Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

<keyword id="10879" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="youtube" source="Orion">YouTube</keyword> fans have been puzzled by a subtle change in the platform’s familiar look recently. Several users have been noticing how the red progress bar when you watch a video is shifting to a pink gradient. This subtle change has sparked talk of a broader rebranding effort, perhaps even a logo update. Given the platform’s last major visual redesign was in 2019, it’s possible YouTube is gearing up to align itself with a fresher, more modern look, a common trend across digital brands today.<br /><br /><h2>YouTube logo getting changed soon?<br /></h2><br />YouTube has long retained a clean, recognisable identity with its bright red colour. Yet, the shift to pink in the progress bar could hint at broader changes, especially as other tech giants are also embracing gradient colours and experimenting with logos to keep their brand aesthetic current. <br /><br />“The visual changes rolling out on web and mobile will also come to the YouTube app on TV. Keep an eye out for new pops of pink, as well as other light touches that add dynamism to the YouTube you know and love,” the company mentioned in a blog post last month.<br /><br />YouTube also disclosed the change in a post on X, via a relatively unknown handle called Google Design. <br /><br />"YouTube's identity just got a refresh. The new YouTube color palette features a brand gradient that elevates the UX and reinforces the brand. Say hello to a softer shade of red and eye-catching magenta-infused gradients," the post reads. <br /><br />  <div type="image" title="7" msid="115050326" hostid="261"></div><br />YouTube may similarly be looking to refresh its look while balancing the identity that’s made it iconic. However, nothing about an official logo update has been announced.<br /><br />With that being said, if a logo redesign indeed follows, its impact can be tricky to predict. For example, many brands have misfired in the past when attempting major redesigns, alienating their loyal audience instead of attracting new interest. A potential logo update would mark a big step for YouTube, especially since subtle changes like these can dramatically affect user perception.<br /><br />As YouTube reportedly considers a new logo redesign, the move brings to mind some memorable and turbulent logo changes from other major brands. Redesigning a logo isn’t a simple task; it can redefine a company’s image, reinforce brand values, and appeal to new audiences. However, as these examples show, a logo change can easily backfire if it doesn’t resonate with consumers or fails to reflect the brand’s core identity. Let us take a look at some examples from the past where a logo redesign didn’t go as planned.<br /><br /><h2>1. Gap’s Short-Lived redesign<br /></h2><br />  <div type="image" title="3" msid="115050331" hostid="261"></div><br /><br />Gap, the popular clothing retailer, experienced one of the most infamous <keyword id="23849484" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="logo-redesign-failures" source="keywords">logo redesign failures</keyword> in 2010. With the aim to align with contemporary design trends, Gap abandoned its iconic blue box for a minimalistic Helvetica-based look. This redesign faced immediate backlash, with customers expressing disappointment over the loss of the brand’s warmth and heritage. <br /><br />Within a week, Gap reverted to its original logo, realising the new version lacked the authenticity their audience valued. This incident underscores the importance of respecting a brand’s legacy. A logo redesign can’t just be trendy; it must feel connected to what loyal users have come to love.<br /><br /><h2>2. Tropicana’s misguided simplicity<br /></h2><br />  <div type="image" title="5" msid="115050344" hostid="261"></div><br /><br />In 2009, Tropicana attempted a redesign that would prove costly. The bright, recognisable logo was replaced with a simplistic and sterile version, alienating consumers. Sales plummeted as customers struggled to identify the new packaging, which resembled generic brands rather than a trusted favourite. <br /><br />Within a few months, Tropicana reverted to its original look, learning the hard way that standing out on the shelves was crucial to its appeal. A toned-down design might not align with a brand that aims to capture and hold people’s attention.<br /><br /><h2>3. Uber’s identity shift<br /></h2><br />  <div type="image" title="2" msid="115050352" hostid="261"></div><br /><br />In 2016, Uber tried to distance itself from its ride-sharing origins with a logo that removed its familiar “U” in favour of a geometric symbol. The change confused users, and the loss of instant brand recognition led Uber to make adjustments, later adding the name “Uber” below the symbol for clarity. By 2018, Uber dropped the icon altogether, reverting to a more traditional logo that better aligned with its global user base<br /><br /><h2>4. Pepsi’s pricey tilted strip<br /></h2><br />  <div type="image" title="1" msid="115050360" hostid="261"></div><br /><br />Pepsi reportedly spent a staggering $1 million in 2008 to reorient the white stripe on its logo into a “smile,” hoping to evoke a friendlier brand image. However, the change was so subtle that many consumers didn’t notice or understand the rationale behind it. The company’s large expenditure didn’t translate into brand enhancement, serving as a reminder that a high investment doesn’t guarantee a logo’s success.<br /><br />Last year, Pepsi’s logo changed again and brought back the white wave closer to how it was before the 2008 design change. <br /><br /><h2>5. Myntra’s logo controversy<br /></h2><br />  <div type="image" title="4" msid="115050367" hostid="261"></div><br /><br />In early 2021, Myntra, an Indian e-commerce giant, faced a unique challenge when it had to change its logo following a complaint from a social activist. The activist claimed that Myntra’s then-redesigned logo was offensive and insulting to women, and the company had to update the design. <br /><br />DCP Rashmi Karandikar of Mumbai Police's Cyber Crime Department had said at the time, "We found that the logo was offensive in nature for women. Following the complaint, we sent an email to Myntra and their officials came and met us. The officials said they will change the logo in a month's time."<br /><br />This case highlights the importance of anticipating public perception, especially in today’s highly connected and sensitive social environment.<br />

YouTube is turning pink: Times when logo redesigns failed to impress

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Uber Eats has cut 8,000 virtual brands from its app.</li><li>Some were offering duplicate menus from restaurants at the same address.</li></ul><p>In March, Uber Eats began weeding out <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-restaurant-ghost-kitchen-doordash-grubhub-uber-eats-2022-12">delivery-only brands</a> clogging its app.</p><p>About 8,000 brands were wiped — 3,000 more than Uber Eats anticipated when it <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-eats-to-take-down-thousands-of-virtual-brands-to-declutter-the-app-2e05ca96" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rolled out the new rules,</a> which were designed to ensure consumers saw authentic restaurant varieties on the app, the company said. Uber Eats' virtual-brand policies come a year after Insider reported that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-grubhub-set-rules-for-virtual-restaurants-on-delivery-apps-2022-5">DoorDash and Grubhub were cracking down on virtual brands</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virtual-restaurant-ghost-kitchen-doordash-grubhub-uber-eats-2022-12">Virtual brands are menus created for delivery only</a>, and their food is typically prepared inside "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ghost-kitchens-cloudkitchens-kitchen-united-food-halls-2021-5">ghost kitchens</a>" or restaurants looking to boost delivery income by selling another food brand online. These virtual brands grew rapidly earlier in the pandemic. But now delivery apps, and even some consumers, are wising up to virtual brands and the confusion, clutter, and lack of accountability they bring.</p><p>"We saw many duplications for a virtual restaurant operating out of a brick-and-mortar where the two menus were, if not incredibly similar, exactly the same," John Mullenholz, the head of virtual restaurants and dark kitchens at Uber Eats, told Insider in a recent interview.</p><h2><strong>'This whole thing is making me revisit our virtual-brand strategy'</strong></h2><p>At the start of the year, Uber Eats had 40,000 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-grubhub-set-rules-for-virtual-restaurants-on-delivery-apps-2022-5">virtual brands</a> on its site, up from more than 20,000 in March 2022, the company said. To weed out the doppelgänger online menus, Uber Eats now <a href="https://merchants.ubereats.com/us/en/services/virtual-restaurants/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">requires a</a> virtual restaurant's menu to be at least 60% different from the "parent" restaurant where the food is prepared, according to its site.</p><p>It also must be 60% different from any other virtual restaurant operating from that same physical location, Uber Eats said. </p><p>DoorDash hasn't announced any widespread virtual-brand elimination, but <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-grubhub-set-rules-for-virtual-restaurants-on-delivery-apps-2022-5">it requires a virtual brand to have at least 50% differentiation</a> in its main menu from all other DoorDash restaurant menus prepared at that same address. Grubhub requires similar differentiation. DoorDash has been labeling virtual brands on its app for more than two years. </p><p>Uber Eats' new rules cost Joon Park, a Washington, DC, ghost-kitchen operator, $7,000 a month, he told Insider earlier this month.</p><p>At the start of the year, Park had 10 Asian-themed virtual brands listed on Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub. The delivery-only brands are prepared at his ghost kitchen, <a href="https://and.market/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&amp;market</a>, a virtual food hall where he operates five brands available for delivery and takeout.</p><p>He said Uber Eats booted eight of his virtual restaurants from the app during the March purge. Park acknowledged some of his menus were too similar to the menus of his other &amp;market concepts. For example, Uber Eats removed his virtual brand Poke Sushi because its menu was nearly identical to Block Sushi, an &amp;market concept, he said.</p><p>He said he created the virtual brands to "grab more real estate" on the delivery apps. </p><p>Park added that he understood the rationale for the changes.</p><p>"If every restaurant did what we did and basically creates two to three times the number of brands or logos and floods these marketplaces," it negatively affects the experience, Park told Insider, adding: "This whole thing is making me revisit our virtual-brand strategy."</p><div type="image" title="MrBeast takes a selfie with a fan at a MrBeast Burger event." height="2526" width="3367" msid="101737915" hostid="261"></div><h2><strong>MrBeast Burger woes </strong></h2><p>Uber Eats wants to improve the quality of virtual brands as well. </p><p>Its new guidelines require restaurants to have a 4.3-star rating or higher on the app before adding a second online brand to their brick-and-mortar kitchen.</p><p>"If you're under this number, it feels, essentially, like you don't have the bandwidth to be able to launch a secondary concept," Mullenholz said, adding that Uber Eats had a tool that swept the app to look for "bad actors." </p><p>Still, some virtual-brand creators have no control over the quality of their products.</p><p>Take MrBeast Burger. The most popular virtual brand in the space is having some quality-control problems, according to its namesake, MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson. The influencer has tweeted criticism about his burger brand and even said in a now deleted <a href="https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/mrbeast-says-hes-moving-mrbeast-burger" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweet</a> that he was "moving on" from it.</p><p>"Yeah, the problem with Beast Burger is I can't guarantee the quality of the order. When working with other restaurants, it's impossible to control it, sadly," <a href="https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1669940276989657088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1669940276989657088%7Ctwgr%5E3b847c11b755bbcca0dbfc2aa2cabfa6b1a602fe%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthespoon.tech%2Fmrbeast-i-want-to-move-on-from-beast-burger-enjoy-feastables-1000x-more%2F" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MrBeast said in a June 16 tweet</a>.</p><p>The MrBeast Burger brand is licensed by Virtual Dining Concepts, a company that helps run virtual brands. A spokesperson for the firm said: "Brand is completely up and running. Nothing has been changed." Its other celebrity-backed brands include Mariah's Cookies from Mariah Carey. The company said it's a <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/uber-eats-launches-us-certified-virtual-restaurant-program-301782630.html#:~:text=The%20Certified%20Virtual%20Restaurant%20Program,quality%2C%20operations%2C%20and%20branding." target="_blank" rel="noopener">certified virtual-brand partner with Uber Eats</a>.</p><p>Other virtual-brand companies are feeling the heat. The SoftBank-backed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/softbank-backed-virtual-brand-startup-nextbite-lays-off-staff-2022-7">Nextbite</a>, whose <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ihop-offering-chicken-brand-by-stranger-things-star-noah-schnapp-2023-3">virtual brands are inside chains including IHOP</a>, had several rounds of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/softbank-backed-virtual-brand-startup-nextbite-lays-off-staff-2022-7">layoffs</a> before <a href="https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/Sam-Nazarian-C3-buys-nextbite-virtual-brand-business/652924/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">selling the company to a rival virtual-brand company, C3</a>.</p><p>Meredith Sandland, the CEO of the foodtech startup Empower Delivery, said in her podcast, "<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-digital-restaurant-june-5-2023/id1589707141?i=1000615716775" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Digital Restaurant</a>" that the latest struggles in the space didn't mean virtual brands were done.</p><p>"Innovation is messy, right? Nobody wakes up one day with a fully formed idea," Sandland, also a coauthor of "Delivering the Digital Restaurant," said.</p><p>She said virtual brands were still a great way to maximize underused restaurant kitchens. And like restaurants, producing a high-quality menu will be key to their success.</p><p>"You have to consistently deliver great food to people, or people will stop ordering it," she said.</p><p><em>Are you a foodtech insider with insight to share? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at </em><a href="mailto:nluna@insider.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>nluna@insider.com</em></a><em>.</em></p>

'Ghost' menu massacre: Virtual brands face a reckoning as Uber Eats slashes 8,000 from its app

<br />
On Tuesday,<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=uber"> Uber</a> did the unthinkable. It revealed a completely redesigned app logo ditching the old favourite U-shaped design, the one we’d gotten so fond of, and instead chose to go with a more abstract and unusual collection of lines and squares.<br />
<br /> The only problem was the <keyword id="240527" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="new-logo">new logo</keyword> looked nothing like an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=uber+logo">Uber logo</a>. You could have the app staring right back at you on your phone and you still wouldn’t be able to notice it- because it felt that alien.<br />
<br /> Predictably, the Internet had a lot to say about <keyword id="1042120" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Uber">Uber</keyword>’s new rebranding and sadly none of them were favourable. But, looking at the good side, we have to admit that the company succeeded in getting people to talk about it!<br />
<br />
If reports are to be believed, Uber CEO <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=travis+kalanick">Travis Kalanick</a> himself helped the design team come up with the logo. Unfortunately, people have already branded it as a ‘disaster’ even after the company came up with a complex explanation behind the thought of the new logo.<br />
<br />
Most people dubbed the logo as ‘confusing’ and ‘ugly’ with one Twitter user even claiming that the new logo has ‘shaken him to the core’ while the other saying it has given him anxiety.<br />
<br />
While, the shock is understandable, as we too personally can’t seem to relate to or understand why Uber would willingly want to associate themselves with this logo. Hence, to strengthen our case, we came up with a list of five things the Uber logo looks like, instead of looking like an Uber logo.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
1.     <strong>SBI logo</strong>: This is every Indian’s worst nightmare. The first time you look at the Uber logo, you see it, and then you can’t unsee it anymore. The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=SBI">State Bank of India</a> logo must’ve fallen asleep on its side and woken up as the new Uber logo, quipped someone on Twitter and we cannot help but agree. <br />
<br />
Thanks to Travis and the design team at the ride-sharing platform, <em>desis </em>worldwide forever be confused and can never tilt their head sideways while looking at the SBI logo any longer. End of an era.<br />
<br />
<br />
 <br />
 <br />
2.     <strong>Photo editing app</strong>: Look at Uber’s new logo. Cringe. But, then look at it again. Doesn’t it make you want to click selfies so you could get them edited to look nothing like you from the app you’ve mistaken as a photo editing app?<br />
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TRAVIS? *clicks 100 pictures*<br />
<br />
<br />
 <br />
<br />
3.     <strong>Kankaria Lake in Ahmedabad</strong>: When <keyword id="1739133" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Travis-Kalanick">Travis Kalanick</keyword> says he can find inspiration anywhere, literally, anywhere, he wasn’t kidding. Nope, not all. On the plus side, this is the only time people will get to know about this lake’s existence or talk about Ahmedabad.<br />
<br />
<br />
 <br />
<br />
<br />
4.     <strong>A vinyl player</strong>: Am I the only one who wants to spin records on the logo?<br />
<br />
<br />


	<strong>(Uber's new logo also known as an almost accurate description of a sperm entering an egg)</strong>
<br /><br />
<br />
5.     <strong>A s</strong><strong>perm entering an egg:</strong> Great to know, Uber is so in favour of biology lessons!<br />
<br />
To conclude, we have a message for you, Travis Kalanick, the new logo would ONLY make sense if Uber was called Ober.<br />
<br />
There is just that one way.<br />
<br />
Image credit: Twitter/Uber/Indiatimes<br />

Five
things the Uber logo looks like instead of looking like an Uber logo

<p>Few prints are as emblematic as the Burberry check. For more than a century, the black, white, red, and tan plaid has represented a certain level of British sophistication and, more practically, a defense against even the worst wet weather.</p><p>But earlier this summer, the cracks in fashion powerhouse Burberry's foundations became very apparent. In July, after reports that it was cutting hundreds of jobs, Burberry said sales had fallen 21% year-over-year in the first quarter and that it would suspend its dividend. On the heels of earnings, the company also announced it was ousting its CEO, Jonathan Akeroyd.</p><p>The market has not responded kindly. Burberry's stock is down 24% since the news and 49% so far this year.</p><p>It's a strong about-face for the brand and has left many wondering what exactly went wrong.</p><p>The answer is a combination of too-high prices and too-high fashion.</p><p>Burberry has shifted away from its bestsellers, like the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/style/best-trench-coat-women">classic trench</a>, into avante-garde looks that don't appeal to a broad market. It's also pitted itself against bigger, more established luxe players — with limited success.</p><p>"They tried to be a major fashion player because fashion was back in fashion," Jelena Sokolova, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, told Business Insider. "It was the same with boosting leather goods. Neither of these things, I would say, are extremely strongly in the brand DNA."</p><p>Take handbags. Being an exclusive fashion name means playing in the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-handbags-most-fakes-counterfeit-how-to-tell-hermes-gucci-2024-7">competitive world of overpriced bags</a>, one of the most high-margin items a luxury house can sell. But Burberry hasn't been able to keep up with the likes of Louis Vuitton or Gucci.</p><p>What's left is a confused brand with little direction and too many discounts and outlet stores.</p> <p>But things aren't hopeless at Burberry, which did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. A strategy that focuses on the brand's core products — its outerwear — and eschews a bloated price structure in favor of more broad appeal could help turn the company around.</p><h2>From technical fabric to a golden age</h2><p>Like many <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hermes-became-ultimate-status-symbol-2024-2">legacy brands — Hermès,</a> Louis Vuitton — Burberry was created for practicality, not for fashion's sake. Thomas Burberry, the founder, invented a proprietary fabric in 1879 with the goal of protecting customers from the notoriously poor British weather.</p><p>The fabric was about performance, and the company's history boasts about explorers in the early 20th century wearing the gear to the Arctic Circle or on long-distance hot air balloon rides.</p><p>It wasn't until 100 years later, in the early 21st century, that the brand really became a force in fashion.</p><p>From 2001 to 2018, designer Christopher Bailey ran Burberry and turned it into a global name. While focusing its design on Burberry's heritage and its classic plaid, he also modernized the business, making runway collections available right after the show and building an online presence. It may not have been very high-fashion, but it worked.</p><p>"When things were good, the brand was outperforming the industry," Sokolova said.</p><h2>Trying to be a 'major fashion player'</h2><p>But every golden age comes to an end, and after Bailey was also <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/burberrys-new-ceo-christopher-bailey-2013-10">named Burberry CEO in 2014</a>, the brand started to decline.</p><p>The company had begun to lag behind its peers, and a move to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/burberry-new-ceo-marco-gobbetti-christopher-bailey-stays-on-as-president-2016-7">bring in new leadership in 2018</a> was lauded by industry watchers who had just seen <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gucci-sales-profit-reputation-falling-luxury-kering-michele-china-2024-5">Gucci transform under Alessandro Michele</a>.</p><p>"We believe this is a necessary move to make Burberry exciting again," Luca Solca, then the head of luxury goods at Exane BNP Paribas, wrote in a note, The New York Times reported in 2017, when it was announced Bailey would be leaving. "Creative directors — like all artists (painters, composers, singers) — tend to produce variations on a theme. Most brands that have gone through a revival had to first find new creative resources.''</p><p>Part of that revival was an attempt to go upmarket — both in terms of look and price.</p><p>Burberry looks designed by Ricardo Tisci, who followed Bailey as creative director, leaned away from the traditional.</p><div type="image" title="Ricardo Tisci's Burberry collection on hangers" height="3187" width="4562" msid="112344418" hostid="261" sizebytes="537832"></div><p>"I wanted to celebrate the amazing brain of England," Tisci told <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/riccardo-tisci-burberry-interview">Vogue</a> in 2019. "The beauty, the avant-garde, the real individualism."</p><p>But Burberry's sweet spot was never the avante garde but classic trench coats, a lesson Tisci's successor and Burberry's current designer, Daniel Lee, would learn when he leaned too heavily into leather goods.</p><p>Over the past couple of years, Burberry has tried to become a player in the luxury handbag market, a high-profit opportunity, to little avail. The company started churning out bags that matched the prices of those from leather goods houses like Louis Vuitton, charging 58% more than its legacy leather goods products.</p><p>It was a move that Solca, now at Bernstein, called "overambitious" in a June note. And customers weren't buying it — or the bags.</p><p>"They have been trying to boost their leather goods business, but of course it's a very uphill battle," Morningstar's Sokolova said. "They pushed the pricing where the brand didn't feel legitimate. I've heard from some people, with a $2,500 bag, you might as well just go for Louis Vuitton, you wouldn't buy Burberry."</p><p>Designer Lee has also added to the brand's muddled image. He adopted a new signature color and a new logo, leaving consumers who wanted classic Burberry just as confused as they were with Tisci.</p><p>The result is a series of contradictions: a British heritage brand known for its trench coats trying to become a high-end maison, and a label with increasingly expensive products that has had to turn to outlets and steep discounts when those products didn't move.</p><p>"Burberry was trying to expand into categories and price points where it did not have sufficient brand desirability or heritage," Adam Cochrane, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Research, told BI over email. "The combination of higher price points and more sales via outlet channels was always hard to reconcile, and the company never managed to navigate this well."</p><p>Even chairman Gerry Murphy admitted things had "moved a bit too far, too fast with the new aesthetic" during the July earnings call.</p><p>"Convincing consumers that they need to spend more for its products would only be possible if Burberry became very hot and very desirable," Solca wrote in his June note. "This is currently not the case, and most likely will only change gradually."</p><h2>In the luxury trenches</h2><p>Not all of Burberry's problems are of its own making; the entire <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-goods-sales-slow-clothes-shoes-china-bain-company-travel-2024-6">luxury sector is facing challenges</a>.</p><p>"If the general sentiment is weak, the brands that have the weaker momentum, they get discarded first," Sokolova said. "They get the most hurt in a downturn."</p><p>With <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lvmh-says-the-aspirational-customer-is-suffering-2023-7">inflation squeezing aspirational shoppers</a>, it's natural that if they are going to splurge, they will do it on a brand that's considered a good investment. Those are more likely to be iconic styles that have been in fashion for years — a Louis Vuitton Neverfull, say, or Chanel Flap bag — than a style from Burberry, a brand not known for its bags.</p><p>"It's been a tougher market where customers are more cautious, more conservative, not just about price but on style," Murphy said during the July call.</p><p>There's also <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-lvmh-loreal-declining-sales-china-earnings-consumer-luxury-retail-2024-7">China, a difficult market</a> for the entire sector right now. Consumer sentiment in the region has fallen, and shoppers are choosing to take their money to Japan, where the yen has been weak.</p><p>And Burberry is doing even worse than its peers there, which partially reflects Chinese customers' shift "to brands which have been able to better reflect heritage and desirability," Cochrane said.</p><p>Burberry's comparable store sales in Mainland China fell 21% during the first quarter. Luxury bellwether LVMH's revenue in the Asia-except-Japan region dropped 13% in the first half of the year.</p><p>"It is difficult to reposition a brand in a challenging macro environment, and Burberry's high exposure to the slowdown in China does not help," Anne-Laure Bismuth, a director of luxury and sporting goods research at HSBC, told BI.</p><p>In the region, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-brands-slash-prices-in-china-burberry-marc-jacobs-2024-7">shoppers associate the brand with discounts</a>, Bernstein research found, meaning its offerings are far from the investment pieces or "wear for five year" items that people typically want during tough economic times.</p><h2>Check, please!</h2><p>Industry onlookers seem to agree Burberry is at a crossroads and can go one of two directions, with one being substantially easier. The brand can continue its price hikes and attempt to go high fashion — plus close most of its 56 discount outlets, Bismuth said — or it can go back to basics and stop trying to compete with the Louis Vuittons and Guccis of the world.</p><div type="image" title="Burberry Outlet Store" height="650" width="1024" msid="112344416" hostid="261" sizebytes="83214"></div><p>The first would come with "the consequence of impairing its earnings significantly for at least three to five years," Bismuth said; most analysts BI spoke to see going back to basics as a more surefire way for Burberry to succeed.</p><p>Part of a strategy of shrinking away from being a very upmarket high-fashion brand would be to lean into what works — namely, the trench.</p><p>While Burberry was built as an outerwear brand, outerwear currently only makes up 30% of its revenue, and trench coats make up just about 10%, Sokolova said. Apparel, one of the slowest growing parts of luxury, makes up about 60%.</p><p>"I wish that they would focus on their iconic products," Sokolova said. "From an advertising and product perspective, that should be the focus to revitalize the brand."</p><p>Outerwear makes up more than 70% of the revenue of Moncler, she said, a brand known for its winterwear. Moncler has outperformed Burberry year-to-date; by leaning on what it knows works — it doesn't even make handbags — the company has been less exposed to the squeezes facing the luxury sector.</p><p>Just like Hermès needs the Birkin and the Kelly, Burberry needs the trench and the scarf, and even the brand admits it has strayed too far from its heritage. In a July <a target="_blank" href="https://www.burberryplc.com/news/financial/2024/first-quarter-trading-update">memo</a>, the company said it would "emphasise more of the timeless, classic attributes that Burberry is known for" and "a broader everyday luxury offer."</p><p>Part of this would also mean reducing those sky-high prices of recent years, but in reality, the company was already offering steep discounts and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nycs-first-outlet-mall-has-an-uncertain-future-2019-9">selling at outlets</a>.</p><p>It looks like management agrees that highbrow is not the way to go, given the new CEO, Joshua Schulman, is a veteran of Coach and Jimmy Choo, two upmarket brands that have iconic collections yet aren't exactly uber-luxury.</p><p>Making Burberry a British Coach or Michael Kors "would possibly generate higher cash flows and profits," Solca wrote in a November 2021 note.</p><p>Perhaps there is a way for Burberry to weather the storm after all.</p>

How the British behemoth Burberry became fashion's biggest fail of the year 

<p class="drop-cap">One morning this past spring, I was working at my desk when Biz, a fellow tech reporter with a bloodhound's nose for news, texted me a screenshot of my husband's Twitter bio.</p><p>Something was missing. Kyle had deleted the name of his startup.</p><p>"What happened to Playbyte????" Biz wrote.</p><p>Confused, I wrote back, "Wait that's so weird. I'll talk to him."</p><p>Kyle and I both work from home, and I wanted to confront him then and there. But talking about my husband's battle-scarred startup always had the potential to turn into a fight. And if his reason for scrubbing Playbyte's name was that he was winding it down, well, that would be an even longer conversation. </p><p>That night, as he plugged in his Apple Watch, iPhone, and Steam Deck on his side of the bed, I sidled up to him and asked what the story was. </p><p>Kyle shrugged it off. Playbyte, which had started as a kind of TikTok for games (which I loved) and then pivoted to software for indie game developers (meh, he could do better), was about to pivot again. For weeks, Kyle told me, he and Playbyte's two employees — all who were left after he laid off several others during the tech downturn — had been working on a new tool, one that would let anyone build a web app by describing it to a chatbot. I knew that part, though barely because Kyle had been sharing less and less about the company with me. </p><p>Then he said he didn't relate to the name Playbyte anymore.</p><p>My cheeks flushed. I wanted to scream. Kyle had put 3 ½ years of his life — of <em>our </em>life — into building his startup, and now he had wiped it from public view in a few keystrokes. That, I told him, sent a message to his 20,000 Twitter followers that he had given up. What he was really doing was siphoning off code from the old project to start a new one. Had he considered the knock-on effects on his ability to attract new investors or talent? (After eight years of reporting on startups and venture capital, I'm sad to say, I reflexively use phrases like "knock-on effects" with my husband in bed.)</p><p>Kyle knit his brow and explained why he didn't need more money or engineers. I changed the subject to what we should put on before bed. We watched "The Mandalorian" in stewing silence.</p><p>By the time I rolled over and turned off the light, I was feeling a pang of remorse. I wished I had told Kyle that I would understand if he wanted to quit. I'd reassure him that he hadn't failed. I had the words ready, but I couldn't bring myself to say them. I still wanted to present as the kind of wife who had unlimited confidence in her husband's ability to turn things around.</p><p>In my reporting on the world of company building, I've grown familiar with the myriad ways startups end — with acquisition jackpots or bankruptcies, with trading debuts or lawsuits, with Champagne or jail. "The myth<em> </em>of a successful journey is that it starts with an idea, followed by a ton of hardship, and then a gradual and linear rise to the finish line," the founder and investor Scott Belsky writes in his book "The Messy Middle." It's taken living with a founder to fully dispel that myth for me. "In reality, the middle is extraordinarily volatile — a continuous sequence of ups and downs, flush with uncertainty and struggle," Belsky adds. That's as apt a description of Kyle's startup as it is of our relationship. And in our case, the startup's middle has surely been made messier by the fact that the startup's founder is married to a startup reporter.</p><p>Lately, I've been fixated on a nagging question: Would my marriage be happier if my husband's startup failed?</p><p class="drop-cap">Four years ago, when Kyle began talking over dinners and dog walks about becoming a founder, I secretly hoped he'd change his mind. I'd written hundreds of stories about the life he was signing up for: 80-hour work weeks, high stress, low salaries. Not the ideal lifestyle to adopt, right as we were planning to start a family. I told Biz and Jillian, also a tech reporter, over breakfast in San Francisco's Mission District that I thought this was a bad idea. They asked whether we had savings to fall back on.</p>          <p>Nine in 10 startups fail. Yet, at the time, it didn't occur to me that my husband's might. During the 10 years I'd known Kyle, things always had a way of working out for him. When he was 20, he dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, to write for TechCrunch. Before long, he had parlayed a sit-down interview with the renowned investor Chris Dixon into a dealmaking role at Andreessen Horowitz. In 2019, while working at a drone startup, he caught the entrepreneurial bug.</p><p>My worst fear about his startup wasn't that he'd fail. My worst fear was that I'd never see him, and we'd grow apart as he became a staggering success. Late nights of toiling over code would lead to private jets and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/employees-inside-adam-neumanns-wework-reveal-a-wild-culture-2019-9">alcohol-fueled</a> company retreats, and I'd be left behind, reading about his corporate conquests under someone else's byline. Earlier that year, Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott had filed for divorce amid a tabloid scandal that included love nests and racy texts with a news anchor. I wondered whether someday our children would spend every other weekend at Kyle's Pacific Heights mansion with his own "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-relationship-timeline-photos">alive girl</a>."</p><p>But I didn't tell him any of this. Like my mother, and her mother before her, I am ruthlessly nonconfrontational. When I was growing up, my dad lovingly referred to our "Schulze talk" — the thing you say when you're upset, instead of what you really mean. Becoming a reporter and learning to ask hard questions of founders and investors helped immensely, but being hard on the aspiring founder I slept next to was another thing. I worried that if I didn't support his career, my husband might love me less.</p><p>As Kyle was conceiving his startup, I found out I was pregnant. For that, I did confront him. I told him I'd feel more comfortable with him becoming a solopreneur if we moved from San Francisco, where rents were catastrophically high at the time, to New York, where we would be closer to family when the baby arrived. He agreed to my condition, even though it meant he'd be a continent away from the investors and talent he needed to court.</p><p>Kyle, who learned to program in fifth grade so he could <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_modding">mod</a> his favorite video games, dreamed up an app for creating and sharing simple games in a scrolling feed. I thought it was fantastic, and well-timed: TikTok was just then taking off in America. Together, we picked out a name by covering our living room walls with sticky notes filled with words and phrases. He settled on Playbyte, a nod to both the app's bite-size games and our tug-of-war-loving pit bull, Nubs.</p><div type="image" title="Melia puts the box of post-its away." height="1650" width="3300" msid="105235737" hostid="261"></div><p>I put the Post-its in a shoebox of keepsakes, along with handwritten love notes and ticket stubs from our travels, at the back of our closet. Back then, I imagined I would get the Playbyte Post-it framed and give it to Kyle on the day he took the company public, generating a windfall for our family that would pay for our daughter's tuition and so much more.</p><p>Lately, though, the Post-its feel like just another relic of our relationship, ones we'll dig out decades from now and laugh over. "Remember when you tried doing a startup?" I'll say.</p><p class="drop-cap">The most shocking thing I've learned about startups is how boring they are. Day to day, almost nothing happens. There's a call with an investor, a coding sprint, and a team stand-up. So much for "move fast and break things." In my house, it was more "futz endlessly with a Figma file and chat with employees on Discord all day."</p><p>Being a startup reporter married to a startup founder isn't without its perks. We can talk about our days without having to explain a million little things. When I get tripped up on jargon such as "transformer" or "smart contracts" or anything Marc Andreessen blogs, Kyle is my Google Translate for tech speak. He rolls deep in juicy news tips, which I'm frustratingly unable to use. And he sets his own hours. When I have to work late, he can easily cover parenting duties.</p><p>At times, though, it was strange to experience the way my professional and personal lives had blurred. One drizzly morning last spring, as the tech sector entered year two of a global correction marked by mass layoffs and a dearth of venture-capital funding, I was reporting a story about a looming "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-fears-exctinction-event-startup-failure-rate-increase-2023-6">mass extinction event</a>" for startups. In our living room, my husband had gathered the team for an off-site. By then, they had already killed the first two iterations of the startup and had begun work on the chatbot app builder. They spoke hunched over laptops on the couch, surrounded by paper coffee cups and twisting charger cables.</p><p>"This isn't going to be the thing that determines if we become a billion-dollar company or go out of business," I overheard an engineer say matter-of-factly.</p><p>The next night, when Kyle and I were out to dinner with the team, I admitted how bizarre it had been for me to eavesdrop on the challenges they faced at the same time I was interviewing people in the tech industry about the Darwinian moment that startups were facing. To my surprise, Kyle had a confession of his own. He'd been listening in on my interviews, and overhearing talk of things such as "startup mortality rates" didn't exactly give him hope. </p><p>I'm not sure Kyle has found as many perks to being a startup founder married to a startup reporter. Perhaps more than any other job, entrepreneurs are encouraged to fake it till they make it, to either bountiful or cataclysmic results. "Startups only exist because their founders are willing to suspend the disbelief of the probable and instead consider what is possible," <a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/the-probable-the-possible-the-delusional/#:~:text=Startups%20only%20exist%20because%20their,instead%20consider%20what%20is%20possible.">Eric Paley</a>, an early Uber investor, once wrote. Steve Jobs' infamous "reality-distortion field" let him convince himself and nearly everyone around him of practically anything. Kyle's reality-distortion field seemed strong, and it's often been at war with my journalistic service weapon, a bullshit radar gun.</p><p>I knew too much about what could go wrong, like a first lady who doubled as a reporter in the White House press corps. I often assumed the worst because I'd reported dozens of stories about the worst. When one of his favorite employees quit to start his own company — just two months before Playbyte debuted in the App Store — it put both of us in a tailspin of doubt. Had the employee left, we wondered, because he lost confidence in Kyle's idea?</p><p>As Playbyte struggled to gain users and investors, I worried less about being the relentlessly positive cheerleader. I began plying Kyle with unsolicited reviews of his pitch deck and interrogating his every move. Did the team really need those logo fleece blankets? When the company had layoffs in spring 2022, had he done everything possible to minimize the impact on his employees? I thought I knew better than he did — after all, I'd just spoken to a dozen talent partners at venture-capital firms for an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-layoffs-how-to-help-employees-laid-off-2022-6">article</a>, "11 ways companies can ease the burden on laid-off employees." That night, we sat on the bed, bickering over how long the company should extend healthcare benefits. I wanted him to stretch coverage longer. He wanted to be comforted.</p><p>Kyle began to bristle at my feedback. Knotted with anxiety, he started withholding details and sought my input less and less. He was trying to find the idea that clicked and found no joy in discussing those that blew up on the launchpad.</p><div type="image" title="Kyle works out with dumbells." height="1650" width="3300" msid="105235740" hostid="261"></div><p>Like other founders I've met, Kyle's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/startup-founders-mental-health-stress-economy-funding-2022-7">mood</a> is moored to the health of the business. When he's excited about a development, he oozes confidence and throws himself into the company, often working past dinner. I rarely mind caring for our toddler solo on those nights. Better a happy partner, I figure, than a cranky coparent. Because when a bug creeps into the software, or an investor ignores his email, Kyle can be hard to be around. He snaps at coffee spills and bad drivers and grunts loud enough at his computer to jolt our dog awake. I know things are tense when I hear the dumbbells clanging from his office in the middle of the day. He feels the upsets so intensely because he believes every one reflects on his acumen.</p><p class="drop-cap">Over the years, I've come to believe that Kyle would cut off his own arm, "127 Hours" style, before putting an end to his startup. After the layoffs, when I asked if he had considered winding down the company and returning some of the funding to his investors, he immediately launched into a pitch on how well the beta test was going. I'm convinced he's going to keep building until he's spent the startup's last dollar.</p><p>I often write about founders having blow-through-walls resilience. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/who-are-clubhouse-founders-paul-davison-rohan-seth-2021-1">Clubhouse</a> founders Rohan Seth and Paul Davison had at least nine failed apps between them before hatching the breakout app of the pandemic. Steve Huffman led the turnaround of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-reddit-hired-engineers-after-revolt-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-2018-9">Reddit</a> after a firestorm of user revolts and hate speech. I wrote about them in nearly glowing terms. But the same determination I so admired in them I found unnerving in Kyle. I was exhausted, my patience eroding with each new round of hiring and firing, capital raising, and pivoting.</p><p>I told my therapist, my friends, and my boss, whose husband had started and sold his own startup, how I wished my husband would get a "normal job." They encouraged me to tell him how I felt. But that would require me to confront my fear of confrontation. </p><p>More than once, I tried to "Inception" Kyle by talking up other companies I thought he'd enjoy working for. He could join a venture firm in Boston, say, and make a six-figure salary, plus a share of the fund's profits. I knew that shutting down his startup would deal a disastrous blow to his confidence. But it would be temporary. In a new role, he could resume a healthy relationship with work. The weight of failure would fall across the entire organization, not on his shoulders alone. He could feel good about himself again.</p>          <p>I could breathe easier, too. The money would certainly help. But more than wealth, I want things to be less fraught at home. I want to talk about Kyle's work, and mine, without tiptoeing around a minefield. I want him to be free of the torment the startup puts him through. I want to release myself of the guilt I feel for tearing us away from the Bay Area, where he would have had an easier time getting funded. I want peace of mind.</p><p class="drop-cap">One afternoon in September, I watched Kyle leave his office and face-plant onto the bed. I went over and placed a hand on his back. He looked up at me, tears forming. </p><p>"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked.</p><p>He told me that in a few hours he had to call an investor and share the news: The app-building chatbot was over.<br /><br />I tried to assure Kyle that his investor had calls like that all the time, especially this year, as founders twisted themselves into pretzels trying to get funded. Just because everything hasn't clicked into place yet, I told him, doesn't mean it won't eventually. After all, YouTube launched as a dating service, and Instagram started off as Burbn.</p><p>For once, I thought, I had found the right thing to say — but I must not have been very convincing. Kyle sank back into the pillow and sighed, and I went back to work.</p><p>Now Kyle's startup has pivoted a third time. Instead of creating software to help amateurs and indie developers make video games, he and his team plan to use what they've learned to create their own game. The idea is a first-person shooter and an homage to a game, set in a ruinous Russian war zone, that became a pandemic smash hit.</p><p>I'm skeptical. In my years of reporting on startups, I've never heard of a pivot like that. Game studios don't exactly scream venture-backed business. Many are bootstrapped or funded by an incumbent studio searching for the next big hit. In the past few years, venture investment in gaming has swelled, but it's still a<em> </em>precarious time for startups that need to raise capital.</p><p>The truth is, I don't know if Kyle's startup will make it.</p><p>But in the throes of the pivot, Kyle and I faced our most harrowing experience yet. On Labor Day, we were role-playing characters from "Legend of Zelda" with our 3-year-old when Nubs bounded into the kitchen. He jumped on me and kissed me hard before padding over to Kyle. That's when our daughter came up behind Nubs, startling him, and he bit her on the face, slicing her eyebrow and cheek.</p><p>She turned out to be OK. But that night in bed, after she had fallen asleep, Kyle and I wept, cradling Nubs in our arms as we had every night for six years. We agreed to call the vet in the morning to discuss euthanasia. Nubs, Playbyte's namesake, was Kyle's best friend. If we went through with it, I asked, did he think he could handle being with me at the vet to put Nubs down?</p><p>I wasn't sure how he would respond. This was a man for whom things had always fallen easily, happily into place. But in that moment, as he faced the death of a loved one, I saw that something had changed within him. He now understood peril, having chosen a path rife with it. He had told employees he cared for that he was letting them go. He had gone to investors, tail between his legs, to confess that a new round of funding had fallen through. He had weathered incessant grillings from his reporter-wife, who was not always as supportive as she wished to be and whose own anxiety had often contributed to his. The loneliness and the self-doubt, the sleepless nights and the cold sweats, all the stress and the sorrow of launching and tending to a startup, had shown him something.</p><p>"I can do hard things," he told me. He would go with me to say goodbye. </p><p>For a flickering moment, between sobs, I was bursting with pride.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/melia-russell"><em>Melia Russell</em></a><em> is a senior correspondent at Insider.</em></p>

My husband founded a startup. Then our marriage got weird.

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Deliveroo riders are dropping off takeaways to people that have ordered food from UberEATS, causing confusion among the customers of both companies.<p>The riders, who operate on zero-hours contracts, are legally able to deliver food for both companies but the fact that each company has its only uniform is proving to be problematic.</p><p>Uber's uniform is all black with a silver Uber logo, while Deliveroo's uniform is black and green with the Deliveroo logo.</p><p>Obviously it's not practical for riders to change their uniform each time they make a delivery for a different platform. As a result, there are delivery people&#xa0;turning up at people's homes and offices with an UberEATS bag and a Deliveroo uniform, or vice versa.</p><p>I nearly turned away my UberEATS delivery because the man carrying it was wearing a Deliveroo uniform.</p><p><div></div></p><p><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-ubereats-food-delivery-service-is-launching-in-london-2016-6" target="_blank">UberEATS launched in London</a> last Thursday and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/ubereats-gets-off-to-a-rocky-start-in-london-2016-6" target="_blank">got off to a bit of a rocky start</a>. Prior to the launch, several delivery riders told Business Insider that they intended to work for UberEATS and either Deliveroo or Take Eat Easy, which is another restaurant food delivery startup.</p><p><div></div></p><p></p><p>Alex Czarnecki, general manager at UberEATS, said: "Couriers do not have to deliver exclusively with us - UberEATS is a completely flexible way for people to make money. Thousands of people, including some who deliver with other companies, have already signed up to deliver with UberEATS in London."</p><p>A Deliveroo spokesman said: "Both Deliveroo and UberEATS offer freelance contractor models for riders in the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword>, meaning riders are free to work for both companies. We love our rider equipment and we're glad our riders choose to use it."</p><p><strong>Here is a man wearing the UberEATS uniform:</strong></p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Business Insider/Sam Shead" title_caption="An UberEATs delivery man." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/576970badd0895b0568b4b58-960/img_4281.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Sam Shead</span></p><p class="caption">An UberEATs delivery man.</p></div><p></p></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bumble-tinder-whitney-wolfe-dating-profile-app-2016-5">4 things men can stop doing online that will automatically make them more attractive </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="RkeHhnMzE6pk1hm6GnqIxTySYJTlGOFx" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

People keep getting their UberEATS takeaways delivered by couriers in Deliveroo uniforms

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Barclaycard; Shayanne Gal/Business Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Barclays, which issues branded credit cards for Apple, JetBlue, and the NFL, has a practice of rejecting applications from former customers who have fallen behind on payments, even if they've improved their credit history.</li><li>The bank's practice of not pulling credit reports for former customers is uncommon among banks willing to discuss the practice.</li><li>Other banks say they always request credit reports, even for former customers.</li></ul><p>Few financial sectors are as deeply embedded in the lives of Americans as the credit-card industry. It aims to protect consumers from fraudulent transactions, volatile incomes, and lost wallets. Certain credit cards offer attractive perks, such as free travel and cash back, while others are more likely to trap consumers in endless cycles of accumulating debt.</p><p>Most significant, its products underpin the US credit-reporting system, which governs access to home mortgages, automobile loans, and credit cards themselves. Who has access to credit, and how that access is determined, matters a great deal.</p><p>I had to relearn this lesson last year after I embarked on improving my credit history by applying for a number of cards. I did so to decrease my <a href="https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/credit-education/score-basics/credit-utilization-rate/">"credit-utilization rate,"</a> which refers to the percentage of available credit you're using. Nearly a third of an individual's credit score, <a href="https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/credit-scores/amount-of-debt">as calculated by the Fair Isaac Corp., or FICO,</a> is based on this statistic.</p><p>While the bulk of my efforts succeeded, in a few cases my applications were rejected. My search for an explanation led to obscure online forums in which credit-card enthusiasts spoke of "blacklists" and "lifetime bans," and to an overlooked corner of the industry that dictates the availability of consumer credit.</p><p>My personal process for obtaining credit was essentially random and heavily influenced by advertising. I applied for one card because I saw an online ad for it, another because a credit-monitoring app recommended it to me, and still another because an airline attendant handed me a physical trifold application. Most of these were approved. But two cards turned me down: the Uber Visa Card and the AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite MasterCard.</p><p>At first glance, these cards have nothing to do with each other. They're associated with different companies and belong to competing payment networks. But according to their rejection letters, and the <a href="https://www.uber.com/c/uber-credit-card/">fine</a> <a href="https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-program/miles/partners/credit-card/aadvantage-aviator-red-mastercard.jsp">print</a> on each card's website, they have one important thing in common: They're both issued by Barclays, the British multinational bank.</p><p>Founded in London in 1690, Barclays is one of the oldest banks on earth. It entered the US credit-card market in 2004, with its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/business/barclays-pays-293-million-for-us-credit-card-issuer.html">acquisition</a> of Juniper Bank, and now holds <a href="https://www5.fdic.gov/idasp/confirmation_outside.asp?inCert1=57203">more than $24 billion</a> in consumer credit-card debt.</p><p>Besides Uber and American Airlines, it <a href="https://cards.barclaycardus.com/banking/cards/#///">issues cards</a> for consumer brands like the National Football League, Frontier Airlines, Barnes &amp; Noble, Priceline, JetBlue, and Apple. Barclays has established its US presence in other ways too. It <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/sports/basketball/18arena.html">owns</a> the naming rights to Barclays Center, the massive indoor arena in Brooklyn, as well as Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/nyregion/24naming.html">subway station</a> underneath the arena. It's the <a href="http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ridership_sub_annual.htm">busiest train station</a> of New York City's most populous borough.</p><p>A few weeks after I applied for the Uber and AAdvantage cards, I received letters from Barclays Bank Delaware, the subsidiary that operates the bank's US credit-card business. Except for the name of the card, both had the same language:</p><p>My initial reaction was confusion: I didn't remember ever having a credit card through Barclays. But when I went back and looked through my old emails, I discovered that I previously had <em>two</em> such cards: one associated with Apple and another with Sallie Mae. I remember applying for and using both cards, but I'd forgotten they were serviced by Barclays.</p><p>The embarrassing thing is that both letters were largely accurate. Several years ago, I paid a debt-settlement company to contact each of my creditors to negotiate a lower balance and a repayment schedule. To open those negotiations, however, I first needed to stop making payments on them. That's probably why Barclays mentioned "severe delinquency."</p><p>It ended up working out. The company reduced the balance of the first card by about $850 and the second one by $1,000. I eventually paid off those and a few other accounts, thereby avoiding bankruptcy. My credit score, after taking a nosedive, has inched upward since.</p><p>The letters from Barclays drew my curiosity because, for a few years after the aforementioned negotiations, I was rejected by every credit card I applied for, and for the same reason: My credit score and credit history, as recorded by the three major credit-reporting bureaus, were in disarray. This was discouraging but not entirely hopeless. After all, there are ways to improve both.</p><p>The Barclays letters, by contrast, seemed to suggest that my eligibility for another Barclays credit card had been revoked, because their internal file for me overrode my external credit history. They wouldn't even <em style="font-weight: 400;">ask</em> for it, as stated in the last sentence of the bank's explanation: "A credit bureau report was not used in making this determination."</p><p>"Several different things go into underwriting criteria," Barclays spokesman Matt Fields said. "We definitely use all three credit bureaus. They are used dozens and dozens and dozens of times every day for new customers. Another piece of that, though, is that we do look at whether an applicant has a past or current relationship with us."</p><p>Fields added that, while no two applications are alike, the bank followed certain guidelines when assessing them. "Let's say someone had a previous relationship with us, where they charged off," he went on. "As a general practice, we are not looking to do business with someone who has not honored their obligations with us."</p><p>I later found other people in a similar position. They had flocked to online forums devoted to credit cards (and associated rewards programs) to complain about being placed on the so-called <a href="https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Card-Applications/So-I-m-on-the-Barclays-Blacklist/td-p/5114797">Barclays blacklist</a> and receiving a "<a href="https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5474215">lifetime ban"</a> from the bank. Some detailed their frustrating experiences with the bank's customer-service representatives, who struggled to explain their employer's policy.</p><p>Two things make that policy especially confusing. The first is that the majority of their cards carry the branding of other companies. Of the <a href="https://cards.barclaycardus.com/banking/cards/#///">23 cards it issues</a>, only three are primarily branded as Barclays. Of the remaining 20 cards, only five carry a small Barclays logo on the front of the card. The websites of the remaining 15 cards - none of which have obvious Barclays branding, and which account for 65% of the bank's offerings - bury their Barclays affiliations in fine print.</p><p>This arrangement isn't problematic in and of itself. Branded credit cards are not new. But it gets confusing when paired with Barclays' policy of rejecting former customers based on the bank's internal records, rather than external credit reports.</p><p>If you had a credit card through JetBlue, which offered JetBlue-specific rewards, you likely associated that credit card with JetBlue. So it would seem counterintuitive for Barclays, which operates JetBlue's credit card, to reject you for a credit card associated with a different company simply because that company also contracted with Barclays.</p><p>The second thing that makes this confusing is that the degree to which Barclays' relies on internal records to evaluate former cardholders who became delinquent - to the point of ignoring their updated credit history, even if that history has been rehabilitated - appears to be uncommon in the credit-card industry, at least among the institutions that were willing to discuss the practice.</p><p>I came to this conclusion by asking <a href="https://www.valuepenguin.com/largest-credit-card-issuers">the largest credit-card issuers in the US</a> about their policies. Three of the five largest issuers - JP Morgan Chase, Capital One, Bank of America - confirmed to Business Insider that they always pull an applicant's credit report when they apply for a new line of credit. Wells Fargo, a smaller issuer, confirmed it does so as well.</p><p>Other banks were less willing to discuss this aspect of their operations. Citigroup, US Bancorp, and Discover declined to comment. American Express and Synchrony did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In fact, Barclays was the only bank willing to confirm that it rejects former cardholders who became delinquent, without seeking their credit reports, as a matter of policy.</p><p>In 2017, the top 10 issuers of credit cards in the US held a combined $712 billion in credit-card debt. Slightly <a href="https://www.valuepenguin.com/largest-credit-card-issuers">more than half of that debt</a>, $358.5 billion, was held by banks that always consider external credit reports. The remaining $353.5 billion belonged to banks that either ignored external credit reports for certain applicants (in the case of Barclays) or refused to disclose their practices.</p><p>Their differing responses, or lack of responses, are noteworthy because the US closely regulates how consumer credit histories may be used to make underwriting decisions. Since 1970, when the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/chapter-41/subchapter-III">Fair Credit Reporting Act</a> became law, consumers have had the right to obtain a copy of their credit histories from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. They can also challenge the accuracy of those histories. In most cases, adverse information is <a href="https://www.equifax.com/personal/education/credit/report/how-long-does-information-stay-on-credit-report/">automatically removed</a> after seven years.</p><p>At the same time, the law doesn't require banks to consider those credit histories when assessing the risk of a prior customer. And that can lead to inconsistent policies across different issuers.</p><p>"It certainly depends on the lender as there is no rule one way or the other," said John Ulzheimer, who has <a href="http://www.johnulzheimer.com/about/">studied and written about</a> the credit-card industry for nearly three decades. "Your previous performance with a lender is absolutely considered if and when you make future applications with that same lender.</p><p>"If you defaulted on or discharged previous debts with a lender they may simply choose to never do business with you again as a matter of policy."</p><p>Most issuers do both, he added: "They'll review their own master file for previous performance records and then, if that's satisfactory, they'll pull a credit report and credit score as a basis for their decision."</p><p>A certain degree of inconsistency among financial institutions is understandable: It's not as if competing issuers coordinate, or would want to coordinate, their underwriting processes. But when only a handful of institutions decide who gets credit, and how much, those inconsistencies take on a greater weight. They exist in tension with the fact that having good credit, which heavily depends on access to credit, is a necessity for more and more of our lives.</p><p>Fields, the Barclays spokesman, clarified that the bank sometimes reverses rejections if it's made aware of "extenuating circumstances," and encouraged me to call the bank's customer service line to ask about my case. He didn't know how long Barclays retains records about former customers. But the upshot of our conversation was clear: Because of my prior history with Barclays, I would likely be unable to obtain another credit card through them, at least for a while.</p><p>Later, when I called their help line, a Barclays representative told me that he couldn't discuss my applications or the underlying reasons they were rejected, because it had been more than 90 days since I applied. I would need to reapply for both and then contest the inevitable rejection letters.</p><p>A particular practice at a particular bank - and a relatively small one, at least in the US - can't fully explain the broader system to which it belongs. Obviously, Barclays is not legally or morally obligated to extend a line of credit to me or anyone else. But the power Barclays and its peers exert on the personal lives of Americans should not be ignored.</p><p>Credit doesn't just dictate <a href="https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/cellphone-credit-check-1270.php">what kind of cellphone you can buy</a>, or whether you can <a href="https://studentloanhero.com/featured/5-banks-to-refinance-your-student-loans/">consolidate student loans under a lower interest rate</a>. It can also influence <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/landlords-credit-check/">where you live</a>, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/why-employers-check-your-credit-report.html">where you work</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/business/even-cupid-wants-to-know-your-credit-score.html">whom you marry</a>.</p><p>Remember this the next time you apply for a credit card.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-world-economic-forum-founder-shares-the-biggest-threat-to-the-economy-davos-2019-1">The founder of the World Economic Forum shares what he sees as the biggest threat to the global economy</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Credit-card users have whispered about the 'Barclays blacklist' for years. Here's how I got on it.

<p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Entrepreneurs of New York</span></p><p class="caption">Former Navy SEAL and current CEO of Force12 Media, Brandon Webb</p></div><p></p></div></div>Economies are incentive driven, and the current incentives in America are driving more and more business owners to cut American workers in favor of cheaper hires in Asia, eastern Europe, and elsewhere. </span></p><p><span>I know this because I'm one of them: I own media business that's content driven and most of our tech operations are offshore. </span></p><p><span>This trend will continue until leaders and policy makers in US government adopt practical tax and employment laws that bring back strong incentives to hire Americans. </span></p><p><span></span><span></span><span>After serving as a US Navy SEAL, I started a business, and in four years it failed incredibly but learned a lot about business, raising equity, and choosing partners. </span></p><p><span>Growing up in a family full of entrepreneurs - my own grandmother owned a collection agency named after yours truly - I was hungry for another go. Going through SEAL training taught me that it's OK to fall down three times, as long as you get up four. This is a good philosophy for most things in life. </span></p><p><span>Shortly after losing with my first venture I started to write, then I started blogging. I learned digital media along the way and then founded <a href="http://force12media.com/">Force12 Media</a> in 2012, a digital publishing business. </span></p><p><span>While we have over twenty US military veterans on payroll, most of our technology team is offshore. We are a virtual, distributed company, and we don't have a traditional office - we all work from home. </span></p><p><span>After talking to investment bankers I learned two things: We have something valuable, and we don't fit traditional models. However, I believe we are creating the model for how a lot of businesses will work in the future; they will be highly distributed and virtual. Moreso if current tax and employment laws favor industrial age thinking. </span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://force12media.com/">Force12 Media</a></span></p><p class="caption">Force12 Media's home page.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>Force12 makes money as a business by creating original and engaging content on our digital platforms (websites, podcast, and online TV channels) and selling to premium advertising partners who want to connect with a smart, mostly male, demographic. </span></p><p><span>It's a good business and our team (both US and offshore) enjoys the autonomy that come from creating their own schedules and working from home (or anywhere for that matter). They are free to spend more time with friends and family and have more freedom to pursue their passions in life. </span></p><p><span>Why hire offshore? US laws persuade us to.</span></p><p><span>For example: A member of our sales team used to live in San Francisco until I was advised by my CPA firm that California's franchise tax board, regardless of our businesses being located in Nevada, was leaning towards treating business revenue, generated by employees living in the state, as taxable revenue for the state.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span> MikeBehnken via Compfight cc</span></p><p class="caption">San Francisco</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>So if this person flew from San Francisco to Nashville and sold a half million dollar advertising campaign to a major car company, then California could possibly make a claim on the whole amount as if we were running a half million dollar business in California. </span></p><p><span>The state's aggressive and ambivalent tax laws create a massive incentive for out of state business owners like myself to avoid hiring Californians period. The San Francisco based salesperson? He ended up moving to Washington state and California lost a six figure income earner who used to spend and pay income taxes in the state. </span></p><p><span>As the Economist Milton Friedman would often say, "Incentives are everything."</span></p><p><span>States like New York and California have some of the most aggressive and confusing tax and employment laws I've ever seen. When the $800-an-hour attorneys are confused, I know it doesn't make sense. </span></p><p><span>The laws are outdated and need to change or business owners will continue to find ways to hack the system. Uber is an excellent example of this, and there are plenty more.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Thomson Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Photo illustration of logo of car-sharing service app Uber on a smartphone over a reserved lane for taxis in a street in Madrid.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>I hire offshore developers because I don't want to get tangled up with confusing and aggressive state tax and employment laws (like Uber is now in California). I go to zero risk when I hire someone smart who can write code for our company from the Ukraine or Poland. Would I rather hire someone from the US? Yes, of course, but there is no incentive to do so where I can avoid it. </span></p><p><span>Like a lot of business owners out there, I don't desire to face the continual flogging from government regulators who push burdensome and confusing state tax and employment laws on the business. It creates an unnecessary risk when, as an owner, I can just take it offshore. </span></p><p><span>Not to mention avoiding the expense incurred of paying the expensive (and usually worth it) attorneys to provide their own ambiguous interpretation of the tax and employment law tea leaves. </span></p><p><span>Being a Navy SEAL and sniper taught me all about risk management. Take away all the risk variables under your control and reduce it to an acceptable level. The same fundamentals apply in business. </span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Brandon Webb</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>US Government leaders, from the top down, need to recognize that a global economy also comes with a global workforce. </span></p><p><span>They need to create more incentives for business owners to spend onshore and business owners need to pressure their state representatives to push for the elimination of murky and hard to navigate tax and employment laws. Elected officials need to develop simple tax rules that are easy to understand, follow and enforce.  </span></p><p><span>It doesn't take a degree in economics to realize that the tax and employment laws in this country our outdated in the 21st Century global economy. An overhaul is needed, I'll even say it's necessary, for a healthy US economy in the future. </span></p><p><span>Business owners don't get a free pass either: We need to stand up and start pressing our elected officials into action because if we don't, than we can all expect to see more rules that don't make sense while we send more jobs and spending offshore. </span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-sachs-biggest-threat-human-race-technology-2015-5">Economist Jeff Sachs reveals the biggest threat to the human race </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="NudmcxdTqsaXIuFZ0ILKnMz6ymYK9my_" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

A former Navy SEAL explains why companies are outsourcing in droves

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>DoorDash</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>DoorDash, a two-year-old startup that lets you <span>buy meals from local restaurants on-demand, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/report-doordash-raising-a-round-at-unicorn-valuation-2015-11">is rumored to be raising a new round of financing at a $1 billion valuation</a>.</span></p><p><span>The startup's delivery people, independent contractors called Dashers, pick up food from restaurants and bring it to customers in 21 metropolitan areas in the United States.</span></p><p><span>Some of the company's practices have come under fire. DoorDash, which has high-profile partnerships with brands like 7-Eleven, <a href="http://ny.eater.com/2015/11/6/9678206/door-dash-delivery-nyc">has faced criticism</a> from businesses about the way it lists restaurants on its site with or without their permission.</span></p><p><span><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/12/technology/in-n-out-doordash-delivery-lawsuit/">In-N-Out recently sued the startup</a> for allegedly using the restaurant's logo and promising delivery -even though In-N-Out isn't actually a DoorDash partner. <span></span></span></p><p><span><span>DoorDash has said it will comply with the wishes of restaurants who don't want to participate in DoorDash's service. But a training video - which a source says was used as recently as a few weeks ago - seems to suggest otherwise. </span></span></p><p>The DoorDash training video obtained by Business Insider shows DoorDash telling Dashers to follow certain practices that could mislead businesses and customers.  </p><h2><strong>"Do not use the word 'DoorDash' in a non-partner restaurant"</strong></h2><p>The 20-minute, undated training video seems to be part of the onboarding process for new Dashers. It explains what DoorDash does, and how to be a Dasher for the company. </p><p>The video explains that there are two types of restaurants DoorDash works with: partners and non-partners. (Fast food chain In-N-Out is an example of a non-partner restaurant that DoorDash has offered food delivery from.)<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>DoorDash training video</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Dashers are told not to say that they work for DoorDash when they pick up food for customers from non-partnering restaurants.</p><p>"<span style="font-weight: 400;">Do not use the word DoorDash in a non-partner restaurant," the video's narrator says. "T<span>here's no need to mention DoorDash in these cases because not all the staff know that we have a relationship with the restaurant." </span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">But doing this also makes DoorDash reps inconspicuous to non-partners who might not realize a DoorDash delivery person isn't a typical customer. And it conveniently allows DoorDash to continue making deliveries with or without the store's permission.</span></p><p>"To simplify the order and pickup process at restaurants, including restaurants where there may be numerous DoorDash orders waiting, we encourage Dashers to provide a real name rather than simply saying 'DoorDash,'" a company spokesperson told Business Insider. </p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>DoorDash training video</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The In-N-Out lawsuit, </span>filed on November 6, says DoorDash <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/report-doordash-raising-a-round-at-unicorn-valuation-2015-11">has been ignoring its requests to stop delivering its food</a>. The burger chain first contacted DoorDash in April 2014 to ask them to stop using the In-N-Out logo on their site and to stop delivering food from the popular restaurant. In October, DoorDash's CEO Tony Xu responded and indicated that his company had removed references to In-N-Out on the site. </p><p>In July, In-N-Out says it contacted the startup again to try to get them to remove a falsified logo and to make sure it stopped delivering In-N-Out. Since then, the complaint alleges, DoorDash has ignored all messages and as of the filing, the logo was still up. Now, the logo <a href="https://www.doordash.com/store/?city=downtown-sf">seems to be removed</a>. </p><p>On the same day that the lawsuit was filed, a DoorDash spokesperson <a href="http://ny.eater.com/2015/11/6/9678206/door-dash-delivery-nyc">told Eater that the company is happy to remove a restaurant from its system when asked</a>. This person also said that logos of non-participating restaurants are only put up if there's a lot of customer demand for the restaurant or DoorDash is testing demand.</p><p>"DoorDash delivers from tens of thousands of merchants around the country. While we have formal relationships with many of the restaurants on our site, in order to fulfill our mission of providing the very best of a city at your doorstep we also offer delivery from popular restaurants that have not signed on as a DoorDash partner," a company spokesperson told Business Insider.</p><p>"In those cases, we continue to offer the same delivery quality and experience customers expect from DoorDash; we make our best effort to contact the owner of the restaurant in order to offer them our world class merchant tools and delivery tracking features; and we will remove the restaurant from DoorDash if they so request." </p><h2><strong>"Never give a customer a receipt"</strong></h2><p><span>Another part of the DoorDash training video explains how to (and how not to) act when Dashers hand food to customers. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>DoorDash training video</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Dashers are explicitly told to remove customers' receipts from their orders. "<span>Never give a customer a receipt," the video's narrator says. </span></span></p><p><span><span>DoorDash delivers its own receipt electronically to customers, the video explains. </span></span>"To avoid confusion, we encourage customers and Dashers to use the receipt provided through the DoorDash website and app, which shows the total cost of the order, including item prices, tip and delivery fee," a company spokesperson told Business Insider.</p><p><span><span>The startup may also not want customers to see price discrepancies. In order for DoorDash to operate, it bakes the delivery fee into each menu item, and a customer may or may not realize they've been upcharged.</span></span></p><p><span><span>One Italian deli store owner who does not partner with DoorDash <a href="http://ny.eater.com/2015/11/6/9678206/door-dash-delivery-nyc">complained to Eater</a> that the startup was adding a few extra dollars to every menu item. One of his $15 paninis, for example, was listed at $21.95 on DoorDash.</span></span></p><p>Currently, DoorDash focuses on delivering food. But the startup, which less than a year ago <span>raised $40 million at a $600 million valuation,</span> has hinted at ambitions to use <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/22/doordash-17-3m-sequoia/">its logistical delivery infrastructure to deliver any number of things</a> in the future. To date, high-profile investors including Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia Capital have poured <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/doordash#/entity">$59.7 million</a> into the business.</p><p>Its chief competitor is Postmates, though the food delivery market is <span>"overcrowded," according to research analytics firm CB Insights, with companies including <span>Uber, Google, Amazon, Instacart, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tapingo-raises-22-million-to-deliver-food-to-college-kids-on-demand-2015-4">Tapingo</a>, and Square's Caviar all trying to carve out their own niche.</span></span>   </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/female-meteorologists-wearing-amazon-dress-2015-11">Why female meteorologists all over the US are wearing the same $23 dress</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="lidWIzeTpAqQ5qJw06ZNmnT5Md4wM-nq" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

DoorDash, a food delivery startup that's rumored to be raising at a $1 billion valuation, has some shady instructions for its delivery workers

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Govtech</span></p><p class="caption">Ron Bouganim is founder and managing partner of Govtech, a venture firm that's laser-focused on technology that modernizes the internal operations of government.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Silicon Valley is flush with cash, with nearly $58 billion invested in US venture-backed startups so far in 2018.</strong></li><li><strong>With <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/venture-investment-first-half-2018-2018-7">so much money in venture capital,</a> small-time investors are struggling to compete for hot deals.</strong></li><li><strong>Some investors are standing out by specializing. They may target a specific tech sector, which differentiates them by domain expertise and the quality of their relationships.</strong></li><li><strong>Business Insider spoke with three venture capital investors in Silicon Valley to find out why they went niche.</strong></li></ul><p> </p><p>There was a time in San Francisco when pretty much any wealthy individual could write a check and own a piece of a company or a portfolio of companies through partnering with a venture firm.</p><p>But being rich doesn't get you as far in today's tech landscape.</p><p>More and more venture firms, from Palo Alto to Tokyo, are pouring billions of dollars into mammoth, global growth funds known as <a href="http://fortune.com/2018/03/22/venture-capital-funding-gap-softbank/">"mega-funds"</a> that have invested in startups building the future of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wework-wants-to-raise-money-at-35-billion-valuation-softbank-says-2018-6">work,</a> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gm-self-driving-cruise-business-benefits-from-softbank-deal-2018-7">cars,</a> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/softbank-has-taken-a-4-billion-stake-in-us-chipmaper-nvidia-2017-5">computing,</a> and even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wag-raises-300-million-from-softbank-hires-hilary-schneider-as-ceo-2018-1">dog-walking.</a> Sequoia Capital told limited partners they would have to make a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/sequoia-sets-minimum-investment-of-250-million-to-join-growth-fund.html">minimum investment of $250 million</a> to procure a spot in its growth fund.</p><p>The rush of capital has produced a number of effects, including inflated startup valuations and increases in the amount of capital competing for access to the buzziest startups in Silicon Valley.</p><p>"In the early days of venture, one could have made the argument that because venture capitalists had money and entrepreneurs didn't, and there were limited choices [with fewer funds], having money itself was competitive advantage," Ron Bouganim, founder and managing partner of boutique venture firm Govtech, told Business Insider.</p><p>"With the oversupply of capital, having money alone is not an advantage. There's so much money chasing every investment opportunity," Bouganim said. "How do you differentiate yourself from another investor? Some form of specialization is necessary."</p><p>SC Moatti, a former Facebook executive who raised $13 million for her firm <a href="https://mighty.capital/">Mighty Capital's</a> debut fund, put it this way: "Money is money. It's nothing specific. It's really hard to say, 'You should take my money because it's more green that somebody else's.'"</p><p>The situation has created a shift in venture capital, where small-time investors are rewriting the playbook on how to land deals. Those who don't have the reputation or financial backing of the most established venture firms on Sand Hill Road are getting smarter, not richer, to compete with the fat funds sprouting up.</p><p>Some investors look to specialize by targeting a specific tech sector, which gives them a robust network of connections, domain expertise, and higher quality deal flow, because founders start to seek out those firms that aim to deliver more value for their buck.</p><h2>Knowledge is more valuable than money</h2><p>The first half of 2018 saw nearly $58 billion invested into venture-backed startups in the US, which is more than VCs deployed for the full year over six of the past 10 years, according to the <a href="https://nvca.org/research/venture-monitor/">National Venture Capital Association.</a> An estimated 300 new funds will close in 2018, which only adds to the opportunities for founders to raise.</p><p>In order to compete for spots in hot investment deals, investors are asking themselves why a founder should take their money over someone else's pile of cash. For some, it's about who they know.</p><p>For others, it's about their expertise.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/clara-brenner-dont-call-women-investors-girls-2018-7">Clara Brenner</a> and Julie Lein just raised $22 million for their debut fund to invest in startups solving important challenges for cities. Those companies are a tough sell for venture capitalists, because their products often require a lot of money to launch and they face regulatory hurdles from local authorities who prefer the status quo.</p><p><span>"We gravitate towards businesses operating in highly-regulated or politicized spaces. And we offer our companies a lot of hands-on support around these issues, which they'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere," Brenner told Business Insider.</span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Urban Innovation Fund</span></p><p class="caption">Julie Lein (left) and Clara Brenner are cofounders of Urban Innovation Fund, a venture firm that puts money into startups solving important challenges for cities.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The investors met as graduate students at MIT Sloan School of Management, where they studied the intersection of cities and entrepreneurship. They applied their knowledge of urban innovation as cofounders of an accelerator called Tumml, which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vc-investor-explains-why-she-backed-chariot-2018-8">made early investments in companies such as Chariot</a>, a private shuttle service that carries commuters where they need to go, and Neighborly, an <span>online investment platform for civic projects</span>.</p><p>Brenner and Lein helped shape some key policies inside Chariot, including the decision to hire locally and deploy shuttle buses in neighborhoods that are underserved by public transportation, in order to build goodwill in the community. In 2016, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-using-chariot-service-to-focus-on-enterprise-2018-1">Ford bought Chariot for $65 million,</a> creating a nice payout for Brenner and Lein, as well as investors, or LPs, in their urban innovation accelerator.</p><p>The investors are betting that their new firm, <a href="http://www.urbaninnovationfund.com/">Urban Innovation Fund,</a> will attract social-impact companies because of their domain expertise. They already have a track record for success: Chariot is thriving, while its Andreessen Horowitz-backed rival <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/29/the-last-bus-startup-standing-chariot/">shut down.</a></p><p>The decision to specialize was a no-brainer, according to Brenner.</p><p><span>"Specializing helps you stand out. For an entrepreneur, you are demonstrating passion and expertise for their business, which can make you a real value-add," Brenner said. "For an LP, you are offering them a portfolio that doesn't look like anyone else's, which can help them diversify. And, of course, building</span><span> a well-considered thesis can make you a stronger, more discerning investor."</span></p><h2>A laser-focused venture firm rises</h2><p>Many years ago, Ron Bouganim made a similar observation.</p><p>As the Canadian entrepreneur crawled through the process of becoming a US citizen, he saw that the government was ripe for innovation. In 2014, he launched a venture capital firm called <a href="http://govtechfund.com/">Govtech</a> to deploy capital into startups that aim to help governments be more responsive, efficient, and better able to serve society.</p><p>The firm only makes about four investments a year and is laser-focused on technology that modernizes the internal operations of government. This is not to be confused with civic technology, which supports the public's interaction with government, and is likely a better fit for Brenner and Lein's Urban Innovation Fund.</p><p>Govtech companies build software tools for government employees that improve how they deliver everything from foster care to law enforcement to food safety. The portfolio ranges from <a href="http://www.glimpsek12.com/">Glimpse</a>, which identifies and evaluates a school district's "eROI" (education return on investment) for every product, program, or strategy implemented in a classroom, to <a href="http://semalab.com/">Sema</a>, which transforms legacy software code maintenance for government software systems.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Melia Robinson/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Govtech is based in downtown San Francisco.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Matt Van Itallie, CEO of Sema, said he considered many venture capitalists when fundraising for his company.</p><p>"Our goal was to partner with a fund that truly understood the govtech market," Van Itallie <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/govtech-fund-raises-25-million-for-second-fund-launches-product-advisory-council-300662667.html?tc=eml_cleartime">said in a press release announcing Govtech's second fund.</a> "We're not just backed by the Govtech Fund's capital, but with the govtech ecosystem they have built."</p><p>Companies that have taken venture dollars from Govtech have relationships with over 20,000 government agencies, and according to Bouganim, the ecosystem adds 10 new agencies every day.</p><p>It's not uncommon for those startups to pitch their government partners on services provided by other companies in the Govtech portfolio. They share learnings with each other in the firm's Slack channel and on company offsites. Some entrepreneurs even come to work at Govtech HQ, a 4,000-square-foot office space in San Francisco that was designed for hosting speakers, lunch-and-learn programs, and salons with visiting government workers.</p><p>Bouganim said while he doesn't have the resources of a large, private equity fund with "a hundred staff members that are doing research" as if it had an "in-house consulting shop," he adds value in other ways with a close-knit portfolio of 19 companies.</p><p>"I don't think venture capital is different from any other business," Bouganim said, adding that when he advises his startups, he tells them, "'You need to have a large market opportunity, you need to have a differentiated product, and as you scale that product, you need to have competitive moat. If you don't build competitive moat, someone else will come along and probably displace you.'"</p><p>He went on, "So, when you just look at the basic principles of running a startup, why would that apply any differently in the world of venture capital?"</p><h2>Investors are more involved than ever </h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Michael Ajamian</span></p><p class="caption">SC Moatti says she has no interest in giving startups piles of cash. Anyone can do that, she says, and Moatti believes she has something more valuable than money to offer.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Most venture firms specialize to some extent in order to attract a certain type of company. Investors might choose to focus on a venture stage from pre-seed to growth, a geography, or a sector.</p><p>With so much money in venture, some investors say they have to do more than specialize in order to attract tier one startups.</p><p>"That's not how you stand out," said SC Moatti, the former Facebook executive who launched her own venture firm. "You stand out by the value you bring, not by saying, 'I do this and not that.' You stand out by saying, 'You should take my money because it really has a different color, because we give you access to Products That Count.'"</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mighty-capital-sc-moatti-facebook-exec-2018-7">Mighty Capital invests almost exclusively in product-driven startups</a> and differentiates itself from other growth-stage funds by giving its portfolio companies access to <a href="https://productsthatcount.com/">Products That Count,</a> one of the world's largest networks of product managers. It's helpful if a founder wants to hire product managers, sell to product managers, or get advice from insiders on building their companies at scale.</p><p>Moatti has figured out that social influence is what she brings to the table, beyond writing checks for between $500,000 and $1 million.</p><p>Mighty Capital makes mostly growth-stage investments, because Moatti said that's when the firm adds the most value for companies. The job of a product manager is to match a customer's problem with a solution in the form of a product. This is known as product-market fit, and it's an essential goal of growth-stage companies.</p><p>Some venture firms are building out programming and services to support the portfolio companies after they've invested. </p><p><a href="https://structure.vc/">Structure Capital,</a> a young venture firm in San Francisco, invests almost exclusively in sharing economy companies whose goal is to reduce waste. (The firm's founder, Mike Walsh, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-structure-capital-came-to-disrupt-the-sharing-economy-2018-5">seeded the fund with $300,000 worth of Uber stock</a> before the company blew up.)</p><p><span>According to Walsh, the firm's "special sauce" is a two-day bootcamp for portfolio companies that Structure Capital offers. </span><span>Entrepreneurs meet with advertising executives and brand strategists to craft their brand, through developing logos, idea videos, taglines, mission statements, and their overall brand strategy. This is especially important for sharing economy companies (think Airbnb and Uber) that rely on customers loving the brand to grow their businesses.</span></p><p>In Silicon Valley, it's the investors who are trying to impress.</p><p><span>"Almost always, we are the most hands-on investor our portfolio companies have," said Brenner of her new firm, Urban Innovation Fund. "As a team, we pride ourselves on being useful - with deck prep, fundraising support, or policy-related strategic planning. We take their calls and texts late at night, and we are always repping them to other investors."</span></p><p>According to Moatti, founders should expect nothing less when there's so much capital competing for investments.</p><p>"Most venture capital firms offer money and a network," Moatti said. "Well, if you've been in the Bay Area for long enough, we all have a little bit of money and a network."</p><p><span>"The fact that we give access to basically hundreds of thousands of potential hires, or hundreds of thousands of potential customers, that's really differentiated," she said.</span></p><h2>See also:</h2><ul><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-structure-capital-came-to-disrupt-the-sharing-economy-2018-5"><strong>One of the first investors in Uber and Salesforce shares how his blue-collar upbringing shaped how he invests his millions</strong></a></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mighty-capital-sc-moatti-facebook-exec-2018-7">A former Facebook executive explains why she's all done investing piles of cash, and giving startups something more valuable - social influence</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/clara-brenner-dont-call-women-investors-girls-2018-7">A VC who just raised $22 million to invest in startups reveals one thing you should never say to a female investor</a></strong></li></ul>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/drew-houston-dropbox-ceo-joins-founders-for-change-2018-3">Silicon Valley heavyweights are trying to fix the lack of diversity in tech - here's how</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

You Searched For "Uber logo confusion" and got 11 results

YouTube is turning pink: Times when logo redesigns failed to impress

Divyanshi Sharma

'Ghost' menu massacre: Virtual brands face a reckoning as Uber Eats slashes 8,000 from its app

Nancy Luna

Five things the Uber logo looks like instead of looking like an Uber logo

Poulomi Das

How the British behemoth Burberry became fashion's biggest fail of the year

Madeline Berg

My husband founded a startup. Then our marriage got weird.

Melia Russell

People keep getting their UberEATS takeaways delivered by couriers in Deliveroo uniforms

Sam Shead

Credit-card users have whispered about the 'Barclays blacklist' for years. Here's how I got on it.

J.K. Trotter,J.K. Trotter

A former Navy SEAL explains why companies are outsourcing in droves

Brandon Webb

DoorDash, a food delivery startup that's rumored to be raising at a $1 billion valuation, has some shady instructions for its delivery workers

Maya Kosoff

There's more money than ever being poured into Silicon Valley startups, so investors are getting smarter not richer to compete

Melia Robinson

The founders of Warby Parker reveal how they run a billion-dollar glasses brand with two CEOs, and why Amazon won't crush them

Alyson Shontell

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides