PayBright , startup that began at Furman University, grows in Raleigh

When Dustin Magaziner founded PayBright in 2012 while he was a student at Furman University, it was supposed to make “just a little money." It's done that – and much more......»»

Insider rounded up 15 of the world's wealthiest entrepreneurs searching for a solution to the predicament of mortality. Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, appears to be the latest tech entrepreneur dabbling in longevity.Lucy Nicholson/Reuters A growing number of the world's richest entrepreneurs are using their wealth to fight aging. They're taking supplements, abiding by austere fitness routines, and investing millions into longevity research. Insider rounded up a list of 15 entrepreneurs actively seeking the fountain of youth. Sam AltmanOpenAI's Sam Altman reportedly invested $180 million into a longevity startup called Retro Biosciences, according to MIT Technology Review.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersSam Altman is quickly establishing himself as a household name as the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. It's unclear what Altman's net worth is right now — his name doesn't appear on the well-known billionaire indexes maintained by Bloomberg or Forbes. However, OpenAI was reportedly valued at $29 billion in January after Microsoft confirmed plans to invest $10 billion into the company. Altman seems to be channeling some of his probable largesse into extending the human lifespan. MIT Technology Review reported that Altman invested $180 million into Retro Biosciences, a company with a mission to "add 10 years to healthy human lifespan," according to the company's site. Altman's investment in Retro Biosciences is among the "largest ever by an individual into a startup pursuing human longevity," MTR said. According to MTR, Altman believes that the world of longevity needs a "OpenAI-type effort." In other words, a major game-changer. Altman also said his personal anti-aging regimen includes "trying to eat healthy, exercise, sleep enough," and taking metformin, a diabetes drug that is increasingly being taken by Silicon Valley biohackers as a way to slow aging.Peter ThielPeter Thiel, who has a net worth of $7.93 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is a prominent backer of longevity research.Marco Bello/Getty ImagesTech billionaire Peter Thiel may be best known for co-founding companies like PayPal, Palantir Technologies and donating to Republican political candidates, but he's also funneled millions into the field of longevity research. In 2012, he told Insider, "There are all these people who say that death is natural, it's just part of life, and I think that nothing can be further from the truth." Thiel was an early investor in Unity Biotechnology, a company that develops drugs to target aging cells. In 2006, also pledged $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation, a nonprofit focused on anti-aging research by way of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. By 2017, he had boosted that investment to $7 million.He's reportedly signed up with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on cryonics, the practice of freezing of human corpses to stop the aging process. He's made several investments in biotechnology companies through the Thiel Foundation, and a handful through his venture firm, Founder Fund.   Larry EllisonOracle co-founder Larry Ellison, with a net worth of $101 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has donated millions to anti-aging research since 1997.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesInsider's Cadie Thompson reported that in 2003, Oracle founder Larry Ellison told his biographer, "Death has never made any sense to me. How can a person be there and then just vanish, just not be there?" Ellison has devoted millions over the years to fighting that mysterious phenomenon.In 1997, he founded the Ellison Medical Foundation, which "supports basic biomedical research on aging relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities," Insider reported based on its website. Until the foundation stopped funding new anti-aging research in 2013, approximately 80% of the $430 million in grants the foundation awarded to medical researchers were directed to the cause. By 2020, Vox reported that Ellison was disbanding the program entirely to refocus on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.  Larry PageGoogle co-founder Larry Page, has a net worth of $92 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and also helped launch anti-aging research firm Calico Labs.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIn 2013, Google co-founder Larry Page announced the launch of the California Life Company, more commonly known as Calico Labs.The goal of Calico Labs — which falls under the umbrella of Google's parent company, Alphabet— is to research aging and develop medicines to combat age-related diseases, according to its website.In 2014, Calico Labs began working with biopharmaceutical company, AbbVie, towards developing therapies against age-related diseases in an initiative that has received billions in investment. Calico Labs has also been credited recently as the forerunner to Altos Labs, a cell-rejuvenation startup that reportedly claims Jeff Bezos as an investor. However, Calico co-founder Bill Maris also told Insider in 2020 that he was "disappointed" with the lack of visible progress Calico has made in the field. Sergey BrinSergey Brin, with a net worth of $88.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has poured more than $1 billion into researching Parkinson's disease.Evan Agostini/Invision/APSergey Brin's interest in longevity research might be more personal than his fellow tech billionaires. In 2008, the Google co-founder revealed in a blog post that he had a genetic mutation that made him more susceptible to Parkinson's disease. Over the years, Brin has poured more than $1 billion into research on the disease, Forbes reported in December, citing people familiar with his philanthropy.Brin has also spearheaded several ventures devoted to stopping the aging clock. In addition to investing money into Calico Labs, he also announced in 2015 that Google's Life Sciences team would become an independent unit under Alphabet, and rebranded to Verily Life Sciences. It has since worked on wearable tech initiatives, like the Verily Study Watch, which aims to help people live a healthier life. Mark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg, with a net worth of $56.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, once told physicist Stephen Hawking he wanted to know what would enable humans to live forever.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesInsider's Cadie Thompson reported that in 2015, the late physicist Stephen Hawking asked Mark Zuckerberg about which big questions in science he sought answers to. Zuckerberg responded, "I'm most interested in questions about people. What will enable us to live forever? How do we cure all diseases? How does the brain work? How does learning work and how we can empower humans to learn a million times more?"One of the ways he might be answering those questions is through the Breakthrough Prize, a set of $3 million prizes give to "the world's top scientists working in the fundamental sciences – the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations," according to its website. Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are among a small crop of Silicon Valley elite who founded the prize in 2012, and continue to back it. In 2016— after he and Chan committed millions to curing infectious diseases through their philanthropic initiative, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative— Zuckerberg said, "by the time we get to the end of this century, it will be pretty normal for people to live past 100."  Sean ParkerSean Parker, with a net worth of $2.8 billion, according to Forbes, has donated millions into life sciences research.Miguel Villagran / GettySean Parker is widely recognized as co-founder of the file-sharing service Napster, and later, Facebook's first president. But he also struggles with life-threatening food allergies, and has dedicated millions into funding research in the life sciences. In 2015, he launched the Parker Foundation with an initial investment of $600 million. The goal of the foundation was to fund programs in life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement, Insider reported, following its launch. A year later, he founded the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, PICI, in order to "accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies to turn all cancers into curable diseases," according to its website.PICI has now created several research centers in partnership with the top institutes in the country including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Stanford Medicine, adding partnerships with the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco and Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2022, according to STAT.  Jack DorseyJack Dorsey, with a net worth of $6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has become known for a regimented health routine that includes fasting, meditation, and ice baths.Chesnot/Getty ImagesSome might call Jack Dorsey the former CEO of Twitter, or the current CEO of mobile payment company Block, once known as Square.Others, like New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles, call him the Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley. The metonym is the result of Dorsey's fastidious commitment to wellness. He has admitted to eating one meal per day, fasting on weekends, taking ice baths, waking up at 5 a.m. every morning, and meditating for two hours in order to optimize his cognitive performance. Dorsey said his regimented schedule came from the stress of running a company like Twitter. "When I went back to Twitter and took on the second job, I got super-serious about meditation and I got really serious about just dedicating a lot more of my time and energy to working out and staying physically healthy and looking more critically at my diet," Dorsey said, after taking helm of the platform again in 2015. "I had to. Just to stay above water." he added.  Jeff BezosJeff Bezos, with a net worth of $126 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is a reported investor in longevity research company Altos Labs.Anadolu Agency / Getty ImagesJeff Bezos is reportedly an investor in Altos Labs, a biotech startup with a goal "to restore cell health and resilience through cellular rejuvenation programming to reverse disease, injury, and the disabilities that can occur throughout life," according to its website. The company — which launched in 2022 — has already been incorporated in the US and UK, and has plans to establish institutes in more locations like the Bay Area, San Diego, Cambridge, UK and Japan, according to MIT Technology Review.Altos Labs is also, "recruiting a large cadre of university scientists with lavish salaries and the promise that they can pursue unfettered blue-sky research on how cells age and how to reverse that process," MTR reported. Yuri MilnerYuri Milner, with a net worth of $7.3 billion according to Forbes, is a known backer of longevity research company, Altos Labs.David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesYuri Milner is Russian-born billionaire who made his money as an early backer of Facebook and Twitter.According to MIT Technology Review, Milner and his wife Julia are also investors in Altos Labs.Milner has also made hefty donations to advancing scientific research in the years. The Milner's are backers of the Breakthrough Prize, a set of $3 million awards given to remarkable physicists, biologists, and mathematicians, that also claims supporters like Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki. In 2021, the Milky Way Research Foundation — a nonprofit sponsored by Milner according to MTR — gave out three-year grants of $1 million a year to longevity researchers. One of the projects examined a method of cellular reprogramming which might eventually "facilitate the discovery of novel anti-ageing genes and therapies," according to its abstract.   Dmitry ItskovDmitry Itskov, who was cited as a "Russian multimillionaire" by The New York Times, is on ambitious journey to rewire synthetic avatars with human personalities.AP Photo/Mary AltafferDmitry Itskov is the founder of the online media company, New Media Stars.But what he's really made headlines for is his quest for immortality.In 2011, Itskov launched a nonprofit called the 2045 Initiative. According to its website, through something called the "main science mega-project" the nonprofit: "Aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual's personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world's major spiritual traditions, science and society."Its goal, in other words, is to use technology to create avatars with hologram bodies and synthetic brains that will be rewired with human personalities.And it's all supposed to be completed by the year 2045. "This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive!" the site notes. David Murdock99-year-old David Murdock, with a net worth of $2.2 billion according to Forbes, hopes to live until 125.Patrick McMullan / Contributor/ Getty ImagesDavid Murdock, the former chairman of Dole, has a more modest request than other billionaires. The 99 year-old just wants to make to the age of 125. Murdock apparently became fixated on his health after losing his third wife to cancer, according to Insider's summary of a New York Times profile from 2011. His diet, as of 2011, was limited to seafood, egg whites, beans, nuts. He avoided dairy, red meat, and even salt, sugar, and alcohol. He lifted weights several times a week, took brisk walks on the treadmill, and tried to maintain a weight of 140 pounds, Insider noted. Aside from his personal routine, Murdock has also directed millions into scientific research on food science and nutrition. He's spent a reported $500 million on developing a public-private research center called North Carolina Research Campus, according to the NYT. The NYT described it as "a scientific center dedicated to his conviction that plants, eaten in copious quantities and the right variety, hold the promise of optimal health and maximal life span."  Robert G. MillerRobert G. Miller, with a net worth of $1.8 billion according to Forbes, has a reported interest in cryonics.Screenshot of Robert G. Miller from Forbes.com where the picture is credited to ASBED.COM/LUMISCULPTRobert Miller is a Canadian businessman who founded Future Electronics, a distributor of electronic equipment.  While Miller has largely maintained his distance from the press over the years, a Forbes story from 2014 mentions his interest in cryonics— the freezing of human bodies to restore life in the future. Miller is reportedly an investor in Alcor Life Extension, a nonprofit dedicated to cryonics, and intends to be cryo-preserved after his death, according to Fortune.Bryan JohnsonBryan Johnson, a 45-year-old biotech founder, hopes to rewind the clock of his body a few decades through a program he started, called Project Blueprint.Courtesy Dustin GiallanzaThe 45-year-old biotech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has the heart of 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lungs of a young adult, according to Insider's summary of a Bloomberg story from January 25.  Johnson seems to be reversing, or at least stopping, the aging clock through an intense regimen of exercise, diet, and daily supplements guided physician Oliver Zolman, who calls himself a  "rejuvenation doctor" Insider noted.The entrepreneur's daily routine starts at 5 am with a mouthful of supplements including lycopene, metformin, turmeric, zinc, and others, Insider noted.Johnson also maintains a vegan diet of solid and soft food that total up to around 1,977 calories a day, Insider noted. In 2021 alone he achieved a world record age reversal of 5.1 years, Insider noted. Anne Wojcicki23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, with a net worth of $300 million according to Forbes, is an investor in longevity startup, Gameto.Kimberly White / Getty ImagesAnne Wojcicki, founder of the genetic testing company 23andMe, is among a handful of women investing in the longevity space. While 23andMe is not explicitly focused on longevity the company's blog has several posts on the topic. Wojcicki — the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin — is both board member and along with Brin, backer of the Breakthrough Prize.In 2022, she also invested in the Series A round of Gameto, a biotechnology company with a mission to reprogram ovarian cells to slow down the aging in the ovary. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Retailers who use livestream typically broadcast between three to eight hours, and some Insider spoke with make $1,000 to $9,000 per stream. Livestream shopping is set to become a $25 billion market in the US in 2023, and it's been popular in China for over a decade.Dave J Hogan/Dave Hogan/Getty Images for Disney; Samantha Lee/Insider Small businesses and resellers are using livestream shows to personally connect with customers. Live shopping in the US is expected to become a $25 billion market in 2023. Our guide breaks down the top livestream platforms, how to get started, and tips from sellers. Vivian Nguyen is paying for college with squishy, plushy Kawaii-themed toys. Turns out, these cute Japanese characters are a lucrative side hustle.The San Francisco nursing student and influencer said she started on YouTube and sold her products on Mercari and eBay until she discovered Popshop Live, which launched in 2019. She became one of the first sellers on the livestream-shopping app, which allows viewers to buy the items they see on her stream in real time. In 2020, her business Cyndercake netted more than $60,000 in sales, which Insider verified with documentation. Livestream shopping has been popular in China for over a decade, where the industry was estimated to be worth $305 billion in 2021, up from $63 billion in 2019, according to Coresight Research. The experience has been compared to QVC, but it's much more personal than that — sellers speak directly to their audience, address each viewer by name, and tailor the show to questions asked in the chat. Pandemic-induced shutdowns accelerated the trend's ascension in the US, where Coresight Research estimated the market will be worth $25 billion in 2023.Poshmark is the latest tech company to tap into the trend. In September 2022, the resale platform launched a beta test of a new feature called Posh Shows, which allows selected resellers on the platform to host livestreamed shows and auction off items from their closets. Pending a $1.2 billion acquisition by Korean e-commerce company Naver, Poshmark hopes to enhance its livestream capabilities and become a leader in the live shopping space, a press release said.Experts say livestreams are the mall of the future, where people will go to shop, socialize, and be entertained. Retailers who use livestream typically broadcast anywhere from three to eight hours, and some Insider spoke with make $1,000 to $9,000 per livestream.Vivian Nguyen was one of the first sellers on the livestream-shopping app Popshop Live.Courtesy of Vivian NguyenFor small businesses, livestreaming brings products straight to customers' homes. But it's more than a live feed of your shop — it's about recreating the discovery of the in-person shopping experience and the personalized service of a friendly store associate. Done right, livestreams create a community of fans who look forward to gathering for your online events, respect your expertise, and are invested in your entrepreneurial journey.Use the table of contents below to navigate our guide on the best livestreaming platforms, success stories from expert streamers, and the gear you need to get started. How the top livestreaming platforms compareThere are several startups taking on the livestream market in the US, but a few apps in particular stand out in the ways they make this sales channel accessible to small businesses. Cindy Cortez is the owner of Newtown HQ, a retail store in New York. She uses Popshop Live to sell to customers around the country.Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins/InsiderPopshop Live: for independent retailersDan Dan Li initially founded Popshop Live as a peer-to-peer resale app, then revamped it in 2019 to become a livestream-shopping app catered to retailers and e-commerce businesses. In July, the startup announced a Series A funding led by Benchmark, valuing the company at $100 million. Individual investors included Sophia Amoruso, Hailey Bieber, and Kendall Jenner.Li told Insider the company had prioritized working with brick-and-mortar business owners because so many have been hit hard by the pandemic. Livestreaming has been a way for many sellers to reach a whole new breadth of online shoppers."Before Popshop, they talked to one customer at a time, and now they can talk to hundreds of customers at the same time," she said.Business owners need to fill out an application to become a seller on the app. Li did not disclose how applications are vetted, but Popshop Live is accepting more applications as the company's team grows, she said.Cost: Popshop Live takes a 9% commission on every sale. Screenshots of Vivian Nguyen's Friday livestream show on Popshop LiveJennifer Ortakales Dawkins/InsiderWhatnot: for collectorsWhatnot is like a millennial eBay catered to resellers and collectors. Founders Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head are collectors themselves and felt like their experience on eBay hadn't changed since the '90s."Selling is now happening on social media with things like live video or posting things on Instagram," LaFontaine told Insider. "eBay didn't have any of those tools, and even its existing tools weren't really well-optimized for buyers and sellers of collectibles." So in 2019, LaFontaine quit his job at Facebook, Head left his job at the sneaker-resale marketplace GOAT, and together they started Whatnot in hopes of modernizing online resale. Last year, the startup raised $4 million in seed funding.While anyone can shop on Whatnot, not everyone can sell on the app, so businesses have to apply for the wait list. The team then reviews applications and accepts established businesses with a good reputation and high sales volume on other platforms.   Cost: Whatnot takes an 8% commission on every sale.   Livescale: for Shopify users and luxury brandsFounded in 2016, Livescale started as a platform to help content creators with their livestreams. The company then began to explore adding shopping features, and the pandemic brought in dozens of brands looking to hold online live events while their customers couldn't shop in store. Last year, the company partnered with Shopify so that any business with a Shopify account could easily integrate live shopping events into their e-commerce site.Virgile Ollivier, a cofounder and the CEO of Livescale, told Insider livestream shopping would soon become just as important for brands as social-media marketing."Live shopping is the first step in what we call experiential commerce, that really huge space you have between retail and traditional e-commerce," he said.Cost: Livescale charges sellers a monthly subscription fee, depending on the scale of support they want. Plans for Shopify merchants start at $490 a month. And in the coming weeks, the company will be releasing a lower-tier plan for $100 a month.A reseller hosts a live shopping show on Poshmark.ScreenshotPoshmark: for resellersLaunched in 2011, Poshmark is a community-based platform where people can sell clothing and accessories straight from their closets. The company reported that it currently has more than 80 million registered users in the US.Poshmark's founder and CEO Manish Chandra previously told Insider that the future of retail is becoming more personal. "The intergenerational movement that resale has ignited is fueling the acceleration of social commerce at scale, delivering on consumers' need for connections and a newly awakened sense of community," he said. Cost: It's free to list items, then Poshmark charges a $2.95 fee for sales under $15 and takes a 20% commission on sales of $15 or more. There are plenty of other livestream-shopping platforms, like TalkShopLive, Ntwrk, and ShopShops, each with its own style and user experience. Explore them all to figure out which best fits your business needs.Livestream-shopping platforms pick up where Instagram falls shortApps focused solely on livestream shopping show a disconnect on traditional social-media platforms. Robert Valentine and Lisa Bosco have been reselling Funko Pop figurines — collectible bobbleheads of movie, show, and cartoon characters — on Facebook and Instagram since 2018 under their brand FunkoWhisperer. They said they turned to Whatnot when Instagram's live feature couldn't support their weekly live auctions. Robert Valentine and Lisa Bosco sell Funko Pops, among other collectibles, on Whatnot.Courtesy of Robert Valentine and Lisa BuscoInstagram Live has a slight delay in broadcast, which presents a difficulty in facilitating seamless conversation and sales with viewers. Comments don't appear on the screen in chronological order, hindering a truly authentic auction or preorder because the seller can't be sure who claimed a product first."Whoever we saw wrote 'claim' first, they would get the Pop," Bosco said. "But sometimes it would just be all over the place. It was crazy."Instagram also doesn't provide a way to connect livestreams to direct sales, so viewers aren't technically making a purchase until hours after the livestream. Valentine and Bosco manually wrote down who claimed each product, then they would direct-message the winner to get shipping information and collect payment through PayPal or Venmo. The whole process was time-consuming, and without any money on the line, they risked losing the sale if the winner backed out.Once they moved their auctions to Whatnot, it became a much-smoother and automated process. Livestreams, comments, and bids are broadcast in real time. So when they hold an auction, the winner instantly secures their purchase and gets charged directly through the app.What sellers need to be successfulThere are five main elements sellers need to be successful on livestream platforms, according to business owners who have made thousands of dollars in sales through livestreaming. Nguyen designed her own characters for merchandise in addition to the squishy and plushy toys she sells on Popshop Live.Courtesy of Vivian NguyenPersonality gets customers invested in supporting youLike YouTubers, livestream sellers should have an authentic personality and a presence that engages viewers. Nguyen suggests sellers get comfortable with being on camera and really displaying their personalities as much as the products."Sell yourself and your products in a way where people would be interested in supporting you and purchasing the products, not just for the item but also because of who you are as a person," she said.When Nguyen introduced an original set of characters for stickers and key chains, she told her viewers the story of how she designed them and where she got the inspiration."That's what made my viewers more in love with my brand," she said. She sold out of the merch within seconds. Expertise is key to gaining customers' trustNext, sellers' expertise is a major part of establishing trust and authenticity, and it goes beyond surface-level product knowledge. Most successful livestreamers are immersed in the same hobbies and interests as their customers. If you sell anime products, you should know the stories behind the characters. Or if you sell baseball cards, you should follow the sport and read up on baseball history. Viewers notice if you're truly passionate about the topic, and they may fall off if you don't know what you're talking about.Valentine recommends following the shows your customers are watching so that when something major happens in the latest episode of say, "Stranger Things," he knows he should sell Funko Pops of the show's characters that week."You gotta relate to the Pop that you're selling," Valentine said. "I know people — they'll sell things they can't even pronounce the name, and that kind of irks me."Create an environment where customers want to hangoutWhile the goal is to sell products, viewers expect a casual environment that feels like they've logged on to hang out with friends. Think of how a morning-talk-show host involves the audience, instead of just talking at them. The average livestream show runs from a few hours to a full eight-hour workday, so sellers need to be able to keep viewers interested. A good playlist in the background can also set the tone for viewers to linger."There's a lot of the same customers that come to our lives, and they stay the whole three to five hours," Bosco said."Sometimes they won't even buy anything — they'll just want to watch," Valentine added.Basic equipment will make your show look more professionalYou can start livestreaming without major equipment, but a few basics will elevate the quality of your show. First, you usually can't livestream without a phone or tablet, since most apps are not available for desktop. Plus, a handheld device is best for easily moving around your space. You'll also need a stable internet connection. If your WiFi is spotty, consider getting an extender to ensure your show won't lag or cut out.Next, a tripod will keep your phone stable and allow you to adjust the height and positioning. Look for a model that makes it easy to remove your phone when you want to switch to handheld mid-livestream. Cindy Cortez, the owner of Newtown HQ in New York, uses her tripod to quickly move around her store when viewers request to see specific products. She also switches to a smaller tripod when she wants to lay products out on a table.Depending on the product you sell, you may want to invest in some creative displays like shelves or stands. Valentine and Bosco use an automated turntable when they auction off Funko Pops so they can easily show all angles of the piece.  Finally, you'll want good lighting in your space so viewers can see products clearly. If you don't already have adequate lighting in your store or office, you can get a ring light or a couple of standing lights.Consistency and engagement keep customers loyalOnce you have all the basics, the rest comes over time with consistency. Most sellers livestream at least once a week, at the same time so their followers always know when to expect a show. They also use other social-media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to promote their shows and provide previews of the products they'll be showcasing. Building anticipation and demand behind a launch or event can also boost engagement, according to a WGSN report. "Always be consistent and active because your followers will notice," Nguyen said. "If they see you disappear for a couple of months, they kind of start to forget about you and wonder where you've been."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The Fatal Flaw Of The Renewable Revolution Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog, Ramping up wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles can’t solve our energy problem Renewables are hailed as a potential solution to the world’s energy problem, but it might not be as easy as simply installing more turbines or solar panels. Renewable tech is incredibly complex and requires a lot of support in order to function.  Increasingly complex energy solutions are undoubtedly powerful and promising, but in practice, they often result in more fuel use rather than less. Many people believe that installing more wind turbines and solar panels and manufacturing more electric vehicles can solve our energy problem, but I don’t agree with them. These devices, plus the batteries, charging stations, transmission lines and many other structures necessary to make them work represent a high level of complexity. A relatively low level of complexity, such as the complexity embodied in a new hydroelectric dam, can sometimes be used to solve energy problems, but we cannot expect ever-higher levels of complexity to always be achievable. According to the anthropologist Joseph Tainter, in his well-known book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, there are diminishing returns to added complexity. In other words, the most beneficial innovations tend to be found first. Later innovations tend to be less helpful. Eventually the energy cost of added complexity becomes too high, relative to the benefit provided. In this post, I will discuss complexity further. I will also present evidence that the world economy may already have hit complexity limits. Furthermore, the popular measure, “Energy Return on Energy Investment” (EROEI) pertains to direct use of energy, rather than energy embodied in added complexity. As a result, EROEI indications tend to suggest that innovations such as wind turbines, solar panels and EVs are more helpful than they really are. Other measures similar to EROEI make a similar mistake. [1] In this video with Nate Hagens, Joseph Tainter explains how energy and complexity tend to grow simultaneously, in what Tainter calls the Energy-Complexity Spiral. Figure 1. The Energy-Complexity Spiral from 2010 presentation called The Energy-Complexity Spiral by Joseph Tainter. According to Tainter, energy and complexity build on each other. At first, growing complexity can be helpful to a growing economy by encouraging the uptake of available energy products. Unfortunately, this growing complexity reaches diminishing returns because the easiest, most beneficial solutions are found first. When the benefit of added complexity becomes too small relative to the additional energy required, the overall economy tends to collapse–something he says is equivalent to “rapidly losing complexity.” Growing complexity can make goods and services less expensive in several ways: Economies of scale arise due to larger businesses. Globalization allows use of alternative raw materials, cheaper labor and energy products. Higher education and more specialization allow more innovation. Improved technology allows goods to be less expensive to manufacture. Improved technology may allow fuel savings for vehicles, allowing ongoing fuel savings. Strangely enough, in practice, growing complexity tends to lead to more fuel use, rather than less. This is known as Jevons’ Paradox. If products are less expensive, more people can afford to buy and operate them, so that total energy consumption tends to be greater. [2] In the above linked video, one way Professor Tainter describes complexity is that it is something that adds structure and organization to a system. The reason I consider electricity from wind turbines and solar panels to be much more complex than, say, electricity from hydroelectric plants, or from fossil fuel plants, is because the output from the devices is further from what is needed to fill the demands of the electricity system we currently have operating. Wind and solar generation need complexity to fix their intermittency problems. With hydroelectric generation, water is easily captured behind a dam. Often, some of the water can be stored for later use when demand is high. The water captured behind the dam can be run through a turbine, so that the electrical output matches the pattern of alternating current used in the local area. The electricity from a hydroelectric dam can be quickly added to other available electricity generation to match the pattern of electricity consumption users would prefer. On the other hand, the output of wind turbines and solar panels requires a great deal more assistance (“complexity”) to match the electricity consumption pattern of consumers. Electricity from wind turbines tends to be very disorganized. It comes and goes according to its own schedule. Electricity from solar panels is organized, but the organization is not well aligned with the pattern of consumers prefer. A major issue is that electricity for heating is required in winter, but solar electricity is disproportionately available in the summer; wind availability is irregular. Batteries can be added, but these mostly mitigate wrong “time-of-day” problems. Wrong “time-of-year” problems need to be mitigated with a lightly used parallel system. The most popular backup system seems to be natural gas, but backup systems with oil or coal can also be used. This double system has a higher cost than either system would have if operated alone, on a full-time basis. For example, a natural gas system with pipelines and storage needs to be put in place, even if electricity from natural gas is only used for part of the year. The combined system needs experts in all areas, including electricity transmission, natural gas generation, repair of wind turbines and solar panels, and battery manufacture and maintenance. All of this requires educational systems and international trade, sometimes with unfriendly countries. I also consider electric vehicles to be complex. One major problem is that the economy will require a double system, (for internal combustion engines and electric vehicles) for many, many years. Electric vehicles require batteries made using elements from around the world. They also need a whole system of charging stations to fill their need for frequent recharging. [3] Professor Tainter makes the point that complexity has an energy cost, but this cost is virtually impossible to measure. Energy needs are hidden in many areas. For example, to have a complex system, we need a financial system. The cost of this system cannot be added back in. We need modern roads and a system of laws. The cost of a government providing these services cannot be easily discerned. An increasingly complex system needs education to support it, but this cost is also hard to measure. Also, as we note elsewhere, having double systems adds other costs that are hard to measure or predict. [3] The energy-complexity spiral cannot continue forever in an economy. The energy-complexity spiral can reach limits in at least three ways: [a] Extraction of minerals of all kinds is placed in the best locations first. Oil wells are first placed in areas where oil is easy to extract and close to population areas. Coal mines are first placed in locations where coal is easy to extract and transportation costs to users will be low. Mines for lithium, nickel, copper, and other minerals are put in the best-yielding locations first. Eventually, the cost of energy production rises, rather than falls, due to diminishing returns. Oil, coal, and energy products become more expensive. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries for electric vehicles also tend to become more expensive because the cost of the minerals to manufacture them rises. All kinds of energy goods, including “renewables,” tend to become less affordable. In fact, there are many reports that the cost of producing wind turbines and solar panels rose in 2022, making the manufacture of these devices unprofitable. Either higher prices of finished devices or lower profitability for those producing the devices could stop the rise in usage. [b] Human population tends to keep rising if food and other supplies are adequate, but the supply of arable land stays close to constant. This combination puts pressure on society to produce a continuous stream of innovations that will allow greater food supply per acre. These innovations eventually reach diminishing returns, making it more difficult for food production to keep up with population growth. Sometimes adverse fluctuations in weather patterns make it clear that food supplies have been too close to the minimum level for many years. The growth spiral is pushed down by spiking food prices and the poor health of workers who can only afford an inadequate diet. [c] Growth in complexity reaches limits. The earliest innovations tend to be most productive. For example, electricity can be invented only once, as can the light bulb. Globalization can only go so far before a maximum level is reached. I think of debt as part of complexity. At some point, debt cannot be repaid with interest. Higher education (needed for specialization) reaches limits when workers cannot find jobs with sufficiently high wages to repay educational loans, besides covering living costs. [4] One point Professor Tainter makes is that if the available energy supply is reduced, the system will need to simplify. Typically, an economy grows for well over one hundred years, reaches energy-complexity limits, and then collapses over a period of years. This collapse can occur in different ways. A layer of government can collapse. I think of the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991 as a form of collapse to a lower level of simplicity. Or one country conquers another country (with energy-complexity problems), taking over the government and resources of the other country. Or a financial collapse occurs. Tainter says that simplification usually doesn’t happen voluntarily. One example he gives of voluntary simplification involves the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century. With less funding available for the military, it abandoned some of its distant posts, and it used a less costly approach to operating its remaining posts. [5] In my opinion, it is easy for EROEI calculations (and similar calculations) to overstate the benefit of complex types of energy supply. A major point that Professor Tainter makes in the talk linked above is that complexity has an energy cost, but the energy cost of this complexity is virtually impossible to measure. He also makes the point that growing complexity is seductive; the overall cost of complexity tends to grow over time. Models tend to miss necessary parts of the overall system needed to support a highly complex new source of energy supply. Because the energy required for complexity is hard to measure, EROEI calculations with respect to complex systems will tend to make complex forms of electricity generation, such as wind and solar, look like they use less energy (have a higher EROEI) than they actually do. The problem is that EROEI calculations consider only direct “energy investment” costs. For example, the calculations are not designed to collect information regarding the higher energy cost of a dual system, with parts of the system under-utilized for portions of the year. Annual costs will not necessarily be reduced proportionately. In the linked video, Professor Tainter talks about the EROEI of oil over the years. I don’t have a problem with this type of comparison, especially if it stops before the recent change to greater use of fracking, since the level of complexity is similar. In fact, such a comparison omitting fracking seems to be the one that Tainter makes. Comparison among different energy types, with different complexity levels, is what is easily distorted. [6] The current world economy already seems to be trending in the direction of simplification, suggesting that the tendency toward greater complexity is already past its maximum level, given the lack of availability of inexpensive energy products. I wonder if we are already starting to see simplification in trade, especially international trade, because shipping (generally using oil products) is becoming high-priced. This might be considered a type of simplification, in response to a lack of sufficient inexpensive energy supply. Figure 2. Trade as a percentage of world GDP, based on data of the World Bank. Based on Figure 2, trade as a percentage of GDP hit a peak in 2008. There has been a generally downward trend in trade since then, giving an indication that the world economy has tended to shrink back, at least in some ways, as it has hit high-price limits. Another example of a trend toward lower complexity is the drop in US undergraduate college and university enrollment since 2010. Other data shows that undergraduate enrollment nearly tripled between 1950 and 2010, so the shift to a downtrend after 2010 presents a major turning point. Figure 3. Total number of US full-time and part-time undergraduate college and university students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The reason why the shift in enrollment is a problem is because colleges and universities have a huge amount of fixed expenses. These include buildings and grounds that must be maintained. Often debt needs to be repaid, as well. Educational systems also have tenured faculty members that they are obligated to keep on their staff, under most circumstances. They may have pension obligations that are not fully funded, adding another cost pressure. According to the college faculty members whom I have talked to, in recent years there has been pressure to improve the retention rate of students who have been admitted. In other words, they feel that they are being encouraged to keep current students from dropping out, even if it means lowering their standards a little. At the same time, faculty wages are not keeping pace with inflation. Other information suggests that colleges and universities have recently put a great deal of emphasis on achieving a more diverse student body. Students who might not have been admitted in the past because of low high school grades are increasingly being admitted in order to keep the enrollment from dropping further. From the students’ point of view, the problem is that jobs that pay a sufficiently high wage to justify the high cost of a college education are increasingly unavailable. This seems to be the reason for both the US student debt crisis and the drop in undergraduate enrollment. Of course, if colleges are at least somewhat lowering their admission standards and perhaps lowering standards for graduation, as well, there is a need to “sell” these increasingly diverse graduates with somewhat lower undergraduate achievement records to governments and businesses who might hire them. It seems to me that this is a further sign of the loss of complexity. [7] In 2022, the total energy costs for most OECD countries started spiking to high levels, relative to GDP. When we analyze the situation, electricity prices are spiking, as are the prices of coal and natural gas–the two types of fuel used most frequently to produce electricity. Figure 4. Chart from article called, Energy expenditures have surged, posing challenges for policymakers, by two OECD economists. The OECD is an intergovernmental organization of mostly rich countries that was formed to stimulate economic progress and foster world growth. It includes the US, most European countries, Japan, Australia, and Canada, among other countries. Figure 4, with the caption “Periods of high energy expenditures are often associated with recession” is has been prepared by two economists working for OECD. The gray bars indicate recession. Figure 4 shows that in 2021, prices for practically every cost segment associated with energy consumption tended to spike. Electricity, coal, and natural gas prices were all very high relative to prior years. The only segment of energy costs that was not very out of line relative to costs in prior years was oil. Coal and natural gas are both used to make electricity, so high electricity costs should not be surprising. In Figure 4, the caption by the economists from OECD is pointing out what should be obvious to economists everywhere: High energy prices often push an economy into recession. Citizens are forced to cut back on non-essentials, reducing demand and pushing their economies into recession. [8] The world seems to be up against extraction limits for coal. This, together with the high cost of shipping coal over long distances, is leading to very high prices for coal. World coal production has been close to flat since 2011. Growth in electricity generation from coal has been almost as flat as world coal production. Indirectly, this lack of growth in coal production is forcing utilities around the world to move to other types of electricity generation. Figure 5. World coal mined and world electricity generation from coal, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. [9] Natural gas is now also in short supply when growing demand of many types is considered. While natural gas production has been growing, in recent years it hasn’t been growing quickly enough to keep up with the world’s rising demand for natural gas imports. World natural gas production in 2021 was only 1.7% higher than production in 2019. Growth in the demand for natural gas imports comes from several directions, simultaneously: With coal supply flat and imports not sufficiently available, countries are seeking to substitute natural gas generation for coal generation of electricity. China is the world’s largest importer of natural gas partly for this reason. Countries with electricity from wind or solar find that electricity from natural gas can ramp up quickly and fill in when wind and solar aren’t available. There are several countries, including Indonesia, India and Pakistan, whose natural gas production is declining. Europe chose to end its pipeline imports of natural gas from Russia and now needs more LNG instead. [10] Prices for natural gas are extremely variable, depending on whether the natural gas is locally produced, and depending on how it is shipped and the type of contract it is under. Generally, locally produced natural gas is the least expensive. Coal has somewhat similar issues, with locally produced coal being the least expensive. This is a chart from a recent Japanese publication (IEEJ). Figure 6. Comparison of natural gas prices in three parts of the world from the Japanese publication IEEJ, dated January 23, 2023. The low Henry Hub price at the bottom is the US price, available only locally. If supplies are high within the US, its price tends to be low. The next higher price is Japan’s price for imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), arranged under long-term contracts, over a period of years. The top price is the price that Europe is paying for LNG based on “spot market” prices. Spot market LNG is the only type of LNG available to those who did not plan ahead. In recent years, Europe has been taking its chances on getting low spot market prices, but this approach can backfire badly when there is not enough to go around. Note that the high price of European imported LNG was already evident in January 2013, before the Ukraine invasion began. A major issue is that shipping natural gas is extremely expensive, tending to at least double or triple the price to the user. Producers need to be guaranteed a high price for LNG over the long term to make all of the infrastructure needed to produce and ship natural gas as LNG profitable. The extremely variable prices for LNG have been a problem for natural gas producers. The very high recent prices for LNG in Europe have made the price of natural gas too high for industrial users who need natural gas for processes other than making electricity, such as making nitrogen fertilizer. These high prices cause distress from the lack of inexpensive natural gas to spill over into the farming sector. Most people are “energy blind,” especially when it comes to coal and natural gas. They assume that there is plenty of both fuels to be cheaply extracted, essentially forever. Unfortunately, for both coal and natural gas, the cost of shipping tends to be very high. This is something that modelers miss. It is the high delivered cost of natural gas and coal that makes it impossible for companies to actually extract the amounts of coal and natural gas that seem to be available based on reserve estimates. [10] When we analyze electricity consumption in recent years, we discover that OECD and non-OECD countries have had amazingly different patterns of electricity consumption growth since 2001. OECD electricity consumption has been close to flat, especially since 2008. Even before 2008, its electricity consumption was not growing rapidly. The proposal now is to increase the use of electricity in OECD countries. Electricity will be used to a greater extent for fueling vehicles and heating homes. It will also to be used more for local manufacturing, especially for batteries and semiconductor chips. I wonder how OECD countries will be able to ramp up electricity production sufficiently to cover both current uses of electricity and planned new uses, if past electricity production has been essentially flat. Figure 7. Electricity production by type of fuel for OECD countries, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. Figure 7 shows that coal’s share of electricity production has been falling for OECD countries, especially since 2008. “Other” has been rising, but only enough to keep overall production flat. Other is comprised of renewables, including wind and solar, plus electricity from oil and from burning of trash. The latter categories are small. The pattern of recent energy production for non-OECD countries is very different: Figure 8. Electricity production by type of fuel for non-OECD countries, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. Figure 8 shows that non-OECD countries have been rapidly ramping up electricity production from coal. Other major sources of fuel are natural gas and electricity produced by hydroelectric dams. All these energy sources are relatively non-complex. Electricity from locally produced coal, locally produced natural gas, and hydroelectric generation all tend to be quite inexpensive. With these inexpensive sources of electricity, non-OECD countries have been able to dominate the world’s heavy industry and much of its manufacturing. In fact, if we look at the local production of fuels generally used to produce electricity (that is, all fuels except oil), we can see a pattern emerge. Figure 9. Energy production of fuels often used for electricity production for OECD countries, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. With respect to extraction of fuels often associated with electricity, production has been closed to flat, even with “renewables” (wind, solar, geothermal, and wood chips) included. Coal production is down. The decline in coal production is likely a big part of the lack of growth in OECD’s electricity supply. Electricity from locally produced coal has historically been very inexpensive, bringing the average price of electricity down. A very different pattern emerges when the production of fuels used to generate electricity for non-OECD countries is viewed. Note that the same scale has been used on both Figures 9 and 10. Thus, in 2001, the production of these fuels was about equal for OECD and non-OECD countries. Production of these fuels has about doubled since 2001 for non-OECD countries, while OECD production has remained close to flat. Figure 10. Energy production of fuels often used for electricity production for non-OECD countries, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. One item of interest on Figure 10 is coal production for non-OECD countries, shown in blue at the bottom. It has been barely increasing since 2011. This is part of what is now tightening world coal supplies. I am doubtful that spiking coal prices will add very much to long-term coal production because truly local supplies are becoming depleted, even in non-OECD countries. The spiking prices are much more likely to lead to recession, debt defaults, lower commodity prices, and lower coal supply. [11] I am afraid that the world economy has hit complexity limits as well as energy production limits. The world economy seems likely to collapse over a period of years. In the near term, the result may look like a bad recession, or it may look like war, or possibly both. So far, the economies using fuels that are not very complex for electricity (locally produced coal and natural gas, plus hydroelectric generation) seem to be doing better than others. But the overall world economy is stressed by inadequate cheap-to-produce local energy supplies. In physics terms, the world economy, as well as all of the individual economies within it, are dissipative structures. As such, growth followed by collapse is a usual pattern. At the same time, new versions of dissipative structures can be expected to form, some of which may be better adapted to changing conditions. Thus, approaches for economic growth that seem impossible today may be possible over a longer timeframe. For example, if climate change opens up access to more coal supplies in very cold areas, the Maximum Power Principle would suggest that some economy will eventually access such deposits. Thus, while we seem to be reaching an end now, over the long-term, self-organizing systems can be expected to find ways to utilize (“dissipate”) any energy supply that can be inexpensively accessed, considering both complexity and direct fuel use. Tyler Durden Mon, 02/13/2023 - 05:00.....»»

Insider rounded up 14 of the world's wealthiest entrepreneurs searching for a solution to the predicament of mortality. Jeff Bezos is one among a handful of billionaires working to rewind the clock.Gareth Cattermole / Staff/ Getty Images A growing number of the world's richest entrepreneurs are using their wealth to fight aging. They're taking supplements, abiding by austere fitness routines, and investing millions into longevity research. Insider rounded up a list of 14 entrepreneurs actively seeking the fountain of youth. Peter ThielPeter Thiel, who has a net worth of $7.93 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is a prominent backer of longevity research.Marco Bello/Getty ImagesTech billionaire Peter Thiel may be best known for co-founding companies like PayPal, Palantir Technologies and donating to Republican political candidates, but he's also funneled millions into the field of longevity research. In 2012, he told Insider, "There are all these people who say that death is natural, it's just part of life, and I think that nothing can be further from the truth." Thiel was an early investor in Unity Biotechnology, a company that develops drugs to target aging cells. In 2006, also pledged $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation, a nonprofit focused on anti-aging research by way of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. By 2017, he had boosted that investment to $7 million.He's reportedly signed up with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on cryonics, the practice of freezing of human corpses to stop the aging process. He's made several investments in biotechnology companies through the Thiel Foundation, and a handful through his venture firm, Founder Fund.   Larry EllisonOracle co-founder Larry Ellison, with a net worth of $101 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has donated millions to anti-aging research since 1997.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesInsider's Cadie Thompson reported that in 2003, Oracle founder Larry Ellison told his biographer, "Death has never made any sense to me. How can a person be there and then just vanish, just not be there?" Ellison has devoted millions over the years to fighting that mysterious phenomenon.In 1997, he founded the Ellison Medical Foundation, which "supports basic biomedical research on aging relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities," Insider reported based on its website. Until the foundation stopped funding new anti-aging research in 2013, approximately 80% of the $430 million in grants the foundation awarded to medical researchers were directed to the cause. By 2020, Vox reported that Ellison was disbanding the program entirely to refocus on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.  Larry PageGoogle co-founder Larry Page, has a net worth of $92 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and also helped launch anti-aging research firm Calico Labs.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIn 2013, Google co-founder Larry Page announced the launch of the California Life Company, more commonly known as Calico Labs.The goal of Calico Labs — which falls under the umbrella of Google's parent company, Alphabet— is to research aging and develop medicines to combat age-related diseases, according to its website.In 2014, Calico Labs began working with biopharmaceutical company, AbbVie, towards developing therapies against age-related diseases in an initiative that has received billions in investment. Calico Labs has also been credited recently as the forerunner to Altos Labs, a cell-rejuvenation startup that reportedly claims Jeff Bezos as an investor. However, Calico co-founder Bill Maris also told Insider in 2020 that he was "disappointed" with the lack of visible progress Calico has made in the field. Sergey BrinSergey Brin, with a net worth of $88.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has poured more than $1 billion into researching Parkinson's disease.Evan Agostini/Invision/APSergey Brin's interest in longevity research might be more personal than his fellow tech billionaires. In 2008, the Google co-founder revealed in a blog post that he had a genetic mutation that made him more susceptible to Parkinson's disease. Over the years, Brin has poured more than $1 billion into research on the disease, Forbes reported in December, citing people familiar with his philanthropy.Brin has also spearheaded several ventures devoted to stopping the aging clock. In addition to investing money into Calico Labs, he also announced in 2015 that Google's Life Sciences team would become an independent unit under Alphabet, and rebranded to Verily Life Sciences. It has since worked on wearable tech initiatives, like the Verily Study Watch, which aims to help people live a healthier life. Mark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg, with a net worth of $56.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, once told physicist Stephen Hawking he wanted to know what would enable humans to live forever.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesInsider's Cadie Thompson reported that in 2015, the late physicist Stephen Hawking asked Mark Zuckerberg about which big questions in science he sought answers to. Zuckerberg responded, "I'm most interested in questions about people. What will enable us to live forever? How do we cure all diseases? How does the brain work? How does learning work and how we can empower humans to learn a million times more?"One of the ways he might be answering those questions is through the Breakthrough Prize, a set of $3 million prizes give to "the world's top scientists working in the fundamental sciences – the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations," according to its website. Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are among a small crop of Silicon Valley elite who founded the prize in 2012, and continue to back it. In 2016— after he and Chan committed millions to curing infectious diseases through their philanthropic initiative, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative— Zuckerberg said, "by the time we get to the end of this century, it will be pretty normal for people to live past 100."  Sean ParkerSean Parker, with a net worth of $2.8 billion, according to Forbes, has donated millions into life sciences research.Miguel Villagran / GettySean Parker is widely recognized as co-founder of the file-sharing service Napster, and later, Facebook's first president. But he also struggles with life-threatening food allergies, and has dedicated millions into funding research in the life sciences. In 2015, he launched the Parker Foundation with an initial investment of $600 million. The goal of the foundation was to fund programs in life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement, Insider reported, following its launch. A year later, he founded the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, PICI, in order to "accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies to turn all cancers into curable diseases," according to its website.PICI has now created several research centers in partnership with the top institutes in the country including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Stanford Medicine, adding partnerships with the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco and Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2022, according to STAT.  Jack DorseyJack Dorsey, with a net worth of $6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has become known for a regimented health routine that includes fasting, meditation, and ice baths.Chesnot/Getty ImagesSome might call Jack Dorsey the former CEO of Twitter, or the current CEO of mobile payment company Block, once known as Square.Others, like New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles, call him the Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley. The metonym is the result of Dorsey's fastidious commitment to wellness. He has admitted to eating one meal per day, fasting on weekends, taking ice baths, waking up at 5 a.m. every morning, and meditating for two hours in order to optimize his cognitive performance. Dorsey said his regimented schedule came from the stress of running a company like Twitter. "When I went back to Twitter and took on the second job, I got super-serious about meditation and I got really serious about just dedicating a lot more of my time and energy to working out and staying physically healthy and looking more critically at my diet," Dorsey said, after taking helm of the platform again in 2015. "I had to. Just to stay above water." he added.  Jeff BezosJeff Bezos, with a net worth of $126 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is a reported investor in longevity research company Altos Labs.Anadolu Agency / Getty ImagesJeff Bezos is reportedly an investor in Altos Labs, a biotech startup with a goal "to restore cell health and resilience through cellular rejuvenation programming to reverse disease, injury, and the disabilities that can occur throughout life," according to its website. The company — which launched in 2022 — has already been incorporated in the US and UK, and has plans to establish institutes in more locations like the Bay Area, San Diego, Cambridge, UK and Japan, according to MIT Technology Review.Altos Labs is also, "recruiting a large cadre of university scientists with lavish salaries and the promise that they can pursue unfettered blue-sky research on how cells age and how to reverse that process," MTR reported. Yuri MilnerYuri Milner, with a net worth of $7.3 billion according to Forbes, is a known backer of longevity research company, Altos Labs.David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesYuri Milner is Russian-born billionaire who made his money as an early backer of Facebook and Twitter.According to MIT Technology Review, Milner and his wife Julia are also investors in Altos Labs.Milner has also made hefty donations to advancing scientific research in the years. The Milner's are backers of the Breakthrough Prize, a set of $3 million awards given to remarkable physicists, biologists, and mathematicians, that also claims supporters like Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki. In 2021, the Milky Way Research Foundation — a nonprofit sponsored by Milner according to MTR — gave out three-year grants of $1 million a year to longevity researchers. One of the projects examined a method of cellular reprogramming which might eventually "facilitate the discovery of novel anti-ageing genes and therapies," according to its abstract.   Dmitry ItskovDmitry Itskov, who was cited as a "Russian multimillionaire" by The New York Times, is on ambitious journey to rewire synthetic avatars with human personalities.AP Photo/Mary AltafferDmitry Itskov is the founder of the online media company, New Media Stars.But what he's really made headlines for is his quest for immortality.In 2011, Itskov launched a nonprofit called the 2045 Initiative. According to its website, through something called the "main science mega-project" the nonprofit: "Aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual's personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world's major spiritual traditions, science and society."Its goal, in other words, is to use technology to create avatars with hologram bodies and synthetic brains that will be rewired with human personalities.And it's all supposed to be completed by the year 2045. "This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive!" the site notes. David Murdock99-year-old David Murdock, with a net worth of $2.2 billion according to Forbes, hopes to live until 125.Patrick McMullan / Contributor/ Getty ImagesDavid Murdock, the former chairman of Dole, has a more modest request than other billionaires. The 99 year-old just wants to make to the age of 125. Murdock apparently became fixated on his health after losing his third wife to cancer, according to Insider's summary of a New York Times profile from 2011. His diet, as of 2011, was limited to seafood, egg whites, beans, nuts. He avoided dairy, red meat, and even salt, sugar, and alcohol. He lifted weights several times a week, took brisk walks on the treadmill, and tried to maintain a weight of 140 pounds, Insider noted. Aside from his personal routine, Murdock has also directed millions into scientific research on food science and nutrition. He's spent a reported $500 million on developing a public-private research center called North Carolina Research Campus, according to the NYT. The NYT described it as "a scientific center dedicated to his conviction that plants, eaten in copious quantities and the right variety, hold the promise of optimal health and maximal life span."  Robert G. MillerRobert G. Miller, with a net worth of $1.8 billion according to Forbes, has a reported interest in cryonics.Screenshot of Robert G. Miller from Forbes.com where the picture is credited to ASBED.COM/LUMISCULPTRobert Miller is a Canadian businessman who founded Future Electronics, a distributor of electronic equipment.  While Miller has largely maintained his distance from the press over the years, a Forbes story from 2014 mentions his interest in cryonics— the freezing of human bodies to restore life in the future. Miller is reportedly an investor in Alcor Life Extension, a nonprofit dedicated to cryonics, and intends to be cryo-preserved after his death, according to Fortune.Bryan JohnsonBryan Johnson, a 45-year-old biotech founder, hopes to rewind the clock of his body a few decades through a program he started, called Project Blueprint.Courtesy Dustin GiallanzaThe 45-year-old biotech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has the heart of 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lungs of a young adult, according to Insider's summary of a Bloomberg story from January 25.  Johnson seems to be reversing, or at least stopping, the aging clock through an intense regimen of exercise, diet, and daily supplements guided physician Oliver Zolman, who calls himself a  "rejuvenation doctor" Insider noted.The entrepreneur's daily routine starts at 5 am with a mouthful of supplements including lycopene, metformin, turmeric, zinc, and others, Insider noted.Johnson also maintains a vegan diet of solid and soft food that total up to around 1,977 calories a day, Insider noted. In 2021 alone he achieved a world record age reversal of 5.1 years, Insider noted. Anne Wojcicki23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, with a net worth of $300 million according to Forbes, is an investor in longevity startup, Gameto.Kimberly White / Getty ImagesAnne Wojcicki, founder of the genetic testing company 23andMe, is among a handful of women investing in the longevity space. While 23andMe is not explicitly focused on longevity the company's blog has several posts on the topic. Wojcicki — the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin — is both board member and along with Brin, backer of the Breakthrough Prize.In 2022, she also invested in the Series A round of Gameto, a biotechnology company with a mission to reprogram ovarian cells to slow down the aging in the ovary. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Daniel Zahler spent 12 years in New York and was ready for a change. He moved to LA, where he enjoys the weather and says it's easier to meet people. Daniel Zahler realized New York didn't work for him anymore — so he left.Daniel Zahler Daniel Zahler is a healthcare consultant who previously worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. He spent 12 years in Manhattan, but moved to LA for a better quality of life — and he found it. Zahler struggled to find a community in the past and says it's easier to make friends in LA. When I told people I was moving from New York City to LA, these were the common reactions:Why — what's in LA?Did you join a cult?Are you gonna start putting avocado on everything?The short answer for why I decided to pack up and move across the country: I can live near the beach and work from anywhere. I work as an independent consultant, advising companies in healthcare, life sciences and medical technology. I didn't have a job tying me to New York. I finally made the move to LA in 2017.I had a realization. What I want out of a city is changing. New York doesn't work for me anymore. LA does.I got the full New York City experienceI lived in Manhattan for 12 years. I experienced the highs and lows of New York life, from 100-hour weeks at Goldman Sachs to all-day picnics in Central Park.As time went by, the stress of the city began to wear on me. I felt like the city was taking more out of me than I was getting from it. When I visited friends in LA, I noticed how much calmer I was. For me, New York was like a long-term relationship I'd stayed in too long. It was comfortable and familiar. I knew every inch of it. There was always something fun going on. I was addicted to the city's energy.Yet it wasn't fulfilling me. The crowded streets and honking taxis that once seemed enchanting now felt like an assault on the senses. I wasn't doing enough deep work. Nights out seemed repetitive and predictable. The sense of wonder I'd felt as a newcomer was gone.In 2015, I decided to sublet my West Village pad and spend the winter in Santa Monica. I had a blast. I went to beach yoga, did sunrise hikes, and sound bath meditations. I befriended my Airbnb hosts. They introduced me to their friends. LA went from being an attractive fantasy to a place where I could actually settle down and make a new home. Living in LA hasn't had a negative impact on my finances. Santa Monica is one of the priciest areas of California, but it's still cheaper than Manhattan. I was paying $4,000 a month for a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. Today I'm paying $3,000 a month for a spacious apartment in the heart of Santa Monica with amazing views of mountains and palm trees. There are three big misconceptions about LA1. You're always stuck in traffic.Yes, traffic is a problem in LA. But you can avoid it. And owning a car has become optional. Seriously!Uber has been a game changer. You can hop in a car and go anywhere you want. It's convenient and cheap ($20 gets you from Venice to West Hollywood).It's never been easier to get around LA. Don't let the traffic scare you.2. There's no good pizza.LA has become a great food city. New Yorkers, I'm here to tell you: You can get some amazing pizza in LA. Anyone who's been to Gjelina knows it. There's a Joe's Pizza by the Santa Monica Pier serving up a good replica of the New York original.LA is undergoing a food renaissance. It's easy to see why. Produce is fresher. Leases are cheaper. It's easier to try new restaurant concepts.Chefs today are calling LA "the best food city in America."3. Everyone there is shallow and vapid.LA is not just for people in "the industry." Yes, there are lots of Hollywood types. Fame is the town's chief currency. Throw a rock on Sunset and you'll hit at least one aspiring actor fresh off the bus from Iowa.Then there's the other LA. Spend time in Westwood, Silver Lake, Santa Monica. You'll meet designers, scientists, entrepreneurs. People who are ambitious and intent on changing the world.I've found that LA is a city of newcomers and outsiders. People in LA are more open-minded and adventurous. There's a sense that anyone you meet could be a future collaborator on a film, art project or startup. Rather than ask where you work, people in LA are more likely to ask: What are you working on?There's a real startup ecosystem blossoming in SoCal. Tech companies like SpaceX, Snap and Activision got started here. Silicon Valley heavyweights like Google, Tesla, and Netflix have major locations in SoCal. Top venture capital investors are moving to LA to support the next generation of high-growth tech companies. It's an exciting place to be.It's easier to make friends in LAI knew maybe 10 people in LA when I moved here a few years ago. Fast forward to today – I've hosted dinners for hundreds of people. I've been invited to speak at events all over the city.I made more friends in one year than I did in 10 years living in Manhattan.How did I do this? Isn't LA supposed to be a place where it's hard to make friends? A city where people worship at the altar of fame and social media but struggle to make real human connection?LA is not the easiest city to adjust to. The city can seem like a sprawling tangle of highways and strip malls. New York City is like a river, beating you relentlessly downstream. You need to be a strong swimmer to keep your head above water.LA is more like a lake. If you don't have a paddle, you can find yourself drifting aimlessly for months or years. It can be hard to find communities and plant roots. You need to go out of your way to hang out with people, build community and make friends.I made an effort to strike up conversations with people in my building. At Whole Foods. Soho House, Equinox, WeWork.I found it was easy to meet people simply by smiling and saying, "Hi! I'm Daniel. I just moved here from New York."They'd typically reply in one of 3 ways:"Oh really, why'd you move?""How do you like LA?""Cool, I used to live in New York, too!"Each week I discovered new communities:Mountain Gate, a monthly speaker series and dinner party with young professionals. Trybe, a group that organizes Shabbat dinners at gorgeous homes around LA. Summit, a group that organizes health and wellness retreats at beautiful Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah. REALITY Israel, a tech fellowship run by a global community of change-makers dedicated to tikkun olam, repairing the world.The best communities help you venture outside your comfort zone and experience something new. There's a sense of adventure. An element of unpredictability.A good community challenges you. It makes you feel you're part of something bigger than yourself, a greater cause. It gives you a sense of meaning and purpose.In LA, you can create your own small-town vibeFinding and participating in these communities has nourished me, sustained me, and inspired me. These communities have made me feel at home in LA.Living in NYC, I often struggled to find community. People were always scurrying between work and family obligations, power lunches and first dates. I met new people but didn't often form the close, intimate relationships of my college years.The key ingredient for the formation of friendships is repeated spontaneous contact. That's why we make friends in school — because we're forced into regular contact with the same people. It is the natural soil out of which friendship grows.I found one of the keys to LA survival is creating your own small-town vibe within the big city. Find a small community where you run into familiar faces.I run into friends every week in Palisades Park, or at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, aka the happiest place on Earth.It's nice to live in an extended community, to have people to rely on beyond family. It's nice to have bustling shared spaces where you can run into people you know without planning it beforehand.Seeking out former New Yorkers helped me build communityIn the summer of 2020 I created a group called "NYC in LA." I noticed how many New Yorkers were relocating to Southern California during the pandemic. I wanted to find a way to bring together New York expats and provide mutual support. So I made a group on WhatsApp and Facebook.The group has grown to over 500 people in the past two years. It's been an incredible source of community. Everyday people share events, local recommendations, and apartment listings. New friendships have been forged. We were even featured in The New York Times in April.We've started hosting NYC in LA meetups that regularly attract 50-60 people. We created a housing group for short-term sublets. We crowdsourced an "LA Cool List" – a collection of recommendations for local activities, hikes, date spots, coworking spots, workout studios, running and cycling groups.There's something special about bringing together New Yorkers in Southern California. New Yorkers are a distinct subculture. We all went through the same struggles: Finding an apartment, navigating the subway, dealing with the intensity of NYC life. It's like running into someone who attended the same college. You have stuff in common. There's a shared background.In a way, it's ironic that I moved all the way across the country to end up hanging out with a bunch of New Yorkers. But I love it. Combining the people of New York with the weather and lifestyle of Southern California – for me, it's the best of both worlds.I've met dozens of people through NYC in LA. Nothing makes me happier than introducing LA newcomers to new friends, giving them tips and helping them settle in. I know how hard it is to feel at home in a new city. I've been there.One member told me: "I'm incredibly grateful for this group. Virtually all the people I've met and bonded with in LA have stemmed from NYC in LA!"There's still no place like New YorkPeople always ask me which city I prefer, New York or LA. It's an impossible question. The two cities are so different. The short answer is that NYC has the most amazing people, and LA has the best quality of life – sunny skies 300 days a year, beautiful parks and the beach and great hiking spots. Stress levels are lower. Everything is just easier.Summers in Santa Monica are amazing: there are beach gatherings and outdoor concerts. In the winters, the weather rarely drops below 50. The ocean is cold, but the sunsets are still incredible. You can go to the beach in December and have picnics in February.I used to be one of those New York snobs who looked down on LA. I'll always be a New Yorker at heart, but I've grown to love LA, too.I travel to New York 4 or 5 times a year. I love NYC in September, when the weather is great and people are back from their summer getaways. October in the city is gorgeous — the leaves are changing and you feel the magic of autumn in the city. Springtime is great, too: I spend as much time in New York as I can in May and June.New York City is unrivaled in its energy and diversity and is the major league of cities — truly world-class. The best restaurants, bars, culture and nightlife are all there. I love its vibrancy and its unplanned serendipity. You never know where the night will take you.But you also need to have something going for you to make it there. It's not an easy place to live. The people you meet are exceptional – brilliant, attractive, ambitious professionals from around the world who inspire you to achieve more.Living in New York was like graduate school for me. I learned a lot about the world and about myself. Living in the city toughened me up. It made me more resilient.Making a great life in a new city is all about making the effort to talk to strangersNow that I've lived in LA for a bit, I try to share my lessons with other newcomers to the city.I tell them it's easy to meet new people at co-working spaces and cafes. There's a great mix of entrepreneurs, artists, and other professionals. They have regular events & happy hours. Or you can just go up to someone and ask what they're working on.Search for local interest groups on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram. It could be a book club, language exchange, hiking or biking group: These are all good places to meet people.Airbnb Experiences are also a great way to explore a new area and meet people. I signed up for a group hike in Griffith Park and a walking tour of Melrose street art.In neighborhoods like Silver Lake and Venice there's more of a small-town vibe. It's easy to meet people at cafes and ask for local tips and places to check out.People are more approachable during the day, when the sun is shining. Don't be afraid to put down your phone and talk to a stranger. That's how people met before the internet!Daniel Zahler is a healthcare consultant based in Santa Monica, California.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

A real-world experiment of 33 companies found that productivity, revenue, and employee well-being improved with a four-day workweek. More companies are finding success with the four-day workweek. A recent trial of 33 companies had overwhelmingly successful results.Arif Qazi/InsiderA real-world experiment just proved that we should all shift to a four-day workweekThe results are in: It's time for your company to stop working on Fridays (or Mondays).The latest, perhaps most convincing evidence yet for the shift to a four-day workweek comes from a six-month trial which began in February 2022 in which 33 companies with employees in six countries decreased their employees' workload to four days, or 32 hours, a week. Organized by 4 Day Week Global, the real-world experiment sought to see whether the employees could be just as productive in 80% of the time — all for the same pay. The results were overwhelmingly positive: Companies in the program reported increased revenue and improved employee health and well-being, and had a positive impact on the environment. And after the success, a hundred more companies that together employ thousands of people are considering or are already implementing the same approach.So if you've ever tried to persuade your boss to shift to a four-day workweek, this is the best evidence yet that it can work. The results of the new report were unequivocal: The four-day workweek was better for everyone.'It probably sounds crazy, but it works' At the outset of the trial, employees at Soothing Solutions, a Dundalk, Ireland-based company that makes cough lozenges for children, were skeptical that a four-day working week would be feasible, let alone profitable. But the founders Sinéad Crowther and Denise Lauaki had high hopes. When the company was founded in 2017, the duo wanted to establish a people-focused culture, so when Crowther learned about 4 Day Week's program in 2021, she saw it as a way to attract and retain talent.Since Soothing Solutions hired its first employees last year, no staff members have left the company, and Crowther told me the anecdotal feedback about the four-day week had been so glowing that it almost moved her to tears. "One of our employees has an elderly parent who was terminally ill, and she got to spend three, four days a week with them," she told me. "She said nothing can give her that time back. She wouldn't have got to do that in any other job." Another worker has been able to pursue her passion for photography in her time off, Crowther said, adding that "it turns out, she's a fantastic photographer!"Because Soothing Solutions started operations using the four-day week, the founders don't have anything to compare their business growth to, but Crowther isn't worried about any negative impact a four-day week might have on business, even as the company grows. When we spoke, Soothing Solutions had just launched on Amazon and had its first UK sale. Its products are available in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Scotland, with plans to expand further. "We have absolutely no concerns," she said. "It probably sounds crazy, but it works."4 Day Week Global is a nonprofit community platform that promotes the four-day workweek by helping companies implement it and by funding research into the future of work. The organization was established after the success of a landmark trial program at its cofounder Andrew Barnes' New Zealand company Perpetual Guardian. To conduct trials at companies and analyze their results, the group has partnered with academics at Harvard Business School, Oxford University, and the University of Pennsylvania.The four-day-week movement has been gaining momentum on the heels of the Great Resignation and the push from employees to rethink the way we work. The tech startup Bolt became the first unicorn to trial it in 2021, finding it so successful that it implemented it after three months. Other trials of shorter weeks have found success as well: A 2021 trial in Iceland found positive results, and a 2019 research paper by Henley Business School found that two-thirds of businesses operating on a four-day week saw employee productivity increase. There is some pushback, though. A shorter week could mean employees' workload increases each day, causing more stress rather than less. For companies that experience significantly busier periods around holidays or during the summer, it may not be possible to extend the program across the whole year. And many companies, such as banks or insurance companies that require around-the-clock customer service or news organizations that follow a 24-hour news cycle, aren't able to shutter for even one day each week. But in those cases, companies could approach the four-day week the way they already handle weekends: Simply arrange teams' schedules so there are always people working.No downsidesThe ongoing push for a four-day workweek isn't the first time there's been a movement to upend the traditional model of work. Until 1926, the standard US workweek lasted six days. Then, Henry Ford reduced the workweek at his namesake company down to five days. He believed an extra day off would increase workers' productivity and give workers more leisure time to spend more money — hopefully on Ford cars. The trend caught on, and, after organizing by workers in favor of the shift, the Fair Labor Standards Act set the standard for the workweek at 44 hours; an amendment in 1940 set the now-standard 40-hour week. Fast forward to today, and our norms appear ripe for a shake-up once again.Barry Prost, a cofounder of the Irish company Rent a Recruiter, a specialist talent-acquisition service, took part in the six-month 4 Day Week trial with the goal of addressing staff turnover — a problem for many businesses since the coronavirus pandemic. When the pandemic began, Rent a Recruiter was already moving to a permanent remote-work model, and after hearing about the program the company decided to try the four-day week as well. To Prost, it was particularly important to ensure the switch didn't hurt clients. Despite these reservations, Prost told me that not only had customers been supportive of the modified schedule, but some had even asked about implementing the policy themselves.Crucially, the new approach has brought huge gains to the small startup, which employs 20 people. Over the six-month trial period, Rent a Recruiter doubled its gross profits and calculated that its staff's productivity doubled over that time as well. And though it wasn't the initial motivation, Prost told me the benefits had shown up in more than just the company's bottom line. "Anecdotally, we have a manager who's also a psychotherapist — she's now able to spend more time on her therapy practice," he said. "We've got mums and parents who are able to drop off and pick up their kids on a Friday, which they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise."While staff well-being and retention are important, the trial also was associated with a revenue boost among the participating companies. Among the 16 companies in the trial that provided revenue data, combined revenue for the companies, weighted by size, increased by 8.14%, which for some companies was nearly 40% higher than revenue growth during the same six-month period of the previous year.The companies that took part in the trial have reported almost no downsides. None of the 27 companies that filled out a final survey for participants said they had any plans to return to a five-day week. And nearly all of the 495 employees involved in the trial wanted to maintain the four-day working week. According to the post-trial surveys, everyone from CEOs and managers to junior employees noticed far-reaching benefits, and a new UK-wide trial is now underway.Fewer work hours may also help the environment and gender inequalityWhile adopters of a four-day workweek might be primarily seeking a business impact — in revenue or employee well-being — there could also be less-obvious benefits.For one thing, less time working correlates with lower carbon emissions — people are commuting less, and businesses use less energy. The 4 Day Week trial found that participants spent an hour less time commuting than before the trial. And as Orla Kelly, an environmental sociologist at University College Dublin who was the lead researcher for the 4 Day Week trial, told me, the shorter workweek also helps people make more pro-environmental choices. "When people are working longer hours, they tend to be in this kind of work-spend cycle where consumption patterns tend to be quite intensive," Kelly said. With less free time, people are more likely to buy food in disposable plastic packaging, drive to work instead of walking or taking public transportation, and spend more money on material goods. Kelly tells me that because this is hard to measure, the research is still in its early stages, but she hopes to dive deeper into the idea and provide more concrete evidence of the environmental benefits of a shorter working week.A four-day week also provides vast improvements in well-being, life satisfaction, and sleep for women. Since women tend to take on more caring responsibilities, the extra day off work was most beneficial for them, allowing the extra load of emotional labor to be spread more evenly. In Ireland, where many of the companies in the trial were based, 70% of part-time workers are women. "Women tend to often be in jobs that pay less, so they tend to be the ones that move to part time, even if they don't want to," Kelly told me. In the past few years especially, women have been leaving the workforce in droves, or cutting back hours, over burnout or a lack of childcare options. "This can be problematic for their long-term career trajectory, their pension contributions, and the dynamics of power within the household," Kelly said. Cutting back working hours for everyone helps women stay in their full-time jobs and not feel as if they're getting pushed out of the workforce. It's unlikely that the world will shift to a four-day week overnight, but the trial produced real benefits and found it's possible for many different kinds of corporations, as long as they are willing, to make the change. As companies continue to grapple with attracting and retaining staff, the four-day week could be a relatively simple solution. And after the latest trial, there aren't many excuses not to try it out.Molly Lipson is a freelance writer and an organizer from the UK.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to keep his personal life out of the spotlight, rarely if ever discussing his children or relationships. Russian President Vladimir and his now ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva.Sergey Ponomarev/AP Russian President Vladimir Putin has at least two daughters he rarely talks about. He has two adult daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva: Maria, 37, and Katerina, 36. He may have one more daughter with his rumored girlfriend Alina Kabaeva, and another with a mistress. Russian President Vladimir Putin is famously secretive about his personal life, and has fought hard to prevent the media and the world from knowing much about his family.Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, on Sunday, April 24, 2022.AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, FilePutin has long made a concerted effort to shield his children from the spotlight.He has rarely publicly acknowledged his children, though media outlets have for years speculated and reported about the two daughters he had with his ex-wife.Further reports center around rumors that two extramarital affairs may have produced another two daughters.Putin's family affairs are so secretive that reports of the second marriage of one of his daughters only emerged in April this year thanks to investigative reporting published at least eight years after they reportedly got together. But as international pressure mounts on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, sanctions have closed in on his personal networks — and in particular, his children and rumored girlfriends.One daughter from his first marriage, Katerina Tikhonova, has been entrusted with a key job overseeing import substitutions as Russia reels under sanctions.And in August, the US government sanctioned ex-gymnast Alina Kabaeva — with whom Putin is rumoured to have had two children.Here is what we know about the lives of Putin's secret kids and partners.Pat Ralph contributed reporting to previous versions of this article, which has been updated with new information.Putin had two daughters in his first marriage to former flight attendant Lyudmila Shkrebneva, to whom he was married for three decades until their divorce in 2013.APSources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Business InsiderTheir daughter's names are Maria and Katerina. Maria was born in Leningrad in 1985, and Katerina was born in Germany in 1986 when the family lived there during her father's time in the KGB.Maria and Katerina Putin, from their father's personal archive.ReutersSources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, NewsweekBoth girls are named after their grandmothers. Maria's nickname is Masha and Katerina's nickname is Katya.Putin's father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, and his mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova.KremlinMasha and Katya are common Russian shortenings for Maria and Katerina.Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, NewsweekWhen the family moved to Moscow in 1996, the girls attended a German-language school. The children were reportedly removed from school when Putin became acting president, and teachers educated them at home.Then-acting President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila applaud during a concert after an award ceremony in Gudermes on January 1, 2000.REUTERSSource: Newsweek"Not all fathers are as loving with their children as he is," Lyudmila said in an undated quote on Putin's government website. "And he has always spoiled them, while I was the one who had to discipline them."Vesti.ru screengrabSource: Vladimir PutinBut as Putin gathered political power, his children saw him less and less, according to one of his early biographers.Then-Acting Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks to the media after a meeting in the Duma, Russian parliament's lower house, in Moscow, 12 August 1999.STR/AP POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesHis first official biographer, Natalya Gevorkyan, interviewed him and his family in 1999.The family was soon isolated and surrounded by security after Putin became prime minister for the first time, she told the BBC.His daughters told her that they admired their father and were proud of him, but it appeared they didn't get to see him much, she said.Putin's marriage may also have been loveless. Lyudmila "was not a happy woman" and Putin wouldn't "hold" her, his biographer said.Then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila pray during an Orthodox Easter service in Moscow in 2011 in Moscow.Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images"I understood that [Lyudmila] was not a happy woman. She was not," the biographer Gevorkyan told the BBC, speaking of her interviews conducted in 1999.Gevorkyan said she had the impression Putin did not love her. She recalled Lyudmila as saying: "There are women who are admired by men, I think I am not that kind of woman. He will not hold me in his hands."Gevorkyan said Lyudmila's tone was "more with respect" to her husband."I had the feeling that she really loved him," she added. "And I had a feeling that she was not that much loved back. I didn't have the feeling that it was a successful marriage for her."Putin and Lyudmila announced their divorce in 2013, the BBC reported.Maria studied biology in college and went to medical school in Moscow, while Katerina majored in Asian Studies in college. Both girls attended university under false identities.Putin and wife Lyudmila arrive at the airport in Rostock-Laage, Germany, on June 6, 2007.Alexander Hassenstein/Getty ImagesSources: Reuters, NewsweekMaria, now 37, is a medical researcher. According to reports, she married Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen, although it's unclear exactly when.APSources: Reuters, Newsweek, BloombergMaria and Faassen reportedly have a child — Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone in 2017 that he was a grandfather. When Stone asked if he played with his grandchild, Putin replied: "Very seldom, unfortunately.""The Putin Interviews" was a four-part series that premiered on Showtime in May 2017.ShowtimeSources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily MailMeanwhile, Katerina reportedly lives a high-flying life, living in lavish apartments and acquiring a fortune.Russian President Vladimir Putin makes a toast during an award ceremony in the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia, on December 28, 2017.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool Photo via APSources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily MailKaterina, now 36, is an accomplished acrobatic dancer and has a senior position at her alma mater, Moscow State University, heading a $1.7 billion startup incubator.Katerina Tikhonovna, daughter of Vladimir Putin, dancing.Jakub Dabrowski/ReutersTikhonova's performance in a 2013 rock 'n' roll dance competition in Winterthur, Switzerland, can be seen here: Sources: Reuters, BloombergKaterina married Russian billionaire Kirill Shamalov in 2013. Their wedding was a lavish affair at the Igora resort in Leningrad.Kirill Shamalov, the former husband of Putin's daughter KaterinaReuters/Kommersant Photo/Dmitry DukhaninThe wedding was highly secure and included a laser show, an ice-skating display, and a mock Russian village, according to Reuters. Sources: Reuters, The Guardian   Shamalov prospered during the marriage, racking up lucrative business interests. By the time he and Katerina split in 2018, the divorce papers revealed they were worth $2 billion.Russian President Putin visits "Voronezhsintezkauchuk" plant, part of the SIBUR company, in Voronezh. Shamalov is pictured at the right of the group.Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/Kremlin via ReutersSources: Reuters, BloombergFlight records suggest that in 2017, Katerina had begun a clandestine relationship with German ballet star Igor Zelensky and had a daughter with him.Igor Zelensky the father of Katerina's child pictured, in 2014. In 2016 he became director of the Bavarian State Ballet.Tobias Hase/picture alliance via Getty ImagesZelensky has served as the director of the Bavarian State Ballet and the Munich State Ballet. Sources: Important Stories, Der SpiegelKaterina secretly flew to Munich more than 50 times to see Zelensky between 2017 and 2019, with their daughter in tow.Igor Zelensky on stage in 2018 in Munich, Germany.Gisela Schober/Getty ImagesThe relationship was revealed by a 2022 investigation from Important Stories and Der Spiegel that examined Katerina's flight records, showing that she traveled with members of Putin's presidential secret service.Meanwhile, Maria Vorontsova split with Faassen and had a child with businessman Evgeny Nagorny, independent Russian media reported. A post shared by Barkli_rus (@barkli_rus)  Nagorny — who formerly showed an interest in opposition politics — has been flying around the world with Vorontsova since at least 2016, according to a joint investigation by Russian outlets Meduza and Current Time.They had a child together, and Nagorny became the manager of major gas company Novatek, the outlets reported. In 2020, per the outlets, Nagorny bought a luxury Moscow apartment in the building pictured above.  Sources: Meduza, Current Time.There are no official current photos of the women. For Katerina, we found the slightly varying first names of "Katerina", "Katya", and "Yekaterina," and the last names "Putina," "Tikhonova," and "Shamalov."Katerina Tikhonova (L), daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, dances with Ivan Klimov during the World Cup Rock'n'Roll Acrobatic Competition in Krakow, Poland, on April 12, 2014.REUTERS/Jakub DabrowskiSources: Reuters, NewsweekThere are rumors that Putin has a third daughter with girlfriend and former Russian rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva.Putin greets rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva during a meeting with candidates to the Russian Olympic team for the 2004 Summer Olympics, at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, outside Moscow, on March 10, 2004.REUTERS/Pool ASSource: New York PostNeither the child nor the relationship with Kabaeva have been confirmed.Putin smiles next to Russian gymnast Alina Kabaeva during a meeting with the Russian Olympic team at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on November 4, 2004.REUTERS/ITAR-TASS/PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICESource: Business InsiderReports have also surfaced that a former cleaning lady, Svetlana Krivonogikh, had an affair with Putin and suddenly moved into one of St. Petersburg's wealthiest neighborhoods.An aerial view of St Petersburg's prestigious Birch Alley, where one of Putin's rumored mistresses was reported to live.Google EarthIndependent Russian outlet Proekt reported that the pair had a close friendship between the late 1990s and the end of the 2010s, which resulted in a daughter.In that time, Krivonogikh went from a former cleaning lady to the billionaire owner of one of Putin's favorite ski resorts, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.Krivonogikh's daughter, born 2003, is called Elizaveta Vladimirovna Rozova, and also goes by Luisa. Identity papers do not indicate a father, but her middle name means "daughter of Vladimir." She has not confirmed any relationship.A Google Earth image of St Petersburg's elite Birch Alley complex.Google EarthThe Proekt investigation remarked on Elizaveta's "phenomenal resemblance" to Putin and many connections between the president and her mother, but no relationship has been proven.In an interview with Russian GQ, Elizaveta's face was not depicted. When asked whether she looked like Putin, she agreed, but said "there are a lot of people similar to Vladimir Vladimirovich," using an alternative, respectful name for Putin.Putin has tried to shelter his children from the media, attempting to keep them out of politics.Dennis Grombkowski/Getty ImagesSources: Reuters, Business InsiderDespite this, Katerina made her debut on Russian state TV as a biotechnology expert in December 2018.Katerina Tikhonova (R) on Rossiya 1 on December 7, 2018.Rossiya 1Source: Business InsiderHer appearance did not include comments on her being related to Putin. The link was briefly made public in the course of a dance competition, but later retracted.Katerina Tikhonova (L) and Vladimir PutinREUTERSSource: ReutersIn June 2021, Katerina addressed a conference that's considered Russia's equivalent of Davos — but nobody called her Putin's daughter, apparently out of fear of reprisal from the Kremlin.Katerina Tikhonova, deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University, on screen taking part in a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 4, 2021.Evgenia Novozhenina/ReutersSource: Washington PostIn late 2020, Putin announced Russia had finished its COVID-19 vaccine, although it had yet to complete clinical assessments. Putin said he gave the shot to one of his daughters, but wouldn't specify which one.Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, on August 11, 2020.Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERSSources: Business Insider, BBC, PoliticoIn February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting condemnation from around the world. Three weeks later an activist filmed himself inside what he said was a Biarritz apartment owned by Katerina's ex-husband, saying he wanted to host Ukrainian refugees there.An image showing an activist flying a Ukrainian flag from the balcony of a villa linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Biarritz, France.Russia TodaySources: Insider, The InsiderIn April, the US sanctioned Maria and Katerina, saying that they had "enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people."Getty/ReutersA White House statement said: "This action cuts them off from the US financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States." The US announcement also contained more details about their work, saying that it has close ties to the Kremlin. Tikhonova's work supports Russia's government and defense industry, while Vorontsova's genetics research programs are personally overseen by Putin, the White House said.The main building of the Moscow State University. As of 2021, Tikhonova was deputy director of its Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex SystemsAlexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty ImagesSource: ABC NewsThe US said it believed the women were hiding assets for Putin, which was its rationale for sanctioning them. The Kremlin expressed confusion over the decision, suggesting it was anti-Russian.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images"We believe that many of Putin's assets are hidden with family members and that's why we're targeting them," a senior official at the Biden administration said, according to ABC News.Putin's top spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin found the decision "difficult to understand" and framed it as part of a "rabid" Western animosity towards Russia.The UK quickly followed suit with a raft of sanctions on Maria and Katerina, among others in Putin's inner circle, aimed at hitting their "lavish lifestyles."The villa registered in the name of Kirill Shamalov, Katerina Tikhonova's ex-husband, in Biarritz, France.Gaizka Iroz/AFP via Getty ImagesSources: Insider, The Press AssociationSince last spring, the list of countries that have slapped sanctions on Maria and Katerina have only grown.European Union flags fly outside the European Commission headquarters in BrusselsReutersNow, the US, UK, European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan have all imposed sanctions on the women.Sources: Associated Press, Reuters, Reuters, Japan Times, New Zealand HeraldIn July 2022, as sanctions began to bite in Russia, Katerina was given a top post overseeing import substitutions.Putin meeting with the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin in March 2022.Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via ReutersTikhonova was appointed to the post at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, known as RSPP.Putin critics speculated that the shakeup at RSPP, a key Russian business lobby, was done to help bolster the country's lagging economy, which remains heavily dependent on foreign imports and has suffered from the bevy of international sanctions imposed due to the war in Ukraine. State media reporting on Tikhonova's appointment didn't mention her relationship to Putin.Sources: RBC, FortuneFour months later, the US added Kabaeva to its sanctions list, citing her "close relationship" with Putin.Alina Kabaeva pictured in Moscow in July 2018.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty ImagesThe US government had initially held off sanctioning Kabaeva on the basis that it would be too personal a provocation, The Wall Street Journal reported.But Kabaeva was finally sanctioned on August 2 over her ties to the Russian government. She had become a politician after retiring from sports, and as of 2022 was head of the pro-Kremlin National Media Group.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Israeli Intelligence Warns Iran Is Mulling Terror Attack On World Cup The head of Israeli Military Intelligence has warned this week that Iran is mulling an attack on World Cup venues in Qatar amid ongoing anti-regime protests. Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva described that he expects Tehran officials to grow more desperate amid the now months-long "anti-hijab" protests, thus the potential for lashing out by a major terror attack grows increasingly likely. "There is a real concern within the regime that it endangers the regime. At this stage, I do not see a risk to the regime…. but as the pressure on Iran increases, including internal pressure, the Iranian response is much more aggressive, so we should expect much more aggressive responses in the region and in the world," Haliva said. Anadolu Agency/Getty Images "I am telling you that the Iranians are now considering attacking the World Cup in Qatar as well," he said. “The only thing holding them back is how the Qataris will react." He issued the words Monday before a defense conference in Tel Aviv, calling the ongoing protests which have increasingly taken over university campuses and major city streets in the Islamic Republic "extremely exceptional" and now fast becoming a "civilian rebellion". "The death toll, the attacks on national symbols — this is very troubling for the regime, especially combined with sanctions, the existing international pressure, and the difficult economic situation," the military intel chief described. Outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz also backed the prediction related to the World Cup, alleging the Iranians are poised to create instability outside their country.  Iranian leaders have meanwhile charged that the protests and unrest are a foreign plot, with the spiraling violence which has left scores of police and security services casualties being fueled by Israeli and US intelligence. Over 320 people have died since the demonstrations began. Authorities have denounced the "rioters".  IDF Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva. Image: JNS/Flash90 As for the claims that Iran could be planning an attack on the World Cup, it remains entirely unclear if this is based on any firm intelligence. Instead, it seems more the speculative accusations which are typical from Israeli officials anytime there's a major media-covered international event in the Middle East region. Tyler Durden Wed, 11/23/2022 - 11:30.....»»

The Specter Of Germany Is Rising Authored by Diana Johnstone via ConsortiumNews.com, The European Union is girding for a long war against Russia that appears clearly contrary to European economic interests and social stability. A war that is apparently irrational – as many are – has deep emotional roots and claims ideological justification. Such wars are hard to end because they extend outside the range of rationality. Olaf Scholz, Federal Chancellor of Germany, meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, in Kiev, Feb. 14, 2022. (President of Ukraine) For decades after the Soviet Union entered Berlin and decisively defeated the Third Reich, Soviet leaders worried about the threat of “German revanchism.” Since World War II could be seen as German revenge for being deprived of victory in World War I, couldn’t aggressive German Drang nach Osten be revived, especially if it enjoyed Anglo-American support? There had always been a minority in U.S. and U.K. power circles that would have liked to complete Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union. It was not the desire to spread communism, but the need for a buffer zone to stand in the way of such dangers that was the primary motivation for the ongoing Soviet political and military clampdown on the tier of countries from Poland to Bulgaria that the Red Army had wrested from Nazi occupation. This concern waned considerably in the early 1980s as a young German generation took to the streets in peace demonstrations against the stationing of nuclear “Euromissiles” which could increase the risk of nuclear war on German soil. The movement created the image of a new peaceful Germany. I believe that Mikhail Gorbachev took this transformation seriously. On June 15, 1989, Gorbachev came to Bonn, which was then the modest capital of a deceptively modest West Germany. Apparently delighted with the warm and friendly welcome, Gorbachev stopped to shake hands with people along the way in that peaceful university town that had been the scene of large peace demonstrations. I was there and experienced his unusually warm, firm handshake and eager smile. I have no doubt that Gorbachev sincerely believed in a “common European home” where East and West Europe could live happily side by side united by some sort of democratic socialism. Gorbachov on June 13, 1989 in the market-square in Bonn. (Jüppsche/Wikimedia Commons) Gorbachev died at age 91 two weeks ago, on Aug. 30. His dream of Russia and Germany living happily in their “common European home” had soon been fatally undermined by the Clinton administration’s go-ahead to eastward expansion of NATO. But the day before Gorbachev’s death, leading German politicians in Prague wiped out any hope of such a happy end by proclaiming their leadership of a Europe dedicated to combating the Russian enemy. These were politicians from the very parties – the SPD (Social Democratic Party) and the Greens – that took the lead in the 1980s peace movement. German Europe Must Expand Eastward German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a colorless SPD politician, but his Aug. 29 speech in Prague was inflammatory in its implications. Scholz called for an expanded, militarized European Union under German leadership. He claimed that the Russian operation in Ukraine raised the question of “where the dividing line will be in the future between this free Europe and a neo-imperial autocracy.” We cannot simply watch, he said, “as free countries are wiped off the map and disappear behind walls or iron curtains.” (Note: the conflict in Ukraine is clearly the unfinished business of the collapse of the Soviet Union, aggravated by malicious outside provocation. As in the Cold War, Moscow’s defensive reactions are interpreted as harbingers of Russian invasion of Europe, and thus a pretext for arms buildups.) To meet this imaginary threat, Germany will lead an expanded, militarized EU. First, Scholz told his European audience in the Czech capital, “I am committed to the enlargement of the European Union to include the states of the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova and, in the long term, Georgia”. Worrying about Russia moving the dividing line West is a bit odd while planning to incorporate three former Soviet States, one of which (Georgia) is geographically and culturally very remote from Europe but on Russia’s doorstep. In the “Western Balkans”, Albania and four extremely weak statelets left from former Yugoslavia (North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and widely unrecognized Kosovo) mainly produce emigrants and are far from EU economic and social standards. Kosovo and Bosnia are militarily occupied de facto NATO protectorates. Serbia, more solid than the others, shows no signs of renouncing its beneficial relations with Russia and China, and popular enthusiasm for “Europe” among Serbs has faded. Adding these member states will achieve “a stronger, more sovereign, geopolitical European Union,” said Scholz. A “more geopolitical Germany” is more like it. As the EU grows eastward, Germany is “in the center” and will do everything to bring them all together. So, in addition to enlargement, Scholz calls for “a gradual shift to majority decisions in common foreign policy” to replace the unanimity required today. What this means should be obvious to the French. Historically, the French have defended the consensus rule so as not to be dragged into a foreign policy they don’t want. French leaders have exalted the mythical “Franco-German couple” as guarantor of European harmony, mainly to keep German ambitions under control. But Scholz says he doesn’t want “an EU of exclusive states or directorates,” which implies the final divorce of that “couple.” With an EU of 30 or 36 states, he notes, “fast and pragmatic action is needed.” And he can be sure that German influence on most of these poor, indebted and often corrupt new Member States will produce the needed majority. France has always hoped for an EU security force separate from NATO in which the French military would play a leading role. But Germany has other ideas. “NATO remains the guarantor of our security,” said Scholz, rejoicing that President Biden is “a convinced trans-atlanticist.” “Every improvement, every unification of European defense structures within the EU framework strengthens NATO,” Scholz said. “Together with other EU partners, Germany will therefore ensure that the EU’s planned rapid reaction force is operational in 2025 and will then also provide its core. This requires a clear command structure. Germany will face up to this responsibility “when we lead the rapid reaction force in 2025,” Scholz said. It has already been decided that Germany will support Lithuania with a rapidly deployable brigade and NATO with further forces in a high state of readiness. Serving to Lead … Where? Robert Habeck speaking at protest before Green Party headquarters, Berlin, Oct. 28, 2020. (Leonhard Lenz/Wikimedia Commons) In short, Germany’s military buildup will give substance to Robert Habeck’s notorious statement in Washington last March that: “The stronger Germany serves, the greater its role.” The Green’s Habeck is Germany’s economics minister and the second most powerful figure in Germany’s current government. The remark was well understood in Washington: by serving the U.S.-led Western empire, Germany is strengthening its role as European leader. Just as the U.S. arms, trains and occupies Germany, Germany will provide the same services for smaller EU states, notably to its east. Since the start of the Russian operation in Ukraine, German politician Ursula von der Leyen has used her position as head of the EU Commission to impose ever more drastic sanctions on Russia, leading to the threat of a serious European energy crisis this winter. Her hostility to Russia seems boundless. In Kiev last April she called for rapid EU membership for Ukraine, notoriously the most corrupt country in Europe and far from meeting EU standards. She proclaimed that “Russia will descend into economic, financial and technological decay, while Ukraine is marching towards a European future.” For von der Leyen, Ukraine is “fighting our war.” All of this goes far beyond her authority to speak for the EU’s 27 Members, but nobody stops her. Germany’s Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is every bit as intent on “ruining Russia.” Proponent of a “feminist foreign policy”, Baerbock expresses policy in personal terms. “If I give the promise to people in Ukraine, we stand with you as long as you need us,” she told the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-sponsored Forum 2000 in Prague on Aug. 31, speaking in English. “Then I want to deliver no matter what my German voters think, but I want to deliver to the people of Ukraine.” “People will go on the street and say, we cannot pay our energy prices, and I will say, ‘Yes I know so we will help you with social measures. […] We will stand with Ukraine and this means the sanctions will stay also til winter time even if it gets really tough for politicians.’” Certainly, support for Ukraine is strong in Germany, but perhaps because of the looming energy shortage, a recent Forsa poll indicates that some 77 percent of Germans would favor diplomatic efforts to end the war – which should be the business of the foreign minister. But Baerbock shows no interest in diplomacy, only in “strategic failure” for Russia – however long it takes. In the 1980s peace movement, a generation of Germans was distancing itself from that of their parents and vowed to overcome “enemy images” inherited from past wars. Curiously, Baerbock, born in 1980, has referred to her grandfather who fought in the Wehrmacht as somehow having contributed to European unity. Is this the generational pendulum? The Little Revanchists Stepan Bandera torchlight parade in Kiev, Jan. 1, 2020. (A1/Wikimedia Commons) There is reason to surmise that current German Russophobia draws much of its legitimization from the Russophobia of former Nazi allies in smaller European countries. While German anti-Russian revanchism may have taken a couple of generations to assert itself, there were a number of smaller, more obscure revanchisms that flourished at the end of the European war that were incorporated into United States Cold War operations. Those little revanchisms were not subjected to the denazification gestures or Holocaust guilt imposed on Germany. Rather, they were welcomed by the C.I.A., Radio Free Europe and Congressional committees for their fervent anticommunism. They were strengthened politically in the United States by anticommunist diasporas from Eastern Europe. Of these, the Ukrainian diaspora was surely the largest, the most intensely political and the most influential, in both Canada and the American Middle West. Ukrainian fascists who had previously collaborated with Nazi invaders were the most numerous and active, leading the Bloc of Anti-Bolshevik Nations with links to German, British and U.S. Intelligence. Eastern European Galicia, not to be confused with Spanish Galicia, has been back and forth part of Russia and Poland for centuries. After World War II it was divided between Poland and Ukraine. Ukrainian Galicia is the center of a virulent brand of Ukrainian nationalism, whose principal World War II hero was Stepan Bandera. This nationalism can properly be called “fascist” not simply because of superficial signs – its symbols, salutes or tatoos – but because it has always been fundamentally racist and violent. Incited by Western powers, Poland, Lithuania and the Habsburg Empire, the key to Ukrainian nationalism was that it was Western, and thus superior. Since Ukrainians and Russians stem from the same population, pro-Western Ukrainian ultra-nationalism was built on imaginary myths of racial differences: Ukrainians were the true Western whatever-it-was, whereas Russians were mixed with “Mongols” and thus an inferior race. Banderist Ukrainian nationalists have openly called for elimination of Russians as such, as inferior beings. So long as the Soviet Union existed, Ukrainian racial hatred of Russians had anticommunism as its cover, and Western intelligence agencies could support them on the “pure” ideological grounds of the fight against Bolshevism and Communism. But now that Russia is no longer ruled by communists, the mask has fallen, and the racist nature of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism is visible – for all who want to see it. However, Western leaders and media are determined not to notice. Ukraine is not just like any Western country. It is deeply and dramatically divided between Donbass in the East, Russian territories given to Ukraine by the Soviet Union, and the anti-Russian West, where Galacia is located. Russia’s defense of Donbass, wise or unwise, by no means indicates a Russian intention to invade other countries. This false alarm is the pretext for the remilitarization of Germany in alliance with the Anglo-Saxon powers against Russia. The Yugoslav Prelude Cutting firewood in Sarajevo during wars that broke up Yugoslavia, 1993. (Christian Maréchal/Wikimedia Commons) This process began in the 1990s, with the breakup of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was not a member of the Soviet bloc. Precisely for that reason, the country got loans from the West which in the 1970s led to a debt crisis in which the leaders of each of the six federated republics wanted to shove the debt onto others. This favored separatist tendencies in the relatively rich Slovenian and Croatian republics, tendencies enforced by ethnic chauvinism and encouragement from outside powers, especially Germany. During World War II, German occupation had split the country apart. Serbia, allied to France and Britain in World War I, was subject to a punishing occupation. Idyllic Slovenia was absorbed into the Third Reich, while Germany supported an independent Croatia, ruled by the fascist Ustasha party, which included most of Bosnia, scene of the bloodiest internal fighting. When the war ended, many Croatian Ustasha emigrated to Germany, the United States and Canada, never giving up the hope of reviving secessionist Croatian nationalism. In Washington in the 1990s, members of Congress got their impressions of Yugoslavia from a single expert: 35-year-old Croatian-American Mira Baratta, assistant to Sen. Bob Dole (Republican presidential candidate in 1996). Baratta’s grandfather had been an important Ustasha officer in Bosnia and her father was active in the Croatian diaspora in California. Baratta won over not only Dole but virtually the whole Congress to the Croatian version of Yugoslav conflicts blaming everything on the Serbs. In Europe, Germans and Austrians, most notably Otto von Habsburg, heir to the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire and member of the European Parliament from Bavaria, succeeded in portraying Serbs as the villains, thus achieving an effective revenge against their historic World War I enemy, Serbia. In the West, it became usual to identify Serbia as “Russia’s historic ally”, forgetting that in recent history Serbia’s closest allies were Britain and especially France. In September 1991, a leading German Christian Democratic politician and constitutional lawyer explained why Germany should promote the breakup of Yugoslavia by recognizing the Slovenian and Croat secessionist Yugoslav republics. (Former CDU Minister of Defense Rupert Scholz at the 6th Fürstenfeldbrucker Symposium for the Leadership of the German Military and Business, held September 23 – 24, 1991.) By ending the division of Germany, Rupert Scholz said, “We have, so to speak, overcome and mastered the most important consequences of the Second World War … but in other areas we are still dealing with the consequences of the First World War” – which, he noted “started in Serbia.” “Yugoslavia, as a consequence of the First World War, is a very artificial construction, never compatible with the idea of self-determination,” Rupert Scholz said. He concluded: “In my opinion, Slovenia and Croatia must be immediately recognized internationally. (…) When this recognition has taken place, the Yugoslavian conflict will no longer be a domestic Yugoslav problem, where no international intervention can be permitted.” And indeed, recognition was followed by massive Western intervention which continues to this day. By taking sides, Germany, the United States and NATO ultimately produced a disastrous result, a half dozen statelets, with many unsettled issues and heavily dependent on Western powers. Bosnia-Herzegovina is under military occupation as well as the dictates of a “High Representative” who happens to be German. It has lost about half its population to emigration. Only Serbia shows signs of independence, refusing to join in Western sanctions on Russia, despite heavy pressure. For Washington strategists the breakup of Yugoslavia was an exercise in using ethnic divisions to break up larger entities, the USSR and then Russia. Humanitarian Bombing Western politicians and media persuaded the public that the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia was a “humanitarian” war, generously waged to “protect the Kosovars” (after multiple assassinations by armed secessionists provoked Serbian authorities into the inevitable repression used as pretext for the bombing). But the real point of the Kosovo war was that it transformed NATO from a defensive into an aggressive alliance, ready to wage war anywhere, without U.N. mandate, on whatever pretext it chose. This lesson was clear to the Russians. After the Kosovo war, NATO could no longer credibly claim that it was a purely “defensive” alliance. As soon as Serbian President Milosevic, to save his country’s infrastructure from NATO destruction, agreed to allow NATO troops to enter Kosovo, the U.S. unceremoniously grabbed a huge swath territory to build the its first big U.S. military base in the Balkans. NATO troops are still there. Just as the United States rushed to build that base in Kosovo, it was clear what to expect of the U.S. after it succeeded in 2014 to install a government in Kiev eager to join NATO. This would be the opportunity for the U.S. to take over the Russian naval base in Crimea. Since it was known that the majority of the population in Crimea wanted to return to Russia (as it had from 1783 to 1954), Putin was able to forestall this threat by holding a popular referendum confirming its return. East European Revanchism Captures the EU The call by German Chancellor Scholz to enlarge the European Union by up to nine new members recalls the enlargements of 2004 and 2007 that brought in twelve new members, nine of them from the former Soviet bloc, including the three Baltic States once part of the Soviet Union. That enlargement already shifted the balance eastward and enhanced German influence. In particular, the political elites of Poland and especially the three Baltic States, were heavily under the influence of the United States and Britain, where many had lived in exile during Soviet rule. They brought into EU institutions a new wave of fanatic anticommunism, not always distinguishable from Russophobia. The European Parliament, obsessed with virtue signaling in regard to human rights, was particularly receptive to the zealous anti-totalitarianism of its new Eastern European members.  European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe) Revanchism and the Memory Weapon As an aspect of anti-communist lustration, or purges, Eastern European States sponsored “Memory Institutes” devoted to denouncing the crimes of communism. Of course, such campaigns were used by far-right politicians to cast suspicion on the left in general. As explained by European scholar Zoltan Dujisin, “anticommunist memory entrepreneurs” at the head of these institutes succeeded in lifting their public information activities from the national, to the European Union level, using Western bans on Holocaust denial to complain, that while Nazi crimes had been condemned and punished at Nuremberg, communist crimes had not. The tactic of the anti-communist entrepreneurs was to demand that references to the Holocaust be accompanied by denunciations of the Gulag. This campaign had to deal with a delicate contradiction since it tended to challenge the uniqueness of the Holocaust, a dogma essential to gaining financial and political support from West European memory institutes. In 2008, the EP adopted a resolution establishing August 23 as “European Day of Remembrance for the victims of Stalinism and Nazism” – for the first time adopting what had been a fairly isolated far right equation of. A 2009 EP resolution on “European Conscience and Totalitarianism” called for support of national institutes specializing in totalitarian history. Dujisin explains, “Europe is now haunted by the specter of a new memory. The Holocaust’s singular standing as a negative founding formula of European integration, the culmination of long-standing efforts from prominent Western leaders … is increasingly challenged by a memory of communism, which disputes its uniqueness.” East European memory institutes together formed the “Platform of European Memory and Conscience,” which between 2012 and 2016 organized a series of exhibits on “Totalitarianism in Europe: Fascism—Nazism—Communism,” traveling to museums, memorials, foundations, city halls, parliaments, cultural centers, and universities in 15 European countries, supposedly to “improve public awareness and education about the gravest crimes committed by the totalitarian dictatorships.” Under this influence, the European Parliament on Sept. 19, 2019 adopted a resolution “on the importance of European Remembrance for the Future of Europe” that went far beyond equating political crimes by proclaiming a distinctly Polish interpretation of history as European Union policy. It goes so far as to proclaim that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is responsible for World War II – and thus Soviet Russia is as guilty of the war as Nazi Germany. The resolution, “Stresses that the Second World War, the most devastating war in Europe’s history, was started as an immediate result of the notorious Nazi-Soviet Treaty on Non-Aggression of 23 August 1939, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret protocols, whereby two totalitarian regimes that shared the goal of world conquest divided Europe into two zones of influence;” It further: “Recalls that the Nazi and communist regimes carried out mass murders, genocide and deportations and caused a loss of life and freedom in the 20th century on a scale unseen in human history, and recalls the horrific crime of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime; condemns in the strongest terms the acts of aggression, crimes against humanity and mass human rights violations perpetrated by the Nazi, communist and other totalitarian regimes;” This of course not only directly contradicts the Russian celebration of the “Great Patriotic War” to defeat the Nazi invasion, it also took issue with the recent efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin to put the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement in the context of prior refusals of Eastern European states, notably Poland, to ally with Moscow against Hitler. But the EP resolution: “Is deeply concerned about the efforts of the current Russian leadership to distort historical facts and whitewash crimes committed by the Soviet totalitarian regime and considers them a dangerous component of the information war waged against democratic Europe that aims to divide Europe, and therefore calls on the Commission to decisively counteract these efforts;” Thus the importance of Memory for the future, turns out to be an ideological declaration of war against Russia based on interpretations of World War II, especially since the memory entrepreneurs implicitly suggest that the past crimes of communism deserve punishment – like the crimes of Nazism. It is not impossible that this line of thought arouses some tacit satisfaction among certain individuals in Germany. When Western leaders speak of “economic war against Russia,” or “ruining Russia” by arming and supporting Ukraine, one wonders whether they are consciously preparing World War III, or trying to provide a new ending to World War II. Or will the two merge? As it shapes up, with NATO openly trying to “overextend” and thus defeat Russia with a war of attrition in Ukraine, it is somewhat as if Britain and the United States, some 80 years later, switched sides and joined German-dominated Europe to wage war against Russia, alongside the heirs to Eastern European anticommunism, some of whom were allied to Nazi Germany. History may help understand events, but the cult of memory easily becomes the cult of revenge. Revenge is a circle with no end. It uses the past to kill the future. Europe needs clear heads looking to the future, able to understand the present. Tyler Durden Tue, 09/13/2022 - 02:00.....»»

Russian president Vladimir Putin has tried to keep his personal life out of the spotlight, rarely if ever discussing his children or relationships. Russian President Vladimir and his now ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva.Sergey Ponomarev/AP Russian president Vladimir Putin has at least two daughters he rarely talks about. He has two adult daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva: Maria, 36, and Katerina, 35. One rumored mistress, Alina Kabaeva, was sanctioned by the US in August. President Vladimir Putin is famously secretive of his personal life, and has fought hard to prevent the media and the world from knowing much about his family.He has long made a concerted effort to shield his children from the spotlight.Putin has never publicly acknowledged his children, though media outlets have for years speculated and reported about the two daughters Putin had with his ex-wife.Further reports center around rumors that two extramarital affairs may have produced another two daughters.But as international pressure mounts on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, sanctions have closed in on his personal networks and in particular, his children and rumoured girlfriends.One daughter from his first marriage, Katerina Tikhonova, has been entrusted with a key job overseeing import substitutions as Russia reels under sanctions.And in August, ex-gymnast Alina Kabaeva — with whom Putin is rumoured to have had two children — was sanctioned by the US government.Here is what we know about the lives of Putin's secret kids and girlfriends.Pat Ralph contributed reporting to previous versions of this article.Putin had two daughters in his first marriage to former flight attendant Lyudmila Shkrebneva, to whom he was married for three decades until their divorce in 2013.APSources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, Business InsiderTheir daughter's names are Maria and Katerina. Maria was born in Leningrad in 1985, and Katerina was born in Germany in 1986 when the family lived there during her father's time in the KGB.Maria and Katerina Putin, from their father's personal archive.ReutersSources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, NewsweekBoth girls are named after their grandmothers. Maria's nickname is Masha and Katerina's nickname is Katya.Putin's father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, and his mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova.KremlinMasha and Katya are common Russian shortenings for Maria and Katerina.Sources: Vladimir Putin, Reuters, NewsweekWhen the family moved to Moscow in 1996, the girls attended a German-language school. The children were reportedly removed from school when Putin became acting president, and teachers educated them at home.Then-acting President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila applaud during a concert after an award ceremony in Gudermes on January 1, 2000.REUTERSSource: Newsweek"Not all fathers are as loving with their children as he is," Lyudmila said in a quote on Putin's government website. "And he has always spoiled them, while I was the one who had to discipline them."Vesti.ru screengrabSource: Vladimir PutinMaria studied biology in college and went to medical school in Moscow, while Katerina majored in Asian Studies in college. Both girls attended university under false identities.Putin and wife Ludmila arrive at the airport in Rostock-Laage, Germany on June 6, 2007.Alexander Hassenstein/Getty ImagesSources: Reuters, NewsweekMaria, now 36, is a medical researcher and lives in Moscow with her Dutch husband, Jorrit Faassen.APSources: Reuters, Newsweek, BloombergMaria and Faassen reportedly have a child — Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone in 2017 that he was a grandfather. When Stone asked if he played with his grandchild, Putin replied, "Very seldom, unfortunately.""The Putin Interviews" was a four-part series that premiered on Showtime in May 2017.ShowtimeSources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily MailMeanwhile, Katerina reportedly lives a high-flying life, living in lavish apartments and acquiring a fortune.Russian President Vladimir Putin makes a toast during an award ceremony in the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 28, 2017.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool Photo via APSources: Reuters, The Independent, Bloomberg, Daily MailKaterina, now 35, is an accomplished acrobatic dancer and has a senior position at her alma mater, Moscow State University, heading a $1.7 billion startup incubator.Katerina Tikhonovna, daughter of Vladimir Putin, dancing.Jakub Dabrowski/ReutersSources: Reuters, BloombergKaterina married Russian billionaire Kirill Shamalov in 2013. But the couple divorced in 2018, and the divorce case revealed they were worth $2 billion.Kirill Shamalov, the former husband of Putin's daughter KaterinaReuters/Kommersant Photo/Dmitry DukhaninSources: Bloomberg, Reuters, The Guardian   But flight records suggest that in 2017, Katerina had begun a clandestine relationship with German ballet star Igor Zelensky. She had a daughter with him.Igor Zelensky the father of Katerina's child pictured, in 2014. In 2016 he became director of the Bavarian State Ballet.Tobias Hase/picture alliance via Getty ImagesZelensky has served as the director of the Bavarian State Ballet and the Munich State Ballet. Source: Important Stories and Der SpiegelKaterina secretly flew to Munich more than 50 times to see Zelensky between 2017 and 2019, with their daughter in tow.Igor Zelensky on stage in 2018 in Munich, Germany.Gisela Schober/Getty ImagesThe relationship was revealed by a 2022 investigation that examined Katerina's flight records, showing that she traveled with members of Putin's presidential secret service. Source: Important Stories and Der SpiegelThere are no official current photos of the girls. For Katerina, we found the slightly varying first names "Katerina", "Katya", and "Yekaterina," and the last names "Putina," "Tikhonova," and "Shamalov."Katerina Tikhonova (L), daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, dances with Ivan Klimov during the World Cup Rock'n'Roll Acrobatic Competition in Krakow, Poland, on April 12, 2014.REUTERS/Jakub DabrowskiSources: Reuters, NewsweekThere are rumors that Putin has a third daughter with girlfriend and former Russian rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva.Putin greets rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabayeva during a meeting with candidates to the Russian Olympic team for Summer Olympics 2004 at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow on March 10, 2004.REUTERS/Pool ASSource: New York PostNeither the child nor the relationship with Kabaeva have been confirmed.Putin smiles next to Russian gymnast Alina Kabaeva during a meeting with the Russian Olympic team at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia on November 4, 2004.REUTERS/ITAR-TASS/PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICESource: Business InsiderFinally, an investigation claimed that a former cleaning lady, Svetlana Krivonogikh, had an affair with Putin and suddenly moved into one of St Petersburg's wealthiest neighborhoods.An aerial view of St Petersburg's prestigious Birch Alley, where one of Putin's rumored mistresses was reported to live.Google EarthAn investigation by independent Russian outlet Proekt claimed that the pair had a close friendship between the late 1990s and the end of the 2010s, which resulted in a daughter. In that time, Krivonogikh went from a former cleaning lady to the billionaire owner of one of Putin's favourite ski resorts, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.Krivonogikh's daughter, born 2003, is called Elizaveta Vladimirovna Rozova, and also goes by Luisa. Identity papers do not indicate a father, but her middle name means "daughter of Vladimir." She has not confirmed any relationship.A Google Earth image of St Petersburg's elite Birch Alley complex.Google EarthThe Proekt investigation remarked on Elizaveta's "phenomenal resemblance" to Putin and many connections between the president and her mother, but no relation has been proven. In an interview with Russian GQ, Elizaveta's face was not depicted. When asked whether she looked like Putin, she agreed, but said "there are a lot of people similar to Vladimir Vladimirovich," using an alternative, respectful name for Putin.Putin has tried to shelter his children from the media, attempting to keep them out of politics so they can live normal lives.Dennis Grombkowski/Getty ImagesSources: Reuters, Business InsiderDespite this, Katerina made her debut on Russian state TV as a biotechnology expert in December 2018.Katerina Tikhonova (R) on Rossiya 1 on December 7, 2018.Rossiya 1Source: Business InsiderHer appearance did not include comment on her being related to Putin. The link was briefly made public in the course of a dance competition, but later retracted.Katerina Tikhonova (L) and Vladimir PutinREUTERSSource: ReutersIn June 2021, Katerina addressed a conference that is Russia's equivalent of Davos — but nobody called her Putin's daughter, apparently out of fear of reprisal from the Kremlin.Katerina Tikhonova, deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University, on screen taking part in a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia, on June 4, 2021.Evgenia Novozhenina/ReutersSource: The Washington PostIn late 2020, Putin announced Russia had completed its COVID-19 vaccine, although it had yet to complete clinical assessments. Putin said he gave the shot to one of his two daughters, but wouldn't specify which one.Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, on August 11, 2020.Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERSSources: Business Insider, BBC, PoliticoPutin said his daughter's temperature decreased after getting two shots. "She has taken part in the experiment," he said, adding, "She's feeling well and has a high number of antibodies."Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo / AP ImagesSources: Business Insider, BBC, PoliticoIt was a rare acknowledgment for Putin, but one still shrouded in mystery.Russia's President Vladimir Putin holds a meeting of the Russian Security Council at Moscow's Kremlin.Alexei NikolskybackslashTASS via Getty ImagesIn February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting condemnation from around the world. Three weeks later an activist filmed himself inside what he said was a Biarritz apartment owned by Katerina's ex-husband, saying he wanted to host Ukrainian refugees there.An image showing an activist flying a Ukrainian flag from the balcony of a villa linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Biarritz, France.Russia TodaySource: Insider, The Insider.In April, the US sanctioned Maria and Katerina, saying that they had "enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people." A statement said "This action cuts them off from the US financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States."Getty/ReutersThe Wall Street Journal said that the EU could also sanction the two women.An EU spokesperson said the bloc is "currently discussing the proposals for further sanctions, including new listings of individuals and entities," but could not comment on who would be targeted by them. Source: The Wall Street Journal, The White HouseThe US announcement also contained more details about their work. saying that it has close ties to the Kremlin. Tikhonova's work supports Russia's government and defense industry, while Vorontsova's genetics research programs are personally overseen by Putin, the White House said.The main building of the Moscow State University. As of 2021, Tikhonova was Deputy Director of its Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex SystemsAlexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty ImagesSource: ABC News.The US said it believed the women are hiding assets for Putin, which was its rationale for sanctioning them. The Kremlin expressed confusion over the decision, suggesting it was anti-Russian.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty ImagesA senior official at the Biden administration said: "We believe that many of Putin's assets are hidden with family members and that's why we're targeting them."Putin's top spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin found the decision "difficult to understand" and framed it as part of a "rabid" western animosity towards Russia. Source: ABC News, Reuters.The UK quickly followed suit with a raft of sanctions on Maria and Katerina, among others in Putin's inner circle, aimed at hitting their "lavish lifestyles."The villa registered in the name of Kirill Shamalov, Katerina Tikhonova's ex-husband, in Biarritz, France.Gaizka Iroz/AFP via Getty ImagesSource: The Press Association.In July 2022, as sanctions began to bite in Russia, Tikhonova was given a top post overseeing import substitutions.Putin meeting with the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin in March 2022.Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via ReutersTikhonova was appointed to the post at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. State media reporting on this did not mention her relationship to Putin. Source: RBCFour months later, the US added Kabaeva to its sanctions list, citing her 'close relationship' with Putin.Alina Kabaeva pictured in Moscow in July 2018.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty ImagesThe US government had initially held off sanctioning Kabaeva on the basis that it would be too personal a provocation. But Kabaeva was finally sanctioned on August 2 over her ties to the Russian government. She had become a politician after retiring from sports, and as of 2022 was head of the pro-Kremlin National Media Group.Source: US Treasury Department, The Wall Street Journal.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Daniel Zahler says the stress of New York City began to wear on him. So he took a chance and moved across the country to find fulfillment in LA. Daniel Zahler realized New York didn't work for him anymore — so he left.Daniel Zahler Daniel Zahler is a Harvard-trained healthcare consultant who previously worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. He moved to LA for a better quality of life after spending 12 years in New York City. Zahler struggled to find a community in the past and says it's easier to make friends in LA. When I told people I was moving from New York City to LA, these were the common reactions:Why — what's in LA?Did you join a cult?Are you gonna start putting avocado on everything?The short answer for why I decided to pack up and move across the country: I can live near the beach and work from anywhere. I work as an independent consultant, advising companies in healthcare, life sciences and medical technology. I didn't have a job tying me to New York. I finally made the move to LA in 2017.I had a realization. What I want out of a city is changing. New York doesn't work for me anymore. LA does.I got the full New York City experienceI lived in Manhattan for 12 years. I experienced the highs and lows of New York life, from 100-hour weeks at Goldman Sachs to all-day picnics in Central Park.As time went by, the stress of the city began to wear on me. I felt like the city was taking more out of me than I was getting from it. When I visited friends in LA, I noticed how much calmer I was. For me, New York was like a long-term relationship I'd stayed in too long. It was comfortable and familiar. I knew every inch of it. There was always something fun going on. I was addicted to the city's energy.Yet it wasn't fulfilling me. The crowded streets and honking taxis that once seemed enchanting now felt like an assault on the senses. I wasn't doing enough deep work. Nights out seemed repetitive and predictable. The sense of wonder I'd felt as a newcomer was gone.In 2015, I decided to sublet my West Village pad and spend the winter in Santa Monica. I had a blast. I went to beach yoga, did sunrise hikes, and sound bath meditations. I befriended my Airbnb hosts. They introduced me to their friends. LA went from being an attractive fantasy to a place where I could actually settle down and make a new home. Living in LA hasn't had a negative impact on my finances. Santa Monica is one of the priciest areas of California, but it's still cheaper than Manhattan. I was paying $4,000 a month for a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. Today I'm paying $3,000 a month for a spacious apartment in the heart of Santa Monica with amazing views of mountains and palm trees. There are three big misconceptions about LA1. You're always stuck in traffic.Yes, traffic is a problem in LA. But you can avoid it. And owning a car has become optional. Seriously!Uber has been a game changer. You can hop in a car and go anywhere you want. It's convenient and cheap ($20 gets you from Venice to West Hollywood).It's never been easier to get around LA. Don't let the traffic scare you.2. There's no good pizza.LA has become a great food city. New Yorkers, I'm here to tell you: You can get some amazing pizza in LA. Anyone who's been to Gjelina knows it. There's a Joe's Pizza by the Santa Monica Pier serving up a good replica of the New York original.LA is undergoing a food renaissance. It's easy to see why. Produce is fresher. Leases are cheaper. It's easier to try new restaurant concepts.Chefs today are calling LA "the best food city in America."3. Everyone there is shallow and vapid.LA is not just for people in "the industry." Yes, there are lots of Hollywood types. Fame is the town's chief currency. Throw a rock on Sunset and you'll hit at least one aspiring actor fresh off the bus from Iowa.Then there's the other LA. Spend time in Westwood, Silver Lake, Santa Monica. You'll meet designers, scientists, entrepreneurs. People who are ambitious and intent on changing the world.I've found that LA is a city of newcomers and outsiders. People in LA are more open-minded and adventurous. There's a sense that anyone you meet could be a future collaborator on a film, art project or startup. Rather than ask where you work, people in LA are more likely to ask: What are you working on?There's a real startup ecosystem blossoming in SoCal. Tech companies like SpaceX, Snap and Activision got started here. Silicon Valley heavyweights like Google, Tesla, and Netflix have major locations in SoCal. Top venture capital investors are moving to LA to support the next generation of high-growth tech companies. It's an exciting place to be.It's easier to make friends in LAI knew maybe 10 people in LA when I moved here a few years ago. Fast forward to today – I've hosted dinners for hundreds of people. I've been invited to speak at events all over the city.I made more friends in one year than I did in 10 years living in Manhattan.How did I do this? Isn't LA supposed to be a place where it's hard to make friends? A city where people worship at the altar of fame and social media but struggle to make real human connection?LA is not the easiest city to adjust to. The city can seem like a sprawling tangle of highways and strip malls. New York City is like a river, beating you relentlessly downstream. You need to be a strong swimmer to keep your head above water.LA is more like a lake. If you don't have a paddle, you can find yourself drifting aimlessly for months or years. It can be hard to find communities and plant roots. You need to go out of your way to hang out with people, build community and make friends.I made an effort to strike up conversations with people in my building. At Whole Foods. Soho House, Equinox, WeWork.I found it was easy to meet people simply by smiling and saying, "Hi! I'm Daniel. I just moved here from New York."They'd typically reply in one of 3 ways:"Oh really, why'd you move?""How do you like LA?""Cool, I used to live in New York, too!"Each week I discovered new communities:Mountain Gate, a monthly speaker series and dinner party with young professionals. Trybe, a group that organizes Shabbat dinners at gorgeous homes around LA. Summit, a group that organizes health and wellness retreats at beautiful Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah. REALITY Israel, a tech fellowship run by a global community of change-makers dedicated to tikkun olam, repairing the world.The best communities help you venture outside your comfort zone and experience something new. There's a sense of adventure. An element of unpredictability.A good community challenges you. It makes you feel you're part of something bigger than yourself, a greater cause. It gives you a sense of meaning and purpose.In LA, you can create your own small-town vibeFinding and participating in these communities has nourished me, sustained me, and inspired me. These communities have made me feel at home in LA.Living in NYC, I often struggled to find community. People were always scurrying between work and family obligations, power lunches and first dates. I met new people but didn't often form the close, intimate relationships of my college years.The key ingredient for the formation of friendships is repeated spontaneous contact. That's why we make friends in school — because we're forced into regular contact with the same people. It is the natural soil out of which friendship grows.I found one of the keys to LA survival is creating your own small-town vibe within the big city. Find a small community where you run into familiar faces.I run into friends every week in Palisades Park, or at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, aka the happiest place on Earth.It's nice to live in an extended community, to have people to rely on beyond family. It's nice to have bustling shared spaces where you can run into people you know without planning it beforehand.Seeking out former New Yorkers helped me build communityIn the summer of 2020 I created a group called "NYC in LA." I noticed how many New Yorkers were relocating to Southern California during the pandemic. I wanted to find a way to bring together New York expats and provide mutual support. So I made a group on WhatsApp and Facebook.The group has grown to over 500 people in the past two years. It's been an incredible source of community. Everyday people share events, local recommendations, and apartment listings. New friendships have been forged. We were even featured in The New York Times in April.We've started hosting NYC in LA meetups that regularly attract 50-60 people. We created a housing group for short-term sublets. We crowdsourced an "LA Cool List" – a collection of recommendations for local activities, hikes, date spots, coworking spots, workout studios, running and cycling groups.There's something special about bringing together New Yorkers in Southern California. New Yorkers are a distinct subculture. We all went through the same struggles: Finding an apartment, navigating the subway, dealing with the intensity of NYC life. It's like running into someone who attended the same college. You have stuff in common. There's a shared background.In a way, it's ironic that I moved all the way across the country to end up hanging out with a bunch of New Yorkers. But I love it. Combining the people of New York with the weather and lifestyle of Southern California – for me, it's the best of both worlds.I've met dozens of people through NYC in LA. Nothing makes me happier than introducing LA newcomers to new friends, giving them tips and helping them settle in. I know how hard it is to feel at home in a new city. I've been there.One member told me: "I'm incredibly grateful for this group. Virtually all the people I've met and bonded with in LA have stemmed from NYC in LA!"There's still no place like New YorkPeople always ask me which city I prefer, New York or LA. It's an impossible question. The two cities are so different. The short answer is that NYC has the most amazing people, and LA has the best quality of life – sunny skies 300 days a year, beautiful parks and the beach and great hiking spots. Stress levels are lower. Everything is just easier.Summers in Santa Monica are amazing: there are beach gatherings and outdoor concerts. In the winters, the weather rarely drops below 50. The ocean is cold, but the sunsets are still incredible. You can go to the beach in December and have picnics in February.I used to be one of those New York snobs who looked down on LA. I'll always be a New Yorker at heart, but I've grown to love LA, too.I travel to New York 4 or 5 times a year. I love NYC in September, when the weather is great and people are back from their summer getaways. October in the city is gorgeous — the leaves are changing and you feel the magic of autumn in the city. Springtime is great, too: I spend as much time in New York as I can in May and June.New York City is unrivaled in its energy and diversity and is the major league of cities — truly world-class. The best restaurants, bars, culture and nightlife are all there. I love its vibrancy and its unplanned serendipity. You never know where the night will take you.But you also need to have something going for you to make it there. It's not an easy place to live. The people you meet are exceptional – brilliant, attractive, ambitious professionals from around the world who inspire you to achieve more.Living in New York was like graduate school for me. I learned a lot about the world and about myself. Living in the city toughened me up. It made me more resilient.Making a great life in a new city is all about making the effort to talk to strangersNow that I've lived in LA for a bit, I try to share my lessons with other newcomers to the city.I tell them it's easy to meet new people at co-working spaces and cafes. There's a great mix of entrepreneurs, artists, and other professionals. They have regular events & happy hours. Or you can just go up to someone and ask what they're working on.Search for local interest groups on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram. It could be a book club, language exchange, hiking or biking group: These are all good places to meet people.Airbnb Experiences are also a great way to explore a new area and meet people. I signed up for a group hike in Griffith Park and a walking tour of Melrose street art.In neighborhoods like Silver Lake and Venice there's more of a small-town vibe. It's easy to meet people at cafes and ask for local tips and places to check out.People are more approachable during the day, when the sun is shining. Don't be afraid to put down your phone and talk to a stranger. That's how people met before the internet!Daniel Zahler is a healthcare consultant based in Santa Monica, California.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Hamdi Ulukaya, Reid Hoffman, and Daniel Lubetzky said entrepreneurial success comes from caring for a community, strong friendships, and kindness. Many young people want to start their own business one day.Getty Images College and university graduation ceremonies took place across the United States this spring. Prominent leaders, including entrepreneurs, were invited to give commencement speeches to graduates. Three business owners shared their advice for recent graduates. As millions of college students graduate this month, many are considering starting businesses instead of entering the workforce.After all, there's been a record number of new businesses—about 9.8 million—started in the last two years, according to US Census Data. Additionally, entrepreneurship experts say the Class of 2022 is graduating at one of the best times to start a business."Just as you are entering the world, our world is reentering history," said Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Snacks, who gave the commencement address at High Point University in North Carolina on May 7. "And you can help write its most epic chapter."Lubetzky was among the leading entrepreneurs who gave commencement speeches this graduation season. Here's their advice for young business owners entering a new phase of their lives.Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of ChobaniHamdi Ulukaya.JIM YOUNG/AFP via Getty ImagesUlukaya, who created the yogurt company Chobani in 2007, told the students of Northeastern University in Massachusetts on May 13 that entrepreneurial hopefuls should keep one thing in mind when starting businesses: How can they benefit both the community and the employees?Ulukaya said that as he built Chobani, he learned about a group of refugees nearby who had a hard time finding jobs. When he considered hiring them, he was advised against it — some people suggested customers would boycott Chobani because of his decision, he said. But as an immigrant from Turkey, he knew how hard it can be to emigrate and leave everything behind.Ulukaya said that today Chobani employs hundreds of immigrants and refugees in its facilities in Idaho and New York. He said that this inclusion of refugees had a huge impact on him and that he began to think about what more he could do to help refugees in the country.In 2016 he founded the nonprofit organization Tent Partnership for Refugees, which aims to mobilize the global business community to include refugees. It says more than 220 companies have committed to training and hiring refugees.He told the Northeastern graduates that they should think about how they can give back when they start businesses because of the fulfillment it will bring."I promise you that there is nothing more rewarding than showing up in the world for other people, no matter how hard it may be," he said.Chobani last year filed confidential paperwork for a stock-market listing that could value the company at more than $10 billion, though its IPO plans are currently paused.Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedInReid Hoffman.GreylockIn his speech to graduates of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee on May 12, Hoffman, a founder of the networking behemoth LinkedIn, stressed the importance of personal connections in the professional world. He said friends will not only enrich your life but be truthful allies as you build your business."Making, cultivating, and keeping close friends may be your life's most important work," he said. "Friends will be absolutely central to your sense of happiness, connection, and meaning."Hoffman credits a close friend with encouraging him to start LinkedIn. In 2002, Hoffman wanted to take a year off from work, but a friend suggested he cut the vacation short and focus on his startup idea. The following year he launched LinkedIn, which Microsoft bought for $26.2 billion in 2016."Friends will tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear," he said.Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind SnacksDaniel Lubetzky.KindLubetzky, who created the snack company Kind in 2004, encouraged graduates to find a cause that drives their entrepreneurial spirit."You will achieve far more success, including financial success, if you find purpose in whatever you choose to do," said Lubetzky, who has also appeared on "Shark Tank" as a guest judge. "I am not talking about the what but about the how."Lubetzky also spoke about the importance of daily habits for professional success and personal growth."It may seem simple, but it is seriously hard work," he said. "While your individual actions may feel small, all of us practicing good habits can cause a massive ripple effect of positive transformation."Lubetzky said that at Kind, he and his team value hearty debates, a sense of humor, and treating everyone with dignity, adding that those elements contributed to the company's accomplishments. In 2020, Mars acquired Kind; while the terms were not made public, people with knowledge of the deal told The New York Times it valued Lubetzky's business at $5 billion.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Hamdi Ulukaya, Reid Hoffman, and Daniel Lubetzky said entrepreneurial success comes from caring for a community, strong friendships, and kindness. Many young people want to start their own business one day.Getty Images College and university graduation ceremonies took place across the United States this spring. Prominent leaders, including entrepreneurs, were invited to give commencement speeches to graduates. Three business owners shared their advice for recent graduates. As millions of college students graduate this month, many are considering starting businesses instead of entering the workforce.After all, there's been a record number of new businesses—about 9.8 million—started in the last two years, according to US Census Data. Additionally, entrepreneurship experts say the Class of 2022 is graduating at one of the best times to start a business."Just as you are entering the world, our world is reentering history," said Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Snacks, who gave the commencement address at High Point University in North Carolina on May 7. "And you can help write its most epic chapter."Lubetzky was among the leading entrepreneurs who gave commencement speeches this graduation season. Here's their advice for young business owners entering a new phase of their lives.Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of ChobaniHamdi Ulukaya.JIM YOUNG/AFP via Getty ImagesUlukaya, who created the yogurt company Chobani in 2007, told the students of Northeastern University in Massachusetts on May 13 that entrepreneurial hopefuls should keep one thing in mind when starting businesses: How can they benefit both the community and the employees?Ulukaya said that as he built Chobani, he learned about a group of refugees nearby who had a hard time finding jobs. When he considered hiring them, he was advised against it — some people suggested customers would boycott Chobani because of his decision, he said. But as an immigrant from Turkey, he knew how hard it can be to emigrate and leave everything behind.Ulukaya said that today Chobani employs hundreds of immigrants and refugees in its facilities in Idaho and New York. He said that this inclusion of refugees had a huge impact on him and that he began to think about what more he could do to help refugees in the country.In 2016 he founded the nonprofit organization Tent Partnership for Refugees, which aims to mobilize the global business community to include refugees. It says more than 220 companies have committed to training and hiring refugees.He told the Northeastern graduates that they should think about how they can give back when they start businesses because of the fulfillment it will bring."I promise you that there is nothing more rewarding than showing up in the world for other people, no matter how hard it may be," he said.Chobani last year filed confidential paperwork for a stock-market listing that could value the company at more than $10 billion, though its IPO plans are currently paused.Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedInReid Hoffman.GreylockIn his speech to graduates of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee on May 12, Hoffman, a founder of the networking behemoth LinkedIn, stressed the importance of personal connections in the professional world. He said friends will not only enrich your life but be truthful allies as you build your business."Making, cultivating, and keeping close friends may be your life's most important work," he said. "Friends will be absolutely central to your sense of happiness, connection, and meaning."Hoffman credits a close friend with encouraging him to start LinkedIn. In 2002, Hoffman wanted to take a year off from work, but a friend suggested he cut the vacation short and focus on his startup idea. The following year he launched LinkedIn, which Microsoft bought for $26.2 billion in 2016."Friends will tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear," he said.Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind SnacksDaniel Lubetzky.KindLubetzky, who created the snack company Kind in 2004, encouraged graduates to find a cause that drives their entrepreneurial spirit."You will achieve far more success, including financial success, if you find purpose in whatever you choose to do," said Lubetzky, who has also appeared on "Shark Tank" as a guest judge. "I am not talking about the what but about the how."Lubetzky also spoke about the importance of daily habits for professional success and personal growth."It may seem simple, but it is seriously hard work," he said. "While your individual actions may feel small, all of us practicing good habits can cause a massive ripple effect of positive transformation."Lubetzky said that at Kind, he and his team value hearty debates, a sense of humor, and treating everyone with dignity, adding that those elements contributed to the company's accomplishments. In 2020, Mars acquired Kind; while the terms were not made public, people with knowledge of the deal told The New York Times it valued Lubetzky's business at $5 billion.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Juan Sorto called the student-loan process "freaking confusing" — and he's not the only one. Paying off debt in the US can be a lifelong process. College graduationGetty Images When Juan Antonio Sorto moved to America at age six, he began learning that education was the path to the American Dream. To achieve that dream, he took on what is now a $250,000 student-debt load. He wants an answer on Biden's plan to address the crisis: "If you're going to do something, then do it." Juan Antonio Sorto thought his education would end after high school.His family moved to Houston from El Salvador when he was 6, and Sorto, now 36, faced the challenge of navigating a completely new culture while maintaining his Latino roots. He said part of that was viewing high school "as the end goal to your education."But Sorto ended up with a different plan. At a college fair his senior year of high school, he realized higher education could be a reality for him. He attended a local university, thanks in part to Pell grants, scholarships for low-income students. Then, to progress in his chosen career as a probation officer, he sought a Master's degree, and later a Ph.D.He now has $250,513 in student debt."I had to continue to provide for my mother and my grandmother, and so I had no choice but to start accumulating debt," Sorto told Insider. "It's the price I had to pay to achieve the American Dream."While Sorto knows he voluntarily took on debt, experts agree the student-loan system is confusing and bureaucratic. It can lead borrowers seeking financial assistance on their education down a road of compounding interest and a lifetime of debt. Juan Antonio Sorto, 36, is a first-generation college student with $250,000 in debt.Juan Antonio SortoThe $1.7 trillion student-debt crisis grows each day, and data shows that it disproportionately impacts Latino borrowers and other communities of color. Scholarships for low-income students and loan-forgiveness programs for public servants barely make a dent in the lifelong debt millions of people carry in pursuit of the American Dream.And even though President Joe Biden has extended the pause on student-loan payments until May 1, pressure is ramping up for him to cancel debt — an issue he prioritized in his presidential campaign but has been largely silent on since.While student loans are the only form of debt Sorto has ever had, he said he sees no end in sight."My family will be okay, but I'm not going to be okay because that loan is under my name," Sorto said. "That's the price I was willing to pay for my family to be financially secure."'I believed in my heart that college was the American Dream'After moving to Houston, one of Sorto's first memories is going with his family to a buffet-style restaurant. He said he was so in awe at the range of food options that he got seven trays just for himself. That's just one example of how his family had to adjust to the American way of life.Sorto's father was not in his life growing up. For most of his early education, he took care of his younger sister while his mother worked at night. He also picked up side jobs to help support his mother, sister, and his grandma, who still lives in El Salvador.Living in America to Sorto meant going to college — something no one in his family had done before — and although his mother did not see the importance in doing so, he said, "I believed in my heart that college was the American Dream."But it's not a dream that works out for everyone: 72% of Latino students take out loans for their education, compared with 66% of white borrowers, according to the Student Borrower Protection Center. Twelve years after starting college, the average Latino borrower still owes 83% of their initial loan balance, compared to 65% for white borrowers. Juan Antonio Sorto with his mother and grandmother.Juan Antonio Sorto"College was viewed as a luxury," Sorto said. "And because my mother did not have an understanding of how much of a difference having a college degree would be to our livelihood, she was adamant on me pursuing a trade degree, a mechanical degree, an electrician degree or something that was a six-month or yearlong course."Sorto ended up achieving his goal — he served as a probation officer for 12 years using his bachelor's degree. However, he joined the Great Resignation last year because the "mental exhaustion and stress" became too much. He's now pursuing a Ph.D. — a process he started while he was working as a probation officer — and a new job as a community developer in low-income neighborhoods. Even with his student debt load, he believes he accomplished his goals."I can at least feel happy to know that the chains within my family, within the generations that I can trace, have finally been broken where we're no longer going to be looked upon as uneducated, poor people," Sorto said.Sorto is proud of the life his education has given him and his family, despite the student debt that came with it. But what he didn't know when he was getting seven trays of food at the buffet is the student-loan system is also an "all-you-can-eat" industry — the government and lenders make it easy to take out loans, but that doesn't mean it's in the borrower's best interest.The student-loan industry is 'so freaking confusing' — and requires reformSorto called the process to get assistance paying off his debt "so freaking confusing," and he's not alone. For decades, lawmakers and advocates have been scrutinizing student-loan companies over misleading behavior that can keep borrowers paying off debt longer than they should.For example, Insider spoke to three federal borrowers in July who were struggling to pay off their debt, but they weren't asking for loan forgiveness — they were simply asking student-loan companies to pick up the phone and help them."Nobody wants to assist you," one borrower told Insider. "And you don't know how to get help. Even though you go back and forth, the lender doesn't know what the servicer is doing and the servicer doesn't know what the lender is doing."Lawmakers have been keeping tabs on the issue, as well. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Insider in July that "the world has changed for student-loan-debt servicers," adding that they "can't sign a contract, do a lousy job, cost borrowers tons of money, and still get their contracts renewed." Warren's comments came after PHEAA, one of the largest student-loan companies accused of engaging in misleading behavior, announced plans to end its federal loan servicing contract.But reforms to the industry are in the works. Federal Student Aid head Richard Cordray warned student-loan companies that if they do not adhere to higher standards to better serve borrowers, they will face consequences — and Sorto wants to ensure the administration will follow through on that. "Quit politicizing my livelihood," Sorto said. "This is not a game, and I feel like that's what it's become to them. If you're going to do something, then do it, and stop playing political games."Do you have a story to share about student debt? Reach out to Ayelet Sheffey at asheffey@insider.com.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The USSR leapfrogged the USA in the space race with Sputnik, and the student-loan industry was meant to fix that. Now, it's a $1.7 trillion crisis. Satellite and sunrise in space.Getty Images When the USSR launched Sputnik, the first orbiting satellite, the US worried it was falling behind. Eisenhower responded by creating a program to help more people afford college — and boost the US. While it was created to further educational equity, the student-loan program now furthers debt. Sputnik was a wake-up call for the US: Americans needed to be smarter.On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik. It was a clear sign to President Dwight Eisenhower that the US needed to be producing more scientists and engineers to compete with other nations. But there was one problem — the education system at the time was exclusive and shut out low- and middle-income people from participating. America wasn't going to catch up to the Soviets in the "space race" as long as that was the case.Congress stepped in and created the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) at Eisenhower's request, which allowed the government to give loans to students in science and mathematics fields. It was later amended to remove restrictions on fields of study. In other words, Sputnik spurred the creation of the federal student-loan program, as detailed in "The Debt Trap," a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell."It is no exaggeration to say that America's progress in many fields of endeavor in the years ahead — in fact, the very survival of our free country — may depend in large part upon the education we provide for our young people now," the House report recommending the bill's passage stated. President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1964 remarks that more than 600,000 additional students had gotten access to education thanks to the NDEA's student-loan program. But there was still more to do to tackle affordability, Johnson said, noting that Americans were spending $4,000 to $5,000 on each child's college."Now, ladies and gentlemen, this just must not continue," Johnson added. "The challenge is obvious and we must meet it. Higher costs must not put higher education out of reach."Today, the average annual out-of-state tuition for a public university is $15,000, fewer and fewer people are enrolling in college as the nation's student-debt load stands at $1.7 trillion and grows by the day. What started as an altruistic educational pursuit has now become a full-fledged crisis.Government involvement in US education is hurting the people it intended to help Johnson, well known for his war on poverty, expanded the education system in an attempt to give everyone a fair shot at college — a core pillar of the American Dream. To fulfill his goal of universal access to education, he signed the Higher Education Act of 1965, which guaranteed loans for the middle class.But after the Act's passage, banks began raising interest rates on student loans and the system came to profit lenders while borrowers accumulated more debt. Colleges kept raising tuition as more federal aid became available. It created a trap for students across the country, as Mitchell explains: The more colleges raised tuition, the more Americans had to borrow, and the more Americans had to borrow, the more colleges raised tuition.Alice Rivlin, the first Congressional Budget Office head tasked with crafting Johnson's student-loan program, told Mitchell in 2019 that the idea behind federal loans was that "higher education added to your future income and therefore loan finance was a sensible thing. You could pay it back out of your future income."But looking back, when asked what she thought of how the loan industry turned out, Rivlin told Mitchell: "We unleashed a monster."The average American holds about $32,000 in student debt after graduating. Due to high interest rates, if the borrower does not make sufficient income, it could be very difficult and sometimes impossible, for the borrower to pay off even the original loan amount.For example, David Wise, 59, originally borrowed $79,000 in student debt, had paid off $175,000 of it, and still owes $236,485."I feel like I've actually been responsible, and I've paid a considerable amount of money on my student loans," Wise told Insider. "But it really is a debtor's prison."It's even worse for parents who want to give their kids a chance at higher education. Parent PLUS loans are federal loans parents can take out to finance their kids' education, and the loan can cover up to the cost of attendance and is not based on income.It's created a system of unchecked borrowing, and with PLUS loans having the highest interest rates of 6.28%, parents are often stuck paying off debt for the rest of their lives simply because they wanted to give their kids the best future.President Joe Biden has taken steps to tackle the student debt crisis. He has begun to reform student-loan forgiveness programs that have failed borrowers over past years, like one intended for public servants, and he promised to pass free community college during his term, which will significantly reduce college affordability issues.But even with those reforms, 45 million Americans continue to shoulder significant debt burdens, shutting many out of the American Dream Eisenhower and Johnson envisioned.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The more successful Dom McGregor became, the more he turned to alcohol until his cofounder had to intervene. Now, he's been sober for five years. Dom McGregor, 28, is now five years sober. He stepped back from his role as Social Chain's COO in 2019. Dom McGregor Dom McGregor dropped out of university to cofound Social Chain, an agency now worth $650 million. He increasingly turned to alcohol while navigating the highs and lows of startup life in his 20s. He decided to get sober after getting so drunk at a work event that his cofounder had to intervene. This as-told-to article is based on a conversation with Dominic McGregor, a 28-year-old entrepreneur and cofounder of the social-media agency Social Chain, about his struggles with alcohol and how he got sober. It has been edited for length and clarity.The roller coaster of founding a company now worth nine figures began with a single tweet sent from my university dorm bathroom in January 2013. I remember waking up hungover and walking down to the bathroom to find no toilet paper. Instead of alerting my housemates or heading out to buy some, I tweeted a picture of the empty roll: #studentproblems. I decided to start a new account just for tweeting about my life at university. I had rapidly gained a following of about 50,000 followers when Steve Bartlett, my future cofounder, approached me in February 2013. He was trying to set up his own online business for students and wanted my help.We met up in a bar. By the end of the night, he persuaded me to drop out of university and pursue the venture with him.I was 19 at the time. We started growing different student-focused social-media accounts to draw traffic, but we quickly realized that the social-media influence was more valuable than the website trade. So we got rid of the website and doubled down on growing social-media assets.As freelancers, we began marketing these social assets to companies to pay us to advertise their products, as well as drive traffic and downloads. In April 2014, we traveled together, working flexibly from our laptops in Thailand and Brazil.At this point, we were bringing in six figures each by advising clients in London, San Francisco, and New York. And in August of that year, one of our clients wanted to invest. I was 21, Steve was 22, and we'd been operating causally while funding a lifestyle of traveling. Taking investment meant settling down and accepting a lot more responsibility. We decided to move back to London. And the jump from having to only hold ourselves accountable to having a staff of 10 was huge. Because social media was still in its infancy, it was difficult to find anyone who had experience. The average age of our team was 21.On the client side, we were flying: winning awards, securing huge deals, growing rapidly. But internally there were cash-flow problems. We started working on a 250,000 pound project, but we didn't get paid for 11 months. This was a recurring problem. I was existing in two polar-opposite mindsets: I was an uber-successful 21-year-old with my own home and car. But I was also depressed and anxious, constantly thinking about HR issues, unpaid invoices, and delayed salaries. In both situations, I would turn to alcohol. We had routine celebratory staff parties for every award we won and deal we made. But if I'd had a terrible day, I would go home to unwind with a drink.This pattern worsened throughout our first year and into our second. By Christmas 2015, I was on a downward spiral. I'd function throughout the week, but then I'd fall apart over the weekends. I started isolating myself from my friends and colleagues. One Friday night in the summer of 2016, I got the drunkest I'd ever been. For a few weeks, I'd been trying to limit myself to only one drink a night. Emboldened by my new self-control, I attended a nighttime work event. But it was obvious at this point that I was struggling with alcoholism.I was derogatory toward one of my best friends and embarrassed myself in front of our entire team. When I woke up, Steve had texted me saying we needed to talk.When he sat me down, I apologized. I felt broken.It became a case of 'How do I rebuild myself and get sober?' I threw myself into work because that was what gave me stability and focus.The most difficult part to accept was that it wasn't the success, the business, or Steve who was to blame for my problems. It was me. I think I always had the potential to become dependent on alcohol, but the pressure of becoming a successful founder accelerated it massively. Slowly, I progressed. I don't remember much of the first five or six months. I walked around like a zombie. I had to remove myself from any social situation that would involve drinking. Although I was throwing myself into work, I had drawn a line between myself and the social aspects of the business. At first, I wouldn't go to any events or after-work drinks. Steve and I were settling into roles as senior leadership, so distancing myself wasn't unheard of. I stayed at Social Chain as the COO for four years after this, working alongside Steve. I think being sober made me a better founder, as well as a better person. It was an interesting point of conversation that people could approach me about. I made friends with older peers who no longer drank and pregnant women at networking events - people who would have steered clear of drunk me.My sobriety also came at a time when a natural divide needed to be formed between me and Steve as senior leadership and our employees. We needed that distance to effectively grow the company. Going through that experience broke down any walls between me and Steve. We knew we could depend on each other for anything, and I think that was a major asset when growing our company.Social Chain is now worth 500 million pounds, and although Steve and I have stepped back from our CEO and COO roles, respectively, we still chat often.(Editor's note: In 2019, Social Chain merged with Lumaland AG and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Its market cap as of November 10, 2021, was 565 million euros.)Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

"We have to learn by doing, learn by trying things," the billionaire co-founder and co-CEO of Netflix told Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer. "We're unafraid to fail, we're willing to try new things," said Reed Hastings, co-CEO of Netflix. Netflix Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings recently discussed the multibillion-dollar company's future with Mathias Döpfner. Döpfner is the co-CEO of Axel Springer, Insider's parent company, and a board member at Netflix. Netflix gained 40 million new subscribers during the pandemic and has plans to branch out into the video game space. You are perceived as a successful entrepreneur, and yet your first idea did not work out. You wanted to invent the foot mouse. Can you tell us what the foot mouse was, and why it did not work? I have lots of ideas, but not always the best judgment. I was using a keyboard and mouse, and I had this idea that I could use my hands only for the keyboard and use my foot to operate the mouse. It was the mid-1980s. And so, I worked with some designers and came up with the foot mouse. But then we found out that your leg cramps, and the floor is very dirty. After a couple days, it's disgusting. And so, my first big idea was a total failure. I was just as excited about the foot mouse as I was about Netflix. That's why, when I briefly tried to be an investor, I was totally awful at it, because I was just so full of hope for every person that came in. I was like,"Sure, that might work!" I have a very optimistic personality.Well, the foot mouse did not work out. But Netflix did! It now has over 200 million subscribers worldwide and a market cap of around 250 billion. How did Netflix do during the pandemic?The internet is becoming very widely adopted for smart TVs, so that has given us a pretty steady line. We gained about 30 million more members a year for five years as smart TVs rolled out. Under COVID, in 2020, we gained 40 million, and this year it will probably be about 20 million. It's all about staying on the same trajectory, but COVID's made it a bit lumpier. The fundamental fact remains: can we tell amazing stories? There are so many people now competing in streaming and it's really exciting. That will just drive more people to get a smart TV, and to watch television.What did COVID do to movie production?Shooting stopped it for a while. But we and others figured out how to get back to shooting, with testing, different zones for the teams on set and making it as safe as possible.Netflix is now entering the video game space. Is it a new strategic priority?Sure. You know, when you have a small child, a two-year-old, they're always saying "Papa, will you read to me?" They love to be told stories. And they also love playing with their friends and roughhousing with their cousins or their siblings. And these two main aspects of children's psychology - read me a story and I want to play - when they get older, one part grows into watching movies and series. People want to lean back and be told good stories; that's Netflix. And the other part is interactive play, which grows into video gaming.Until now, you've concentrated on telling good stories.Exactly. Now that we're big enough, we have been trying to expand from showing original series in the US to showing documentaries, German films, French films, and so on. We've continued to expand, and each one of these is a new area. We have to learn by doing, learn by trying things. We're unafraid to fail, we're willing to try new things. And so, we're going to try video gaming. Maybe the first game will be as good as "Among Us," the big game of last year. But more likely, it will take us many tries. About 10,000 games per year are launched on mobile. So, it's a big, crowded marketplace. We may not succeed, but that doesn't mean we're not going to try. And the thing about mobile games is that you get a lot of ads and upsells, trying to get players to buy this sword, buy this robe. The commerce really distorts the storytelling. But on Netflix, you get to just play the game. There is no upselling, no ads. We just want to provide you with the entertainment and the thrill of playing the game.Are there any other ideas for future growth pillars at Netflix? Sport or news, for example? Sports or news are not really compatible with entertainment. News is about trying to get to reality. And we're about escapism. We're on a very different kind of course, even if we offer documentaries. What we want is for people to feel, we want emotion. The main areas where we've still got a long way to go are getting better at films and series from around the world. We've had some great successes like Dark and Barbarians. And we're investing more. And the amazing thing is that the market will be much, much larger in five years than it is today. Before, I mentioned 10,000 video games produced per year. The figure for films is less than 1,000. In the German language alone, 70,000 books per year are published.And you don't feel overwhelmed by books, do you?No, of course not. You learn to choose what you want to read, you're perfectly okay with the huge selection. So, this idea that we're going to produce too much, and that the consumers won't love it is just not true. Consumers love greatness. And to get there, you have to try lots of things and give many people a chance to express their voice. For 100 years, you could only watch an episode of a show, say, at 8 o'clock on Thursday night, or you go to the theater. Now, it's much more flexible. You can watch what you want when you want, and you can also go to a theater. We just want to provide people with that choice, and that expands the market a lot.Netflix got famous, among other things, because it is a no-rule company. And you wrote an important book about that. Nevertheless, there is one unwritten rule, and that is that you don't like to talk about competition. Because you think we should just talk and care about the things that we can really influence ourselves, and not about things that other people are doing. Given the fact that there are now some competitors trying to get pieces of the cake that Netflix took so successfully: Does that rule still apply?Since I wrote a book titled "No Rules Rule," I can't say that there's a rule about what you talk about.So among the three categories of potential competitors: the platforms like Apple and Amazon; the original content creators like HBO, and Disney; and the unknown, young, disruptive startup. Which of the three would you take most seriously?I take all of them seriously. But I would say Disney and HBO eat, sleep, and breathe entertainment. That's what they do, it's what they live, and they have a 100-year history of doing that.If you talk to the creative community, there are two main reasons - at least that's what I hear - why they love to work with Netflix. The first one is that Netflix is fast, and secondly, it provides a lot of freedom. How do you make sure that an incumbent, which has become as big as Netflix, can still keep these two USPs?The thing that helps producers most is the big platform, because if you put your film or series on Netflix, the whole world sees it. So, our biggest proposition is that, if you want broad distribution around the world, then Netflix is really the superior platform. But in terms of freedom and being quick, we know that those are very important, as well as all the technical support we provide concerning production.Certain countries, like Turkey like Hong Kong for example, are now implementing rules that basically makes things very difficult for a freedom-oriented company like Netflix. How do you deal with censorship or more subtle interference with your products?In the US today, whether you get vaccinated or not is political. Nearly everything has become political. We have a series called "Queer Eye" that stars five LGBTQ men who share heartfelt and emotional makeovers with people all over the world. "Queer Eye" is in Saudi Arabia, in Indonesia, in Russia, and in Hungary. So, our ability to influence culture is not just in documentaries; it's really quite broad. "Sex Education," with season three coming out this week, is in every country in the world. And it's not banned anywhere. We do have about a half dozen or so per year that get banned in a certain country, which is unfortunate. And we would rather not have that, of course. All in all, though, we really do have very few takedowns in very few countries and we do report them annually in our ESG report.There has been some improvement over the last couple of years in getting data from Netflix to the producers, but it is still minuscule compared to all other exploitation means. What is the problem?I think that's a good point. We're moving towards providing more and more data and towards standardizing. You know how Spotify has the artist portal and you can look up lots of things. We're moving towards that, but we're not yet there. But we're making steps in that direction on a consistent basis, so you will get more and more information.You launched the company Netflix more than two decades ago. You had to pivot at least three times. Did you in your early days expect, imagine, dream about creating a company of that size and importance?I was very fortunate to be in internet companies in the 90s, and so I always believed that the Internet speeds would continue to do this, as they have. And so, when we named the company Netflix 25 years ago, that was because we believed in internet television and that possibility. I'd say what I did not see is us doing original content. The concept that we had is sort of blockbuster online, where you have everything from everybody, and then we would be a retailer. And I didn't understand the value producer, distributor, channels, exclusive content that HBO and others had done. Ted Sarandos, my partner, really figured out that part that if you looked at again, HBO, which was our model for a long time, having exclusive content was essential, and then we ended up pivoting towards that. The first part of that being "House of Cards," and then getting into building our own content. So, it's been a really two-part thing one is, yes, internet entertainment and second, doing original content.With Ted Sarandos you have established a co-CEO. You're still extremely active in the company but, nevertheless, establishing your co-CEO is also a sign that a kind of mid-term transition is in your mind. A sentence that I would like you to complete, and that is: In five years, I would like to spend much more time…Spending a little more time on philanthropy, that's where I'm taking time off. Not doing something else commercial. But I've had the great fortune to work with Ted for more than 20 years. He's been my partner and effective co-CEO for a long time and now he's formally co-CEO. Doing global entertainment competing with the people we're competing with, we need all the CEOs we can get. So I'm super happy to have him with me.And philanthropy? What is the next thing that you would like to do?Yeah, the project I just made a big investment in is MyAgro. It's a West African farming and savings collective. What they do is help farmers with scratch cards save money when they have the harvest. And then you build up these scratch cards that are mobile validated and then, when the planting time comes, you get fertilizer, or high-quality, great seeds, and some advice. We want to help it go from 100,000 farmers in Senegal and Mali to a million. I was a high school math teacher in southern Africa, which was my first job out of university. I got the chance to travel throughout most countries in Africa and so it's just kind of close to my heart. I love working to help these farmers, you know, with a little bit of fertilizer and good seeds, you can double the output of a small subsistence farmer so it's really a profound impact. So that's the current project.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

     The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Soraya Darabi, TMV, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, Bloomberg, and Acast. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ BARRY RITHOLTZ, HOST, MASTERS IN BUSINESS: This… Read More The post Transcript: Soraya Darabi appeared first on The Big Picture.      The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Soraya Darabi, TMV, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, Bloomberg, and Acast. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ BARRY RITHOLTZ, HOST, MASTERS IN BUSINESS: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest. Her name is Soraya Darabi. She is a venture capital and impact investor who has an absolutely fascinating background working for, first with the New York Times Social Media Group then with a startup that eventually gets purchased by OpenTable, and then becoming a venture investor that focuses on women and people of color-led startups which is not merely a way to, quote-unquote, “do good” but it’s a broad area that is wildly underserved by the venture community and therefore is very inefficient. Meaning, there’s a lot of upside in this. You can both do well and do good by investing in these areas. I found this to be absolutely fascinating and I think you will also, if you’re at all interested in entrepreneurship, social media startups, deal flow, how funds identify who they want to invest in, what it’s like to actually experience an exit as an entrepreneur, I think you’ll find this to be quite fascinating. So with no further ado, my conversation with TMV’s Soraya Darabi. VOICEOVER: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is Soraya Darabi. She is the Co-Founder and General Partner of TMV, a venture capital firm that has had a number of that exits despite being relatively young, 65 percent of TMV’s startups are led by women or people of color. Previously, she was the cofounder of Foodspotting, an app named App of the Year by Apple and Wire that was eventually purchased by OpenTable. Soraya Darabi, welcome to Bloomberg. SORAYA DARABI; GENERAL PARTNER & FOUNDER; TMV: My goodness, Barry, thank you for having me. RITHOLTZ: I’ve been looking forward to this conversation since our previous discussion. We were on a Zoom call with a number of people discussing blockchain and crypto when it was really quite fascinating and I thought you had such an unusual and interesting background, I thought you would make a perfect guest for the show. Let’s start with your Manager of Digital Partnerships and Social Media at the “New York Times” when social media was really just ramping up. Tell us about what that was like. Tell us what you did in the late aughts at The Times. DARABI: Absolutely. I was fresh faced out of a university. I had recently graduated with mostly a journalism concentration from Georgetown and did a small stint in Condé Nast right around the time they acquired Reddit for what will soon be nothing because Reddit’s expecting to IPO at around 15 billion. And that experience at Reddit really offered me a deep understanding of convergence, what was happening to digital media properties as they partnered for the first time when nascent but scaling social media platforms. And so the “New York Times” generously offered me a role that was originally called manager of buzz marketing. I think that’s what they called social media in 2006 and then that eventually evolved into manager of digital partnerships and social media which, in essence, meant that we were aiming to be the first media property in the world to partner with companies that are household names today but back in the they were fairly unbalanced to Facebook and Twitters, of course, but also platforms that really took off for a while and then plateaued potentially. The Tumblers of the world. And it was responsibility to understand how we could effectively generate an understanding of the burgeoning demographics of this platform and how we could potentially bring income into The Times for working with them, but more importantly have a journalist that could authentically represent themselves on new media. And so, that was a really wonderful role to have directly out of University and then introduce me to folks with whom I still work today. DARABI: That’s quite interesting. So when you’re looking at a lot of these companies, you mentioned Facebook and Twitter and Tumbler, how do you know if something’s going to be a Facebook or a MySpace, so Twitter or a Tumbler, what’s going to survive or not, when you’re cutting deals with these companies on behalf of The Times, are you thinking in terms of hey, who’s going to stick around, wasn’t that much earlier that the dot-com implosion took place prior to you starting with The Times? DARABI: It’s true, although I don’t remember the dot-com implosion. So, maybe that naivete helped because all I had was enthusiasm, unbridled enthusiasm for these new companies and I operated then and now still with a beta approach to business. Testing out new platforms and trying to track the data, what’s scaling, what velocity is this platform scaling and can we hitch a ride on the rochet ship if they will so allow. But a lot of our partnerships then and now, as an investor, are predicated upon relationships. And so, as most, I think terrific investors that I listen to, who I listen to in your show, at least, will talk to you about the importance of believing and the founder and the founder’s vision and that was the case back then and remains the case today. RITHOLTZ: So, when you were at The Times, your tenure there very much overlapped the great financial crisis. You’re looking at social media, how did that manifest the world of social media when it looked like the world of finance was imploding at that time? DARABI: Well, it was a very interesting time. I remember having, quite literally, 30-second meetings with Sorkin as he would run upstairs to my floor, in the eighth floor, to talk about a deal book app that we wanted to launch and then he’d ran back down to his desk to do much more important work, I think, and — between the financial crisis to the world. So, 30-second meetings aside, it was considered to be, in some ways, a great awakening for the Web 2.0 era as the economy was bottoming out, like a recession, it also offered a really interesting opportunity for entrepreneurs, many of whom had just been laid off or we’re looking at this as a sizeable moment to begin to work on a side hustle or a life pursuit. And so, there’s — it’s unsettling, of course, any recession or any great awakening, but lemonade-lemons, when the opening door closing, there was a — there was a true opportunity as well for social media founders, founders focusing on convergence in any industry, really, many of which are predicated in New York. But again, tinkering on an idea that could ultimately become quite powerful because if you’re in the earliest stage of the riskiest asset class, big venture, there’s always going to be seed funding for a great founder with a great idea. And so, I think some of the smartest people I’d ever met in my life, I met at the onset of the aftermath of that particular era in time. RITHOLTZ: So you mentioned side hustle. Let’s talk a little bit about Foodspotting which is described as a visual geolocal guide to dishes instead of restaurants which sounds appealing to me. And it was named App of the Year by both Apple and Wired. How do you go from working at a giant organization like The Times to a startup with you and a cofounder and a handful of other coders working with you? DARABI: Well, five to six nights a week after my day job at the “New York Times,” I would go to networking events with technologists and entrepreneurs after hours. I saw that a priority to be able to partner from the earliest infancy with interesting companies for that media entity. I need to at least know who these founders were in New York and Silicon Valley. And so, without a true agenda other than keen curiosity to learn what this business were all about, I would go to New York tech meetup which Scott Heiferman of meetup.com who’s now in charge LP in my fund would create. And back then, the New York Tech Meetup was fewer than 40 people. I believe it’s been the tens of thousands now. RITHOLTZ: Wow, that’s … DARABI: In New York City alone. And so, it was there that I met some really brilliant people. And in particular, a gentleman my age who’s building a cloud-computing company that was essentially arbitraging AWS to repopulate consumer-facing cloud data services for enterprises, B2B2C play. And we all thought it would be Dropbox. The company ultimately wasn’t, but I will tell you the people with whom I worked with that startup because I left the “New York Times” to join that startup, to this day remain some of the most successful people in Silicon Valley and Alley. And actually, one of those persons is a partner at our firm now, Darshan. He was the cofounder of that particular company which is called drop.io. but I stayed there very quickly. I was there for about six months. But at that startup, I observed how a young person my age could build a business, raise VC, he was the son of a VC and so he was exceptionally attuned to the changing landscape of venture and how to position the company so that it would be attractive to the RREs of the world and then the DFJs. And I … RITHOLTZ: Define those for us. RREs and BFJs. DARABI: Sorry. Still, today, very relevant and very successful venture capital firms. And in particular, they were backing a lot of the most interesting ideas in Web 2.0 era when I joined this particular startup in 2010. Well, that startup was acquired by Facebook and I often say, no, thanks to me. But the mafia that left that particular startup continues to this day to coinvest with one another and help one another’s ideas to exceed. And it was there that I began to build the confidence, I think, that I really needed to explore my own entrepreneurial ideas or to help accelerate ideas. And Foodspotting was a company that I was advising while at that particular startup, that was really taking off. This was in the early days of when Instagram was still in beta and we observed that the most commonly posted photos on Instagram were of food. And so, by following that lead, we basically built an app as well that activity that continues to take place every single day. I still see food photos on Twitter every time I open up my stream. And decided to match that with an algorithm that showed folks wherever they were in the world, say in Greece, that might want spanakopita or if I’m in Japan, Okinawa, we help people to discover not just the Michelin-rated restaurants or the most popular local hunt in New York but rather what’s the dish that they should be ordering. And then the app was extremely good was populating beautiful photos of that particular dish and then mirroring them with accredited reviews from the Zagats of the world but also popular celebrity shots like Marcus Samuelsson in New York. And that’s why we took off because it was a cult-beloved app of its time back when there were only three geolocation apps in the iTunes apparently store. It was we and Twitter and Foursquare. So, there was a first-mover advantage. Looking back in hindsight, I think we sold that company too soon. OpenTable bought the business. A year and a half later, Priceline bought OpenTable. Both were generous liquidity events for the founders that enabled us to become angel investors. But sometimes I wish that that app still existed today because I could see it being still incredibly handy in my day-to-day life. RITHOLTZ: To say the least. So did you have to raise money for Foodspotting or did you just bootstrapped it and how did that experience compare with what that exit was like? DARABI: We did. We raised from tremendous investors like Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures whom I think of as being one of the best angel investors of the world. He was on the board. But we didn’t raise that much capital before the business is ultimately sold and what I learned in some of those early conversations, I would say, that may have ultimately led to LOIs and term sheets was that so much of M&As about wining and dining and as a young person, particularly for me, you and I discussed before the show, Barry, we’re both from New York, I’m not from a business-oriented family to say the least. My mom’s an academic, my father was a cab driver in New York City. And so, there are certain elements of this game, raising venture and ultimately trying to exit your company, that you don’t learn from a business book. And I think navigating that as a young person was complicated if I had to speak economically. RITHOLTZ: Quite fascinating. What is purposeful change? DARABI: Well, the world purpose, I suppose, especially in the VC game could come across as somewhat of a cliché. But we try to be as specific as possible when we allude to the impact that our investment could potentially make. And so, specifically, we invest in five verticals at our early stage New York City-based venture fund. We invest in what we call the care economy, just companies making all forms of care, elder care to pet care to health care, more accessible and equitable. We invest in financial inclusion. So this is a spin on fintech. These are companies enabling wealth creation, education, and most importantly literacy for all, that I think is really important to democratization of finance. We invest in the future of work which are companies creating better outcomes for workers and employees alike. We invest in the future of work which are companies creating better outcomes for workers and employers alike. We invest in purpose as it pertains to transportation. So, not immediately intuitive but companies creating transparency and efficiency around global supply chain and mobility. I’m going to talk about why we pick that category in a bit. And sustainability. So, tech-enabled sustainable solutions. These are companies optimizing for sustainability from process to product. With these five verticals combined, we have a subspecies which is that diverse founders and diverse employee bases and diverse cap table. It is not charity, it’s simply good for business. And so, in addition to being hyper specific about the impact in which we invest, we also make it a priority and a mandate at our firm to invest in the way the world truly look. And when we say that on our website, we link to census data. And so, we invest in man and women equally. We invest in diverse founders, almost all of the time. And we track this with data and precious to make sure that our investments reflect not just one zip code in California but rather America at large. RITHOLTZ: And you have described this as non-obvious founders. Tell us a little bit about that phrase. DARABI: Well, not obvious is a term you hear a lot when you go out to Silicon Valley. And I don’t know, I think it was coined by a well-known early PayPal employee turned billionaire turned investor who actually have a conference centered around non-obvious ideas. And I love the phrase. I love thinking about investment PC that are contrary because we have a contrary point of view, contrarian point of view, you often have outlier results because if you’re right, you’re taking the risk and your capturing the reward. When you’re investing in non-obvious founders, it should be that is the exact same outcome. And so, it almost sort of befuddled me as a person with a hard to pronounce name in Silicon Valley, why it was that we’re an industry that prides itself on investing in innovation and groundbreaking ideas and the next frontier of X, Y, and Z and yet all of those founders in which we were investing, collectively, tended to kind of look the same. They were coming from the same schools and the same types of families. And so, to me, there was nothing innovative at all about backing that Wharton, PSB, HBS guy who is second or third-generation finance. And what really excites me about venture is capturing a moment in time that’s young but also the energy is palpable around not only the idea in which the founder is building but the categories of which they’re tackling and that sounded big. I’ll be a little bit more speficic. And so, at TMV, we tried to see things before they’re even coming around the bend. For instance, we were early investors in a company called Cityblock Health which is offering best in class health care specifically for low income Americans. So they focus on the most vulnerable population which are underserved with health care and they’re offering them best in class health care access at affordable pricing because it’s predominantly covered through a payer relationship. And this company is so powerful to us for three reasons because it’s not simply offering health care to the elite. It’s democratizing access to care which I think is absolutely necessary in term out for success of any kind. We thought this was profoundly interesting because the population which they serve is also incredibly diverse. And so when you look at that investment over, say, a comparable company, I won’t name names, that offers for-profit health care, out-of-pocket, you can see why this is an opportunity that excites us as impact investors but we don’t see the diversity of the team it’s impact. We actually see that as their unfair advantage because they are accessing a population authentically that others might ignore. RITHOLTZ: Let me see if I understand this correctly. When you talk about non-obvious find — founders and spaces like this, what I’m hearing from you is you’re looking at areas where the market has been very inefficient with how it allocates capital … DARABI: Yes. RITHOLTZ: … that these areas are just overlooked and ignored, hey, if you want to go on to silicon valley and compete with everybody else and pay up for what looks like the same old startup, maybe it will successful and maybe it won’t, that’s hypercompetitive and hyper efficient, these are areas that are just overlooked and there is — this is more than just do-goodery for lack of a better word. There are genuine economic opportunities here with lots of potential upside. DARABI: Absolutely. So, my business partner and I, she and I found each other 20 years ago as undergrads at Georgetown but we went in to business after she was successful and being one of the only women in the world to take a shipping business public with her family, and we got together and we said we have a really unique access, she and I. And the first SPV that we collaborated on back in 2016 was a young business at the time, started by two women, that was focused on medical apparel predominantly for nurses. Now it’s nurses and doctors. And they were offering a solution to make medical apparel, so scrubs, more comfortable and more fashionable for nurses. I happen to have nurses and doctors in my family so doing due diligence for this business is relatively simple. I called my aunt who’s a nurse practitioner, a nurse her life, and she said, absolutely. When you’re working in a uniform at the hospital, you want something comfortable with extra pockets that makes you look and feel good. The VCs that they spoke to at the time, and they’ve been very public about this, in the beginning, anyway, were less excited because they correlated this particular business for the fashion company. But if you look back at our original memo which I saved, it says, FIGS, now public on the New York Stock Exchange is a utility business. It’s a uniform company that can verticalize beyond just medical apparel. And so, we helped value that company at 15 million back in 2016. And this year, in 2021, they went public at a $7 billion market cap. RITHOLTZ: Wow. DARABI: And so, what is particularly exciting for us going back to that conversation on non-obvious founders is that particular business, FIGS, was the first company in history to have two female co-founders go public. And when we think of success at TMV, we don’t just think about financial success and IRR and cash on cash return for our LPs, of course we think about that. But we also think who are we cheerleading and with whom do we want to go into business. I went to the story on the other side of the fence that we want to help and we measure non-obvious not just based on gender or race because I think that’s a little too precise in some ways. Sometimes, for us non-obvious, is around geography, I would say. I’m calling you from Athens, as you know, and in Greece, yesterday, I got together with a fund manager. I’m lucky enough to be an LP in her fund and she was talking about the average size of a seed round in Silicon Valley these days, hovering around 30 million. And I was scratching my head because at our fund, TMV, we don’t see that. We’re investing in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Austin, Texas and the average price for us to invest in the seed round is closer to 5 million or 6 million. And so, we actually can capture larger ownership of the pie early on and then develop a very close-knit relationship with these founders but might not be as networked in the Valley where there’s 30 VC funds to everyone that exist in Austin, Texas. RITHOLTZ: Right. DARABI: And so, yes, I think you’re right to say that it’s about inefficiencies in market but also just around — about being persistent and looking where others are not. RITHOLTZ: That’s quite intriguing. Your team is female-led. You have a portfolio of companies that’s about 65 percent women and people of color. Tell us how you go about finding these non-obvious startups? DARABI: It’s a good question. TMV celebrates its five-year anniversary this year. So the way we go about funding companies now is a bit different than the way we began five years ago. Now, it’s systematic. We collectively, as a partnership, there are many of us take over 50 calls a month with Tier 1 venture capital firms that have known us for a while like the work that we do, believe in our value-add because the partnership comprised of four more operators. So, we really roll up our sleeves to help. And when you’ve invested at this firms, enough time, they will write to you and say I found a company that’s a little too early for us, for XYZ reason, but it resonates and I think it might be for you. So we found some of our best deals that way. But other times, we found our deal flow through building our own communities. And so, when I first started visit as an EM, an emerging manager of a VC firm. And roughly 30 percent of LP capital goes to EM each year but that’s sort of an outsized percentage because when you think about the w-fix-solve (ph) addition capital, taking 1.3 billion of that pie, then you recognize the definition of emerging manager might need to change a bit. So, when I was starting as an EM, I recognize that the landscape wasn’t necessarily leveled. If you weren’t, what’s called the spinout, somebody that has spent a few years at a traditional established blue-chip firm, then it’s harder to develop and cultivate relationships with institutional LPs who will give you a shot even though the data absolutely points to there being a real opportunity in capturing lightning in a bottle if you find a right EM with the right idea in the right market conditions which is certainly what we’re in right now. And so, I decided to start a network specifically tailored around helping women fund managers, connecting one another and it began as a WhatsApp group and a weekly Google Meet that has now blown into something that requires a lot of dedicated time. And so we’re hiring an executive director for this group. They’re called Transact Global, 250 women ex-fund managers globally, from Hong Kong, to Luxembourg, to Venezuela, Canada, Nigeria, you name it. There are women fund managers in our group and we have one of the most active deal flow channels in the world. And so two of our TMV deals over the last year, a fintech combatting student debt and helping young Americans save for retirement at the same time, as an example, came from this WhatsApp deal flow channel. So, I think creating the community, being the change, so to speak, has been incredibly effective for us a proprietary deal flow mechanism. And then last but not least, I think that having some sort of media presence really has helped. And so, I’ve hosted a podcast and I’ve worked on building up what I think to be a fairly organic Twitter following over the years and we surprise ourselves by getting some really exceptional founders cold pitching us on LinkedIn and on Twitter because we make ourselves available as next gen EMs. So, that’s a sort of long-winded answer to your question. But it’s not the traditional means by any means. RITHOLTZ: To say the least. Are you — the companies you’re investing in, are they — and I’ll try and keep this simple for people who are not all that well-versed in the world of venture, is it seed stage, is it the A round, the B round? How far into their growth process do you put money in? DARABI: So it is a predominantly seed fund. We call our investments core investments. So, these are checks that average, 1 and 1.5 million. So for about 1.25 million, on average, we’re capturing 10-15% of a cap payable. And in this area, that’s called a seed round. It will probably be called a Series A 10 years ago. RITHOLTZ: Right. DARABI: And then we follow on through the Series A and it max around, I think, our pro rata at the B. So, our goal via Series B is to have, on average, 10% by the cap. And then we give ourselves a little bit of wiggle room with our modeling. We take mars and moonshot investments with smaller checks so we call these initial interest checks. And initial interest means I’m interested but your idea is still audacious, they won’t prove itself out for three or four years or to be very honest, we weren’t the first to get into this cap or you’re picking Sequoia over us, so we understand but let’s see if we can just promise you a bit of value add to edge our way into your business. RITHOLTZ: Right. DARABI: And oftentimes, when you speak as a former founder yourself with a high level of compassion and you promise with integrity that you’re going to work very hard for that company, they will increase the size of their round and they will carve out space for you. And so, we do those types of investments rarely, 10 times, in any given portfolio. But what’s interesting in looking back at some of our outliers from found one, it came from those initial interest checks. So that’s our model in a nutshell. We’re pretty transparent about it. What we like about this model is that it doesn’t make us tigers, we’re off the board by the B, so we’re still owning enough of the cap table to be a meaningful presence in the founder’s lives and in their business and it allows us to feel like we’re not spraying and praying. RITHOLTZ: Spraying and praying is an amusing term but I’m kind of intrigued by the fact that we use to call it smart money but you’re really describing it as value-added capital when a founder takes money from TMV, they’re getting more than just a check, they’re getting the involvement from entrepreneurs who have been through the process from startup to capital raise to exit, tell us a li bit about how that works its way into the deals you end up doing, who you look at, and what the sort of deal flow you see is like. DARABI: Well, years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a world-class advertiser and I was at his incredibly fancy office down in Wall Street, his ad agency. And he described to me with pride how he basically bartered his marketing services for one percent of a unicorn. And he was sort of showing off of it about how, from very little time and effort, a few months, he walked away with a relatively large portion of a business. And I thought, yes, that’s clever. But for the founder, they gave up too much of their business too soon. RITHOLTZ: Right. DARABI: And I came up with an idea that I floated by Marina back in the day where our original for TMV Fund I began with the slide marketing as the future of venture and venture is the future of marketing. Meaning, it’s a VC fund where the position itself more like an ad agency but rather than charging for its services, it’s go-to-market services. You offer them free of charge but then you were paid in equity and you could quantify the value that you were offering to these businesses. And back then, people laughed us even though all around New York City, ad agencies were really doing incredible work and benefiting from the startups in that ecosystem. And so, we sort of changed the positioning a bit. And now, we say to our LPs and to our founders, your both clients of our firm. So, we do think of ourselves as an agency. But one set of our marketplace, you have LPs and what they want is crystal clear. The value that they derive from us is through a community and connectivity and co-investment and that’s it. It’s pretty kind of dry. Call me up once a year where you have an exceptional opportunity. Let me invest alongside you. Invite me to dinners four times a year, give me some information and a point of view that I can’t get elsewhere. Thank you for your time. And I love that. It’s a great relationship to have with incredibly smart people. It’s cut and dry but it’s so different. What founders want is something more like family. They want a VC on their board that they can turn to during critical moments. Two a.m. on a Saturday is not an uncommon time for me to get a text message from a founder saying what do I do. So what they want is more like 24/7 services for a period of time. And they want to know when that relationship should start and finish. So it’s sort of the Montessori approach to venture. We’re going to tell them what we’re going to tell them. Tell them what they’re telling them. Tell them what we told them. We say to founders with a reverse pitch deck. So we pitch them as they’re pitching us. Here’s what we promise to deliver for you for the first — each of the 24 months of your infancy and then we promise you we’ll mostly get lost. You can come back to use when your business is growing if you want to do it tender and we’ll operate an SPV for you for you or if you simply want advice, we’re never going to ignore you but our specialty, our black belt, if you will, Barry, is in those first 24 months of your business, that go-to-market. And so, we staffed up TMV to include, well, it’s punching above our weight but the cofounder of an exceptionally successful consumer marketing business, a gross marketer, a recruiter who helps one of our portfolio companies hire 40 of their earliest employees. We have a PR woman. You’ve met Viyash (ph), she’s exceptional with whom, I don’t know, how we would function sometimes because she’s constantly writing and re-editing press releases for the founders with which we work. And then Anna, our copywriter who came from IAC and Sean, our creative director, used to be the design director for Rolling Stone, and I can go on and on. So, some firms called us a platform team but we call it the go-to-market team. And then we promise a set number of hours for ever company that we invest into. RITHOLTZ: That’s … DARABI: And then the results — go ahead. RITHOLTZ: No, that’s just — I’m completely fascinated by that. But I have to ask maybe this is an obvious question or maybe it’s not, so you — you sound very much like a non-traditional venture capital firm. DARABI: Yes. RITHOLTZ: Who are your limited partners, who are your clients, and what motivates them to be involved with TMV because it sounds so different than what has been a pretty standard model in the world of venture, one that’s been tremendous successful for the top-tier firms? DARABI: Our LP set is crafted with intention. And so, 50% of our investors are institutional. This concludes institutional-sized family offices and family offices in a multibillions. We work with three major banks, Fortune 500 banks. We work with a couple of corporate Fortune 500 as investors or LPs and a couple of fund to funds. So that’s really run of the mill. But 50 percent of our investors and that’s why I’m in Athens today are family offices, global family offices, that I think are reinventing with ventures like, to look like in the future because wealth has never been greater globally. There’s a trillion dollars of assets that are passing to the hands of one generation to the next and what’s super interesting to me, as a woman, is that historically, a lot of that asset transferred was from father to son, but actually, for the first time in history, over 50 percent, so 51% of those asset inheritors are actually women. And so, as my business partner could tell because she herself is a next gen, in prior generations, women were encouraged to go into the philanthropic or nonprofit side of the family business … RITHOLTZ: Right. DARABI: And the sons were expected to take over the business or the family office and all of that is completely turned around in the last 10 years. And so, my anchor investor is actually a young woman. She’s under the age of 35. There’s a little bit of our firm that’s in the rocks because we’re not playing by the same rules that the establishment has played by. But certainly, we’re posturing ourselves to be able to grow in to a blue-chip firm which is why we want to maintain that balance, so 50 percent institutional and 50 percent, I would call it bespoke capital. And so, the LPs that are bespoke, we work at an Australian family office and Venezuelan family office and the Chilean family office and the Mexican family office and so on. For those family offices, we come to them, we invite them to events in New York City, we give them personalized introductions to our founders and we get on the phone with them. Whenever they’d like, we host Zooms. We call them the future of everything series. They can learn from us. And we get to know them as human beings and I think that there’s a reason why two thirds of our Fund I LPs converted over into Fund II because they like that level of access, it’s what the modern LP is really looking for. RITHOLTZ: Let’s talk a little bit about some of the areas that you find intriguing. What sectors are really capturing your attention these days? What are you most excited about? DARABI: Well, Barry, I’m most excited about five categories for which we’ve been investing for quite some time, but they’re really being accelerated due to the 2020 pandemic and a looming recession. And so, we’re particularly fascinated by not just health care investing as has been called in the past but rather the care economy. I’m not a huge fan of the term femtech, it always sounds like fembot to me. But care as it pertains to women alone is a multitrillion dollar opportunity. And so, when we think of the care economy, we think of health care, pet care, elder care, community care, personal care as it pertains to young people, old people, men, women, children, we bifurcate and we look for interesting opportunities that don’t exist because they’ve been undercapitalized, undervalued for so long. Case in point, we were early investors Kindbody, a reproductive health care company focused on women who want to preserve their fertility because if you look at 2010 census data, you can see that the data has been there for some time that women, in particular, were delaying marriage and childbirth and there are a lot of world-famous economists who will tell you this, the global population will decline because we’re aging and we’re not necessarily having as many children as we would have in the past plus it’s expensive. And so, we saw that as investors as a really interesting opportunity and jumped on the chance to ask Gina Bartasi who’s incredible when she came to us with a way to make fertility preservation plus expenses. So she followed the B2C playbook and she started with the mobile clinic that helps women freeze their eggs extensively. That company has gone on to raise hundreds — pardon me — and that company is now valued in the hundreds of million and for us, it was as simple as following our intuition as women fund managers, we know what our peers are thinking about because we talk to them all the time and I think the fact that we’re bringing a new perspective to venture means that we’re also bringing a new perspective to what has previously been called femtech. We invest in financial inclusion. Everyone in the world that’s investing fintech, the self-directed financial mobile apps are always going to be capitalized especially in a post Robin Hood era but we’re specifically interested in the democratization of access to financial information and we’re specifically interested in student debt and alleviating student debt in America because not only is it going to be one of the greatest challenges our generation will have to overcome, but it’s also prohibiting us from living out the American dream, $1.7 trillion of student debt in America that needs to be alleviated. And then we’re interested in the future of work, and long have been, that certainly was very much accelerated during the pandemic but we’ve been investing in the 1099 and remote work for quite some time. And so, really proud to have been the first check into a company called Bravely which is an HR chatbot that helps employees inside of a company chat a anonymously with HR representatives outside of that company, that’s 1099. That issue is like DEI, an inclusion and upward mobility and culture setting and what to do when you’re all of a sudden working for home. So that’s an example of a future of work business. And then in the tech-enabled sustainable solutions category, it’s a mouthful, let’s call that sustainability, we are proud to have been early investors of a company called Ridwell, out of Seattle Washington, focused on not just private — privatized recycling but upcycling and reconnaissance. Where are our things going when we recycle them? For me, it always been a pretty big question. And so, Ridwell allows you to re and upcycle things that are hard to get rid of out of your home like children’s eyeglasses and paints and battery, single-use plastic. And it shows you where those things are going which I think is super cool and there’s good reason why it has one of the highest NPS scores, Net Promoter Scores, of any company I’ve ever worked with. People are craving this kind of modern solution. And last but not least, we invest in transportation and part because of the unfair advantage my partner, Marina, brings to TMV as she comes from a maritime family. And so, we can pile it, transportation technology, within her own ecosystem. That’s pretty great. But also, because we’re just fascinated by the fact that 90 percent of the world commodities move on ship and the biggest contributor to emissions in the world outside of corporate is coming from transportation. SO, if we can sort of figure out this industry, we can solve a lot of the problems that our generation are inheriting. Now, these categories might sound massive and we do consider ourselves a generalist firm but we stick to five-course sectors that we truly believe in and we give ourselves room to kick out a sector or to add a new one with any given new fund. For the most part, we haven’t needed to because this remain the categories that are not only most appealing to us as investors but I think paramount to our generation. RITHOLTZ: That’s really intriguing. Give us an example of moonshot or what you called earlier, a Mars shot technology or a company that can really be a gamechanger but may not pay off for quite a while. DARABI: We’ve just backed a company that is focusing on food science. Gosh, I can’t give away too much because they haven’t truly launched in the U.S. But maybe I’ll kind of allude to it. They use crushed produce, like, crush potato skins to make plastic but biodegrades. And so, it’s a Mars shot because it’s a materials business and it’s a food science business rolled off into both the CPG business and an enterprise business. This particular material can wrap itself around industrial pellets. Even though it’s audacious, it’s not really a Mars shot when you think about the way the world is headed. Everybody wants to figure out how do we consume less plastic and recycle plastic better. And so, if there are new materials out there that will not only disintegrate but also, in some ways, feed the environment, it will be a no-brainer and then if you add to the equation the fact that it could be maybe not less expensive but of comparable pricing to the alternative, I can’t think of a company in the world that wouldn’t switch to this solution. RITHOLTZ: Right. So this is plastic that you don’t throw away. You just toss in the garden and it becomes compost? DARABI: Yes, exactly. Exactly. It should help your garden grow. So, yes, so that’s what I would call a Mars shot in some ways. But in other ways, it’s just common sense, right? RITHOLTZ: So let’s talk a little bit about your investment vehicles. You guys run, I want to make sure I get this right, two funds and three vehicles, is that right? DARABI: We have two funds. They’re both considered micro funds because they’re both under 100 million and then we operate in parallel for SPVs that are relatively evergreen and they serve as opportunistic investments to continue to double down on our winners. RITHOLTZ: SPV is special purpose investment … DARABI: Vehicles. Yes. RITHOLTZ: Right. DARABI: And the PE world, they’re called sidecars. RITHOLTZ: That’s really interesting. So how do these gets structured? Does everything look very similar when you have a fund? How quickly do you deploy the capital and typically how long you locked for or investors locked up for? DARABI: Well investors are usually in private equity are VC funds locked up for 10 years. That’s not usual. We have shown liquidity faster, certainly, for Fund I. It’s well in the black and it’s only five years old less, four and a half years old. So, how do we make money? We charge standard fees, 2 on 20 is the rubric of it, we operate by. And then lesser fees for sidecars or direct investments. So that’s kind of how we stay on business. When you think about an emerging manager starting their first fund, management fees are certainly not so we can live a lavish rock and roll life on a $10 million fund with a two percent management fee, we’re talking about 200K for the entire business to operate. RITHOLTZ: Wow. DARABI: So Marina and I, not only anchored our first fund with their own capital but we didn’t pay ourselves for four years. It’s not glamorous. I mean, there’s some friends of mine that thing the venture capital life is glam and it is if you’re on Sand Hill Road. But if you’re an EM, it’s a lot more like a startup where you’re burning the midnight oil, you are bartering favors with your friends, and you are begging the smartest people you know to take a chance on you to invite you on to their cap table. But it somehow works out because we do put in that extra effort, I think, the metrics, certainly for Fund I have shown us that we’re in this for the long haul now. RITHOLTZ: So your fund 1 and Fund 2, are there any plans of launching Fund III? DARABI: Yes. I think that given the proof points between Fund I and Fund II and a conversation that my partner and I recently had, five years out, are we in this? Do we love this? We do. OK. This is our life’s work. So you can see larger and more demonstrable sized funds but not in an outsized way, not just because we can raise more capital now but because we want to build out a partnership and the kind of culture that we always dreamed of working for back when we were employees, so we have a very diverse set of colleagues with whom we couldn’t operate and we’ll be adding to the partnership in the next two or three years which is really exciting to say. So, yes, the TMV will be around for a while. RITHOLTZ: That’s really interesting. I want to ask you the question I ask any venture capitalist that I interview. Tell us about your best and worst investments and what did you pass on that perhaps you wish you didn’t? DARABI: Gosh. The FOMO list is so long and so embarrassing. Let me start with what I passed on that I regret. Well, I don’t know she really would have invited me to invest, but certainly, I had a wonderful conversation a peer from high school, Katrina Lake, when she was in beta mode for Stitch Fix. I think she was still at HBS at the time or had just recently graduated from Harvard. When Katrina and I had coffee in Minneapolis were we went to high school and she was telling me about the Netflix for clothing that she was building and certainly I regret not really picking up on the clues that she was offering in that conversation. Stitch Fix had an incredible IPO and I’m a proud shareholder today. And similarly, when my friend for starting Cloudflare which luckily they did bring me in to pre-IPO and I’m grateful for that, but when they were starting Cloudflare, I really should have jumped on that moment or when my buddy Ryan Graves whom I still chat with pretty frequently was starting out Uber in beta with Travis and Garrett, that’s another opportunity that I definitely missed. I was in Ireland when the Series A term sheet assigned. So there’s such a long laundry list of namedropped, namedropped, missed, missed, missed. But in terms of what I’m proud of, I’d say far more. I don’t like Sophie’s Choice. I don’t like to cherry pick the certain investments to just brag about them. But we’ve talked about someone to call today, I’d rather kind of shine a light — look at my track record, right? There’s a large realized IRR that I’m very proud of. But more on the opportunity of the companies that we more recently backed that prevent damages (ph) of CRM for oncology patient that help them navigate through the most strenuous time of their life. And by doing so, get better access to health care. And we get to wrote that check a couple of months ago. But already, it’s becoming a company that I couldn’t be more excited about because if they execute the way I think Shirley and Victor will, that has the power to help so many people in a profound way, not just in the Silicon Valley cliché way of this could change the world but this could actually help people receive better care. So, yes, I’m proud of having been an early investor in the Caspers of the world. Certainly, we’re all getting better sleep. There’s no shame there. But I’m really excited now today at investing in financial inclusion in the care economy and so on. RITHOLTZ: And let’s talk a little bit about impactful companies. Is there any different when you’re making a seed stage investment in a potentially impactful company versus traditional startup investing? DARABI: Well, pre-seed and seed investing isn’t a science and it’s certainly not a science that anyone has perfected. There are people who are incredibly good at it because they have a combination of luck and access. But if you’re a disciplined investor in any asset class and I talk to my friends who run hedge funds and work for hedge funds about 10 bets that they take a day and I think that’s a lot trickier than what I do because our do due diligence process, on average, takes an entire quarter of the year. We’re not making that many investments each year. So even though it sounds sort of fruity, when you look at a Y Combinator Demo Day, Y Comb is the biggest accelerator in Silicon Valley and they produce over 300 companies, three or four times a year. When you look at the outsized valuations coming out of Y Comb, it’s easy to think that starting company is as simple as sort of downloading a company in a Box Excel and running with it. But from where we sit, we’re scorching the earth for really compelling ideas in areas that have yet to converge and we’re looking for businesses that may have never pitched the VC before. Maybe they’re not even seeking capital. Maybe it’s a company that isn’t so interested in raising a penny eventually because they don’t need to. They’re profitable from day one. Those are the companies that we find most exciting because as former operators, we know how to appeal to them and then we also know how to work with them. RITHOLTZ: That’s really interesting. Before I get to my favorite question, let me just throw you’re a curveball, tell me a little bit about Business Schooled, the podcast you hosted for quite a while. DARABI: So, Synchrony, Sync, came to me a few years ago with a very compelling and exciting opportunity to host a podcast with them that allowed me a fortunate opportunity to travel the country and I went to just under a dozen cities to meet with founders who have persevered past their startup phase. And what I loved about the concept of business school is that the cities that I hosted were really focused on founders who didn’t have access to VC capital, they put money on credit card. So I took SBA loans or asked friends and family to give them starter capital and then they made their business work through trying times and when you pass the five-year mark for any business, I’m passing it right now for TMV, there’s a moment of reflection where you can say, wow, I did it. it’s incredibly difficult to be a startup founder, more than 60 percent of companies fail and probably for good reason. And so, yes, I hosted business school, Seasons 2 and 3 and potentially there will be more seasons and I’m very proud of the fact that at one point we cracked the top 20 business podcasts and people seem to be really entertained through these conversations with insightful founders who are vulnerable with me about what it was like to build their business and I like to think they were vulnerable because I have a good amount of compassion for the experience of being founder and also because I’m a New Yorker and I just like to talk. RITHOLTZ: You’re also a founder so there’s going to be some empathy that’s genuine. You went through what they’re going through. DARABI: Exactly. Exactly. And so, what you do, Barry, is quite similar. You’re — you host an exceptionally successful business podcast and you’re also an allocator. You know that it’s interesting to do both because I think that being an investor is a lot like being a journalist. In both professions, you won’t succeed unless you are constantly curious and if you are having conversations to listen more than you speak. DARABI: Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret since it’s so late in the podcast and fewer people will be hearing this, the people I invite on the show are essentially just conversations I want to have. If other people come along and listen, that’s fantastic. But honestly, it’s for an audience of one, namely me, the reason I wanted to have you on is because I’m intrigued by the world of venture and alternatives and impact. I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people have been somewhat disappointed in the results of ESG investing and impact investing that for — it’s captured a lot more mindshare than it has captured capital although we’re seeing signs that’s starting to shift. But then the real question becomes, all right, so I’m investing less in oil companies and more in other companies that just happen to consume fossil fuels, what’s the genuine impact of my ESG investing? It feels like it’s sort of de minimis whereas what you do really feels like it has a major impact for people who are interested in having their capital make a positive difference. DARABI: Thank you for saying that. And I will return the compliment by saying that I really enjoyed getting to know you on our one key economist Zoom and I think that you’re right. I think that ESG investing, certainly in the public markets has had diminished returns historically because the definition has been so bizarre and so all over the place. RITHOLTZ: Right. DARABI: And I read incredible books from people like Antony Bugg-Levine who helps coin the term the Rockefeller Foundation, who originally coined the term you read about, mortgage, IRR and IRS plus measurement and it’s so hard to have just standardization of what it means to be an impact investor and so it can be bothered but we bother. Rather, we kind of come up with our own subjective point of view of the world and we say what does impact mean to us? Certainly, it means not investing in sin stocks but then those sin stocks have to begin somewhere, has to begin with an idea that somebody had once upon a time. And so, whether we are investing in the way the world should look from our perspective. And with that in mind, it doesn’t have to be impact by your grandpa’s VC, it can be impact from modern generation but simply things that behave differently. Some folks with their dollars. People often say, well, my ESG portfolio is underperforming. But then if you dig in to the specifics, are you investing in Tesla? It’s not a pretty good year. Did you back Beyond Meat? Had a great year. And so, when you kind of redefine the public market not by a sleeve and a bank’s version of a portfolio, but rather by company that you think are making demonstrable change in the world, then you can walk away, realizing had I only invested in these companies that are purpose driven, I would have had outsized returns and that’s what we’re trying to deliver on at TMV. That’s the promise. RITHOLTZ: Really, really very, very intriguing. I know I only have you for a few minutes so let’s jump to my favorite questions that I ask all of our guests starting with tell us what you’re streaming these days. Give us your favorite, Netflix, Amazon Prime, or any podcast that are keeping you entertained during the pandemic. DARABI: Well, my family has been binging on 100 Foot Wave on HBO Max which is the story of big wave surfer Garrett McNamara who is constantly surfing the world’s largest waves and I’m fascinated by people who have a mission that’s sort of bigger than success or fame but they’re driven by something and part of that something is curiosity and part of it is insanity. And so not only is it visually stunning to kind of watch these big wave surfers in Portugal, but it’s also a mind trip. What motivates them to get out of bed every day and potentially risk their lives doing something so dangerous and so bananas but also at the same time so brave and heroic. So, highly recommend. I am listening to too many podcasts. I listen to, I don’t know, a stream of things. I’m a Kara Swisher fan, Ezra Klein fan, so they’re both part of the “New York Times” these days. And of course, your podcast, Barry. RITHOLTZ: Well, thank you so much. Well, thank you so much. Let’s talk a little bit about who your early mentors were and who helped shape you career? DARABI: It’s going to sound ungrateful but I don’t think, in like a post lean in definition of the word, I ever truly had a mentor or a sponsor. Now, having said that, I’ve had people who really looked at for me and been incredibly gracious with their time and capital. And so, I would absolutely like to acknowledge that first and foremost. I think about how generous Adam Grant has been with his time and his investments for TMV in Fund I and Fund II and he’s a best-selling author and worked on highest-rated business school professor. So shout out to Adam, if he’s listening or Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair of GE who has been instrumental in my career for about a decade and a half now. And she is also really leaning in to the TMV portfolio and has become a patient of Parsley Health, an early investment of ours and also an official adviser to the business. So, people like Adam and Beth certainly come to mind. But I don’t know, I just — I’m not sure mentors really exist outside of corporate America anymore and part of the reason why we started Transact Global is to kind of foster the concept of the peer mentor, people who are going through the same thing as you at the same time and allowing that hive mentality with an abundance mentality to catalyze people to kind of go further and faster. RITHOLTZ: Let’s talk about some of your favorite books and what you might reading right now. DARABI: OK, so in the biz book world, because I know your listeners as craving, I’m a big fan of “Negotiation Genius.” I took a crash course with one of the authors, Max Bazerman at the Kennedy School and it was illuminating. I mean, he’s one of the most captivating professors I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing lecture and this book has really helped me understand the concept of the ZOPA, the Zone of Possible Agreement, and how to really negotiate well. And then for Adam whom I just referenced, of all of his incredible books, my favorite is Give and Take because I try to operate with that approach of business. Give more than you take and maybe in the short term, you’ll feel depleted but in the long term, karma pays off. But mostly, Barry, I read fiction. I think the most interesting people in the world or at least the most entertaining at dinner parties are all avoid readers of fiction and history. So I recently reread, for instance, all of my favorite short stories from college, from Dostoyevsky’s “A Gentle Creature” to “Drown” Junot Diaz. “Passing” by Nella Larsen, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” by Fitzgerald. Those are some of my very favorite stories of all time. And my retirement dream is to write a book of short stories. RITHOLTZ: Really, really quite intriguing. Are they all available in a single collection or these just, going back to your favorites and just plowing through them for fun? DARABI: Those are just going back to my favorites. I try to re-read “Passing” every few years which is somehow seems to be more and more relevant as I get older and Junot Diaz has become so incredibly famous when I first read “Drown” about 20 years ago which is an original collection of short stories that broadened my perspective of why it’s important to think about a broader definition of America, I guess. And, yes, no, that’s just — that was just sort of off the top of my head as the offering of a few stories that I really love, no collection. RITHOLTZ: That’s a good collection. And we’re down to our final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad who was interested in a career in either venture capital or entrepreneurship? DARABI: Venture capital or entrepreneurship. Well, I would say, learn as early as possible how to trust your gut. So, this could mean a myriad of things. As an entrepreneur, it could mean under the halo effect of an institution, university or high school or maybe having a comfortable day job, tinker with ideas, get feedback on that idea, don’t be afraid of looking or sounding dumb and build that peer network that I described. People who are rooting you on and are also insatiably curious about wonky things. And I would say that for venture capital, similar play on the same theme, but whether it’s putting small amounts of money into new concept, blockchain investing, or whether it’s meeting with entrepreneurs and saying maybe I only have $3,000 save up but I believe in you enough to bet amongst friends in Brooklyn on your concept if you’ll have me as an investor. So, play with your own money because what it’s really teaching you in return is how to follow instincts and to base pattern recognition off your own judgement. And if you do that early on, overtime, these all become datapoints that you can point to and these are lessons that you can glean while not taking the risk of portfolio management. So, I guess the real advice to your listeners is more action, please. RITHOLTZ: Really very, very intriguing. And our final question, what do you know about the world of venture investing today that you wish you knew 15 or 20 years ago when you first getting started? DARABI: Twenty years ago, I was a bit of a Pollyanna and I thought every wonderful idea that simply is built by smart people and has timed the market correctly will work out. And I will say that I’m slightly more jaded today because of the capital structure that is systematically allowing the biggest firms in the world to kind of eat up a generous portion of, let’s call it the LP pie, which leaves less capital available to the young upstart VC firms, and of course I’m biased because I run one, that are taking outsized risks on those non-obvious ideas that we referenced. And so, what I wish for the future is that institutional capital kind of reprioritizes what it’s looking for. And in addition to having a bottom line of reliable and demonstrable return on any given investment, there are new standards put into play saying we want to make sure that a portion of our portfolio goes to diverse managers. Because in turn, we recognize that they are three times more likely to invest in diverse founders or we believe in impact investing can be broader than the ESG definitely of a decade ago, so we’re coming up with our own way to measure on sustainability or what impact means to us. And if they go through those exercises which I know is hard because, certainly, I’m not trying to add work to anyone’s plate, I do think that the results will more than make up for it. RITHOLTZ: Quite intriguing. Thank you, Soraya, for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Soraya Darabi who is the Co-Founder and General Partner at TMV Investments. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure and check out any of the prior 376 conversations we’ve had before. You can find those at iTunes or Spotify, wherever you buy your favorite podcast. We love your comments, feedback, and suggestions. Write to us at MIB podcast@bloomberg.net. You can sign up for my daily reads at ritholtz.com. Check out my weekly column at bloomberg.com/opinion. Follow me on Twitter @ritholtz. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack team that helps me put these conversations together each week. Tim Harrow is my audio engineer. Paris Walt (ph) is my producer. Atika Valbrun is our project manager, Michael Batnick is my head of research. I’m Barry Ritholtz, you’ve been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.   ~~~     The post Transcript: Soraya Darabi appeared first on The Big Picture......»»

As many big firms call workers back to the office, Heath prioritizes the health of his 32-person staff by giving them Oura rings and access to doctors. Mud/Wtr founder and CEO Shane Heath.Mudwtr Shane Heath is the founder of Mud/Wtr, a beverage brand he launched in 2018. Heath wants to avoid perpetuating startup hustle culture and instead invests in employee well-being. He incorporates mental and physical wellness rituals into his routine and his company's culture. This as-told-to essay is based on an interview with Shane Heath, the 35-year-old founder of Mud/Watr, a beverage brand he launched in 2018 after he quit drinking coffee. The company sells coffee alternatives and other drink powders that are made with organic ingredients; the products cost between $20 and $40.In a time when many large companies are calling employees back to the office, Heath leads a 32-person remote team. Aside from quarterly in-person meetings, his employees can choose where they work best, whether that's from home or the company's Santa Monica office. He also offers them perks to manage their health and rest. Mud/Wtr declined to provide its annual revenue, though a representative said the company sold 1.4 million units in 2022. Additionally, it had about 443,000 customers who purchased single products or subscriptions in the past 12 months. The company booked more than $16 million in revenue in 2020 and projected it would reach $60 million the following year, Inc. magazine reported. The following has been edited for length and clarity.My caffeine addiction inspired me to build a brandAfter I graduated college, I worked in tech for six years. I was addicted to caffeine and surprised that everyone around me was also drinking tons of caffeine. When I created my own drink to replace coffee, everybody asked me what I was drinking. They were experiencing jitters and anxiety and wanted to quit or reduce their caffeine intake. That was the "aha" moment for me. It wasn't a business opportunity, it was an opportunity to shift culture. In May 2018, I ordered some jars and labels. I made the website and brand, starting with the message, "I'm not mad at coffee, I'm just disappointed." I went on to say I made something better and began sharing that story.You can make a high-performing company culture without following the hustle modelMud/Wtr employees attend a meeting in the company's office.Mud/WtrHustle culture was probably rooted in data, but this isn't a sprint. I'm looking at long-term results.The cost of losing an employee is extremely high, so we invest a lot in our team and our benefits policy, more than most startups. It looks expensive on the surface, but it's kind of like eating healthy food: When you factor in the medical bills and not performing at your highest level, the true costs of unhealthy eating are probably higher.I'm not saying to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side. I think balance is key. It's a lot of work to build a company. We're building our culture and philosophy in the way that a professional sports team might take care of their athletes. There are going to be times throughout the year when you're exhausted and you still have to show up and compete at the highest level, but in exchange for doing so, we take care of you.Our whole company takes every other Friday off. We give everybody an Oura ring when they join the company. We connect every employee to a doctor to get blood work, cortisol tests, and advice on what they should do to improve their diet and sleep. When we hire a new employee, we welcome them to the company through a 45-minute breath-work experience. Some of the most powerful moments I can recall at the company were after those breath-work ceremonies. If you take care of your team, keep them motivated, keep them well-slept but also have challenging and ambitious goals, you're going to hit those goals more over time.My daily routine includes a cold plunge and hyperbaric chamberShane Heath takes a cold plungeMud/WtrI treat myself like a professional athlete. For many years, I've had a ton of rituals that help me feel good and help me handle stress better.It all starts with sleep. I've been tracking my sleep for the past five years. I have an Eight Sleep mattress that lets me set the temperature. A cold room has been helping a lot. I typically go to bed and wake up at the same time.When I wake up, I exercise and follow that up with a sauna and cold plunge, which I have at my home. The cold plunge temperature is around 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  At the office, we have a hyperbaric chamber, so after lunch, I'll get in the hyperbaric chamber for around 45 minutes. I do what's called non-sleep deep rest, which is like a yoga nidra meditation practice. Then, before bed, I'll do a mantra and some breath work with my wife. We recently had a kid, and it's made having a routine more difficult but way more necessary.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»