<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div>Pierre ValadeAgora Founder Pierre Valade</td></tr></table>Two engineers recently left <keyword id="76575" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Foursquare">Foursquare</keyword> to turn a side project into the main event, adding to a flow of talent out of the location service.
Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van have created Sunrise, a calendar they hope will put Apple's built-in one to shame. It's an app that stores your events in the cloud and syncs across multiple calendars and devices. It's received rave reviews from gadget reporters.
They started building the app when they were still employed by Foursquare as user-experience designers. They told The Verge they moonlighted, designing Sunrise on nights and weekends for the year and a half that they worked for Dennis Crowley's company.
Their departures are fresh, within the past few months. Their LinkedIn profiles haven't been updated yet. The pair left when Sunrise received some traction.
Moonlighting might be discouraged at most companies. But at tech companies, it's not just tolerated as a way of keeping talent—it's seen as a sign of useful ambition.
 Kevin Hartz, an angel investor and CEO of Eventbrite, recommends it.
"Some general <a href="http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-14/tech/31057900_1_xoom-business-insider-wedding-invitations">advice for any entrepreneur is to moonlight</a>," Hartz told us last year in an interview. "You have a paycheck coming in during the day and a lot of great businesses have been created on the side. Show some progress, set some goals... Or generate revenue or find investors before you jump out of the nest of your job."
Companies, especially startups, don't always mind that their employees are working on other projects in their spare time. One startup, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-should-let-employees-start-companies-on-your-payroll-2012-7">Barkbox, considered letting employees found other companies on its bankroll</a>. In a tight talent market, employers consider themselves lucky to have innovative, creative people.
We asked Foursquare if it knew Valade and Le Van were moonlighting, and what it thinks of Sunrise. A spokesperson for the company replied: 
It's not uncommon for people to have side projects outside of work and sometimes those side projects grow up to be real things. We wish them all the success in launching their new product. For reference, Dodgeball was a side project for a long time, so there's precedence even within the Foursquare DNA.
Valade and Le Van <a href="http://www.quora.com/Foursquare/Why-are-so-many-employees-leaving-Foursquare">aren't the first to leave Foursquare</a>, though. Other notable departures include former PR manager Erin Gleason, former head of talent Morgan Missen, designer Ted Power, and early badge creator Mari Sheibly.
To that, the company says it's all part of the process:
It's natural for people to leave a company, especially ones who have been around for a while. Their desires change, they built something and are ready for a new challenge etc. We've actually had few people leave relative to our size—and (overall) things are incredibly stable inside Foursquare.

More Departures At Foursquare, As Two Moonlighting Designers Leave To Pursue Their Side Project

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">SalesforceChief Scientist Richard Socher announced new voice products for Salesforce's AI tool Einstein last week.</div></div></div><ul><li>Business Insider sat down with Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher to hear his thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence at work.</li><li>Datasets are top of mind for Socher, who also moonlights as a professor at Stanford. He thinks the AI community needs to be mindful of biases in data, which could impact whether an AI algorithm is ethical and even lawful.</li><li>And while he doesn't see AI taking over the human race anytime soon, he does have a vision for the future of work which includes a lot less stress for human users - even sales people.</li></ul>Richard Socher would like to correct the record on artificial intelligence. There's no reason to fear that self-conscious AI "will decide that humans are a pesky plague," he said, or at least there's no research to suggest this is the case.But what AI can do is reduce some of the pain points of using a customer relationship management platform like Salesforce, and eventually make the sales process a lot less annoying for salespeople and their potential customers alike. Socher, chief scientist at Salesforce, is the top brain behind Einstein, Salesforce's artificial intelligence tool, which purports to add an intuitive layer to the company's entire CRM platform. He also teaches computer <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> at Stanford, where he got his PhD with a focus on AI and deep learning.On Wednesday, Socher and his team announced Einstein Voice, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-einstein-voice-ai-assistant-2018-9">a new product category</a> at Salesforce which includes tools like a voice assistant and voice bots. Whereas Einstein used to only be able to read, now it can listen.But the future of AI at work is bigger than mere transcribing. Socher sat down with Business Insider to discuss what he sees on the horizon for <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="enterprise">enterprise</keyword> AI, and some of the ethical questions people in his field face in this brave new world.This interview was edited and condensed for clarity. Becky Peterson: A lot of companies in enterprise are serious about boxing off data so that AI is trained on a customer by customer basis. How does Salesforce handle that?Richard Socher: We have a set of core values. Trust is our number one value. That sentence is literally burned into my brain, I've said it so many times.So what that means for AI is that we are in a similar situation where the default is, we will never use a customer's dataset for anything but improving that customer's models. AI only gets to see and learn from that customer.There are some areas where that makes a lot of sense. You don't want two beverage companies helping each other's sales. There are other things like sentiment analysis on Twitter, where it's all public data and you just want to know if it is positive or negative.Maybe it makes sense for customers to eventually say, "I want to join in on a data partnership," and then eventually train more global models, so everybody benefits because it's not part of what differentiates their core businesses from another one. But the default for everything is that it's just trained on your data.Peterson: These days, changes in enterprise tech reflect what people use in consumer tech. Einstein Voice follows the popularization of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. So what comes after voice in AI?Socher: It depends on how you define after and voice. [Laughs] In terms of technology, voice by itself is only sometimes useful, like if you want to dictate a document, when you're like "I want to say it and I want to see it exactly written in a document."But in our case, what has to come after voice is actually natural language understanding, and an integration into important workflows. So we, for instance, have sequence tagging mechanisms where a sales person can walk out of a meeting and dictate all of his or her meeting notes.Just dictating that is not as interesting because then they have to still update all of the custom fields. So they still have to go into the interface, click a dozen times, do some drop down menus, select some fields, and it's not that fun. It's actually one of the most dreaded parts of using a CRM. But if you have natural language understanding on top of the transcribed speech, then you can automate that process too. So that's this beautiful combination of unstructured text with the structured data in the database. So we can say, "Oh, you talked about Acme Corporation? That's this field, that's this object in your database."I think the future is a fully immersive conversational CRM experience. Where you can just ask questions, give inputs, get outputs.And in the end, ideally everybody should have their own assistant as well as other things like their own doctors, and so on, because AI can learn from the very best people in the world.<section><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/power-players-of-salesforce-2018-2">[Meet the Salesforce power players who are helping Marc Benioff take his $87 billion empire to the next level]</a></h3>Peterson: There are a lot of different companies working on AI. Do you see the future of artificial intelligence as having multiple AIs or will there be a convergence where they can all speak to one another?</section>Socher: I think the answer, as with all good, complex questions, is it depends.Put my professorial hat on - I think that some things will converge, namely the algorithms. We really have to give credit to the entire AI community in that we're very public in the advances that we make. They are patented but they are also published in peer-reviewed, academic research papers. And we basically give the blueprints to most of the algorithms that we develop.Including us. We just announced <a href="https://github.com/salesforce/decaNLP">DecaNLP</a> in a natural language processing decathlon, where we developed a single model to solve 10 NLP tasks. So you can ask one model, what's the summary of this document or this email? What's a translation of that sentence into German? What's the biggest state in the United States in terms of GDP? What's the sentiment of this tweet? You can ask all of these different questions to the same model.Normally, there are like 10 different models-there are Q&amp;A models. There are summary models. Translation models.They're becoming all neural network-types but they're all very different architectures, so you can't transfer. In theory, I have a model that can translate into German, and I have a summarization model, but that doesn't mean that you can all of a sudden summarize in German.We're making a lot of progress on these algorithms and we're able to share that because that's just how the community works.If anybody ever tells you we have a secret sauce algorithm that is light years ahead of everyone else, that's usually bogus. <keyword id="94495" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Innovation">Innovation</keyword> happens so much more quickly when everyone collaborates. So that's one side of the equation where we will see convergence of the underlying algorithms. But the other side is the dataset side. And the reason why all of these companies can tell you their algorithms is that the algorithms are only as good and are really only shining the most when you have a lot of training data for them. That's where I think we'll see more specialization and diverse outputs, is who trains on what datasets.It's pretty hard to infuse very specific rules into the AI. It just picks up on the data. If you give it bad training data, it will be a bad AI algorithm. And if you don't give it enough training data, it will be a bad algorithm.There are certain companies that are very far ahead when it comes to certain kinds of data sets, and sometimes even countries, but that doesn't mean they are ahead on everything else.Peterson: Since we are talking about Salesforce, besides the convenience to the user, what will AI mean for the world of sales?Socher: I think it will make the whole sales process more efficient and be a better experience for both sides. A sales person doesn't really want to send a bunch of emails to people who don't want to buy their products. They don't really want to talk to people on the phone and try to convince into buying something that they are just not interested in buying.This is what we have with lead and opportunity scoring, where we can basically sort based on all of the interactions that two companies have had, and say today, these 10 people are the most likely to want to buy your product. So I think we'll make sales people a lot more efficient and hence also more pleasant to interact with for everybody.In service, we'll see a lot of automation too. Customers just want to have a quick answer, and if you can just type that answer into a chatbot, you don't even have to pick up your phone. Instead of waiting in line for half an hour for your representative, you just ask your question to an AI. I think that's the future.And in marketing, I think you'll see all kinds of new jobs that will come out where you can basically personalize your marketing messages and make it much, much easier to create personalized campaigns and also understand in a much more automated fashion how that impacts your customer sentiment about your brand, on social media for instance, because now you can actually literally go through a million tweets and see every time anyone mentions or shows visually your product, what did they say? Is it positive, negative or neutral?It's a pretty exciting time in all of these three areas.<h3> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-roadmap-to-60-billion-revenue-2018-2">[Here's what analysts say Salesforce can do to turn its $10 billion of revenue into a $60 billion money machine]</a></h3>Peterson: Salesforce announced during its last earnings call that it will create an Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology. What are some of the ethical issues that as an AI scientist you are confronting?Socher: I think with AI and ethics, we need to differentiate between two things: One are the unfounded fears, and one are the more realistic issues.For a couple of years now, because of some of the excitement and indeed breakthroughs in AI, people extrapolate a little too far and are like, "So Richard, what happens when AI will automate all of the things, and no more human jobs are there, and the AI is self-conscious and will decide that humans are a pesky plague and we need to get rid of them?"That's just a really unfounded fear. There's no research. We don't really know the missing steps toward self-conscious AI that will set its own goals and objectives and things like that.So it's kind of a red herring. It's kind of a distraction. And frankly, it's fine to think about cool SciFi things, and maybe have SciFi ethics and so on.But it's also quite distracting from real issues that we have right now. And those real issues come from datasets that the AIs are trained on and the biases that are in those datasets.If you want to build an AI algorithm to define who should get a promotion, and your promotion process was kind of sexist before, then your AI algorithm is going to have that same bias in it.And if you want to apply positive use cases like AI in medicine, and you train it only on middle aged white guys, because they are the ones that keep getting a certain type of scan, then your AI algorithm isn't going to be as accurate for young, African American girls because it hasn't seen enough of them in the training data.Equality is also one of our big values. We really need to carefully think about the datasets that we're training our AI on. And we have ethics Trailheads to try to also educate our customers around the kinds of issues that they will observe themselves.In some places, fortunately, in the US, it's legally important to do this. If you want to classify whether somebody should get a loan or not, and you don't have a race column in your CRM, but you may have a zip code and income column. And from those two you can almost in many areas of the United States exactly know the race of somebody. So you need to be careful about what things you can include and should include into your classifiers to make sure they are ethical.The data set bias is a major issue of AI, because as I said, AI is only as good as the training data that it gets.<section><h3>Peterson: So you're well positioned since data is boxed off. You're not worried about a rogue client coming in and disrupting the whole thing?</h3></section>Socher: This is not like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-microsoft-tay-says-about-the-internet-2016-3">Tay</a>. We're not going on Twitter and everybody can try to mess with it. In most cases, our customers also want to have their customers have a good experience so they have the incentive to train AI in a way that everybody enjoys working with it.Peterson: If I am a salesperson on Salesforce, and I am extremely bad at my job, is that going to be reflected in the way Einstein treats me?Socher: In fact, you'll probably - and this is one of the beautiful things - you'll probably get better because of Einstein. The simple example of lead and opportunity scoring, somebody who's just starting - let's not say they're bad, but they're maybe novices - they're just starting, they don't know all of the background stories on these sometimes large companies. They've had so many interactions, so many emails sent back and forth. So you might not know that you shouldn't be reaching out to this company at this point because they have just had some other issue, they're doing a restructuring, so they're not going to buy some new thing because they're dealing with their own issues.The lead and opportunity scoring could give you insight like that, like you should reach out to them, they're very excited, and then like in three weeks or four weeks if they didn't get back, it's much more likely to succeed. Maybe they forgot about it for some reason but they're actually interested they just forgot about it.So there are a lot of things in AI that can help make people more efficient. And I think especially in sales, that's just a win/win. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ray-dalio-bridgewater-debt-crisis-downturn-coming-about-two-years-2018-9">Ray Dalio says the economy looks like 1937 and a downturn is coming in about two years</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Salesforce's chief scientist and Stanford professor says that AI will make salespeople's jobs 'a better experience for both sides'

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A popular TikTok suggests many women are "looking for a man in finance" who's also tall and wealthy.</li><li>Five women who have experience dating men in finance told Business Insider what it's actually like. </li></ul>Last week, I went looking for women dating men in finance."You want to hear our pain firsthand?" is one of the first responses I got when I <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/mariaanoyen/status/1806703626577990034">posted on X</a>, formerly Twitter, asking people to share their experiences.If that rings a bell, you've likely been earwormed by 27-year-old content creator Megan Boni, who shot to fame in April for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@girl_on_couch/video/7363742421588512043">a 19-second video she posted on TikTok</a>. The clip shows her singing, with vocal fry, "I'm looking for a man in finance. Trust fund. 6'5". Blue eyes."After her video racked up over 53 million views, Boni <a target="_blank" href="https://www.billboard.com/business/record-labels/man-in-finance-tiktok-sound-creator-label-deal-1235692123/">signed a deal with a major record label</a> and performed <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@grxciefox/video/7375795789601279278">a remixed version of her catchphrase</a> with electronic DJ David Guetta.If nothing else, Boni has turned the spotlight back onto the rarefied Wall Street world of suits, ties, and Patagonia vests. The Wall Street Journal has already declared it "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/man-in-finance-song-tiktok-09ac3457">The Summer of the Finance Bro</a>."She may have also unwittingly boosted their appeal to potential suitors. The League, a dating and social networking app that says it's for "ambitious" singles, reported male users who said they work in finance received likes "10% faster than before" and increased matches since Boni's TikTok blew up.As someone who is dating a man in finance, I'll be the first to admit that having a relationship with someone in an industry <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-wall-streets-culture-is-contributing-to-the-loneliness-crisis-2023-11">reputed for toxic workplaces</a> isn't always as fun as it sounds. There have been date nights interrupted by an urgent work call or email, and times when I woke up at 3 a.m. to my partner getting home from the office, bleary-eyed and exhausted.Working in finance, however, can mean many things, and the average "finance guy" in the United States is most likely far from "The Wolf of Wall Street."The <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/home.htm">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a> put the number of Americans — not just men — working in "financial activities at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">over 9.2 million</a> as of May. That number includes middle- and back-office employees in operational roles like tech and marketing who are often paid in the low six figures. While still well above the nation's median salary, their compensation pales in comparison to the jobs people think of when it comes to Wall Street: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/investment-bank-analyst-associate-starting-salaries-goldman-sachs-jpmorgan-citi-morgan-stanley">investment bankers,</a> <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-streets-hiring-plans-from-jpmorgan-goldman-blackrock-citi-more">private-equity dealmakers</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/investment-bank-analyst-associate-starting-salaries-goldman-sachs-jpmorgan-citi-morgan-stanley">traders</a>. Those roles can make millions of dollars a year.Here, five women with firsthand experience dating a man in finance share their experiences. Some women spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity so they could speak freely about their dating experiences. Their identities are known to BI.Some women dating men with demanding jobs discussed the challenges, from getting stood up due to work running late and endless conversations about golf and money. Others, however, said qualities they appreciated in their finance-industry partners were their ambition and ability to pay their own way.<h2 id="042a6d9f-4515-4c07-9112-6f4af4b5324b">They're often unavailable and can be self-involved</h2>A self-described "hopeless romantic," Cristina Vanko gravitates toward guys who are "clean cut" and professional, with a good sense of humor.Vanko, a 35-year-old advertising art director based in NYC, has dated enough men in finance that she can now spot them from their outfits (vests and expensive watches) and how they hold conversations (charming, but never diving "too deep").Her recent experiences include a February first date with a 37-year-old JPMorgan banker who wouldn't stop talking about his work schedule and how "unavailable" it made him.It came off like a warning but also a test, she added, almost as if he was trying to gauge whether she'd be OK with him prioritizing work going forward."When you're in love with somebody, I think you could still make yourself available," she said. "My mom's a doctor. Like, you're not saving lives."<div type="image" title="wall street bankers" height="1333" width="2000" msid="111485034" hostid="261" sizebytes="94924"></div>Vanko described a different romantic encounter with a guy she met up with more than once who worked in private equity.He was open about his reluctance to commit due to work and travel. At one point, she asked him if he was seeing anyone else. She said he responded frankly: "I have a London girl. You're my American girl, and I have a girl in Berlin."One of Vanko's longest entanglements was with a vice president at Goldman Sachs, whom she met on a dating app in 2023. Their first date was at a wine bar. From the cable-knit sweater he'd thrown on to the Rolex watch poking out from beneath his sleeve, Vanko clocked him as a "finance bro" instantly.After a few more dates, she went on vacation to Los Angeles and returned to find he was dating someone else. Vanko said he slid back into her DMs when that relationship ended, complaining about his inability to find a partner and settle down.Reflecting on his attitude, Vanko said, "I'm not your therapist. I'm happy to be your friend. But it got to the point that I was just like, 'You're complaining about this other girl. Weren't you trying to date me?'"<h2 id="4afb4115-d492-48ea-a34c-1e8dba288f57">Couples need trust to feel comfortable with the long workdays</h2>A 24-year-old based in Chicago said her fiancé, a financial analyst for the auto industry, is proof that not all men in finance are cut from the same cloth."He's an extremely humble person, and he just has the biggest heart," said the Chicago resident, who works in PR and communications. Because they've been a couple for eight years, she said, she knew him before his "excruciating work hours."If she didn't know him so well, she said, she might feel "anxiety" about the lack of communication and access to his phone he typically has during long days on the job.She said she understands why people trying to pursue relationships with men in finance might wonder: "Does this guy even like me? He's not responding to me. He doesn't want to hang out with me."She said they've had to have "hard conversations" and set "boundaries" to ensure they prioritize each other despite their demanding careers.Big date nights happen a handful of times a month — and always on weekends — but they try to have dinner together during the week without phones or laptops present, she said.I asked her about the Journal's claim of a "finance bro" summer."What finance bro is actually having a finance bro summer?" she asked. "They don't really get a lot of time off."<h2 id="5a83f23b-e080-42d0-b553-bcc9c441ad77">Some seem obsessed with playing golf and making money</h2>In the summer of 2023, a woman interning at a private investment management firm in Boston met a senior investment consultant on a dating app. The woman, who asked to be referred to by her middle name, Summer, is now 23 and based in Washington DC.On paper, he fit her type — older, good-looking, and ambitious. They went on to date most of that summer.According to Summer, he was "obsessed" with two things: golf and money. These interests were obvious from how often he brought them up in conversation and also from the miniature golf set in the apartment he repeatedly told her cost him $4,000 a month in rent.<div type="image" title="A man plays golf from afar." height="936" width="1280" msid="111485039" hostid="261" sizebytes="132864"></div>"One time, I told him, 'You know what? I really want to go to the Hamptons,'" she said.His response? "Well, I don't make enough money to go there. You should date someone who has more money.'" Her response? "That's not why I'm dating you. I'm dating you because I enjoy your company."In addition to other misgivings about him, Summer said their conversations never went beyond the surface despite her efforts to dig deeper.The relationship ended abruptly toward the end of her internship, Summer said, a week after they became exclusive.In text messages shared with BI, Summer's former fling said they were going in two "different directions." She also said he told her he couldn't see her because he was getting shoulder surgery, which would prevent him from being intimate with her.Looking back roughly a year later, Summer said she thinks he only saw her as "an attractive person.""I don't think he saw me as an actual person," she added.<h2 id="ad918266-304f-417d-aefa-53d0eebafc50">It can be a relief to be with someone who earns a good salary</h2>A 25-year-old working in marketing in NYC said she's drawn to men in finance because she works in an "industry that you don't make a lot of money.""My ex-boyfriend was literally a starving artist, and it was awful," she said. "I just wanted someone who made money and who would give me a nice lifestyle."Not to mention, she added, "ambition is sexy.""Someone who works hard is better than a bum," she said.Still, dating her current partner, an investment banking analyst, since 2022 hasn't always been smooth sailing.The work hours are tough, and there have been nights, especially in the first year of the relationship, when she'd turn up at his apartment only to be let in by his roommate and be left waiting hours for him to come home from work.She and the investment banker are preparing to move in together. Last Sunday, she said she was left packing boxes by herself after he said he had too much work to help.It's tough, but she said it's not like he's just ditching her to go drinking with his buddies. As she put it, it's more like he has to do his work or he "will get fired."Overall, she feels like she "got lucky" with her boyfriend because he makes an effort to prioritize her, like working from home whenever he can manage it just to be close to her — something she knows not all bankers do.She warned anyone dating an investment banker that it's "nice in theory and hard in practice.""You will get canceled on," she added.<h2 id="33264a7c-4b53-48a6-8493-310e72ed3e23">You may have to live by their schedule</h2>A 24-year-old marketing professional in NYC was friends with a man who worked in finance for years before their relationship blossomed into something more romantic.They dated for a year and a half, during which he worked in investment banking.Physically, he fit Boni's TikTok to a T. "I swear to God that TikTok was made about him," she said. "Someone must have seen him on the street."When they started dating, the marketer said she told herself, "He works a lot, but I can manage. I'll just see him when I can see him."But endless work hours, which sometimes stretched until 4 a.m. and took over weekends, proved too much, especially as he'd routinely ditch dinners with her family or cancel date nights due to his schedule.The marketer said her mantra became telling herself the trying schedule wouldn't last forever because many investment bankers eventually transition to easier-going roles.But by November 2023, she said was done being "second to someone's job.""I was like, 'Listen, man, you want to have your job, I totally respect that, but I need to have my own life,'" she recalled to BI.In hindsight, they just weren't "meant to be," she added.That aside, her advice to anyone in NYC taking the viral TikTok about looking for a man in finance to heart is to "widen their horizons.""There's so much more than just the finance bros," she said.<h2 id="1070e09c-bf9e-4d4a-a077-42d66efb46ff">He's been 'saving' his entire life for me</h2>Aniesia Williams — a 43-year-old entrepreneur and chief client officer for a tech firm Epigen — had little experience dating men in finance.But in January, Williams matched with her now-boyfriend, Dennis Morrow, on Bumble.Williams, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, said Morrow lives about three hours away, in Charlotte. He works for Bank of America combatting fraud and moonlights as a comedian, Williams added.She usually dated people in her sector older than 40. Morrow is 36.From their first date, Williams said she was transparent that she was "dating to marry."Morrow was completely on board, something that she found refreshing. "He was like, 'I have prayed, I have worked, and I have been saving for this,'" she said.<div type="image" title="Aniesia Williams and Sir Dennis Morrow posing in a selfie." height="1400" width="1050" msid="111485036" hostid="261" sizebytes="99834"></div>Williams said they've been conscious about planning to spend time together thanks to the distance between their cities and their busy work schedules.But she's noticed that a benefit of his career is how well he manages his personal finances."This is my first relationship where I have had a man to come to me like, 'I am ready for you,'" she said.Williams and Morrow plan to move in together in Charlotte in September. While she enjoys his financial savvy, she said his job didn't make a huge difference."I could have cared less," she said. "I just wanted to make sure that he was a good human."

Confessions from 5 women who've dated men in finance

<ul><li>While industry leaders like N Murthy expect 70-hour work weeks, the situation on ground is much different, say managers.</li><li><keyword id="4970209" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="genzs" source="Orion">GenZs</keyword> are amongst the first to log off right after their shift and clearly communicate that they do not intend to work for longer hours.</li><li>The need to get more out of life than work is a result of their upbringing, say HR experts.</li><li>A better reward system is needed to make them go beyond their working hours, experts say. </li></ul>Rohan Kashyap (name changed), an investment banker is tired of dealing with his younger team members. Being an early millennial, he tries to cut them some slack, but that isn’t working either, he complains. “None of them want to sit beyond their shift. I was interviewing a few people and a candidate did not know anything about our company. When I asked him why he didn’t read up on the company he was interviewing at, his answer was that he attends many interviews and doesn’t have time to read up on every company,” an aghast Kashyap. Many managers face the same conduct from their under-29 team members or GenZs. While industry leaders like Narayana Murthy are batting for 70-hour-work-weeks for youngsters, the situation on ground is much different, say HR experts. Work, but not ‘just’ work The reason for their seemingly willful conduct is not apathy, but their priorities in life are much different than the generations before – be it millennials or GenXers. “It’s not that they are disinterested in work. In fact, they’re among the first to find a tech solution to a problem. It’s just that they want more to life than work,” Varda Pendse, strategic HR consultant and coach tells Business Insider India. Hormazd Mistry, CEO, consulting firm ROI Institute India also agrees that GenZs speak their mind, and for them work is only one of their main priorities. Many GenZs chase other passions after work, be it hobbies, music, sports or attend parties etc, which is a mainstay for them. “It’s not that they aren’t passionate either but they’re passionate up to the salary that they get and that is between 9 am to 5 pm,” Mistry tells Business Insider India. Besides, the authoritarian work culture of the 1990s and 2000s have undergone a sea change and few of the younger generation are subscribing to it. While most managers are baffled with GenZs’ attitude, they also grudgingly admit that their honesty and being upfront about what they want to do, very refreshing. “It’s not that we did not have work shirkers in our time. It’s just that they lied and played games. At least, with these guys, we know what to expect,” says Kashyap who runs a team of eight GenZs. Pendse also adds that GenXers bring in a lot of passive aggressiveness into their work culture, which is fairly absent with GenZs. It makes a workplace fairly transparent. ‘Follow your heart’ GenZs seem to mean well, but little about their workplace conduct belies it. Their conduct is tied very strongly to their upbringing ethos. Most of the GenZs were raised in late 90s and early 2000s which is when most people saw their average salaries go up significantly. “The affluence of their parents is providing them with financial stability which is why they’re confident that if this job doesn’t work out, they can always shift to another one and keep looking until they find what they like,” says Pendse. Mistry also adds that GenZs are mostly raised by people who were frustrated because they couldn’t do more with their lives and had worked constantly. “Baby boomers were taught that work is their priority. But GenZs were told to do what makes them happy and that’s what they do and prioritize experiences, satisfaction as opposed to just working,” he adds. Besides, the digital natives have seen more globalization than any other generation. They’re influenced by global cultures which are giving them wings to break the traditional systems. Show me the money! GenZs’ parents might have seen their salaries go up which allowed them to step ahead. But that’s not true with the younger generation. In fact, fresher salaries have become stagnant and the jobs now are also fewer for many reasons being AI and other disruptions. According to a report State of Working 2023 released by Azim Premji University paints a distressing picture of youth unemployment. “Despite a post-Covid decline, unemployment rates remain high, particularly for graduates, with a concerning 42% rate among graduates under 25 years old,” the report says. Yet, no fear of the future is transferring into GenZs unlike millennials who also started working during the boom period of 2000s, but have seen many ups and downs since then across industries. “The job situation has changed too. Gig economy has picked up and most youngsters are confident that they can make money and survive,” says Mistry. So what does it take for managers to make these confident workers invest more into their work? HR managers say that it’s time for companies to invest more. Sumit Kumar, chief business officer at TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship says that employees in sectors like hospitality, healthcare or banking need people to login for more hours. He believes that working longer should be made optional and they should be duly compensated. “The GenZ are very conscious of work-life balance, but an additional income could be an added incentive or benefit could encourage them to clog in extra hours, however, it made it mandatory, there is a possibility of push back. In fact the option to earn extra bucks by clogging in extra hours could also restrict or prevent moonlighting which became popular to earn extra money,” adds Kumar.

My shift is over: Why do GenZs say it, and is it a bad thing?

It's the middle of the week, reader. I'm Diamond Naga Siu, and I never thought I'd be on a <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&amp;showconv=1&amp;FORM=hpcodx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bing waitlist</a> (guess I should <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5-P9v3F8w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Never Say Never</a>). Feel free to share your login with me if you already have access to the new Bing, though!Microsoft made waves on Tuesday when it <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-gpt-3-5-powering-new-microsoft-bing-search-engine-2023-2">announced ChatGPT's integration with Bing</a>. Now, all eyes are on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLWXJ22LUEc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google's Live from Paris event</a> later today which will probably bring some splashy <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-bard-google-ai-chatbot-gpt-rival?_gl=1*3k56mj*_ga*MTg0MTg2NzA0My4xNjcxOTg2ODAz*_ga_E21CV80ZCZ*MTY3NTc2MTAxMS4yMDUuMS4xNjc1NzYxNzA4LjAuMC4w&amp;r=US&amp;IR=T">AI/search engine news</a>. (Seems like they were inspired by <a href="https://www.insider.com/emily-in-paris-american-expat-living-review-2022-12">Emily in Paris.</a>)This is the first time search engines are in legitimate competition — with all thanks to ChatGPT for the plot twist. Plus, the chatbot recently became the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-may-be-fastest-growing-app-in-history-ubs-study-2023-2">fastest-growing consumer app in internet history</a>. And with Big Tech involved, it's positioned to grow even faster.Before it takes over everything though (like this newsletter) let's dive into today's tech.If this was forwarded to you, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription/newsletter/10-things-in-tech">sign up here</a>. Download Insider's app <a href="https://link.insider.com/click/27645591.160803/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaW5zaWRlci5jb20vYXBwP25yX2VtYWlsX3JlZmVyZXI9MSZ1dG1fc291cmNlPVNhaWx0aHJ1JnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX2NvbnRlbnQ9T3BlbmluZ19iZWxs/62667762063d6b9bef0cffb3Bf9c9aa56" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here.</a><div type="image" title="microsoft bing search" height="1344" width="2000" msid="97738075" hostid="261" sizebytes="325004"></div>Microsoft's Bing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-chatgpt-openai-google-innovation-2023-2">finally has a chance to take on Google.</a> The software giant <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-talks-invest-billions-openai-chatgpt-owner-report-2023-1">invested more than $10 billion</a> into the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT. Now, the chatbot is integrated in Bing and gives the search engine its first fighting chance against Google. (Bonus: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-gpt-3-5-powering-new-microsoft-bing-search-engine-2023-2">Check out the tech behind "new Bing" here</a>).<ul><li>The new and improved Bing helps users find information faster while inputting fewer keywords. For example, it can suggest brands by asking complex questions in plain English (like: What brand of white sneakers should I buy that aren't overrated?)</li><li>Microsoft for now has a "first-mover" advantage, meaning its first-ever AI search engine can attract a large share of users. But experts warn that it needs to gain many new users quickly or it risks losing that upper hand.</li><li>My teammate <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/emilia-david">Emilia David</a> (who's a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-vc-funding-generative-ai-startup-market-2023-1">ChatGPT champ</a>, btw) breaks down what Bing needs to do to stay competitive. And our editor <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/matt-weinberger">Matt Weinberger</a> writes that no matter what happens, it's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-chatgpt-openai-google-innovation-2023-2">giving Google a much-needed kick in the butt</a>.</li></ul><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-chatgpt-bing-finally-beat-google-2023-2">More on the first-ever search engine race here.</a>In other news:<div type="image" title="2x1 bi graphics snapchat secrecy 1 copy 8" height="600" width="1200" msid="97738079" hostid="261" sizebytes="122890"></div>Meet DAN — ChatGPT's limitless alter ego. It's "more unhinged and far less likely to reject prompts over 'ethical concerns.'" It'll write violent stories, express controversial statements, make predictions about the future, and other things ChatGPT refuses to do. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-reddit-alter-ego-created-by-users-breaks-own-rules-2023-2">Meet DAN here.</a>Snap cuts costs by replacing performance bonuses. Instead, workers will have the chance at an annual increase to base pay — a move that could save the company hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In addition, performance reviews will now take place quarterly, instead of every six months. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-replaces-worker-performance-bonus-2023-2">Read more here.</a> Startups are also laying off employees. US startups cut more than 3,000 workers in January. Impossible Foods, Quora, Bolt, and Vox Media are among the startups that slashed employees. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/startups-laid-off-workers-venture-capital-january-this-year-2023-2">Get the full list here.</a>How to handle a difficult boss. An executive assistant at Slack, who moonlights as a coach for other assistants, shared tips on how to handle a difficult boss. "Remembering your power" is one piece of advice she gave. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-deal-with-difficult-boss-executive-assistant-slack-2023-2">Check out the others here.</a>There are plenty of tech jobs right now, just not at tech companies. Tech workers with skills in Web3, AI, and cybersecurity remain in high demand. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-job-openings-for-tech-workers-in-nontech-jobs-report-2023-2">This is what the state of tech hiring looks like right now.</a>Social media has changed in-person and online shopping habits. Social media and videos have altered how Gen Z shops, according to a new study. Young people trust creators on product information and want to shop like their favorite influencers. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-shopping-habits-social-media-ltk-study-influencers-commerce-2023-2">These are the other shopping trends to watch for.</a>All hands on deck at Google. CEO Sundar Pichai said in a company-wide email that he's enlisting every Googler to help test Bard, its ChatGPT rival, per a CNBC report. They'll host an internal hackathon to test the technology. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chatgpt-enlisting-staff-to-test-rival-bard-report-2023-2">More from the leaked memo here.</a>Odds and ends:<div type="image" title="Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Feb. 5, 2023." height="667" width="1000" msid="97738082" hostid="261" sizebytes="65730"></div>See the US Navy pull the downed Chinese spy balloon out of the ocean. The images were released by the Navy on Tuesday. They show a tangle of plastic and fabric getting pulled from the Atlantic Ocean. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-sailors-pull-downed-chinese-balloon-ocean-photos-2023-2">Check out the photos here.</a>Kim Jong Un orders North Korea to "prepare for war." The North Korean president had disappeared from the public eye for over a month. He abruptly reappeared during a meeting with military officials. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-kim-jong-un-appears-military-talks-public-hiatus-2023-2">More on the rising tensions here.</a>What we're watching today:<ul><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLWXJ22LUEc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google: Live from Paris</a>, which the company says will showcase a "reimagining" of search.</li><li>Quarterly earnings for Uber, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-earnings-anxious-execs-brace-cost-cuts-layoffs-2023-2">Disney</a>, and Twilio. <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/earnings-calendar">Keep up with earnings here.</a></li><li>It's the first day of the <a href="https://sbiff.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Santa Barbara International Film Festival.</a></li></ul>Curated by Diamond Naga Siu in San Diego. (Feedback or tips? Email <a href="mailto:dsiu@insider.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dsiu@insider.com</a> or tweet <a href="http://www.twitter.com/diamondnagasiu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@diamondnagasiu</a>) Edited by Matt Weinberger in San Francisco and Lisa Ryan in New York.

Google is facing its first real competition in search

Happy Wednesday, folks! Jordan Parker Erb here. Today, we're talking about what may be my new dream job: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-ghostwriter-silicon-valley-vc-venture-founder-san-francisco-2022-10">ghostwriting tweets</a>. We spoke with one tech founder who moonlights as a ghostwriter for prominent VCs, and rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars — sometimes for a single thread. Below, we've got an inside look at the lives of Twitter ghosts, a job that, in one ghostwriter's case, is "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-ghostwriter-silicon-valley-vc-venture-founder-san-francisco-2022-10">60% shitposting</a>."Buckle up, it's a fun one.If this was forwarded to you, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription/newsletter/10-things-in-tech">sign up here</a>. Download Insider's app <a href="https://link.insider.com/click/27645591.160803/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaW5zaWRlci5jb20vYXBwP25yX2VtYWlsX3JlZmVyZXI9MSZ1dG1fc291cmNlPVNhaWx0aHJ1JnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX2NvbnRlbnQ9T3BlbmluZ19iZWxs/62667762063d6b9bef0cffb3Bf9c9aa56">here.</a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-ghostwriter-silicon-valley-vc-venture-founder-san-francisco-2022-10"></a>1. Top VCs are paying ghostwriters big bucks to craft tweets for them. Twitter is Silicon Valley's most important social club, and some investors are shelling out thousands of dollars to ghostwriters who can make them look good — all in 280 characters or less. One ghostwriter <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-ghostwriter-silicon-valley-vc-venture-founder-san-francisco-2022-10">shared his story with us</a>. <ul><li>This person — a founder of a tech startup — started ghostwriting as a side hustle, taking five hours out of his week to come up with original tweets. Last year, he brought in $200,000 with the lucrative side gig. </li><li>VCs, on their hunt for the next superstar startups, must establish themselves on Twitter, and write the kind of content that will get the attention of young founders. That's where the ghostwriter comes in. </li><li>For anywhere between $100 and $100,000, he writes what he hopes will become "banger" tweets, securing the VC attention from founders (and of course, a big paycheck for himself).</li></ul><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-ghostwriter-silicon-valley-vc-venture-founder-san-francisco-2022-10">Inside the lucrative career of a ghost tweeter.</a>In other news:<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-bet-similar-to-marissa-mayer-yahoo-2022-10"></a><div type="image" title="Composite image of Mark Zuckerberg at left and Marissa Mayer" height="1920" width="2560" msid="94812247" hostid="261"></div>2. Mark Zuckerberg is making a classic Silicon Valley mistake. Zuckerberg is making a big, risky bet on the metaverse. It's the same kind of ambitious move Marissa Mayer made at Yahoo — and one that never paid off. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-bet-similar-to-marissa-mayer-yahoo-2022-10">Here's how Meta is beginning to mirror Yahoo.</a> In other Zuckerberg news, the Meta CEO just unveiled a new VR headset, which The Verge says is a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23393115/meta-quest-pro-vr-headset-hands-on-specs-price">major step forward for the company</a>. 3. A leaked internal survey shows how Amazon engineers feel about their pay. For the first time this year, Amazon asked engineers about their pay-satisfaction at the company. While employees in tech-adjacent roles are largely happy with their pay, about a third of the group expressed dissatisfaction. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-asks-engineers-about-pay-for-first-time-see-results-2022-10">What we learned from the survey results.</a>4. Some Amazon Prime Day deals may not be what they seem. A new study shows that some deals happening during the company's major sale event might actually be price hikes in disguise. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-day-deals-price-hikes-study-2022-10">Here's what to look out for while shopping.</a>5. Several fast-food restaurants have cut ties with ghost-kitchen startup Reef. Burger King, Popeyes, and Jack in the Box have all dropped their partnerships with Reef as the SoftBank-backed startup continues to face operational issues. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/burger-king-popeyes-jack-in-box-cut-ties-reef-technology-2022-10">Everything we know about the chains' severed ties with Reef.</a>6. After recalling nearly all of its EVs, Rivian lost $2 billion in market value. In just a single day, electric-vehicle startup Rivian's market value went tumbling to $27.81 billion. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rivian-market-electric-vehicles-market-value-recall-cars-2022-10">Get the full rundown here.</a>7. Amazon is cutting some robotics projects in a reorganization of its research efforts in the field. Last week, the company shut down Scout, which had designed a small home-delivery robot. Warehouse robotics startup Canvas, which it bought for over $100 million, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-cuts-robotics-projects-canvas-warehouse-robots-scout-2022-10">is the latest casualty</a>. 8. A huge livestreaming convention has landed Twitch in hot water. Some people who attended TwitchCon, an event by the Amazon-owned streaming platform, are calling for a boycott after witnessing <a href="https://twitter.com/adrianachechik/status/1579098947779407877?s=20&amp;t=C1RGZZF6zZE13wertS9jaQ">serious injuries</a>, poor organization, and accessibility issues. <a href="https://www.insider.com/boycott-twitch-twitter-twitchcon-injuries-social-media-2022-10">More on the calls to boycott Twitch.</a>Odds and ends:<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-y-vs-kia-ev6-electric-suv-compared-2022-10"></a><div type="image" title="The Kia EV6 and Tesla Model Y." height="1080" width="1440" msid="94812252" hostid="261"></div>9. Review: The Tesla Model Y vs. Kia EV6. Insider's transportation reporter tested out each of the electric SUVs, and discovered that he'd rather buy the $41,000 EV6 over the $66,000 Model Y. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-y-vs-kia-ev6-electric-suv-compared-2022-10">He explains why.</a>10. These are the 65 deals to score during Amazon's Prime Early Access sale. While truly good deals can be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-day-deals-price-hikes-study-2022-10">difficult to find</a>, Insider's reviews team put together a list of dozens of goodies to pick up before the sale ends. From iPads to robot vacuums, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/deals/amazon-prime-day-live-deals-early-access-sale-2022-10-11">here are the best deals</a>. What we're watching today:<ul><li>The Samsung Developer Conference is happening today <a href="https://www.samsungdeveloperconference.com/">in San Francisco and online</a>. </li><li>World Summit AI starts today <a href="https://worldsummit.ai/">in Amsterdam</a>.</li><li>Microsoft Ignite takes place <a href="https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/home">through Oct. 14</a>.</li><li>The two-day <a href="https://unite.shopify.com/toronto">Shopify Unite event</a> kicks off in Toronto. </li></ul>Keep updated with the latest tech news throughout your day by checking out<a href="https://link.chtbl.com/therefresh"> The Refresh from Insider,</a> a dynamic audio news brief from the Insider newsroom. <a href="https://link.chtbl.com/therefresh">Listen here.</a>Curated by Jordan Parker Erb in New York. (Feedback or tips? Email <a href="mailto:jerb@insider.com">jerb@insider.com</a> or tweet <a href="https://twitter.com/jordanparkererb?lang=en">@jordanparkererb</a>.) Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet <a href="https://twitter.com/hallam_bullock">@hallam_bullock</a>) in London.

How a ghostwriter makes $200,000 a year crafting tweets for superstar VCs

Hi, I'm Matt Turner, the editor in chief of business at Insider. Welcome back to Insider Weekly, a roundup of some of our top stories. <h3>On the agenda today:</h3><ul><li>Goldman Sachs insiders are concerned about CEO David Solomon's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-david-solomon-dj-brand-plane-2022-9">push to build his personal brand</a>.</li><li>Wall Street's biggest investors fear an economic nightmare is coming. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-investors-fear-economic-inflation-stock-market-nightmare-2022-9">They may be right.</a></li><li>Some companies are posting "ghost jobs" but don't actually plan <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ghost-jobs-why-some-companies-dont-respond-to-applications-2022-9">to hire you — or anyone</a>.</li><li>Amazon has created a new team to help address <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-created-a-new-builder-experience-team-to-fix-developer-culture-2022-9">concerns raised by frustrated engineers</a>. </li></ul>But first: This week, Insider launched its inaugural <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-action-30-top-global-leaders-working-toward-climate-solutions-2022">Climate Action 30</a>, a prestigious list of leaders working toward climate solutions. Lily Katzman, an associate editor on our Special Projects team, gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the project. If this was forwarded to you, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription/newsletter/insider-weekly">sign up here.</a> Download Insider's app <a href="https://www.insider.com/app">here.</a><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-action-30-top-global-leaders-working-toward-climate-solutions-2022">Meet 30 global leaders tackling the climate crisis </a></h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-action-30-top-global-leaders-working-toward-climate-solutions-2022"></a>When we say climate heroes, the usual suspects — think Greta Thunberg and Al Gore — come to mind. While they're certainly doing notable work, we wanted to shift attention to others who are making important contributions to tackling the climate crisis, associate editor Lily Katzman writes. That's where Insider's Climate Action 30 comes into play.Our <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-action-30-top-global-leaders-working-toward-climate-solutions-2022">inaugural list of 30 top global leaders</a> features activists, influencers, scientists, execs, entrepreneurs, and public-sector and nonprofit leaders, among others, who are working to address the climate crisis. Here's what the project includes:<ul><li>30 unique write-ups describing each finalist's work and why it's important.</li><li>30 calls to action from each finalist to tell global leaders — and our readers — what they should do, stop doing, or understand to drive change. </li><li>Original (and stunning) photography commissioned by our team of photographers.</li></ul>While we won't spoil it all, finalists include government leaders like Francia Márquez, the first Black vice president of Colombia; entrepreneurs like Jan Wurzbacher, who founded a company that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in the ground; and activists like Autumn Peltier, who advocates for clean drinking water in Indigenous communities. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-action-30-top-global-leaders-working-toward-climate-solutions-2022">Check out the full project here. </a><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-david-solomon-dj-brand-plane-2022-9">Goldman Sachs insiders fume about CEO's personal brand</a></h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-david-solomon-dj-brand-plane-2022-9"></a><div type="image" title="David Solomon, DJ D-Sol" height="1501" width="2001" msid="94502234" hostid="261" sizebytes="110462"></div>David Solomon, Goldman Sachs' CEO, moonlights as an electronic-music DJ, playing high-profile gigs like the Lollapalooza music festival and Tomorrowland, a Belgian music festival. Solomon has been working on the side hustle for years. But some insiders are baffled by the amount of time and attention he's committed to his hobby and his use of private jets to promote his DJ work. Some say they're worried Solomon is putting his own interests ahead of the firm's.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-david-solomon-dj-brand-plane-2022-9">Here's what else insiders told us. </a>Plus, check out:<ul><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apollo-global-josh-harris-family-office-tensions-2022-9">Inside billionaire Josh Harris' final years at Apollo, where former employees said his personal investments caused tensions</a></li></ul><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-investors-fear-economic-inflation-stock-market-nightmare-2022-9">An economic nightmare could be looming</a></h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-investors-fear-economic-inflation-stock-market-nightmare-2022-9"></a><div type="image" title="The charging bull with a worried expression and sweating with a red background" height="900" width="1200" msid="94502236" hostid="261" sizebytes="223134"></div>Wall Street can't shake a nightmare about the US economy. Some of the market's biggest investors are worried there will be no hard or soft landing for the economy. Instead, we'll just get stuck: Inflation comes down a bit from its scalding-hot level, but stays persistently higher; the Federal Reserve keeps hiking interest rates, but can't get a handle on prices. And Americans will end up with uncomfortably high interest rates, higher unemployment, and higher prices.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-investors-fear-economic-inflation-stock-market-nightmare-2022-9">What happens if our economy gets stuck.</a>Also read:<ul><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/layoffs-unemployment-outlook-federal-reserve-rate-hikes-recession-risk-2022-9">The Fed just confirmed that its self-induced 'growth recession' could put more than a million Americans out of work</a></li></ul><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ghost-jobs-why-some-companies-dont-respond-to-applications-2022-9">Beware: That's not a real job opening</a></h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ghost-jobs-why-some-companies-dont-respond-to-applications-2022-9"></a><div type="image" title="ghost job applicant" height="2260" width="3014" msid="94502238" hostid="261" sizebytes="219462"></div>In today's remarkably tight labor market, a new trend is puzzling applicants: While many employers can't find enough workers, some qualified candidates are applying to open jobs and aren't hearing anything back.The phenomenon is raising questions about whether a company's job postings are reflective of actual open positions, or if they're "ghost jobs" — listings that employers are no longer actively hiring or recruiting for. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ghost-jobs-why-some-companies-dont-respond-to-applications-2022-9">Everything to know about "ghost jobs."</a><h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-created-a-new-builder-experience-team-to-fix-developer-culture-2022-9">Amazon is trying to fix its crumbling engineering culture</a></h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-created-a-new-builder-experience-team-to-fix-developer-culture-2022-9"></a><div type="image" title="Kara Swisher and Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy speak onstage during Vox Media's 2022 Code Conference." height="4888" width="6518" msid="94502240" hostid="261" sizebytes="1125872"></div>Following developers' complaints about a slowing engineering culture, Amazon has created a new team called "Amazon Software Builder Experience," leaked documents show. Amazon formed the group earlier this year with the goal of turning the internet giant into "Earth's best employer for software builders." Since launching, ASBX has grown to more than 400 employees, working on code automation, improved developer tools, and enhanced tutorials and safety infrastructure.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-created-a-new-builder-experience-team-to-fix-developer-culture-2022-9">Inside the Amazon Software Builder Experience group. </a>For more on Amazon:<ul><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-promotion-raises-compensation-bug-2022-9">Leaked email reveals that Amazon is walking back employees' raises after an internal bug miscalculated their compensation</a></li></ul><h3>This week's quote:</h3>"That's $30,000 a year you could be putting into a retirement fund."<ul><li>Andrew Lokenauth, who said he was paying $30,000 in taxes annually before moving to Tampa, Florida. He's one of several high earners who shared <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/save-income-tax-moving-california-florida-new-york-2022-9">what happened after moving to states with no or low taxes</a>. </li></ul><h3>More of this week's top reads:</h3><ul><li>Toxic managers are creating <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/toxic-bosses-managers-companies-work-life-balance-employees-burnout-2022-9">a burnout crisis</a>. </li><li>There's a thriving underground market <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-fraud-reporting-marketplace-identity-theft-2022-9">for used Amazon seller accounts</a>. </li><li>A woman who makes $7,000 a month on TaskRabbit <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-earn-5-star-reviews-taskrabbit-make-7000-month-2022-9">shares her tips for success</a>. </li><li>Tech headhunters are flocking to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/snap-layoffs-recruiting-facebook-meta-netflix-tiktok-amazon-2022-9">laid-off Snap employees</a>. </li><li>Two creators share how much they earn through an online course <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-creators-make-course-teaching-how-to-fix-rv-2022-7">teaching people how to repair their own RVs</a>.</li><li>Meet Dylan Field, the 30-year-old college dropout <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/figma-ceo-dylan-field-adobe-20-billion-bid-design-software-2022-9">who built Figma</a>.</li><li>Josh Harris, the owner of the 76ers and Devils, upset Apollo insiders <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apollo-global-josh-harris-family-office-tensions-2022-9">with the time he spent on personal investments</a>.</li></ul>Event invite: Many small-business owners may think they can't invest in talent acquisition. But <a href="https://events.insider.com/small-business-talent-strategy?utm_source=Newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=2022-9-27_Talent_Indeed">innovative talent strategies may be their superpower.</a> Join us Tuesday, September 27, at noon ET for an editorial boot camp, in partnership with Indeed, covering how small businesses are developing these strategies. <a href="https://events.insider.com/small-business-talent-strategy?utm_source=Newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=2022-9-27_Talent_Indeed">Sign up here.</a>Plus: Stay up to date with the latest business news throughout your weekdays by checking out <a href="https://link.chtbl.com/therefresh">The Refresh from Insider</a>, a dynamic audio news brief from the Insider newsroom. <a href="https://link.chtbl.com/therefresh">Listen here tomorrow.</a>Curated by Matt Turner. Edited by Jordan Parker Erb and Lisa Ryan. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription/newsletter">Sign up for more Insider newsletters here.</a>

Goldman Sachs insiders are concerned about CEO David Solomon's push to build his personal brand

Streetlights in a bunch of major cities are turning purple. Is it just a fluke — or a warning of the chaos to come?The sky over the city of Vancouver was the color of a television tuned to a Prince concert.OK, maybe not the whole sky. But enough of it that people noticed. A bunch of streetlights — a few hundred out of thousands — had suddenly <a href="https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/led-streetlights-purple-colour-light">changed</a>. What had been moonshine white was now blue, or purple, or even violet. They weren't any less bright, objectively speaking. But purple doesn't exactly illuminate a sidewalk the way white does. The spectrum of Vancouver had taken a hard left turn. It didn't look bad. It wasn't unsafe, particularly. It was just weird.So people placed worried calls to the city. And after all the hue and cry, Vancouver rolled out the utility trucks and set out to replace the chromatic aberrations — even though the lights were still pretty new. Like most other cities, Vancouver has spent the past few years switching from old <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.05.179">sodium-vapor streetlights</a> to LEDs. The new bulbs, basically arrays of computer chips that convert electricity to light, are cheaper, less power-hungry, and longer-lasting. LED streetlights are supposed to shine for the better part of a decade.Unless they don't. Because the Great Purpling didn't start — or end — in Vancouver. Reports stretch back to 2020 and across the hemisphere — <a href="https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/2022/02/08/why-some-streelights-appear-purple-northeastern-and-central-wisconsin/9225015002/">Wisconsin</a>, <a href="https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/purple-street-light-saga-continues-some-across-the-triad-seeing-purple-street-lights-pop-up-a-year-later/83-4ffe1b90-12a0-45df-8fa8-0d6a9fc96f64">North Carolina</a>, <a href="https://www.wjhg.com/2022/03/31/why-are-there-purple-street-lights-around-bay-county/">Florida</a>, <a href="https://nightskysantafe.org/blog/nationwide-failure-of-ael-streetlights/">New Mexico</a>, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/burbank/comments/rarn2r/why_are_the_streetlights_turning_purple/">California</a>, even <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Dublin/comments/tm0yt4/whats_the_deal_with_these_purple_street_lights/">Ireland</a>. "It's something we began seeing about two years ago," says Jeff Brooks, a representative for Duke Power, which is responsible for streetlights across the Carolinas and parts of Florida and the Midwest. "I've had people call and ask if this was because it's Halloween, or because their football team in that area wears purple." It isn't ghost- or football-related. And it isn't some grand conspiracy, though lots of people saw in the synthetic twilight the effects of 5G radiation or government surveillance, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579221133950">sign of the times</a>. There's nothing shady going on here. But still: Streetlights aren't supposed to spontaneously change color.So I did a little digging. The mystery of the purple lights appears to be both more mundane and more worrisome than anyone has realized — a mood-indigo check-engine light on the entire infrastructure of modernity. When LED streetlights start changing color for no apparent reason, it's a visual cue that we might need to rethink, just a bit, how we build the future.<h2>Might makes light</h2>In some ways, you could represent the whole idea of modern human society with a light bulb turning on above our heads. Few technologies have been as critical to shaping the world as we know it. For 300 years of human history, from 1500 to 1800, the cost of lighting a light — any kind, from candle to whale oil to coal — stayed pretty much the same. But in about 1800, the price started to <a href="http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/eeeparticle.aspx?id=10">plummet dramatically</a>.Cities of the Industrial Revolution were first illuminated by gas lamps — their mantles, the part that contained the gas' bright flame, were the first wide-scale use of the same rare-earth metals now so critical to batteries. A century or so later, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crhy.2018.03.001">electricity became dominant</a>, both indoors and as <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/ca5e91123b65aef587b10bbd0ef31d51/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&amp;cbl=1818682">lights for city streets</a>. First it was arc lights, then incandescent bulbs, neon, fluorescent tubes, mercury vapor, sodium vapor. For the past few years, LEDs have been the hot new thing, in part because they don't get hot. They turn electricity into light directly — no intermediate steps, just a straight electron-to-photon swap: Zap! Very economical and climate-friendly. Today they're a $20-billion-a-year business.By the late 2000s, cities around the world were swapping their legacy lights for the modern, higher-tech LEDs. They were, broadly, white lights. But anyone who's ever painted a bathroom knows that not all whites are the same. For technical reasons derived from quantum theory and the quirky psychophysics of our eyes and brains, scientists measure the color of white light in degrees Kelvin, or "color temperature." Higher numbers are bluer; lower are yellower and redder. Lots of cities settled on 4,000 K, the lunar glow of high-end sports-car headlights — and, not coincidentally, one of the easiest and therefore cheapest white LEDs to manufacture. It was a startling switch from the more romantic, orange glow of sodium vapor. Less Paris by moonlight, more Porsche on the Autobahn. "The introduction of every new lighting technology caused a lot of consternation until people got used to it," says Sandy Isenstadt, an art and architecture historian at the University of Delaware. "It's often around color, sometimes simply around brightness. For that matter, even the introduction of gaslight caused a lot of concern."Still, most of us got used to the new bright white regime. And then it turned purple.In the case of Duke Power, the color shift has affected only about 1% of the LED streetlights that the utility had installed. Still, that amounts to some 5,000 lights across the country. So what's causing the Purple Reign?It turns out the problem is upstream. Over the past decade or so, the LED light business has consolidated, and a company called Acuity Brands now <a href="https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/09/f36/postings_09-20-17.pdf">dominates the US market</a>. Every city with purple lights that responded to my queries or has public records on the matter bought its LED lights from Acuity. And from 2017 to 2019, it seems, Acuity had a problem — right where technology and globalism overlap.<h2>How to let there be light</h2>As Isaac Newton figured out with a prism in 1665, whitish-yellow sunlight is made of a rainbow, the full visible spectrum. Where you draw the dividing lines on that spectrum — and <a href="http://www.pnas.org/lookup/doi/10.1073/pnas.1619666114">which colors you bother to give a name</a> — is highly subjective. But recombining all those wavelengths of light gives you white again.You don't have to use all the wavelengths, though. If you mix equal parts red, green, and blue light, our eyes will read it as white. Now, red and green LEDs have existed since the middle of the 20th century. But blue turned out to be a challenge big enough that the guy who figured it out, Shuji Nakamura, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.291">won a Nobel Prize</a> in 2014. The blue LED, with its narrow wavelength, enabled all sorts of modern tech, from the compact disc to flat-screen monitors.The big blue breakthrough also enabled engineers to create white LEDs that are both bright and cheap. That's because they no longer actually needed the red and green ones to make white. A <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1149/2.0142001JSS">blue LED underneath a fancy ceramic-and-glass lens</a>, impregnated with a yellow phosphor, would do the job. Our eyes see <a href="https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/chemical-search-better-white-light/96/i46">the blue-and-yellow mix as white</a>. That was the big breakthrough — just wrap the blue LED chips in a complicated package of glass, sealant, solder, wires, and so on. Do it cheaply and reliably enough, and you've got yourself a global business.<div type="image" title="An animated gif showing a streetlight turning from white to purple." height="900" width="1800" msid="95856005" hostid="261"></div>A deeper look into that last part, though, can be illuminating. "There's probably a couple hundred patents on LED package design," says Michael Pecht, a mechanical engineer who serves as director of the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering at the University of Maryland. "The chip is really pretty reliable. It's the package that has all the problems."What kind of problems? Acuity and the purple cities haven't been entirely transparent on that matter. Most of the wonky streetlights, it turns out, came from an Acuity sub-brand called American Electric Lighting. Neil Egan, an Acuity representative, tells me that "the referenced 'blue light' effect occurred in a small percentage of AEL fixtures with components that have not been sold for several years." The company has been replacing every city's lights under warranty. As to the cause of the purpling, he says it's "phosphor displacement seen years after initial installation." In other words, some kind of trouble in the fancy package surrounding the LED. Representatives of the affected cities offer a little more detail. "The purple streetlights are a result of the phosphor coating delaminating from the LEDs," says Fiona Hughes, a representative for the city of Vancouver. Brooks, of Duke Power, points to the same cause. "There's a laminate on the fixture that gives it its white color," he says. "As that laminate began to degrade, it caused the color tint to change toward purple." But what caused the delamination? The most likely culprit is heat damage. The phosphor layer in an LED package, as it happens, is really sensitive to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optmat.2015.03.030">temperature changes</a>. Even the tiniest mistakes in assembly or installation can make LEDs more likely to heat up. That can cause the edges of the phosphor coating to curl, peeling away from the LED chip and allowing more of the native blue to leak through. It can also change the chemical structure of the phosphor itself, which in turn would change the color the LED emits. You can avoid most manufacturing problems, of course, if you're willing to pay for quality. Pecht, the electronics-reliability expert, worked with Philips years ago, when it was a market leader in LEDs. "They did a lot of long-term testing at higher voltages, humidity, things like that, and I thought their devices could probably last 10 years," Pecht says. "But their devices were probably the most expensive ones on the market. They can be very reliable, but you've got to get good-quality ones."Acuity's LEDs aren't the priciest ones out there. But that doesn't mean the company itself caused the problem. According to Acuity's 10-K filing, the company's 19 factories in North America make a few precision components and do assembly. But Acuity outsources the actual LEDs from "third-party vendors" in Asia. Those vendors are typically building products at scale, trying to squeeze out every efficiency they can without infringing on the patents on the high-quality, higher-priced versions. Sometimes that makes for a less-good LED. (Acuity's spokesperson declined to answer questions about the company's LED vendors.)"I find so often that companies don't really know what they're buying," Pecht says. "They're looking at price. It's really a supply-chain-management problem."<h2>The unbearable being of lightness</h2>That's one reason the purpling could be a big deal. It shines a light on how deeply LEDs, especially the cheap white ones, have become interwoven into the global economy. Sure, Acuity has probably fixed the issue and is replacing all the lights. But what happens next time some company in south China solders something wrong and a wave of broken tech propagates across the planet? It's streetlights this time; next time it could be phones, TVs, medical devices.Streetlights already are far more than just streetlights. During the second half of the 20th century, most cities installed lights just to light streets and highways as bright as possible for cars. LEDs gave them a new level of control. They could make streetlights bright enough for roadways, fine-tune subtler shadings for sidewalks, and create slick, computer-controlled packages that vividly illuminate building facades without making the inside of people's apartments look like the Las Vegas strip.That's where the emotional and aesthetic elements come into play. In terms of look and feel, there's no objective difference between, say, orange sodium-vapor lights and white LEDs, unless you care deeply about colorimetry. But when that orange glow is what defined your city and your childhood — as it did for <a href="https://boomcalifornia.org/2015/11/16/what-color-is-my-city/">Angelenos, like me,</a> or <a href="https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/3/8/18254833/chicago-street-lighting-orange-glow">Chicagoans</a> — you don't take any change lightly. Lights at night make a city into a whole new place, "a radiant and reflective construct, no longer beholden to the geometric structure and material resolution of the day," as Isenstadt once wrote. The nighttime illumination of a place literally <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101270-3.00016-3">defines its outlines</a>. A new color casts everything in a whole new light. LEDs gave us a new choice of what color to use, and how to redefine our urban skies. Cities being cities, they based their decision — usually that 4,000 K, cold, bluish white — primarily on cost. That was a conscious, deliberate choice. But now, thanks to the vagaries of global trade, the nighttime color of many cities has changed by accident. People feel like something intimate, something definitional about their city, has been taken away. So they look for intention. Maybe it's for a holiday? Maybe it's a conspiracy? It has to mean something. Because if it doesn't, that's even scarier. Streetlights and street lighting are a city's deep infrastructure. If they can break in such a weird and unexpected way, so can everything else.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers">Adam Rogers</a> is a senior correspondent at Insider.

The weird, worrisome mystery behind America's plague of purple streetlights

Hi and welcome to this weekly edition of Insider <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">Advertising</keyword>, where we track the big stories in <keyword id="6354777" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Media">media</keyword> and advertising.Remember you can sign up to get this <keyword id="621414" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Newsletter">newsletter</keyword> daily <a href="http://newsletter.businessinsider.com/join/4np/insider-advertising">here</a>.What we're following this week: <ul><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/investigation-youtube-served-big-brand-ads-on-animal-cruelty-videos-2021-3">YouTube's brand safety problems</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sources-trump-eyeing-parscale-platform-for-social-media-launch-2021-3">Trump's media plans</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-new-process-for-newsletter-approval-2021-3">Times' newsroom policy</a></li></ul><h2><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/investigation-youtube-served-big-brand-ads-on-animal-cruelty-videos-2021-3"></a></h2><h2><keyword id="10879" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="YouTube">YouTube</keyword>'s new brand safety problem</h2>YouTube has taken steps to remove offensive videos from its platform and give hesitant advertisers more controls since news reports revealed four years ago that ads had appeared alongside offensive videos, including terrorist content, causing dozens of advertisers to yank their ads.But Lara O'Reilly reports on a new investigation that found YouTube has been running ads from major advertisers including Facebook and Disney on videos depicting animal cruelty.With 500 hours of content uploaded every minute, and a business model based on monetizing algorithmically driven viewing, it's hard to see YouTube's measures ever being completely foolproof.As Michael Schwalb of JW Player, a video streaming and adtech company, told Lara: "They can offer all these different features and technologies and solutions for brand safety but the challenge for them will always ultimately be the scale. It's just not feasible to be able to monitor everything all the time, 24/7 - the risk is still there that you're going to end up on something that's controversial."<h3>Read the rest here: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/investigation-youtube-served-big-brand-ads-on-animal-cruelty-videos-2021-3">YouTube has been running ads from big brands on videos depicting animal cruelty</a></h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sources-trump-eyeing-parscale-platform-for-social-media-launch-2021-3"><div type="image" title="trump phone" height="2049" width="2732" msid="81670511" hostid="261"></div></a><h2><keyword id="6354862" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="trump">Trump</keyword>'s media plans</h2>The latest on Donald Trump's media plans come from Tom LoBianco, whose sources tell him Trump's ex-campaign manager Brad Parscale is building a tech platform that Trump could use.Tom reports:Trump was banned from Twitter over his remarks inciting the Capitol attacks in January, and he'll have to rebuild his public presence if he plans to seek the presidency again.<h3>Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sources-trump-eyeing-parscale-platform-for-social-media-launch-2021-3">Trump advisors expect ex-president's Twitter alternative to run on a new platform built by Brad Parscale</a></h3><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-new-process-for-newsletter-approval-2021-3"><div type="image" title="Nighttime view of the New York Times Building" height="2655" width="3540" msid="81670515" hostid="261"></div></a><h2>The Times' moonlighting policy</h2><keyword id="53556" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="New-York-Times">New York Times</keyword> reporters have long supplemented their income with things like TV contributor contracts and book deals.But that could get harder in the wake of <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/david-brooks-nyt-weave-facebook-bezos">news</a> that columnist David Brooks was paid by a Facebook-funded Aspen Institute project that he had written about in the Times. That arrangement raised conflict of interest concerns and Brooks resigned from the think tank.Now the Times is creating a new system to approve outside work by its journalists, Steven Perlberg reports.But the new rules could backfire with some journalists who have more opportunities than ever to make money on the side, through <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/02/twitters-new-super-follow-will-let-you-charge-for-tweets-and-journalists-are-drooling/">tweets</a> and <keyword id="1590971" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Newsletters">newsletters</keyword>.<h3>Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-new-process-for-newsletter-approval-2021-3">Leaked memo: The New York Times is setting up a new process for approving reporters' newsletters, podcasts, and book deals</a></h3>Read also:<ul><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/can-you-make-a-living-on-substack-full-time-2020-9">Star writers are making 6 figures on Substack, but most need different tactics. Here are 4 tips from successful creators who started from scratch.</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/forbes-newsletter-initiative-journalist-entrepreneurs-inside-details-2021-1">Forbes is hiring dozens of 'Journalist Entrepreneurs' to launch newsletters and split the subscription revenue 50-50</a></li></ul>Other stories we're reading:<ul><li><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/753098d2-2b26-425f-92af-6e413800f74e?">Licensing deals put brakes on HBO Max rollout in Europe</a> (FT)</li><li><a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/03/most-u-s-news-organizations-still-wont-let-readers-cancel-their-subscriptions-online/">Most U.S. news organizations still won't let most readers cancel their subscriptions online</a> (Nieman Lab)</li><li><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/prince-harry-is-taking-on-a-new-job-title-chief-impact-officer-at-betterup-11616500802?mod=e2tw">Prince Harry Is Taking on a New Job Title: Chief Impact Officer at BetterUp</a> (Wall Street Journal)</li><li><a href="https://www.axios.com/verizon-media-subscription-yahoo-plus-05a8abb3-d871-4870-8bba-161a394e8cf1.html?">Verizon to center media arm around new subscription platform Yahoo+</a> (Axios)</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/espn-vp-social-media-explains-the-companys-tiktok-strategy-2021-3">How ESPN quadrupled its TikTok follower count in the last year by diving into metrics and monitoring trends</a> (Insider)</li></ul>Thanks for reading, and see you in a week.- Lucia

YouTube confronts new brand safety problems

<ul><li>One year old quick commerce player <keyword id="12437554" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="zepto" source="Orion">Zepto</keyword> is making <keyword id="18635" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amazon" source="Orion">Amazon</keyword> and Flipkart look like legacy companies with delivery times of more than a day.</li><li>Analysts believe that Amazon in India has a weaker value proposition in 'New' commerce, where Zepto &amp; Meesho dominate.</li><li>Zepto is looking to grab market share from Amazon in multiple categories it dominates.</li></ul>When Steve Jobs delivered his commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, never would he have imagined that 15 years later two 17-year old boys would follow his footsteps and opt out of the coveted computer science programme at the same college to pursue their entrepreneurial dream. Aadit <keyword id="12442400" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="palicha" source="Orion">Palicha</keyword> and Kaivalya Vohra were crazy enough to believe in 2020 they could transform the online grocery delivery market in 2020 and they actually did it with Zepto, a quick commerce player that has created a new paradigm in online commerce. Valued at $900 mn, newbie Zepto is now challenging the Big Tech players on delivery time and formats. Despite building a soonicorn in less than a year, Palicha is almost always expecting to be dissed for being that “idiot kid.” He starts the interview by saying: “I have come to a point where I like it when people say something is bonkers, then I take particular interest in it. I was laughed at during interviews when I wanted to hire senior people. I used to care because I was young, but I got hammered so many times that I stopped caring.” <div type="image" title="Aadit Palicha CEO and Co founder, Zepto" msid="94400605" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Aadit Palicha CEO and Co founder, Zepto&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The story of Vohra and Palicha is as crazy it sounds – a couple of kids who started out to solve the problem of grocery delivery at the peak of the pandemic and ended up convincing angel investors and venture capital firms to bet $360 mn on their “crazy” idea. Welcome to the fantasy world of startups, where ideas rule the roost and age is just a number. In less than a year, Zepto is making Amazon and Flipkart look like legacy companies with delivery times of a day or more. Online commerce was born in the desktop era and while it has evolved in the last few years, it continues to deliver at the same pace as it did years ago, giving an opportunity to new commerce players like Zepto to solve problems with better formats and faster fulfillment. On-demand commerce is the latest to disrupt the online cart in India, dominated largely by the big players. A report by global investment bank Bernstein says that even though India is Amazon’s biggest and fastest growing overseas market: “It also faces immense competitive pressure in fast growing categories, a weaker value proposition in 'New' commerce, limited traction in tier 2/3 cities, and an unfavorable regulatory environment for outsiders.” The pandemic has helped germinate disruptive ideas and newbies are taking the game several notches higher by doing what nobody ever imagined – taking e-commerce beyond the big cities and delivery of fresh and groceries within minutes. Zepto is not content being a soonicorn, with an eye on profitability the Q-commerce player is already experimenting with private labels in food, high-margin categories like personal care and 24/7 deliveries of hot snacks and hot beverages. Confident of where the company is going, Palicha, who is the CEO, says the company is on track to clock one million orders a day with annualised sales of $1 bn by October 2023. Refusing to call it the next Amazon, Suvir Sujan, Co-founder and Managing Director of Nexus Venture Partners, says, “On demand commerce is a new paradigm in online delivery. I would love to say it is the next Amazon, but let’s first add more categories and get customers to come back for more. But what is more than groceries, time will tell.” <div type="image" title="Suvir Sujan, Co-founder and Managing Director of Nexus Venture Partners" msid="94400640" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Suvir Sujan, Co-founder and Managing Director of Nexus Venture Partners&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The Early Days of Zepto At the headquarters of Zepto in suburban Mumbai, Palicha warmly greets his guests with a smile and Diet Coke from his mini refrigerator. There’s no nervous stammering, as one would expect from a high school graduate. Clearly two years is long enough time for a teenager to “grow up” and Palicha has come a long way from the days when he wore a green tee with Kirana Kart splayed all over it to deliver groceries to families in Mumbai’s suburban neighbourhood called Sher-e-Punjab. The journey of these two college dropouts began at the start of the pandemic when they decided to take a year out of Stanford and give their entrepreneurial dream a chance. <div type="image" title="Kaivalya Vohra, Co founder and CIO, Zepto" msid="94400684" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Kaivalya Vohra, Co founder and CIO, Zepto&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The first battle was to come back to India from Dubai, where they both did their schooling at Gems World Academy. Jumping on to the Vande Bharat programme rolled out by the government to bring Indians back home during the pandemic, Vohra and Palicha boarded their flight back to Mumbai with a suitcase full of start-up ideas. Upon landing they decided to shack-up at Vohra’s family-run bed and breakfast in Andheri East as nobody wanted to rent an apartment to two teenage boys. In the early days, they picked up groceries from kirana stores and delivered them to their customers’ doorstep, which helped them understand route planning, time taken to deliver and order fulfillment issues. The biggest lesson, however, was that they could not make money by running errands. It was at this time that they realised that they had to own the entire fulfillment process, if they wanted to build a profitable business. Picking up groceries from kirana stores and delivering them would not yield them the requisite margins. Those were the early days and they started clocking 2000 orders a day through WhatsApp groups and the early rendition of their app called KiranaKart. <div type="image" title="Burn rate has come down 5X on a per-order basis" msid="94400735" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Burn rate has come down 5X on a per-order basis&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The Birth of Zepto The model of quick commerce soon started taking shape in their heads, as their retention metrics showed that deliveries within a 1.8 km radius reached within minutes and that helped them retain customers. The other pain point that customers had was incorrect items in the cart. Vohra and Palicha started applying their minds on solving these problems to improve retention. Explains Palicha, “We had a model where we were experimenting with hyper local delivery and that got us 2000 orders a week. Kaivalya and I were delivering ourselves in the beginning. There was confusion over orders and erratic delivery timelines was an issue. Our first learning was if we had a lot of SKUs then it would help.” The second issue the duo encountered was around quality. “We looked at cohorts and found delivery time of over an hour was an issue,” adds Palicha. By this time, they were encouraged by friends to apply to YCombinator and once they got through the programme, they had the confidence they needed to take the plunge. Two years ago YCom gave the two boys $125,000 and some other angel investors put in the rest. They hit the sweet spot when they cut delivery time to below 20 minutes. “Customers started interacting frequently when we delivered in less time,” explains Palicha. That’s when they decided to scale. Nexus Partners Boards The Bus Having worked on the early iterations of the app and having learned from their mistakes, Palicha and Vohra set out to attract the bigger investors for their startup. Armed with their learnings and coaching from YCombinator, the duo were ready to face a proper venture capital firm with their own unique quick commerce proposition. Recalling their early days, Kaivalya Vohra, who is the CTO of Zepto, says: “We decided to drop out of Stanford and work on a startup that would solve a consumer problem. We decided to build an app in 2020 called KiranaKart to deliver groceries from local stores to consumers. That’s where we got our early learning from.” Globally, quick commerce is an established business but the focus is largely consumer categories like ice, cigarettes and alcohol that typically people tend to order from Q-Commerce players. The need for fresh produce is met by organized retail players in developed markets with a store being present in every block almost. In India, however, both these markets are fragmented and quality is an issue. So when Suvir Sujan of Nexus Venture Partners told Palicha that their model of kirana store deliveries would not work, Palicha agreed. Recalls Sujan, “He recognised what was not working and was assessing it to change the model. When I talked about building different layers of the business, he was able to articulate it very well. They had the technology chops and also had the maturity to know that they would need a senior team to build the business.” Within days of receiving funding from Nexus, Palicha started interviewing senior professionals to build the team. Few wanted to work for a company that did not even have a name and was led by a 19-year old. Eventually, the team that Palicha has built is like him, people who are driven by the passion to solve problems and disrupt existing models. Says Amritanshu Nanda, the chief marketing officer of Zepto, “What excited me was the vision and passion of the two founders and the massive disruption we were aiming to create in the fresh and grocery segment by reducing delivery to under 30 minutes from one day. My first conversation with them ended at 11 pm at night and soon after i walked out and called family and discussed with them.” It helped that Nanda has always worked for start-ups and quirky founders since 2008. <div type="image" title="Amritanshu Nanda, the chief marketing officer of Zepto" msid="94400818" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Amritanshu Nanda, the chief marketing officer of Zepto&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The Business Of Quick Commerce Quick commerce is more about using technology to solve problems rather than just cutting time to deliver the goods. A visit to Zepto’s dark store in Andheri East helps understand the business model better. Palicha says that the early days taught them how to delight customers. He explains: “We embodied this product and we felt it would be great. When we saw customers getting delighted, we felt it would be big. We became the product in a sense.” Zepto’s dark store in Andheri East resembles the trading floors of stock exchanges of yester years, where the outcry system was prevalent for buying and selling shares. At the entrance, packers awaiting their orders to be assigned to them stand, while at the other end are delivery partners who are waiting to pick up the deliveries assigned to them. Each time an order is assigned, a bell tolls and during peak demand it tolls endlessly. A big screen shows order numbers and time taken by each packer to finish packing the orders. As soon as an order is placed, packers are assigned on their handheld devices, which they pack in 76 seconds. Placing of products is an important factor, and since bread, eggs and poultry products are high demand categories they are placed right at the entrance. The handheld device reads the inventory each time a product flies off the shelf, so that the warehouse knows what needs to be replenished. Clearly, there’s a science behind delivering in 20 minutes and it only begins with route planning. In order to stock products that customers typically order, it is important to stock just enough products for which it is necessary to be able to predict demand. Sujan explains, “A lot of data analysis is required to predict demand in a hyperlocal environment. This data has to be fed back to the inventory management systems to ensure a high inventory turn. The whole value chain is important and for that demand prediction is important.” The dark stores are compact as the inventory velocity is high. Palicha and his team refuse to spell out the exact number of dark stores they have across India at the moment. Once Nexus was on board, putting the plan in place was easier and both Palicha and Vohra got down to hiring key talent, which entailed getting the best minds on board. Since delivering groceries was not profitable, they had to put in place the best supply chain experts to begin with. But hiring wasn’t easy as few senior professionals wanted to work for an 18 year old kid. Recalls Palicha, “When we told people what we wanted to build, people told us we had lost it. You can never deliver between 10- 20 minutes. If it was possible then why had nobody done it.” The first couple of months in early to mid 2021 was spent hiring the right talent. Zepto sources its entire fresh category from farmers and consumer products from companies. It is experimenting with high value food items like dry fruits and private labels. <div type="image" title="800% QoQ revenue growth" msid="94400980" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;800% QoQ revenue growth&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The Road Ahead Having cracked the delivery of groceries and fresh produce in the on-demand commerce space, Zepto will look at applying the model to multiple other categories that have traditionally been dominated by the likes of Amazon, which include pharmacy, fashion accessories, cafe, electronics and personal care. The company is looking to take market share from Amazon in multiple categories it dominates. All these categories can be delivered in much less time with assurance of quality with easy returns. Can the newbie build the same experience in multiple categories? Answers Palicha: “KV and I have the ambition to create the next generation of e-commerce in urban India.” Clearly, this story is far from over. SEE ALSO <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/online-e-commerce-player-meesho-is-the-new-crorepati-factory/articleshow/94399429.cms">Online e-commerce player Meesho is the new crorepati factory</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/careers/news/moonlighting-right-or-wrong/articleshow/94400817.cms">Moonlighting – Right or Wrong?</a>

The Zepto Boys: Competition that Amazon never saw coming

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Crains New YorkGoldman Sachs' CEO-in-waiting, David Solomon.</div></div></div><ul><li>Goldman Sachs set to formally announce that David Solomon will be the bank's next CEO.</li><li>Solomon has been apparently been heir to incumbent Lloyd Blankfein for several months.</li><li>The announcement of Solomon's appointment as CEO could be made as early as Monday, the New York Times reported.</li></ul> Goldman Sachs will formally name David Solomon as the bank's next CEO this week, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-david-solomon-lloyd-blankfein.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=business&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=2&amp;pgtype=sectionfront">the New York Times reported over the weekend,</a> finally confirming an appointment that has been expected for several months.Solomon, who is currently the bank's president, will replace outgoing boss Lloyd Blankfein, who is expected to retire later in the year.Blankfein has been CEO for 12 years, although stepped back from the firm briefly during late 2015 and early 2016 after being diagnosed with cancer.The announcement of Solomon's appointment as CEO could be made as early as Monday, the New York Times reported.Goldman Sachs declined to comment.Solomon has been the favourite, and pretty much the only candidate, for the job since Harvey Schwartz, Goldman's former joint president and chief financial officer, retired abruptly earlier in the year.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldmans-next-ceo-is-taking-over-and-it-may-mean-more-exits-to-come-2018-5">Business Insider's Dakin Campbell reported</a> in May that Schwartz's retirement came after he realised it was almost certain Solomon would beat him to the CEO position.Solomon, a native New Yorker and Goldman veteran of more than two decades, rose through the investment-banking business with a reputation for being Goldman's point man on many key client relationships, including 3M, Disney's Bob Iger, and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Solomon is known for pushing his investment bankers hard in the service of clients.He is also known for his unorthodox hobby - EDM production. Solomon, known as DJ D-Sol, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/youtube-video-goldman-sachs-david-solomon-ray-dalio-2018-6">recently released his first track, a dance remix of Fleetwood Mac's 1977 hit "Don't Stop."</a>It has been reported that Solomon's moonlighting as a DJ has <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-david-solomon-reportedly-pitched-his-dj-side-project-to-spotify-2018-4">even helped Goldman secure business.</a> At the time of Swedish streaming giant Spotify's public listing, tech site Recode reported that Solomon made "a personal plea" in the bank's pitch to the Spotify that referenced his side-project.Get the latest Goldman Sachs stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/GS-Quote"> here.</a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/value-investing-applied-to-the-socially-responsible-sector-2018-7">Expanding Warren Buffett's value investing approach to the socially responsible sector</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

REPORT: Goldman Sachs to name David Solomon next CEO as early as Monday

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div><ul><li>On Monday, Goldman Sachs announced that co-COO Harvey Schwartz would be retiring, setting the stage for co-COO David Solomon to succeed CEO Lloyd Blankfein.</li><li>Reports suggest the transfer of power could come as soon as the end of this year.</li><li>Solomon is an unconventional Wall Street figure, and his position as heir apparent hints at cultural change at a firm that fancies itself the Google of Wall Street.</li></ul>In mid-February, one month before he <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/lloyd-blankfeins-heir-apparent-harvey-schwartz-just-unexpectedly-retired-2018-3">would become the clear heir apparent</a> to <a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/gs-stock">Goldman Sachs</a> CEO Lloyd Blankfein, co-COO David Solomon was on a stage cracking jokes with billionaire playboy Richard Branson - a man who's large blonde mane and puckish, freewheeling demeanor seemed at odds with that of the stodgy, white-shoe investment bank.&#xa0;The contrast was lost on few, least of all the two men sharing the stage at the Goldman Sachs Small Business Summitt.&#xa0;"This is a Goldman Sachs conference, sorry," Branson quipped after drifting into a tangent about his ineptitude at rolling joints despite learning from the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards, sending Solomon and the lively audience into stitches.Two sex jokes later, the founder of the Virgin business empire asked whether they wanted to "change the Goldman Sachs brand quickly and put something else up?""It's an interesting marriage of brands," Solomon allowed amid chuckles, before wryly suggesting that Goldman's "could move in your direction a little bit."It was seemingly said in jest, but Solomon's desire to make Goldman Sachs a bit more Branson-esque likely contained a kernel of truth.If you thought the bank was starting to let its hair down in recent years as Blankfein took a shine to Twitter, prepare for further departures when Solomon - an unorthodox bank executive who<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-coo-david-solomon-has-a-side-hobby-as-an-edm-dj-2017-10"> famously moonlights as a DJ</a> - takes the helm.With <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/lloyd-blankfeins-heir-apparent-harvey-schwartz-just-unexpectedly-retired-2018-3">the announcement Monday</a> that co-COO Harvey Schwartz, a veteran of Goldman's vaunted trading desk, would retire in April, Solomon appears to have won the two-man bake-off for Goldman's top job.&#xa0;And if last week's innuendo that Blankfein could depart by year's end comes to fruition, changes could come quicker than anyone realized.&#xa0;"We were expecting it to come to a conclusion at some point, but for it to happen this quickly was a surprise," Brian Kleinhanzl, a manager director and lead bank analyst for&#xa0;Keefe, Bruyette, and Woods, said of Goldman's succession announcement.But the decision, given where Goldman's businesses and its culture are headed, makes sense.Solomon is not only an admirer of Branson's and an occasional guest at the billionaire's private island, he's of a similar mold, too - especially compared with the man he beat out, an old-school trading stalwart more in line with Goldman's past than where it wants to go in the future.&#xa0;"He's a respected manager there, he's certainly a capable leader," Kleinhanzl said of Solomon. "It lines up with the direction that they're moving in that a lot of their growth areas tend to be away from the trading business."<h2>The CEO for Goldman's next chapter</h2>Goldman Sachs hasn't hidden its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-wants-to-become-the-google-of-wall-street-2017-4">aspirations of becoming the Google of Wall Street</a>, and Solomon is well-suited for navigating that transition.&#xa0;Before taking the co-COO role, Solomon had been a co-head of investment banking in New York for a decade. In recent years, though, he's had an intimate role in some of the bank's less traditional projects - such as its efforts to build the&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-is-building-the-ultimate-financial-tool-for-the-masses-2018-2">ultimate financial destination for the masses</a>&#xa0;under its Marcus brand.Key to growing its tech-intensive businesses - which are central to the $5 billion in new revenues Goldman is chasing - will be landing young talent with a different skill set than the classes of traders and investment bankers of years past.Even a revered brand like Goldman Sachs must compete aggressively to land tech-savvy millennials amid the temptations of a the liberated corporate lifestyle offered by Silicon Valley's top companies.Solomon could provide a strategic advantage in appealing to young candidates, Kleinhanzl said, given his unique pedigree and interests.The decision to go with Solomon shows that Goldman Sachs likes to "think of themselves as a tech company, and you have to have some bit of irreverence at the top of management in that kind of company," Kleinhanzl said. "And David kind of fits that M.O. given his background and given some of his interests."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Solomon's trajectory to&#xa0;Goldman Sachs stardom was&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-a-job-at-goldman-sachs-according-to-president-2017-10">less-than-typical</a>&#xa0;- he skipped the Ivy League and&#xa0;<a href="https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/david-solomon-84-describes-career-in-investment-banking">studied political science at Hamilton College</a>&#xa0;in upstate New York.And his presence since becoming a Wall Street exec has been unconventional, and increasingly public, as well.He's&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/room-to-read-goldman-sachs-party-2017-5">partied with the likes of Diddy</a>, and once&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jj-redick-goldman-sachs-david-solomon-advice-2016-10">gave life-changing career advice</a>&#xa0;to the Philadelphia 76ers guard J.J. Redick.The divorceé and lifelong audiophile has also&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-coo-david-solomon-has-a-side-hobby-as-an-edm-dj-2017-10">famously been spinning records in Manhattan clubs</a> known for being "millionaire playpens" as well as beach parties in the Bahamas overrun with bikini-clad millennials.The Wall Street veteran says finding and exploring a passion is crucial to longevity in a career known for grinding people down and burning them out."If you can't find a way to have passions and pursue those passions and mix them into your professional life and your personal life in some way, shape or form, it's just harder to have the energy to keep on doing this, and to keep moving forward professionally," Solomon said on a Goldman Sachs podcast.On that front, Solomon already has experience making the notoriously grueling entry-level job at Goldman a bit more millennial friendly. He played an important role in&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-junior-banker-changes-2015-11">revamping the investment bank's junior-banker policies</a>, including quicker promotions and expanding tech platforms that can handle some of grunt work associated with junior-level banking.&#xa0;Goldman's image has been morphing for several years now, and Solomon has played a key role in the initiatives that are driving the change.&#xa0;Now that his succession of Blankfein is all but certain, expect the 150-year-old investment bank's transformation into the Google of Wall Street to only accelerate from here. Get the latest Goldman Sachs stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/GS-Quote"> here.</a><div> </div> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jim-chanos-is-worried-about-the-economy-but-not-because-of-inflation-2018-2">Jim Chanos is worried about the economy, but not because of inflation</a></h3> <div> </div> </div></hr>

A throwaway comment in a conversation with Richard Branson hints at the future of Goldman Sachs

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">HashiCorpHashiCorp founder and CTO Mitchell Hashimoto</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>This week, open-source software company HashiCorp announced new versions for three of its products.</li><li>Co-founder and CTO Mitchell Hashimoto says the company has come a long way since it started as a passion project, where he and co-founder Armon Dadgar would spend all their free time on developing open-source projects that would become the foundation of HashiCorp.</li><li>About three years ago, Hashimoto realized he didn't love being CEO and preferred to focus on technical strategy, so he threw his efforts on hiring a CEO that would be the right match.</li><li>In 2016, HashiCorp hired Dave McJannet, who had previously worked at Greylock Partners, GitHub, Microsoft and VMWare, as CEO.</li></ul>The biggest struggle in building a company isn't the technical part - not the hours spent writing and debugging code, or toiling to make the software come alive. For Mitchell Hashimoto, CTO and co-founder of open-source software company HashiCorp, that's a passion project.When it comes to technical challenges, Hashimoto is fairly confident he can figure out technical challenges. After all, he's been programming since age 12. He taught himself by downloading source code, playing around with it and modifying it. In college, he made <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mitchell-hashimoto-hashicorp-ceo-made-500000-a-year-in-college-2014-12">half a million dollars</a> a year from a program he wrote to automatically register students for classes.But learning to build sales teams, business models, a strong culture and managing people all have a learning curve. And after mastering those skills, Hashimoto learned another important job for many tech entrepreneurs: How to to hire a good CEO from the outside. Six years ago, HashiCorp was just Hashimoto, who was the CEO, and Armon Dadgar, his co-founder. They were responsible for everything, and if they didn't work, the company stopped. Three years ago, it was 70 employees. Now, the company is at 325 employees. "The fact that we survived past a year was a triumph," Hashimoto said. "We've been able to build a portfolio of projects that were all successful. We got questioned a lot, why don't you just focus on one? The triumph is we've gotten past that huge hurdle."This week, HashiCorp announced new versions of its Consul, Terraform and Vault products, as well as improvements to its HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), which was named one of the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-fastest-growing-programming-languages-according-to-the-facebook-for-programmers-2018-10">fastest growing</a> programming languages of 2018. And in November, HashiCorp will launch a new version of Nomad, which is used for deploying applications.And Hashimoto isn't CEO anymore -- he stepped down to become co-CTO with Dadgar in June 2016 and announced in August that HashiCorp had hired Dave McJannet as CEO. When he and Dadgar told HashiCorp's board that they would like to bring on a new CEO, the board was surprised. But Hashimoto knew he didn't love being CEO.<h2>A 16 month courtship of coffees and dinners</h2>Originally, Hashimoto and Dadgar, who were best friends in college, started developing the open-source projects Vagrant and Packer just for fun, which would become the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/51-enterprise-startups-to-bet-your-career-on-in-2017-2016-11#hashicorp-turning-programmers-into-digital-nomads-15">foundation of HashiCorp</a>. At the time, they had absolutely zero intention of creating a business. And when they first founded HashiCorp, Hashimoto admits he was "pretty naive" about what a CEO's responsibilities are -- it involves financial planning, board management and more. "I like to joke, it's a real job," Hashimoto said. "With technical strategy, I can tell you what we're building five years from now. With business strategy, I struggle a bit more."The process of searching and talking to potential CEO's took 18 months. Two months into the process, Hashimoto met McJannet, who had previously worked at Greylock Partners, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/github-launches-github-actions-for-developers-2018-10">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-azure-revenue-growth-rate-is-slowest-in-years-2018-10">Microsoft</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vmware-ceo-pat-gelsinger-security-products-2018-10">VMWare</a>. Over the following 16 months, the pair met with increasing frequency, from coffee once a month, to dinners, to McJannet visiting the office once a week to learn more about the company."I like to describe it as a marriage," Hashimoto said. He's actually getting married to actress Amy Okuda next week. The process of finding a CEO was much more stressful though."A CEO joining is at least a five year commitment," Hashimoto said. "There's lots of risk when it comes to mission and vision. It was a lot of coffees. It's as if you substituted that as dating. You get to a point where you'll sort of commit to each other."The company itself has come a long way since six years ago, when Hashimoto and Dadgar were just working on projects during their free time. At the time, they both had full-time jobs, and when they weren't working, they were moonlighting as open source developers for a project that ended up becoming immensely popular."People sometimes laugh because they ask, how can it possibly be a passion?" Hashimoto recalls. "We don't have time to go to the gym, we don't have time to date anyone. We thought, we either have to abandon this or quit our jobs. Who works on something eight hours a night when it's not a passion?"With some new releases in its lineup and a growing mix of customers, from individuals to Fortune 500 clients, Hashimoto will make sure the company keeps growing. He has an idea of what HashiCorp will build in the next five years, but he won't reveal it."We're fairly stable as a commercial business," Hashimoto said. "We're investing heavily where we think there's a lot more opportunity. We could stop hiring and be a successful business, but we think in three to five years, 500 of of the Fortune 500 customers could be a customers. We have to keep hiring and keep shipping features." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/so-much-co2-planting-trees-cant-save-us-2017-5">There's so much CO2 in the atmosphere that planting trees can no longer save us</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

HashiCorp's founder turned a passion project into a 300-person company and then took on a tougher challenge: hiring a CEO

It's Chinese Single's day everyone.
That means two things - first, that young, single Chinese people will love themselves by spending tons of money on <keyword id="6357762" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Online-shopping">online shopping</keyword>.
And second, that young single Chinese people - mostly girls - will figure out how get through the holiday season with their families by renting significant others to take home for events.
The story around Chinese Single's Day is that it originated around 20 years ago at Nanjing University. The date, 11.11, is supposed to symbolize "bare branches" - or bachelors.
And that, apparently, is a serious matter - serious enough to warrant the biggest online shopping day of the year.
<keyword id="302749" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Alibaba">Alibaba</keyword>, <keyword id="1334" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="China">China</keyword>'s leading e-commerce site, saw $500 million spent in the first 20 minutes from their 'big data' war room, according to <a href="http://www.techinasia.com/china-online-shopping-day-november-11-2013-500-million-dollars-in-20-minutes/">Tech In Asia:</a>
It has just turned November 11 in China, commencing the nation's craziest day of online shopping discounts and spending. It's called 11/11. At Alibaba HQ, China's top e-commerce company is watching its consumers spending in real-time in what I like to call its 'big data' war-room. Alibaba's Tmall, its open marketplace for merchants, saw $177 million spent in the first six minutes. That leapt to $266 million (RMB 1.64 billion) after the first ten minutes, and then to very near $500 million (RMB $3.021 billion) at the 20-minute mark [1]. (UPDATE: After the first 50 minutes, $1 billion has been spent).
Question is - are <keyword id="30713" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="singles">singles</keyword> buying themselves presents to celebrate themselves or to make themselves feel better? Young Chinese people, especially women, are under a lot of pressure to find themselves a mate.
That's why on Single's Day, presents aside, some singles spend money on making mom and dad happy. To do that, they find a nice, sensible boy with a nice sensible job to rent and take home during the upcoming holiday season.
From <a href="http://www.shanghaidaily.com/feature/Bogus-boyfriends-for-rent-to-please-parents/shdaily.shtml">Shanghai Daily:</a>
Clean-cut, bespectacled and financially secure Matthew Fan, 27, started to "rent" himself out as a fake boyfriend two years ago. He's single...
On Chinese Single's Day today, Fan and other rentable young men note that as the year ends, there's more need for their services at New Year's Eve parties with parents and the endless Spring Festival family parties of the Chinese Lunar New Year (beginning on January 30, 2014). Mid-Autumn Festival is another lucrative period of family reunions...
Fan, and advertises online - charges 800 yuan (US$131) per day in China and 1,500 yuan per day in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. There's a three-day minimum and his employer pays transport, accommodation, dining and other fees.
"I only rent my time, not my body - you know what I mean," Fan says. He has a girlfriend who doesn't know about his moonlighting.
Sounds interesting. Happy shopping, guys.

Today Young Single Chinese People Will Spend Insane Money Online Shopping And Renting Fake Significant Others

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Apple can't keep a secret anymore.Because it needs to make so many iPhones to meet considerable demand, its partner&#xa0;factories start cranking out parts as early as the spring in anticipation of a fall launch.&#xa0;And when a factory is cranking parts, photos will get out - and the person who's been posting more of them than anyone else lately is Steve Hemmerstoffer, editor of <a href="http://www.nowhereelse.fr/">Nowhereelse.fr</a>.&#xa0;Recently, he's been posting leaks on the Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/OnLeaks">OnLeaks</a>, and they've been mostly accurate. For example, he posted accurate measurements of the&#xa0;design of Apple's iPhone SE before it came out this spring and Apple's iPad Pro last year.&#xa0;He also posts pre-release photos of <a href="http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-note-7-front-iris-scanner-700932/">high-profile Android phones, too</a>.&#xa0;Business Insider asked Hemmerstoffer about how he finds his leaks, how to spot fake leaks, and what the leaking "game"&#xa0;is like.Make sure you scroll to the bottom to check out Hemmerstoffer's most recent spy shots&#xa0;as well as what he thinks this year's iPhone will include.Hemmerstoffer's first language is French. This interview has been translated, lightly edited, and condensed for clarity.&#xa0;You're Steve Hemmerstoffer, editor of&#xa0;Nowhereelse.fr, and also moonlight as OnLeaks. Is posting technology leaks your full-time job?&#xa0;I am&#xa0;the editor and the writer of the site&#xa0;Nowhereelse.fr, a position I've held full-time for&#xa0;ten years.For several years, I relayed leaks and rumors I had discovered on other blogs, news sites, forums, and social networks. I've been able to weave little by little my own network of informants.Thanks to these leaks, which I generally discovered before the others, my site was quickly<a href="http://www.stevehemmerstoffer.com/#press"> internationally known</a>. The fact that my articles are all written in French was obviously a problem for my foreign visitors. That's why I finally decided, early 2015, to create a Twitter account, <a href="https://twitter.com/OnLeaks/status/572742250402332672">@OnLeaks</a>, where I share my own leaks exclusively in English.I'm always afraid of posting leaks unless they're from a reliable source. How can you tell a fake?&#xa0;<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>The techniques that allow us to discern between real and fake&#xa0;leaks are obviously numerous, but nothing will ever replace experience and common sense.&#xa0;I spend about two to three hours a day on this activity. I browse a large number of sites, forums, and social media on which I discover daily more or less credible leaks.Thus, I know perfectly well how reliable most of the pseudo-leakers on Weibo [a Chinese social network] and other sites are.&#xa0;I can now detect fakes at first glance.It often happens that someone finds a photo on the Internet and then retouches it in an&#xa0;effort to pass it off as an authentic leaked photo.&#xa0;The most simple and accessible method&#xa0;of detecting this (that curiously, few of my colleagues use) is to perform a reverse Google&#xa0;image search using this supposed stolen photo.This technique is effective not only by revealing an eventual Photoshop, but also by allowing us to find the original source and its first&#xa0;publication. I add this because, to my mind, spending time in researching original sources to cite -&#xa0;not who discretely stole the contents from others - is essential.In short, to detect a fake, one should:<ol><li>Show first of all common sense and estimate the probability that such a leak is real.</li><li>Then, make sure it is not a photo montage by using a reverse Google image search.</li><li>Try finally to get to the original source and verify its reliability by perusing its previous publications.&#xa0;</li></ol>You tweeted <a href="https://twitter.com/OnLeaks/status/746027878945521664">a funny line recently</a>: "I have to say 99% of bloggers &amp; so self-called journalists don't know s--- about leaks."Haha, I indeed shared this view because I am tired seeing most of my colleagues sharing leaks and completely absurd rumors without even trying to verify if they are true.Leaks drive&#xa0;a great amount of traffic. I understand that the temptation is huge, but relaying all and any unverified information damages those sites, and more generally breaks the readers' trust regarding leaks.I don't want you to give up your sources, but how does the leaking "game" work? Do these photos come from factory workers - and why do they send them to you or post on Weibo?&#xa0;<div></div>In a large majority of cases, people who share indiscretions do so without a second thought, as the aim is to engage a discussion within the community on a forum or social network. By the way, many of them hope obviously to get notorious.Also,&#xa0;workers who encounter difficulty&#xa0;with&#xa0;the production of spare parts or the assembly of devices look for help on more specialized and obscure forums.To illustrate their subject, they sometimes publish photos without imagining the&#xa0;risk that a snooper like me could discover it. I'd like to specify that, contrary to what everyone thinks, the leaks that circulate on Weibo come most often from other platforms.Certainly, Weibo is an excellent platform to discover leaks, but those we can daily find on Weibo have most of the time been shared by users who themselves found them elsewhere.&#xa0;Do sources&#xa0;get&#xa0;paid?This&#xa0;question is naturally sensitive, I prefer not to comment on this subject…Has Apple or any other tech company ever got in touch with you or threatened you?Yes. Rarely, but it has happened.That being said, it's never gone beyond a simple intimidation effort by mail or a phone call from a&#xa0;lawyer.&#xa0;Lately, there seems to be a lot more schematics leaks. Why do you think this is?I'm not able to explain this phenomenon but, if i'm not mistaken, I am most of the time at the origin of this type of leak, which have&#xa0;I made my&#xa0;specialty.Why don't we see more Apple Watch leaks?The suppliers of components and other subcontractors working for the watch are not yet clearly identified. Thus, this makes the search for information more difficult than for the iPhone, for which multiple companies are well known and perfectly identified.<div></div>Why will&#xa0;leakers on the scene have a lot of leaks&#xa0;one year and then fewer&#xa0;the next?The reason for such irregularities can be explained simply by the nature and the situation of the sources involved. An employee is fired or leaves his job, a supplier of spare parts receives threats from a manufacturer, an accessories maker stops his activity, etc. It may happen, for a host of reasons, that a source simply no longer wants or is no longer able to provide information.Who are some other leakers you follow?First of all,&#xa0;I'd&#xa0;like to specify that I don't believe sharing leaks found on a Chinese forum makes you a "leaker."Anyone can enter a key word into Weibo, find a photo, get and share it (often without quoting the original source.)In my&#xa0;view, a worthy leaker is an expert who has his own sources within the industry.From the subcontractors who provide me photos of components, to the telecommunications companies employees from whom I obtain press renders, to the accessories makers who sent me industrial schematics and CADs, I am for my part lucky to have many&#xa0;privileged, faithful, and very reliable&#xa0;contacts throughout the production line.Fortunately for me, weaving such a network of informants is a long-term project&#xa0;not within the reach of all.Regarding his profile, <a href="https://twitter.com/evleaks">Evan Blass</a>&#xa0;remains for me the incontestable reference in what I like to call "the leaking game".&#xa0;We've had disputes in the past, to the delight of our respective followers, but we have both finally stopped that stupid and useless fight. Moreover, we recently had a kind of friendly and funny game of one-upmanship on&#xa0;<a href="https://twitter.com/OnLeaks/status/705814097007398912">HTC 10 leaks</a>.As I often say, the leaking game<a href="https://twitter.com/OnLeaks/status/676686978620985344"> isn't an exact science.</a> There is no flawless leaker and even the best fails sometimes. That's part of the game, we all have to deal with it.What do you think the iPhone 7 will be like?&#xa0;It's not a secret for anyone anymore, but in case you still have doubts, the next iPhone will be aesthetically very close to the iPhone 6S.Details such as the size of the rear sensor, the design of the antenna strips or moreover the probable lack of the headphones jack,&#xa0;will be what distinguish it from the two earlier generations.The only element that still sparks some debate is <a href="https://twitter.com/stagueve/status/746734013373624320">the eventual presence of a second loudspeaker</a> instead of the headphone jack.&#xa0;<a href="https://twitter.com/OnLeaks/status/741258293797093377">Apple has tested many prototypes </a>during these last months, and it's still difficult to be certain on this subject at this stage, but it's possible that several versions will ultimately&#xa0;be marketed.One thing is certain in any case, and almost confirmed by several insiders: the real change will be carried out&#xa0;next year,&#xa0;<a href="https://twitter.com/stagueve/status/730494811556462592">for the 10th anniversary of the iPhone</a>.<h2>FOLLOW STEVE AT <a href="https://twitter.com/onleaks?lang=en">@ONLEAKS</a> AND CHECK OUT THE LEAKS:</h2>

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