughly the same number then the company would be more likely to receive a line. This is to prevent further crypto contagion or customers losing their assets.
The exec added that the "best case" scenario, however, is when companies approach him with "about zero left," meaning that they need an extra buffer before they have lay off staff or dip into user funds. The troubled firm could then received a line that is "definitely bigger than the plausible downside" and so the company has a surplus of cash.
Senior lines of credit, which are more secure and prioritized in bankruptcies, would be likely extended if a firm is going through a liquidity crunch versus a net-asset-value crunch.
It's unclear what kind of return on investment these bailouts will bring for FTX or Alameda, however. The exec added that FTX keeps its treasury in dollars to mitigate risk and doesn't allow customer accounts to be in the negative.
But SBF says that right now it's okay make a "moderately bad deal" if it will improve the overall "health" of crypto as an industry.
"We need to be a good, constructive actor in this space," he said. "How healthy the ecosystem is, in the long run, is going to be a very strong predictor of how much we can grow."
More: Investing crypto Sam Bankman-Fried
bloomberg crypto summit
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2022-07-22T08:17:36Z
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Sam Bankman-Fried: Why I'm Bailing Out Crypto Companies Amid Rout
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https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-why-bailing-crypto-companies-market-rout-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-why-bailing-crypto-companies-market-rout-2022-7
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Read the pitch business-automation startup AirSlate prepared for investors but didn't end up needing to land a $51.5 million Series C
Aaron Mok
Borya Shakhnovich, left, and Vadim Yasinovsky, AirSlate's cofounders.
AirSlate
The business-automation startup AirSlate raised a $51.5 million Series C round led by G Squared.
It touted its finances to win over investors but prepared a pitch deck just in case, its CEO said.
AirSlate plans to use the new funds to develop products and build out a creator community.
AirSlate, a startup in Boston that lets businesses automate business processes involving documents without coding experience, just raised fresh funds. And even though it prepared a pitch deck, that's not what landed AirSlate its latest round.
Instead, Borya Shakhnovich, a cofounder and the CEO of AirSlate, told Insider investors approached the firm because of its financial track record. The latest round of $51.5 million in Series C funding was led by the venture-capital firm G Squared, with participation from the software firm UiPath's investment arm, and it boosted AirSlate's valuation to $1.25 billion.
"This was not my first rodeo," Shakhnovich said.
Between 2017 and 2019, AirSlate tripled in size and generated $51 million in annual revenue, according to the company. It had 443,000 customers by the end of the 2019, including the insurance firm MetLife, the energy provider Eversource, and the Australian government, Shakhnovich said.
But it's still operating in a tough market. Competitors in the business-automation space, like the $12.8 billion company DocuSign and the $5 billion firm Zapier, sell similar products. AirSlate tries to stand out by expanding into several product areas, Shakhnovich said.
Vadim Yasinovsky, AirSlate's cofounder and chief product officer, started the company in 2008 as the document-management firm PDFFiller. In 2011, Shakhnovich, a former biotechnology professor at Boston University, joined Yasinovsky to oversee the firm's marketing strategy.
"It's not like we took different softwares and put them together," Shakhnovich said. "We built all of it from scratch."
By 2017, PDFFiller received its first round of funding of $40 million from the private-equity firm General Catalyst. Two years later, the company acquired the e-signature firm SignNow and the legal-document library US Legal Forms. That's when it changed its name to AirSlate.
In early 2021, AirSlate received $40 million in private-equity funds from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and General Catalyst. All the funds raised were spent on mergers and acquisitions or stored in the bank, according to Shakhnovich.
AirSlate plans to spend its latest funds on developing products akin to those of the cloud-based-communication company Twilio, directed at users with technical expertise. The company also plans to build a creator community where clients can create apps on top of AirSlate's platform.
"All of the financing that we've had up to date has been inbound interest," Shakhnovich said. "We really work towards understanding who the right partner is for us."
Not all of AirSlate's past investor meetings were successful. AirSlate has received pushback from investors for a lack of brand recognition and an ideal customer base, Shakhnovich said.
Now, when seeking investors, Shakhnovich looks for ones that closely align with the company's mission.
"Investors are like shoes," he said. "There's a lot of them, and some of them will fit better than others. I think a lot of founders feel like their purpose is to win every investor, but that's not possible."
Read the pitch deck that AirSlate prepared to raise its latest $51.5 million round:
More: Cloud Enterprise Startup
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2022-07-22T11:20:13Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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How AirSlate Raised a $51.5 Million Series C Round Led by G Squared
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https://www.businessinsider.com/airslate-funding-round-gsquared-no-code-pitch-deck-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/airslate-funding-round-gsquared-no-code-pitch-deck-2022-7
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The hottest part of the commercial-real-estate market last year is getting iced by rising rates. One investor is bracing for fire sales.
Alex Nicoll and Kelsey Neubauer
An apartment building in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Karen Hartman / EyeEm/Getty Images
Apartment complexes drew record investment in 2021, but rising rates may spoil the party this year.
Buyers and sellers are drifting apart on building valuations, stalling transactions.
One investor expects deals to emerge later this year as some investments collapse.
Rising interest rates have set off debates over a setback in US home prices. For apartment buildings, the darling of institutional investors last year, the reckoning may already be here.
The multifamily market grew by leaps and bounds last year as fast rent growth and low interest rates attracted $240 billion in investment from investors such as the world's largest landlord, Blackstone, and Adam Neumann, WeWork's founder and former CEO. An intoxicating mix of record rent growth and cheap debt attracted capital from sophisticated investors and neophytes alike.
Apartment buildings, as the narrative went, would be the most effective hedge to an inflationary economy because rents were projected to rise for years to come. For the first time since at least 2009, demand for them exceeded that of office buildings, which were staring down a sketchy future as employees embraced the work-from-home opportunities that expanded during the pandemic, according to Savills.
But the party is ending, at least for now. As interest rates rise, those with cash in hand want to buy properties at a discount to the lofty prices of just a few months ago because borrowing costs affect valuations of commercial real estate. Sellers scoff, saying that their rental income looks as good or better than it ever has, which enhances values.
This stalemate may be a speed bump as the market readjusts to a new reality or a sign of serious dislocation, especially if high financing costs persist and lending stalls. Whatever the final outcome, industry leaders are feeling the heat, Manus Clancy, a senior managing director at Trepp, a firm that analyzes real-estate debt, said on the firm's podcast last week.
"Over the last 10 days, there's been a decidedly severe turn in that sentiment from people reaching out to me," Clancy, whose data is used by executives across the commercial-real-estate industry, said.
He said the gist of the complaints was: "Liquidity hasn't dried up, but it has tightened considerably."
Indeed, many of the eight multifamily investors and experts who spoke with Insider about the shifting winds shared those views. Most still considered multifamily the most secure part of commercial real estate because rising interest rates were making it difficult for homebuyers, which increases demand for rentals. But the risk, some said, is that a recession hits, curbing rent collections and perhaps forcing financially stretched owners to dump their holdings.
One investor, Adil Hasan, a director at Yieldstreet, is preparing for fire sales, expecting increasingly costly debt to capsize some deals. He said he wasn't not the only one, with many investors rich with capital that must be deployed. Yieldstreet, a crowdfunding platform, has raised over $640 million for real-estate deals.
Investor Tides Equities recently acquired the Tides on 7th apartment complex in Phoenix.
Tides Equities
Many multifamily purchases in the past few years were made with short-term loans financed in the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities, a favorite of bond investors seeking a bit of extra yield in the low-interest-rate environment. Easy access to these loans — originated when prevailing rates were far lower — contributed to a rise in overall debt on multifamily properties to a record $287 billion by the end of last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Rising rates and higher yields demanded by the bond investors haven't yet upended the market, which is still supported by rising rents. There are many market participants who think Hasan is waiting for what will never come. But the swift move in borrowing costs has at the very least put the market on pause, at best, or a deep freeze, at worst.
"Absent any shift in the macro conditions, we're probably in for a cooling in the marketplace in terms of transactions and new development," Bradley Tisdahl of Tenant Risk Assessment, which analyzes commercial real estate, told Insider.
Frozen deals
Indeed, investors who must put their dollars to work are finding few opportunities lately. Hasan, who helps oversee Yieldstreet's portfolio, estimated multifamily deal volume had plummeted by as much as 90% in recent weeks.
Coincidentally, the market for cheap short-term loans has seized up.
As of the July 14 episode of Trepp's podcast, issuance of commercial-real-estate collateralized loan obligations, the complex bonds that finance the lending, had entirely dried up, with not a single deal happening in this month so far. The collateralized-loan-obligation deals totaled $24 billion across 23 deals in the first six months of 2022, with nearly half the volume done in January alone.
The shift is affecting the value of buildings, at least where buyers are concerned. This month, multifamily-property values are likely down anywhere from 5 to 10% in most markets, Lonnie Hendry, the head of commercial-real-estate advisory at Trepp, said on the podcast. Clancy projected they could drop as much as 15%, a view he said led to audible gasps during a private call sponsored by an investment bank.
Disagreement over valuations has ramped up so much over the past few weeks that Tides Equities, which says it's the third-biggest buyer of apartment buildings this year and was the second-largest last year, has "taken its foot off the gas," Sean Kia, its cofounder and principal, told Insider. His firm has gone from a pace of closing as many as two deals a week to nothing in the past six.
"We were extremely active," Kia said.
Tides Equities' Tides on Wynn apartment complex in Las Vegas.
He has been "pumping the brakes" on borrowing for commercial-real-estate collateralized loan obligations, where lenders have sharply increased interest rates and the amount of equity they require of borrowers, and is instead seeking funding from banks and the so-called agencies, such as Freddie Mac. He told Insider that firms like his expected certain borrowing rates to double from last year's lows to 7% in the coming months.
Investors who thought they had great funding a few months ago have had rude awakenings. Lenders are busy canceling those deals or forcing borrowers to make larger down payments and pay higher rates.
"Some of the deals right now circulating in the market are deals that were signed two to three months ago," Yieldstreet's Hasan said. "People are going back to the sellers and repricing every deal."
Could a frozen tundra turn to fire sales?
There are early signs that affordability concerns may slow rental growth, and that's while the economy is still hot enough to warrant more interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
Hasan doesn't think rents will decrease but expects a significant slowdown in their growth, he said. For some buildings financed with riskier underwriting — such as lower debt-service coverage ratios — reduced income could push owners into a corner, triggering sales.
"There is no way that they can fulfill all the debt obligations because of the rising interest costs," Hasan said. "So they are going to be a forced seller of their assets in the next three to six months. Those are sort of the interesting opportunities that we are going to wait around for, and I think we can get some really remarkable deals at really good prices."
Adam Deermount, a partner at RanchHarbor Capital, which manages about $150 million in real estate assets, said shrinking rents relative to debt costs wouldn't be enough to threaten the investment for borrowers.
"If you look at COVID, you had people who couldn't or wouldn't pay," Deermount told Insider, referring to the effects of rising unemployment as the pandemic unfolded. "You never had an inducement to sell, meaning that your lenders and equity partners were willing to work with you and make capital available."
In the last financial crisis, there was both property-level distress — caused by a deep recession — and reasons to sell as liquidity dried up. Right now, funding has dried up, but multifamily properties continue to be cash cows for their owners. According to the Urban Institute's rent-collection tracker, most tenants are continuing to make monthly payments even as their rents increase.
"I'm not sure a whole lot of distress is going to come unless a recession lasts a lot longer or net operating income starts to take a hit," Deborah Smith, the CEO and a cofounder of the real-estate investment bank CenterCap Group, told Insider.
John McNellis, an investor and developer, recalled countless times that investors salivated for distressed opportunities that never materialized. There was one big one, but it was under much more extreme conditions: when the government auctioned off foreclosed properties during the savings-and-loan crisis from 1989 to 1995.
What's more, multifamily is typically the most stable of commercial-real-estate assets and would be an unlikely source of sales, McNellis said.
"Everyone knows this. If you're going to go out and try to grab a great deal, multifamily is probably the last place you'll find one," McNellis told Insider.
More: Apartments Multifamily Interest Rates
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2022-07-22T11:20:19Z
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www.businessinsider.com
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Apartment Building Investments Are Slowing As Interest Rates Rise
|
https://www.businessinsider.com/apartment-building-investments-slowing-interest-rates-distressed-sales-2022-7
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https://www.businessinsider.com/apartment-building-investments-slowing-interest-rates-distressed-sales-2022-7
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Delta Air Lines just ordered 100 Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft — the largest of the MAX family.
The cabin will be split into first class and economy and fly from major hubs like Seattle and New York.
The MAX 10 is longer than other variants and requires specially designed landing gear to avoid potential damage to its tail on takeoff.
Delta Air Lines has placed a $13.5 billion order for 100 of Boeing's 737 MAX 10 jet — the largest of the MAX variant. The deal also has an option for 30 more planes.
Source: Delta Air Lines
A signing ceremony took place at the Farnborough Air Show in England on Monday, marking the first large Boeing order that Delta has placed in 11 years. Deliveries will begin in 2025.
Delta Senior Vice President of Fleet & TechOps Supply Chain Mahendra Nair and President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Stan Deal at the Farnborough International Air Show 2022.
Source: Delta Air Lines, CNBC
"The Boeing 737-10 will be an important addition to Delta's fleet as we shape a more sustainable future for air travel, with an elevated customer experience, improved fuel efficiency and best-in-class performance," Delta CEO Ed Bastian said.
Delta Boeing 737 MAX 10 CFM International LEAP-1B engines.
"This aircraft will be piloted, served, and maintained by the very best professionals in the business, and it's your hard work and dedication to our customers that always sets us apart," he continued.
The MAX 10 is one of two planes in the MAX family that does not yet have regulatory approval to fly. The other model still undergoing certification is the company's smallest variant — the 737 MAX 7.
Boeing 737 MAX 7 in Boeing livery. A Southwest 737 MAX 8 sits behind.
Boeing is on a tight deadline to get the MAX 10 certified. If it does not receive regulatory approval by December 31, 2022, then federal law will require the manufacturer to upgrade the cockpit to meet the latest safety standards.
Source: US Congress
The current cockpit design, which is similar to earlier 737 variants, is favored by airlines because it doesn't require additional pilot training, Delta SVP Mahendra Nair said on Monday, per the Wall Street Journal.
Boeing 737 MAX 10 test aircraft at the Farnborough International Airshow.
However, if Boeing misses the December 31 deadline, the MAX 10's crew alert systems would differ from the MAX 8 and 9, requiring airlines to pay for separate training.
Nair explained that if Boeing has to upgrade the systems, the airline "will have to rethink about where we are." But, Delta said the deal has "adequate protection" where the carrier can choose to purchase a different MAX variant, the Business Journals reported.
Boeing 737 MAX lineup in Seattle. The planemaker has five variants: the 737 MAX 7, 8, 8200, 9, and 10.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, The Business Journals
A Boeing spokesperson told Insider at the Farnborough International Airshow that the certification timing is "completely in the hands of the regulator," but said, "Boeing's plan is to certify the plane — that's the intention — and we're still working on that path."
If Boeing can't get the plane certified by the end of the year, the planemaker may ask for an extension from the Federal Aviation Administration, which the agency can grant, according to Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash).
However, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told Aviation Week in early July that if the plane is not given a waiver, then the planemaker may cancel the program, saying "a world without the MAX 10 is not that threatening." However, he added he does not expect to shelve the plane, but "it's just a risk."
Mandel Ngan/Contributor
Source: Aviation Week
The order comes as Boeing trails European aircraft manufacturing giant Airbus, which recently won a $37 billion order from China's three biggest airlines. A Boeing spokesperson said they missed out on the deal due to "geopolitical differences."
Boeing is still recovering from the crash of two Boeing MAX planes in 2018 and 2019 that led to a worldwide grounding of the jet, causing the planemaker to fall behind Airbus.
Ethiopian Airlines' 737 MAX crashed in 2019.
However, Delta's order, as well as United Airlines' order for 200 MAXs last year, suggests airlines are putting their trust back in Boeing.
United Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9.
I toured one of Boeing's 737 MAX 10 experimental planes to learn how the testing and certification are done — take a look.
Walking inside, the first thing I noticed were giant black tanks. According to a Boeing flight test engineer on the plane, they are water barrels that are used to control the center of gravity during test flights.
He explained that there are also tanks in the back of the plane, and engineers will load them to their max to test the limits of the aircraft.
The orange wiring is part of the testing but is not part of the final passenger aircraft.
Being able to manipulate the center of gravity will simulate the aircraft fully loaded with passengers.
Panels on the aircraft for testing.
Engineers will also put large sandbags in the aft of the plane to add weight.
The aft section of the plane.
On the plane, engineers sit at stations throughout and receive live data from the jet on screens. Here, they can monitor the aircraft and ensure it's performing as expected.
An engineer told Insider that they will conduct the same test several times a day and that flights can last anywhere from two to eight hours.
When engineers or other employees are traveling on the jet instead of working, they sit in dedicated passenger seats located throughout the plane.
One of the main focuses of the MAX 10 is the landing gear.
Because the MAX 10 is longer than previous MAX variants, the plane needs to stand higher to give the tail more clearance on takeoff so it does not suffer a tail strike.
To do this, Boeing has designed the landing gear to stand taller but still fit inside the same size wheel well.
According to the engineer, the gear expands for takeoff but can compress to make the jet sit lower at airport gates, negating the need for new infrastructure.
The employees actually do tail strike testing as well to prove that the airplane is still structurally sound after a tail strike and the jet is still safe, according to one of the engineers.
In the cockpit are glass screens and heads-up displays.
A flight test pilot told Insider that one screen unique to the MAX 10 is a moving map of the airfield that shows where the jet is at when taxiing around.
Moving map screen in the cockpit.
The MAX 10 is powered by CFM LEAP 1-B engines, which were specifically designed for the 737 MAX, according to Boeing. For Delta, the engines will make the MAX 10 20%-30% more fuel efficient than retiring narrowbodies in the carrier's fleet.
Source: Boeing, Delta Air Lines
Moreover, the chevron design on the back of the engines reduces noise by 50% compared to the 737 Next-Generation models.
When the MAX 10 is delivered to Delta, the airline will have over 300 Boeing 737 jets in its fleet, which is its second-largest aircraft family behind the A320.
Delta Boeing 737 MAX 10.
Boeing's 737 MAX 10 can carry up to 204 passengers in a two-class configuration, according to the planemaker. Delta said it would fit its jets with 182 seats split into economy and first.
Boeing mock image of its Sky Interior.
About one-third of the cabin would be configured with premium seating, according to the airline. Specifically, Delta's jet will feature 162 economy seats, including 33 in Comfort+ and 129 in the Main Cabin…
Delta Comfort+.
…and 20 in first class. Delta recently flew its first-ever A321neo, which is fitted with the carrier's new domestic first class. It's possible the seat will also be configured on the MAX 10s.
Delta A321neo first class.
Jennifer Bradley Franklin/Insider
Delta just took delivery of its first Airbus A321neo — take a look at what passengers can expect aboard the ultra-modern jet
Delta said the planes, which have a range of 3,3000 nautical miles, will fly from Delta's largest hubs, including New York, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Seattle, and Los Angeles.
Onboard, passengers will experience Boeing's Sky Interior, which includes a spacious cabin, inflight entertainment, on-demand video, power ports, and WiFi.
Inflight entertainment mockup from Boeing.
Passengers will also have access to large pivoting overhead bins, which maximizes the number of bags that can fit…
Space bins on the Boeing 737 MAX 10 test aircraft at the Farnborough International Airshow.
…as well as huge windows, which are 20% larger than the competing A320 jet, according to Boeing.
Windows on the Boeing 737 MAX 10 test aircraft at the Farnborough International Airshow.
More: Features Business Visual Features Delta Boeing
|
2022-07-22T11:20:31Z
|
www.businessinsider.com
|
See Inside Boeing 737 MAX 10 Test Aircraft; Delta 100 Jet Order
|
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-boeing-max-10-order-see-inside-737-max-jet-2022-7
|
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-boeing-max-10-order-see-inside-737-max-jet-2022-7
|
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