Chobani, Farmers Business Network, and others are changing the way we eat in 2017.
The food industry is rapidly changing as consumers develop an appetite for bold new flavors, healthier and more eco-friendly options, and more control over how their food gets served, delivered, and made. These 10 companies have hit on strategies that are serving up the biggest change in the industry.
Click on a company to learn more about why it made the list.
The work-anywhere, travel-the-world fringe lifestyle is going mainstream—and these apps, services, and events are here to help.
Twenty years ago, a Hitachi executive named Tsugio Makimoto predicted a revolution.
In the future, he wrote, high-speed wireless networks and low-cost mobile devices will break the link between occupation and location. Thanks to Moore and his Law, millions would indulge an innate wanderlust by selling their homes and living abroad, doing their jobs over the internet and enjoying the benefits of first-world income and developing-world cost of living. No more rat-race grind of cubicle and commute.
Makimoto's vision appeared in his 1997 bookDigital Nomad, written with coauthor David Manners. The book was virtually ignored by the public.
Ten years later, the digital nomad idea resurfaced in Tim Ferriss's 2007 best-selling bookThe 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. In that hodgepodge of life hacks and business schemes, Ferriss painted a seductive picture of automated income and unbridled globetrotting.
Neither Makimoto nor Ferriss predicted the rise and impact of social networking, smartphone apps, the sharing economy, and on-demand services. Popular apps and services like AirBnb, Whatsapp, Yelp, Lyft, Duolingo, Earth Class Mail, and Google services like Maps, Fi, and Translate, though targeted at the public in general, simplify the digital nomad lifestyle in particular.
The authors also couldn't have predicted the rise of the digital nomad industrial complex, an entire industry created by and for digital nomads. Whether you're a digital nomad, aspire to be one, or if you simply travel on business or vacation from time to time, you can benefit from this burgeoning industry.
The real impact of Makimoto's vision isn't the possibility of a strange untethered lifestyle for the few. It's that technology may eventually turn us all into digital nomads. After all, a digital nomad is just another name for a remote worker.
A Gallup poll published this month called "State of the American Workplace" found that 43% of employed Americans worked remotely last year at least some of the time. Moreover, both the length of time working remotely and the number of employees doing so full time has been growing every year. (This is up from 39% in 2012.)
Thanks to the new digital nomad economy, it's easier than ever to work remotely for the rest of your life or for an hour; from a tent on the Masai Mara or from the Starbucks around the corner. With the exception of two years at an American desk, I've done it myself since 2006—from Belize, Cuba, El Salvador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, and Turkey.
Author Mike Elgan at work at El Castillo, a Mayan pyramid in Tulum, Mexico.
The remote work trend has given rise to the coworking space—office space you can rent for temporary use in the U.S. and all over the world.
The world's first coworking space opened in London in 1650: The Oxford coffee house. Loosely modeled on establishments in Vienna, which were themselves influenced by coffee houses in Istanbul and elsewhere in the Muslim world, the Oxford started the British coffee house craze. These coffee houses spread quickly throughout London (along with newly found enthusiasm for the stimulating, exotic, and bitter beverage itself).
These coffee houses brewed more than coffee. They became incubators and coworking spaces for all kinds of businesses and newspapers. In fact, insurance giant Lloyd's of London is named after Edward Lloyd's coffee house, which opened in 1688, and where the insurance company began as an innovative startup.
Nowadays, coffee houses are everywhere and dedicated coworking businesses are growing fast. Some digital nomads prefer the low cost and often superior chow at coffee houses, while others prefer dedicated coworking spaces that offer acoustic privacy, meeting rooms, and the promise of reliable internet. The choice is often governed by what kind of business you do. If you make calls and hold meetings, coworking spaces are often better.
Whatever your preference, here's how to track down a spot to work that fits your needs:
• The iOS app Work Hard Anywhere offers a user-ranked directory. CEO Benson Chou told me his app offers 13,000 ranked and crowdsourced "laptop-friendly spaces" in 100 countries. These include cafes, coworking spaces, and even libraries. Spaces are ranked by users according to Wi-Fi quality, outlet availability, seating, parking, price, and other benefits. Chou and cofounder Cody Huang built the app because they struggled to find good places to work in launching their startup. Chou told me that freelancers, entrepreneurs, and students also use the app, but that it really "hit a sweet spot" for digital nomads.
• French IT manager Fabien Vauthey also decided that digital nomads need a crowdsourced, reputation-based directory of both coffee houses and coworking spaces from which to work, so he launched CoWorking.Coffee in 2015, with help from a Tokyo startup incubator. Coffee joints are ranked by quality of Wi-Fi and friendliness to coffee-shop camping (where you sit there working for hours on end). Vauthey told me that he hasn't monetized the site yet and continues to live as a digital nomad while consulting for various companies.
• One simplifying option for nomads and business travelers alike is to join a network of hundreds of global coworking spaces, such as Copass.
• One sharing-economy innovation is Hoffice, which is a cross between a coworking directory and AirBnB. The site enables people to offer workspaces in their homes, and for digital nomads to rent them.
The Work Hard Anywhere iOS app helps you find a great place to work, including a coffee shop with fast Wi-Fi. The startup is itself based in coffee and tea shops, including Far Leaves Tea in Berkeley, California.[Photo: courtesy of Work Hard Anywhere]
For many, the biggest barrier to living nomadically is occupation. How do you find a location-independent job?
Gallup found that remote work opportunities are "increasing across most industries that Gallup has studied." Still, the majority of digital nomads are freelancers or small business owners, and a disproportionate number of them are developers or content creators of some kind.
• An Estonian company called Jobbatical connects developers and other "knowledge workers" with one- or two-year jobs all over the world. Companies benefit by quickly hiring engineers and others during crunches, and employees get their foot in the door with a chance to be hired permanently—and the ability to get hired in a foreign country, which can often be difficult.
• Modern Day Nomads curates mostly non-tech, temporary, seasonal, and part-time global jobs.
These guys look like they're on vacation, but they're actually in the middle of a crash course on software development via Destination:Dev in Cusco, Peru—and making a few friends along the way.
Until recently, digital nomads were pretty much on their own when figuring out how to earn a living while traveling the world. In the past two or three years, however, a large number of conferences, training programs, and other educational events have emerged, almost all of it by, for, and about digital nomads.
• The annual Nomad Summit in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is run by a digital nomad who goes by the name Johnny FD. He hosts the Travel Like a Boss podcast and blogs about passive income generation. (FD could be a poster child for the digital nomad financial advantage—he claims to earn between $15,000 and $25,000 per month from Udemy courses, YouTube videos, affiliate links, drop shipping, and book publishing, yet pays only $342 per month for his apartment in Chiang Mai, Thailand.) FD told me his third annual Nomad Summit had more than 350 attendees and attributes the conference's rapid growth to increasing interest in digital nomad living.
• A conference called DNX Camp is the world's biggest Conference for digital nomads, according to founder Felicia Hargarten. The event is designed to help digital nomads launch, build, and grow a business that can support a location-independent lifestyle. Their next event is March 1 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Most of the sessions tackle some aspect of launching and growing a startup. One session is a crash course on how digital nomads can benefit from Estonian e-Residency (the Estonian government offers an e-Resident smart card, enabling nomads to establish an Estonian-based business, bank account, and other benefits of residency without ever living there). The DNX publishes a helpful list of the best tech, sites, apps, books, and services for digital nomads, which is also great for business travelers.
• Coworkstation offers short retreats, from three to seven days, where digital nomads can learn, brainstorm ideas, and enjoy the program's location. Founder Stuart Jones launched Coworkstation in September 2015 after living as a digital nomad for years (he told me he's been to more than 70 countries). So far, his company has done three programs in Barcelona, Bali, and on a sailboat in the Mediterranean.
• Speaking of boats, the Nomad Cruise is a two-week "floating conference for digital nomads," according to founder Johannes Voelkner. The first voyage shoved off in November 2015, from Spain to Brazil. The next one sails from Colombia to Portugal. His three trips served 400 digital nomads from over 40 countries with classes on WordPress, AdWords, blogging, email marketing, artificial intelligence, Facebook Messenger bots, and even a crash course on cryptocurrency, as well as a range of non-technical programs. Voelkner estimates current growth at 200% per year, driven by the rise in digital nomad living.
• YonderWork started as a remote work and travel company, but the rapid rise in digital nomad living soon saturated that market, so the company pivoted to helping companies transition to a remote work culture, according to cofounder Nick Messina and his wife and partner, Kristin. The company supports their own digital nomad lifestyle.
• The Freedom Summit is an online virtual summit that provides courses that anyone in the world can join. The next summit is April 1 and 2, and focuses more on the digital nomad lifestyle and less on business. The company also offers a four-week "Freedom Bootcamp Program."
• The Cocal site provides a calendar of digital nomad conferences and coworking retreats.
If you don't know how to digital nomad, the digital nomads will teach you. This workshop at the Coworking Unconference Asia teaches prospective coworking space operators all about the business.Photo: courtesy of Coworking Unconference Asia
The housing needs of digital nomads are different from the average traveler. For starters, many nomads like to connect with other freelancers and entrepreneurs. They need fast Wi-Fi. And they often need something longer-term than a hotel room but shorter-term than an apartment.
• A company called Roam offers "flexible housing" for digital nomads in cities like Bali, London, Tokyo, Miami, and San Francisco that can be rented week to week or month to month. Founder and CEO Bruno Haid told me Roam has plans to expand to at least 10 properties by the end of the year. The company says benefits include a community of entrepreneur-travelers as well as help with travel arrangements, available to customers through their website.
• Outsite offers something similar. It's a kind of subscription service where you pay monthly, but can move around to their various locations. They also promise coworking space.
• If you're a homeowner or apartment renter and want to keep your housing but also want to live as a digital nomad, a service called 6x2x6 makes it possible. It's a house-exchange community, but with a difference. Instead of swapping houses directly with one person or family, you can live in the house of another member for between one and three months, then move to the house of yet another user, and so on. You can move from house to house all over the world until you're ready to return home. All the while, other members are living in your house.
• When digital nomads want to live in a specific place for six months, a year, or a few years, they need a furnished apartment. Nestpick partners with apartment rental sites, extracting only furnished apartments for digital nomads.
• When you're traveling abroad full time, stuff happens, plans change, and things sometimes don't work out. Most nomads find themselves needing a place to stay tonight. A service called Overnight is like Hotel Tonight, but for AirBnB-type accommodations—in other words, people's homes.
• Colive is a user exchange for finding temporary roommates and shared housing while traveling abroad.
• Hotel WiFi Test enables you to choose a hotel based on the most important criteria: how fast the Wi-Fi is.
• If you're not even sure what country to head for, resources such as Teleport, Nomadlist, Expatistan, and Numbeoare full of valuable information, excelling especially in comparative cost of living.
Digital nomads give up the community, camaraderie, and social interaction that comes with working in an office. And work community is not just about socializing, but brainstorming, collaborating, and learning. It's an important component of productive work.
• Nomadbase is an app-based social network for digital nomads using iPhones or Android smartphones. MagPie is a social network for female digital nomads. And Flylancer enables members to schedule meetups.
• NomadProjects enables compatible business partners for potential side projects to find each other. Launched in 2015, the company caters to digital nomads because the work habits of nomads is, well, different, according to cofounder Thom Wensink. "Some days you work 18 hours, other days not at all. Sometimes you sleep in a hostel with crappy Wi-Fi, other days you stay in an AirBnB apartment. Nomad life is versatile. You want someone that understands your lifestyle and workflow."
• NomadPass recommends digital nomads with similar personal or business interests for you to live and travel with.
• Some 46% of digital nomads are not currently married or otherwise in a committed relationship, the Digital Nomad Survey. Nomad Soulmates is here to help. The dating site is for location-independent nomads looking for love. Founder Aline Dahmen told me the iOS and Android app is scheduled for beta testing in June, and the startup is in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Until then, Nomad Soulmates is a Facebook Group that claims 7,000 members. Date a Nomad does something similar.
Skillful digital nomads spend far less on air travel than most travelers, and for two reasons. The first is that digital nomads are more flexible about when and where they go. With flexibility, low cost can dictate travel specifics. And the second is they're more experienced because they travel all the time.
• You may already be familiar with sites like Google Flights and Fareness, which enable you to tweak travel plans to get better deals. Air Wander enables digital nomads to take advantage of their travel flexibility by giving you two or more destinations for the price of one by figuring out extended layovers of days, weeks, or even months. You can fiddle with cities and dates until you get an extremely low rate.
• Hitlist is an iOS app that sends you alerts when airline flex pricing drops below a user-designated fare.
• Digital nomads are acutely aware that many countries require documentation of a return ticket before they allow you into the country. This can be a problem, because digital nomads often don't know when they'll be leaving and would otherwise enter with a one-way ticket. Fly Onward lets you "rent" a refundable return ticket for $9.99. And NomadProof gives you an itinerary from a different airline than the one you're traveling on (airlines only verify itineraries when it's in their own system).
The financial world of a globe-trotting digital nomad can be challenging because many services require a fixed address. So digital nomad-specific financial services are starting to emerge.
• A service called Revolut assumes you'll be traveling the world, transferring money internationally, dealing with exchange rates, and focusing on security.
• The founder of World Nomads Group began 15 years ago by becoming one of the world's first all-digital providers. One of their travel insurance companies is World Nomads, which caters to digital nomads.
The image of a young content creator working in an impossibly beautiful location is a bit of a cliché. It's also the reality for thousands of digital nomads, such as this Remote Way customer.[Photo: courtesy of Remote Way]
The newest and biggest thing to hit, and which increasingly define the digital nomad industrial complex, is a new industry of all-inclusive package deals—companies that give coliving, coworking, travel, training, cultural excursions, and more, all for a single, often monthly, rate.
• The Remote Experience provides all-inclusive, business-intensive digital nomad programs. Cofounder (and full-time digital nomad) Michelle Lawson told me that initially they served mostly digital nomad types—freelancers and entrepreneurs—but they increasingly get professionals that usually work nine to five back home. The company provides flights, office space, housing, travel, and medical insurance, as well as local events and a "local ambassador" to help participants experience the local culture. One benefit to The Remote Experience, according to Lawson, is flexibility. Participants can show up and stay on a month-to-month basis, or choose one of the four-month programs.
• The founder of a company called Terminal 3, Mevish Aslam, has been a digital nomad for eight years, and launched the company to help others benefit from the lifestyle while continuing to work at their existing jobs. Terminal 3 provides all-inclusive travel booking, co-living and coworking spaces, social events, excursions, and monthly professional coaching sessions in destinations in Europe and Asia. Upcoming programs are scheduled for Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Spain, Croatia, and the Czech Republic.
• Aslam also runs Sprinters hackathons that bring together women entrepreneurs, leaders, mentors, and developers to launch a startup in three days. These take place in different cities, with the most recent one taking place in Kenitra, Morocco.
• Luke Kelly became a digital nomad by accident. After traveling across South America for three months, he ran out of money in Bolivia and got serious about pursuing freelance design work. Then he moved to China, and later to the digital nomad capital of the world, Chiang Mai, Thailand. He's now diversified his income, with a small design agency, his work as design lead at a Seattle tech startup, and Wecoco, his own startup. When Wecoco's first event takes place somewhere in Africa sometime this fall, it will offer coworking, coliving, and cotravel packages for freelance designers, graphic artists, and other creatives and makers.
Tsugio Makimoto predicted the rise of the digital nomad, and he was right. But he didn't know how 21st-century products and services would transform how nomads work, live, travel, and explore. Best of all, this new industry is for everybody, from business travelers and vacationers to adventurers and entrepreneurs.
Meet "Botlr," the robotic butler who can get around on its own and bring you those late-night needs—from drinks to snacks and extra towels.
It's midnight. I'm on a business trip in Cupertino, California and after sending off a few final emails, I change into my pajamas, and then it hits me: I've forgotten my toothbrush.
This is not the first time I've done this and most of the time, when I do, I swing by the front desk and grab one. But when it's really late and I'm in my pajamas, I'm a little less inclined to head downstairs to model my choice in sleepwear for the folks still at the hotel bar.
So I call the Aloft Hotel's front desk for room service, and a few minutes later open my door to get my toothbrush from Botlr, the hotel's robotic butler.
Botlr, who has been on staff since 2014 and looks a tiny bit like a rolling trash can, works 24/7 delivering everything from extra towels to snacks and drinks. When a guest calls the front desk, the attendant places the requested item inside of the head of the bellhop on wheels, programs in the room number, and off it goes.
And Botlr knows its way around. It even takes the elevator on its own. A phone call to the guest is made when Botlr arrives at your door.
There's pretty much only one reason one might find themselves in Cupertino: Apple. The Aloft across from Apple's campus. The tech giant has building upon building located off De Anza Boulevard in which engineers and designers are creating the next generation of iPhones, iPads, and laptops. In many ways, it makes sense that the first robotic butler works here.
Before Botlr, my toothbrush request would have required the front desk attendant to leave his post and take the elevator up to my room. That's not a big deal on a slow night, but if another guest also needed assistance, having a robotic butler to give a helping hand can be a big help.
Other hotels are buying into the ongoing robot revolution in hotels. A few years back, the introduction of robotic bartenders made a huge splash. Savioke, the startup that made Botlr, has 59 different contracts for the robot butlers across the United States and one in Singapore.
But they're not all called Botlr—Savioke calls the model a "Relay." Aloft renamed their Relay to Botlr.
"There's a lot of creativity in terms of naming these robots," says Tessa Lau, CTO at Savioke. Hotels create names that they think best reflect their personality.
So how do the robots know how to navigate hotels on their own? Lau says an installation tech trains them to navigate through hallways and lounges using a PlayStation joystick.
"We drive Relay around and we show him where everything is. It's kind of like bringing a new trainee on board and saying 'Here's the break room, here's the lounge, here's the front desk.' After we do that, then Relay knows how to get around and it can go fully autonomous," says Lau.
Lau says that Relay has a bunch of sensors onboard, including laser sensors, depth cameras, and sonar that help it put together a pretty good map of the hotel it's in. The only place Savioke needs to install anything is the elevator.
"We're actually the first robotics company to really develop a method for connecting to pretty much any elevator in existence," says Lau. "We install a connector near the elevator system which gets wired into the elevator, then Relay can talk to our box."
At the Aloft, that means Botlr can roll up to the elevator and call it down. Once inside, it wirelessly presses the button for the destination floor.
Botlr is a model employee but there was a bit of a learning curve in its early days. One issue: maids.
Botlr is programmed to detect objects, like, say, people, in its path and move around them. It initially had a lot of trouble with maid carts. When it came across one in the hallway it would assess the situation and get stuck, thinking there was no way to get through. After a few months of troubleshooting, the Savioke team was able to improve Botlr's navigation.
Savioke also has a 24/7 call center that's constantly monitoring its fleet of robots. Lau says that the call center is notified whenever a robot gets into trouble, and is usually able to correct the issue remotely before the hotel realizes there's an issue.
Speaking of the hotel, another interesting thing to note is they don't actually own Botlr.
"What we discovered on the business side is that they don't want to own the robot. They don't want to hire roboticists and maintenance people and service people to figure out what to do with it when it breaks. What they actually want is just an ongoing monthly expense," Lau says.
For a flat monthly fee of roughly $2,000 with a 3-year contract, a hotel gets use of the robot as well as any maintenance and service it needs.
"From a hotel perspective it's just like hiring another team member," says Lau. A team member like no other.
Imagine if an inner voice was constantly telling you that you are a professional fraud.
"Any moment, someone could come through the door, tap me on the shoulder, and tell me that it's been concluded that I'm really not very good, certainly not an asset to the business, and it would be better for everyone if I packed my things and left," says J.J.,* a professional in his 30s who works in marketing and communications.
While J.J. is successful by many measures, he suffers from impostor syndrome. In short, no matter how much he accomplishes, he feels like a fraud. People with impostor syndrome see all the signs of their success–-the large bank balance, the public praise, the demand for their work–-yet feel like they just got lucky, getting there not through hard work, merit, and talent, but by chance. They live in constant fear that someone will realize that they don't really deserve to hold the position they do.
"It's exhausting, morale sapping, and confidence inhibiting," he says. J.J. says his impostor syndrome developed after a succession of career traumas, including a layoff and a dead-end role at a marketing firm. Yet despite recovering from those setbacks and a current position at a marketing agency that he likes, where his bosses and colleagues give him positive feedback and appear to value his work, he can't shake the feeling of being a fraud.
While impostor syndrome is increasingly of interest to psychologists and neuroscientists, it's not currently considered a disease. Compared to other psychological afflictions, there are only limited studies and anecdotal data on impostor syndrome's genesis, symptoms, and who is likely to be afflicted, says Tara Swart, a leadership consultant, neuroscientist, and medical doctor who has been helping people overcome the condition for years.
"There is a common idea that women suffer from this syndrome more than men," says Swart. "That could be because women are generally more open to talking about their feelings of inadequacy and lack of confidence than men are." But it's not actually a gendered affliction. She says that most ("80% to 90%") of her clients are men, noting that that could be due to gender imbalances across board rooms. Some who suffer from impostor syndrome are also found to suffer from stress, suggesting that high levels of cortisol can trigger the condition, while others have been found to have lower levels of testosterone, which can affect how confident we feel.
Swart also says the rise of social media, "the ability to compare oneself constantly to colleagues or peers," has likely made these feelings of inadequacy more widespread. She also believes that impostor syndrome may be exacerbated by how businesses are often organized, "which gears toward success being awarded to highly competitive, confident staff." Swart says that impostor syndrome "underlies everything and biases your decision making to fear and risk aversion."
"It's bizarre," explains J.J. "Sometimes I feel very bullish and confident about my abilities, but almost all of the time there's this gnawing self-doubt. I know that must seem like a contradiction, but there it is."
Alisia Stasi can relate. A web developer from Italy, she moved to London when she was 16 to launch her career. While that would be impressive enough for anyone, Stasi, a self-confessed perfectionist, first began to notice thoughts associated with impostor syndrome shortly after taking the new job. "I have been sharing my life with my inner impostor for at least five years," she says.
"Was I really good enough? What if I just managed to trick people into thinking I'm the right person for the job?" Stasi says of those first creeping feelings. "I thought I could only manage to keep my 'mask' if I worked a hundred times harder than everyone else."
Stasi says her self-doubt became so severe that it started to affect her professional aspirations and even her pay. "I would ask for more junior positions than the ones I was fit for, and even then, for a lower salary than the one my role implied. I would be scared to go to conferences, hackathons, and even speak with more experienced people in the field, afraid that someone would eventually identify me as an outsider and kick me out."
After taking this risk aversion to new lows at successive jobs, she knew she needed to get help. Despite there being no magic pill impostor syndrome sufferers can take to cure their negative thought patterns, they can learn to overcome them in time. Here's what Swart recommends to her clients who are suffering from impostor syndrome:
Though it sounds simple, Swart says having a go-to set of positive statements that you can speak out loud or say in your head can "reprogram the neural pathways in the brain and prevent automatic shortcuts to negative thought patterns." A few of her favorites that seem to work for most people are the simple phrases, "I am truly capable," or, "I make great decisions." She advises her clients to say these whenever negative self-talk or consistent doubts pop into their heads.
Next, you'll want to remind yourself of what you are capable of. This might include visualizing past successes you have had (that celebratory dinner with your boss for landing that big client, or perhaps the half-marathon you ran a few years ago) as well as visualizing other people's successes to remind yourself what others have achieved in a similar situation to yours. "Just knowing that something is possible makes it less threatening for the brain," says Swart.
Neuroscience-based coaching, such as some forms of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can help people to understand how neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to change itself—can overwrite brain pathways with preferred attitudes and behaviors. CBT techniques allow you to unlearn old habits and "[re]learn new, desired ways of being," Swart says. But CBT, like the other steps outlined above, isn't a quick fix. "I tell clients that this takes about as long and is about as difficult as learning a new language."
Though it might seem time consuming and daunting at first, these neuroscientific steps can overcome the feelings generated by impostor syndrome "by self-awareness, focused attention, deliberate practice—the repetitive performance of the new behavior—which can help to rewire neural pathways in the brain to create new attitudes toward your own success and achievements," she says.
That's not to say those feelings won't surface again in the future, perhaps triggered by a promotion or an unfamiliar situation. "But with tools and techniques from neuroscience, people can learn to prevent this issue from overwhelming them," says Swart. "It is incredibly rewarding work, and a good skill for anyone to have in their toolkit."
That's something Stasi can agree with. Despite overwhelming self-doubt, she applied for the AngelHack Lady Problems hackathon in London. Not only was she accepted, but she also won the competition.
"Since the hackathon series were aimed at solving issues that women face in technology and entrepreneurship, I went to the hackathon with my first proto-draft of an idea, and we ended up winning the competition with an app that integrates CBT with studies on impostor syndrome and gives a little daily help to keep the impostor at bay and boost confidence," she says.
"My team and I are trying to push this project forward, and despite being challenging, I learned that stepping out of your comfort zone on a regular basis makes everything look way different than the disastrous scenarios you had in mind, and helps you recalibrate your perception of yourself."
Stasi says the project, called Caraboo, has been the most effective therapy she's tried so far. "Impostor syndrome isn't stopping me anymore, and I'm pretty confident that one day, my voice will be finally louder than the impostor's."
This writer was "so knee-deep in survival mode" during her son's first year that she no longer had real goals. Here's what came next.
I worked myself into a lovely pickle at the end of 2016. I told my manager that I'd love to have a session on career planning and goals for my role in the company. I love these sorts of chats!
Well, I used to. I've been so knee-deep in survival mode during my son's first year of life, wrangling a puppy, and finding out that I was pregnant with No. 2 when my son was nine months old, that I suddenly realized, while preparing for this chat, that I had no short- or long-term goals. "Well, what do you want life to look like in five years?" my friend asked as a prompt.
After pondering this for an hour or so, all—and I do mean all—I could come up with was: "I want to sleep through the night, for more than three hours at a time."
Rewind another 10 years and beyond. I was the straight-A student, the very nerdy girl riding horses (working at barns to pay for her horse habit), and writing novels in every spare moment.
I was the one involved in three to four clubs or nonprofits at a time. I directed two musicals. I served on a rodeo court and was crowned for a state title as "Miss Teen Rodeo" in my first year of college.
I was the news editor and editor-in-chief of the college paper. I was editor-in-chief of the college magazine. I won several national awards for my writing in college, and even won trips to conferences and such. At the same time, I freelanced for the local newspaper and several statewide publications. Ambition, plans, side projects were never in short supply.
This continued as I entered the professional world; I often took on more in my roles and shaped my jobs into what I wanted them to be (and what the organization needed). I knew that when it came time for me to start a family, I wanted to work from home. I started a side business while working full-time at a university, hoping to accomplish this.
Landing a job here at Buffer was an avenue I'd never anticipated—but something far better than my plan of making my business self-sufficient. (I have always worked better with teams than working for myself!) And while I still worked my dream job in my dream environment (home office!), I continued to work on some side projects and write novels.
I've never not had three to four "jobs" at once. I thrive under the constant yearning to explore more, learn more, test a new skill.
I remember the moment when my side projects, novel wanderings, and drive faltered. It was April 24, 2015. I found out I was pregnant with my first child. This didn't manifest in an instant cosmic shift. We were elated about the news, and new plans and tons of new projects swirled in my head.
I dove into every baby and parenting book I could get my hands on, and when that initial freakout stage passed, I attempted to dive back into the projects and novels I'd been working on. But it was like a dam had been erected, in the exact part of my brain where my fiction writing and freelance design work resided. For months I battled this dam, but I felt like I was poking a thousand tons of concrete with a needle. I couldn't even get a drop through.
Then came baby, and somehow I blinked. A year ago, I had the dreams: a family, a career, a side-passion project of writing a novel a year. Well, the side project never quite happened, and I sometimes feel like I'm barely holding onto the career and family. So what do I want out of 2017? I do want sleep. I want an afternoon to myself every now and then.
But then I shake myself a little: Who is this person? Where are my goals of publishing novels? Why aren't I involved in a dozen nonprofits? Sleep? That's not a "goal"! The hour I spent pondering my goals for the year ahead led to a few hours of panic, then a half a day of mourning for the woman I once was.
A few days later, I felt at peace.
I realized that while this past year flew by, I wouldn't have traded a single baby snuggle for more writing time or more time on the laptop. I know the next few years will go by just as fast, and I'll welcome that lofty-goal–setting person once more. Until then, I'm on a journey toward being more content with smaller (but equally impactful and more realistic) goals.
I'll work on being a better parent and teammate. I'll strive to live more in the moment and less in my to-do list. I'll let go of the things that don't matter and hold onto the essential.
After a few weeks of reflecting on my career-planning session and seeking lots of advice, here's how I plan to get through the next instance of survival mode that eclipses all else:
1. Slow down and breathe. Like most phases in life, the panic and frustration is fleeting. Time really does make a difference.
2. Identify that you're in "survival mode." Consider this a "get-out-of-jail-free" card in the sense of a "get-out-of-your-head-for-now" card. The more I pushed myself, the more I felt paralyzed. Sometimes you can't force yourself out of a situation.
3. Communicate, communicate, communicate. It's important that your supervisor is aware of what you're feeling—the highs and the lows. Sometimes it's easier to put on a brave face and convince everyone that all is well. And this could set you up for failure when things get a little too rough.
4. Seek mentors, colleagues, and friends to talk to. For me, it was a comfort to hear, "Oh, I've been there. It's okay." When we bottle up our feelings, it's easy to think we're the only ones who've ever experienced something like this. Thankfully, we're not. There are so many wise people out there who can encourage you.
5. Seize the moments outside of "survival mode." January brought with it more than I could have ever expected in December, while I was trying to map out my ideal 2017. I found moments of inspiration and clarity (and lost a few more days to no sleep and lower productivity.) That's okay. That's life.
6. Remember: Survive! If you're in "survival mode" in your life, don't ignore the most important thing: your well-being (and the well-being of those close to you)! Running yourself into the ground won't do you or your work any good.
A version of this article originally appeared on Buffer. It is adapted and reprinted with permission.
For the first time since becoming a public benefit corporation, the company is revealing how it's living up to its objectives.
Later today, Kickstarter will release its first annual benefit statement since incorporating as a Public Benefit Corporation in 2015. In taking that step, the crowdfunding platform joined Patagonia and a few other companies that have accepted a legal obligation to benefit society, rather than just focusing on maximizing shareholder value. Every two years, Kickstarter is required to report on its progress in achieving a long list of objectives laid out in its charter—in other words, it has to prove the benefit that it's providing the public.
So far, it appears that the company is making a lot of progress toward fulfilling that charter when it comes to charitable donations, gender and racial equity, and pay equity, according to a copy of the statement obtained by Fast Company. The document also reveals plenty about its overall financial health. In 2016, Kickstarter users pledged $658,053,820, which works out to just shy of $30 million in revenue (it takes 5% of every successful pledge—about 90% of all pledges are successful, according to Kickstarter VP of Communications, Justin Kazmark).
Talking to Kickstarter's cofounders, investors, and employees over the last three weeks, it became clear that while the bottom line serves as a guideline for success, it's not the metric that motivates their team. The statement highlights the number of full- and part-time jobs that Kickstarter claims to have created (more than 300,000, as measured by an independent research team at the University of Pennsylvania) to the combined effective tax rate it paid (25%), to the demographics and pay of its executive team.
Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler says that disclosing these numbers and focusing on the company's social impact is about living up to the values that they preach. "If we're saying that we want to build a more safe and equitable world, that starts in your own backyard. Change starts at home," he told me.
Yancey Strickler
In 2016 Strickler's salary was 2.33 times that of the average employee's salary, and his total compensation (including stock and salary) was five times the average employee's compensation. By comparison, the average tech CEO made 95 times their average employee's pay, according to a study conducted by Mercer last year.
Kickstarter's demographics are also impressive: 53% of employees are women and 50% of executives are women (compared to the 12% average for executives in the tech sector reported by Fenwick & West LP in 2014). And 50% of the executive team is also non-white (compared to the 43% recently reported in the tech sector by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).
Its racial diversity numbers are average for the industry, according to the EEOC. The benefit statement shows that employee demographics are: 70% White/Caucasian; 12% Asian; 12% two or more races; 4% Hispanic or Latino; and 2% Black/African American.
Below is an infographic showing some of the other highlights from the statement.
Artificial intelligence tools are only beginning to penetrate the workplace, but are causing leaders to rethink how their businesses run.
Artificial Intelligence may still be in its infancy, but it's already forcing leadership teams around the world to reconsider some of their core structures.
Advances in technology are causing firms to restructure their organizational makeup, transform their HR departments, develop new training models, and reevaluate their hiring practices. This is according to Deloitte's 2017 Human Capital Trends Report, which draws on surveys from over 10,000 HR and business leaders in 140 countries. Much of these changes are a result of the early penetration of basic AI software, as well as preparation for the organizational needs that will emerge as they mature.
"What we concluded is that what AI is definitely doing is not eliminating jobs, it is eliminating tasks of jobs, and creating new jobs, and the new jobs that are being created are more human jobs," says Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte. Bersin defines "more human jobs" as those that require traits robots haven't yet mastered, like empathy, communication, and interdisciplinary problem solving. "Individuals that have very task-oriented jobs will have to be retrained, or they're going to have to move into new roles," he adds.
The survey found that 41% of respondents have fully implemented or made significant progress in adopting AI technologies in the workforce, yet only 15% of global executives say they are prepared to manage a workforce "with people, robots, and AI working side by side."
As a result, early AI technologies and a looming AI revolution are forcing organizations to reevaluate a number of established strategies. Instead of hiring the most qualified person for a specific task, many companies are now putting greater emphasis on cultural fit and adaptability, knowing that individual roles will have to evolve along with the implementation of AI.
On-the-job training has become more vital to transition people into new roles as new technologies are adapted, and HR's function is quickly moving away from its traditional evaluation and recruiting function—which can increasingly be done more efficiently using big data and AI software—toward a greater focus on improving the employee experience across an increasingly contingent workforce.
The Deloitte survey also found that 56% of respondents are already redesigning their HR programs to leverage digital and mobile tools, and 33% are utilizing some form of AI technology to deliver HR functions.
The integration of early artificial intelligence tools is also causing organizations to become more collaborative and team-oriented, as opposed to the traditional top-down hierarchal structures.
"To integrate AI, you have to have an internal team of expert product people and engineers that know its application and are working very closely with the frontline teams that are actually delivering services," says Ian Crosby, cofounder and CEO of Bench, a digital bookkeeping provider. "When we are working AI into our frontline service, we don't go away to a dark room and come back after a year with our masterpiece. We work with our frontline bookkeepers day in, day out."
In order to properly adapt to changing technologies, organizations are moving away from a top-down structure and toward multidisciplinary teams. In fact, 32% of survey respondents said they are redesigning their organizations to be more team-centric, optimizing them for adaptability and learning in preparation for technological disruption.
Finding a balanced team structure, however, doesn't happen overnight, explains Crosby. "Very often, if there's a big organization, it's better to start with a small team first, and let them evolve and scale up, rather than try to introduce the whole company all at once."
Crosby adds that Bench's eagerness to integrate new technologies also impacts the skills the company recruits and hires for. Beyond checking the boxes of the job's technical requirements, he says the company looks for candidates that are ready to adapt to the changes that are coming.
"When you're working with AI, you're building things that nobody has ever built before, and nobody knows how that will look yet," he says. "If they're not open to being completely wrong, and having the humility to say they were wrong, we need to reevaluate."
As AI becomes more sophisticated, leaders will eventually need to decide where to place human employees, which tasks are best suited for machines, and which can be done most efficiently by combining the two.
"It's a few years before we have actual AI, it's getting closer and closer, but AI still has a big problem understanding human intent," says Rurik Bradbury, the global head of research and communication for online chat software provider LivePerson. As more AI software becomes available, he advises organizations to "think of those three different categories—human, machine, or cyborg—and decide who should be hired for this job."
While AI technologies are still in their infancy, it won't be long before every organization is forced to develop their own AI strategy in order to stay competitive. Those with the HR teams, training program, organizational structures, and adaptable staff will be best prepared for this fast-approaching reality.
Orbital Insight, Spire, and others are taking rocket and satellite technology to new heights.
After NASA embraced the private space industry, the investment dollars began flowing. In 2015, more than $2 billion in bets were placed on space startups, but in 2016 things came back down to Earth—a 30% decrease year-over-year, according to CBInsights. At the same time, many of the companies on this year's list have announced revenue-generating partnerships, which means that 2017 may well include several exciting, ambitious, and highly public product—and rocket—launches. Keep your eyes on the skies.
Click on a company to learn more about why it made the list.
The former All-Star and NBA Finals MVP wants to ensure his financial future—and make sure no other athlete goes bankrupt.
Even in a professional sports league known for well-dressed men, Andre Iguodala, the 6-foot-6 Golden State Warriors forward, stands out for his fashion sense. The 2015 NBA finals MVP, who once moonlit as the menswear style director for Twice, a secondhand fashion startup that was acquired by eBay, is known for his well-tailored suits. Tonight, he is wearing a double-breasted black suit by Ralph Lauren Purple Label with a slate button-up shirt and no tie. He stands at the base of the grand marble staircase in San Francisco's City Hall and surveys the scene.
The rotunda is filled with his fellow Warriors, among them reigning two-time MVP Stephen Curry; fellow All-Stars Klay Thompson and Draymond Green; and newcomer center JaVale McGee, along with bargain pickup Zaza Pachulia. Holding plates piled with grilled lemon chicken and baby watercress salad and tequila cocktails mixed with a special habanero tincture, they're mingling in small groups with the night's other guests, who include some of Silicon Valley's boldest-faced names. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is huddling with Curry. Now former Autodesk CEO Carl Bass is talking eagerly with Green. Elsewhere, there's famous venture capitalist Mary Meeker and Apple Music and iTunes head of marketing Bozoma Saint John, Andreessen Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan, and others. "It's all about connecting," says Iguodala, the proud host. "Connecting the tech world with the tech world, and the tech world with the basketball world."
Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green.Photos: Damien Maloney for Fast Company
Iguodala arranged this 72-person dinner, which took place a few days before the start of the NBA season in October, with Rudy Cline-Thomas, his former financial adviser and now investing partner. Their mission: Bring players and tech executives together to develop relationships that can help the athletes make the kind of moves that solidify financial futures, while bringing their star power and influence to the Valley players. And though some of the techies in attendance seem interested in simply securing an endorsement from Warriors superstars, others recognize the deeper potential in the room. Some of the VCs are starting conversations that could lead to players making investments in portfolio companies. Ben Schwerin, Snapchat's director of partnerships, who has architected deals with all the major sports leagues, uses the night as an opportunity to float the idea of inserting ads into players' Snap Stories. (Iguodala, for one, is intrigued, but wonders if they would be construed as endorsements.)
The athletes, meanwhile, know exactly what they're doing here. The event is taking place on the Warriors's only off-day between a hectic road swing and team's final preseason game. And yet all but one of the players have skipped their well-deserved night at home to attend. "We just got off a crazy road trip [and] we have a game tomorrow," Curry says. "But we understand the value of being in front of a lot of powerful people."
Stephen Curry and several dinner guests, including Morgan Stanley managing director Owen O'Keeffe (left) and Andrew Kearns (right), the bank's co-head of global technology banking.Photos: Damien Maloney for Fast Company
In his four years with the Warriors, Iguodala has become one of the most tech-savvy and well-connected players in the NBA, if not all of sports. (This is an athlete, after all, whose official Warriors bobblehead sports a virtual reality headset.) He's been building a reputation as a shrewd Silicon Valley investor, getting in early on Facebook, Netflix, and Tesla stock, among others, and has built an enviable rolodex of A-list VCs, CEOs, and Valley entrepreneurs, many of whom account for the billions of dollars in total net worth sitting courtside at every sold-out Warriors game. He's been a featured panelist at TechCrunch Disrupt and a headliner at a recent LinkedIn speaker series. More recently, with Cline-Thomas, Iguodala has been developing a diverse portfolio of investments that include fitness and sleep technologies, fintech, and consumer products. His many moves have been geared toward setting himself up to be a Silicon Valley player in the final years of his NBA career, while ensuring he holds onto the $118 million he's made since entering the league out of the University of Arizona as a first-round draft pick in 2004.
Iguodala isn't the only athlete diving into technology investing. Kobe Bryant recently launched a $100 million venture fund focused on media, tech, and data companies. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young is a Silicon Valley VC. Teammate Curry is a cofounder of a social media startup called Slyce, and Kevin Durant, who joined the Warriors this season, has put money into the micro-investing app Acorns and the food-delivery service Postmates. But there is no one else who's putting so much energy into both investing for his own future and educating his fellow ballers to do the same.
Iguodala and Cline-Thomas's City Hall mixer was only one piece of their larger effort to give players more agency in determining their fortunes beyond basketball, while helping them avoid the riches-to-rags trap that has ensnared other players. They are all too aware of stories like those of Antoine Walker, who filed for bankruptcy in 2015 despite more than $100 million in career salary, and Gilbert Arenas, who squandered $160 million in NBA earnings, plus tens of millions more in endorsements.
Iguodala on the court.Photo: Daniel Terdiman
In the past, the relationship between players and companies was fairly simple: Athletes got paid handsomely to endorse brands or products such as shoes, beverages, and cars. These days, the endorsement game is still important, but rise of entrepreneurship—especially in a place like Silicon Valley—presents new opportunities. Players who are willing to take some risk by accepting equity in exchange for endorsement or other involvement in a company can make far more than they would with the traditional cash-for-service arrangement of previous generations of athletes. "Not that there aren't valuable dollars for [cash-for-endorsement] opportunities," says David Abrutyn, a partner at Bruin Sports Capital, a global sports investment firm, "but you can get a multiple of those dollars if you are savvy enough and have the ability to identify companies [where] you're willing to forego cash for equity."
And it's not just endorsements. With today's outsized salaries, players can also become powerful investors, provided they have the right connections. Iguodala is the standard bearer for what David Carter, the executive director of USC's Sports Business Institute, calls the "third phase" of player-company relationships, in which highly paid athletes take an active role in their portfolios and invest directly in companies.
Iguodala wants to help his fellow athletes take their own first steps in this direction—which begins with recognizing the opportunity before it's too late. "[NBA players] are really hot right now. People know our faces now, and our names are recognizable," he says. "But it isn't always going to be that way." Before that popularity and power dissipates, Iguodala wants to help his fellow players, "create these relationships, build these networks and develop them, and create marketing opportunities [for ourselves]."
That means, as Iguodala puts it, that players must think of themselves as businessmen even before they retire. And he's going to help them.
Immediately after almost every Warriors' victory, Comcast SportsNet sideline reporter Ros Gold-Onwude pulls aside one of the game's best-performing players for a short interview. In mid-November, inside Toronto's Air Canada Centre, where the title-favorite Warriors have just dispatched the hometown Raptors, Iguodala is the man on the spot.
Though the 33-year-old is a former All-Star, his stats are declining, and this is his first Gold-Onwude interview of the season. The two have a good relationship, so after some preliminaries, she asks if he was upset it has taken her 11 games to get to him. "Naw, I just figured out you gotta make shots to get interviewed," Iguodala says. "So I'm going to work on that."
The interview is NBA boilerplate, until suddenly, Iguodala's thoughts seem to veer toward retirement. While talking about the Warriors roster, he mentions rookie Patrick McCaw, who has spent most games riding the bench, saying, "He's going to take my spot [one day]. I'm going to be out of a job." To be clear, Iguodala's All-Star years may be behind him, but he's still vital to the Warriors' championship hopes. Nevertheless, he's looking ahead. "I got a tech thing going on, " he tells Gold-Onwude. "Life is good."
Iguodala's quest to craft an identity beyond sports dates back to the start of his career with the Philadelphia 76ers. While Iguodala was playing in Philadelphia, his friend Herbert Hill, a Sixers draftee who never played in a regular season NBA game, often mentioned his financial adviser, Cline-Thomas.
Iguodala and Cline-Thomas became friendly, bonding over their shared interest in tech and business. It was "kind of like a mentorship where it wasn't just somebody working for me," Iguodala recalls. "It was working together, and holding my own, and doing homework." Eventually, in 2007, Iguodala signed on as a client, and for a few years, he and Cline-Thomas invested mainly in publicly available tech stocks via an E-Trade account. Although Cline-Thomas had developed a connection to the world of venture capital through Philadelphia-based VC Josh Kopelman, he and Iguodala didn't have much access to the kinds of early-stage deals where the real money is made.
That began to change in 2013, when—after a year with the Denver Nuggets and eight seasons with the 76ers—Iguodala signed a free-agent contract with the Warriors and moved to the Bay Area. Soon after, Cline-Thomas decided it was time to make inroads on Sand Hill Road. He reached out to Andreessen Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan, one of the top VCs in the business—albeit in an oddly analog fashion.
"I actually got a letter, and I often don't open letters," Jordan recalls. "I ended up replying and we met for dinner in San Francisco. [They] were really intelligent men with a passionate interest in technology, and we talked tech all night." Jordan's specialty is consumer technology, which fit well with Iguodala and Cline-Thomas's interests. And since they had few relationships in the Valley, the VC has played the role of matchmaker, opening doors for the pair and making introductions.
When he first began working with Iguodala, Cline-Thomas had told his client that he'd have to treat investing almost as a second career if he wanted to be successful. And so Iguodala does. He makes a point of reading everything from the Wall Street Journal to TechCrunch every day; his Twitter feed features a mix of style and tech companies; news publications; and Silicon Valley investors and executives. And he doesn't just show up for business meetings; he's an equal partner in discussion and determinations about where to put his—and Cline-Thomas's—money. "[For him] the normal locker room talk is about positive things in the world of tech," says Curry, who has witnessed his teammate's focus over the past four years. "You can pretty much ask him any question, and he'll have a pretty educated answer."
That attention to detail doesn't go unnoticed. Dick Costolo, the former CEO of Twitter, first met Iguodala in 2014 when the two of them were paired for the AOL video series Win/Win. In the video, Costolo mentioned that NBA great Chris Bosh had once told him that he knew he had to think about his life after basketball, and that while a tech executive could always move from one company to the next, Bosh had "to be the CEO of Chris Bosh," taking responsibility for figuring out what comes after his basketball career. "Andre thinks very, very similarly," Costolo says.
Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Andre Iguodala.
When Costolo was recently raising money for his new social fitness startup, Chorus, he approached Iguodala and Cline-Thomas. It wasn't just Iguodala's celebrity or money that he wanted to leverage. Costolo, who had seen that Iguodala "understands the importance of a holistic approach to wellness," wanted the player's perspective on the venture. Over dinner, the three discussed a potential investment. "They probably asked me more questions—more pointed questions and more detailed questions—than anybody else I pitched," recalls Costolo. Iguodala and Cline-Thomas became some of Chorus's earliest investors.
"They're approaching it sort of as students of the game," says Richard Smith, a former business development executive at First Round Capital who's now at LinkedIn, and who's helped Iguodala and Cline-Thomas with various initiatives. "They're putting in the time to learn the industry that they're passionate about, and picking the places that it makes sense for them to dive deeper into." Other investments they've made include TruMid, a George Soros-backed electronic trading platform that recently surpassed $1 billion in total trades; the sleep-tech companies Hello and Thrive Global; Walker & Company, which makes health and beauty products aimed at people of color; and The Players Tribune, Derek Jeter's athlete-focused media company.
Iguodala likely has a few years left in the NBA. Once his playing days are over, though, he plans to ramp up his investing and advising of portfolio companies, even as he increases the amount of energy he puts into educating athletes and bridging the gap between sports and technology. All of that is why, on his LinkedIn profile, Iguodala identifies himself first as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, and only then as an NBA player.
Last summer, about 20 current and former NBA players descended on San Francisco's St. Regis hotel for the National Basketball Players Association's (NBPA) first Technology Summit. Iguodala, an NBPA vice president, and Cline-Thomas had worked closely with the association's then executive director, Roger Mason, to create the event, a three-day series of educational discussions and meetings with venture capitalists, tech executives, and entrepreneurs.
Some of the players who came already had their own businesses; others had tried and failed—and wanted to know why. Over the three days, they sat through discussions on topics like "working with founders and early-stage companies" and "understanding the technology and VC landscape." Speakers included representatives from top-tier VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures, as well as tech companies like Twitter, Under Armour, Halo Neuroscience, and others.
NBPA Tech Summit.
Iguodala's and Cline-Thomas's interest in helping players get the kind of tech-investing education that might help them prosper began about a year and a half ago. Iguodala realized that while lots of athletes were asking him for advice, most had little investing savvy. With tech investing becoming one of the sexiest pastimes, Iguodala knew he could help athletes participate who were flush with eight- and even nine-figure contracts. But he also wanted to prepare them. Players "only read the success stories," says Cline-Thomas. "Nobody's writing about somebody that lost a shitload of money, which is 99% of the whole game." Iguodala's vision for the summit, Cline-Thomas explains, was to offer "safeguards before more players became casualties."
For Iguodala, the event was a chance to give his fellow players access to what he and his Warriors teammates have at hand every day—easy access to Silicon Valley, something that gives them a clear advantage when it comes to understanding tech investing. "[The summit is] kind of a crash course on the tech world," Iguodala says in a video recap of the event. "You want to know everything from the ground up, and you just don't want to dive into something because it's kind of the cool thing to do at the moment." According to Iguodala, the players showed up prepared—ready to take full advantage of their meetings with high-level VCs. And many, he reports, have since maintained contact with the investors.
One such player is Lou Amundson, a 10-year NBA veteran who played last season for the New York Knicks. He has recently been working with a virtual reality company to start a sports division, and came to the summit for a better understanding of the startup ecosystem. But he was just as impressed by the event's emphasis that athletes, rich as they are, need to take responsibility for their own financial well-being. "That message still needs to be delivered to some players," Amundson says, "It's not a secret anymore that there's an opportunity [in tech], but there's really a lot of bad opportunities out there, too."
To Amundson, the summit was a reminder of the kind of knowledge that athletes need to internalize—as well as a demonstration that they have someone in the Valley who's got their back. "It's important to really educate yourself, talk to people, and network," he says, "and [Iguodala and Cline-Thomas] have always been open to sharing that information and talking with players and building relationships."
The Tech Summit will return this summer, and Cline-Thomas expects it to be substantially bigger. He says there's also an interest in expanding the attendee list to players in other sports, and even from other countries. The Warriors dinners, too, are continuing, and paying dividends; Warriors newcomer McGee is investing in a portfolio company of one of the VCs he met at the City Hall event. Iguodala and Cline-Thomas hosted a second dinner, with six Warriors players and a group of VCs, in December at San Francisco's trendy Hakkasan restaurant. They plan on having at least a couple more before the end of the current NBA season.
"I'm trying to get the athlete to reinvent himself," says Iguodala. "There's a lot of hard work that goes into this, but it's possible." And for him, the idea of collaborating with fellow players off the court and in the tech world comes naturally. "I always tell my teammates, we're teammates for life," he says. "We're going to be doing things together when we get older . . . Don't take that for granted."
A system by police supplier Taser aims to automatically activate the company's cameras during encounters with the public.
Technology, no matter how smart, only works if you use it, or simply remember to turn it on.
To ensure accountability during police encounters, Axon, Taser's police body camera division, has announced a small sensor for gun holsters that can detect when a gun is drawn and automatically activate all nearby cameras. The sensor, Signal Sidearm, is part of a suite of products aimed at reducing the possibility that officers will fail to or forget to switch on their cameras during encounters with the public. Last year in Chicago for instance, an officer, when giving chase, said he forgot to turn on his camera before fatally shooting an unarmed 18-year-old named Paul O'Neal.
Taser also sells sensors that activate the company's body cameras and dashboard cameras when a police cruiser's door has opened or its lights have been switched on, as well as a battery pack for the Taser electroshock weapon that prompts cameras to record when the weapon is armed. By activating all cameras within a 30-foot radius, the suite of products can help police create a multi-angle video of a police encounter. (Taser's cameras are also equipped with a historical buffer that captures footage up to two minutes prior to a camera's activation.) Many police dashboard cameras are already designed to activate when the engine is started or a siren is turned on, and another camera maker, Vievu, also sells a holster that automatically triggers its cameras. In the future, body cameras could be activated when an officer enters a hot spot or makes a call on the radio.
"When law enforcement officers must draw a weapon, the last thing they should worry about is their technology," Rick Smith, Taser's CEO and cofounder, said in a statement. "The Signal Sidearm will give officers the same confidence in their technology that already exists in encounters involving Smart Weapons that use our Signal technology. It's an important step in extending the reach of the Axon network to connect other devices."
Axon Signal Sidearm by TASER International, Inc.
A number of police departments have already begun to deploy the suite of sensors, called Axon Signal, which Taser markets as part of a brisk business selling services as well as products to police departments. In an earnings report released today, Taser said its revenues from body cameras increased 154% to $23.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2016, compared to $9.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, far outpacing the growth of its weapons sales. Roughly 6,000 of the 18,000 law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. are thought to be using body cameras in some form, and some estimates put the the market for body cameras and services at $1 billion a year.
Taser's holster sensor is scheduled for release later this year, but the company has not said how much it would cost. Last year, according to a Taser price list, a standard Axon Flex camera equipped with Signal cost $688, and a basic 1-year subscription to Evidence.com with 100 GB of cloud storage cost about $150 per officer.
Automatically activated cameras won't be completely effective at providing oversight of police encounters: As happened when Baton Rouge police shot Alton Sterling last year, cameras can fall off during physical encounters, a problem that Taser has worked to address. They can also malfunction, or videos can be deleted. And civil liberties advocates complain that cameras are only as effective as the rules that guide their use: In Seattle, where the city council voted yesterday to approve $2 million for body cameras, the ACLU has complained that current city policy allowing officers to switch cameras off for privacy reasons gives police too much discretion over when to record.
Example of how the Axon Signal Unit activates Axon Fleet and Axon Body 2 cameras.
Other issues with cameras being resolved at the local level include the heavy costs of cloud video storage, and the question of whether officers are allowed to view their footage immediately after violent encounters—a privilege not extended to the public. As Seattle's police chief, Kathleen O'Toole, said in 2015, cameras will be a "valuable tool" for police and public accountability. "But I think we have to be realistic: Body cameras are not going to be a panacea."
A large majority of Seattle's citizens support body cameras for cops, echoing surveys across the country, and police reform advocates insist that cameras can help reduce use-of-force encounters. In a study of police departments in the United States and the U.K. conducted by researchers at Cambridge University, the technology was found to result in lower rates of complaints against officers, and to reduce some use-of-force encounters. But when policies did not require officers to be recording all interactions with the public, use of force rose.
Sometimes direct experience isn't what makes someone the best fit for a job. This CEO explains.
Having years of experience sounds like a resume booster that could put you ahead of others when you're looking for a job, but the tech platform JumpCrew intentionally recruits people without a sales background to sell its social media marketing services.
Launched in 2016, cofounder David Pachter says his company's initial inclination was to recruit people with as much experience as possible. "We couldn't afford to hire many of them, so we decided to get as many experienced people as we could and then blend them with folks who were talented enough to pick it up," he says.
Surprisingly, the employees who had no experience were outperforming those who had 10 to 15 years of sales experience, says Pachter. "It became a fascination, and we changed our hiring focus to people without experience," he says. "Then we doubled down on the idea, and doubled our investment in training and development."
JumpCrew currently has 65 employees and plans to hire at least 400 more over the next few years. Only one of JumpCrew's top sales people has a degree in social media but no background in sales. The others have degrees in education, music and film, health care, and journalism.
"Of course, there has to be some level of palpable understanding of social media, but they don't have to be a subject-matter expert," he says. "We can get them there. They do need to be able to tell stories; storytelling is more impactful than selling."
Instead of sales experience or training, Pachter looks for people who are collaborative and coachable. Candidates who have been on formal teams, such as college athletes, are at the top of JumpCrew's recruiting list.
Having an engaging personal social media profile is also an indicator of a good fit. "It's hard to come into an environment that's focused on Facebook and Twitter and excel if you aren't doing a good job of telling your own story," he says.
And Pachter looks for challengers: "A Harvard Business Reviewstudy found that a large percentage of top performers in sales had a personality they defined as 'challengers,'" he says. "These are the people who can talk with folks about an area of their business, and push back with confidence if there is some resistance."
The interview process is important for finding candidates with the right qualities. The first question Pachter asks is, "Tell me about yourself and why you are relevant to JumpCrew."
"Candidates often try and hand me a resume. I prefer to ask this question before I accept it," he says. "If you can't tell your story, how are you going to tell ours? The ability to make a quick connection is imperative. In an initial conversation, you have 15 seconds before the other person decides if they will listen to the next 15 seconds."
Another revealing question: What is one thing you wished you were better at?
"Our success depends on strong trusting relationships with our clients and each other," says Pachter. "Relationships and trust depend on honesty. This question helps me to determine if a candidate is honest with him or herself and willing to be honest with me."
Pachter finds challengers by asking, How would you respond to a prospect who tells you that online marketing isn't effective for their business?
"Challengers have acumen to influence conversations," he says. "When they have a way to enhance a solution, innovate or dispel a misconception, they are assertive—with both their customers and bosses."
Finding the right people is the first step, but assembling them in teams is key, says Pachter. "In sales, companies often focus on individual goals," he says. "We've found that a team-oriented process is better. It isn't about becoming the best sales person; it's about being a well-rounded business entrepreneur."
Employees are hired in groups of 10 and trained as a team. "We focus on the team and drive our culture by training people to identify the skills they need to acquire to be great at what they're doing," says Pachter. "You know what your teammates are looking for and can provide help. There is a level of accountability and a shared desire for achievement."
Employees are on a 90-day ramp to get at 100% productivity. "Some do it in 45 days, and there are really strong indicators at every month to ensure the person is a good fit," says Pachter. "The first 30 days is about verifying the interview process and validating the choice. Over 60 days we're looking for a little more than just that. Are they showing progress and functioning independently and autonomously? At 90 days they should fully be up to speed as a functioning team member."
A culture of continual learning is important. JumpCrew has ongoing training as well as monthly lunch-and-learns that help employees develop expertise and gain well-rounded business exposure, which helps them relate to the entrepreneurs they approach.
Pachter admits that hiring people with no experience is a not a quick path to sales successes. "It requires an investment and commitment to training," he says. "If your company has a super-technical sale, you would probably need an enterprise software sales engineer. But if you're working in a less technical sales environment and are willing to have a commitment to training and development, we believe this is a better investment than hiring experienced teams."
Other companies are demurring due to lack of progress, but Danielle Brown, chief diversity and inclusion officer at Intel, says that even incremental gains are important. And in this report, as in its last, some of the improvements look small in terms of percentage of increase. For example, underrepresented minorities in leadership roles increased to 7.1% in 2016 from 6.3% in 2015. Other stats show similar gains.
"We are not doubling in size every year," says Brown, noting that with 50,000 employees in the U.S. alone, a 2% increase is a large number of people.
Intel also reports where it's fallen behind. Retention continues to be a bit of an issue, with the number of underrepresented minorities leaving (15.5%) at a greater rate than other staff (15.3%).
Brown notes that a couple of programs have been put in place to deal with staffing problems before they escalate to the point that an employee quits. The WarmLine, a web-based submission form that employees can use to confidentially report problems, was launched in the U.S. last spring. Brown says that so far, upwards of 1,200 employees have used it to report such issues as struggling as new staffer or not being given enough responsibilities. Many of these have resulted in pay raises, promotions, transfers to different departments, or finding employees a sponsor or mentor, says Brown.
The WarmLine also created a data set for the company to see where staff was having issues and placed that within the larger context of the company, Brown says. That's helped create "playbooks" for individual business units so each could see the analysis of where their own efforts to be more diverse and inclusive were succeeding or falling short.
"This work is hard," Brown admits. "But we have to be committed for the long haul."
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to the Warmline as a phone line.
One startup founder shares the advantages of working in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.
It was a year ago that I moved my company, Bluzelle, to Singapore. We were just two people at the time, and today we're six. But even though we're still a small startup, it's been an exciting 12 months, and we've made some surprising strides while adjusting to our new environment. Here's what I've learned from the experience so far.
Even just a few years ago, traveling internationally demanded a lot more forethought: What roaming package do I need? How will I get around? How much money should I take?
I've been to over 10 new cities in the past year, and I've given maybe five minutes of thought to each visit. As soon as I land I pick up a local SIM card, which is usually cheap. I use Google Maps on my phone to figure out the best way to go. I call an Uber to get me to my meetings. Being on WhatsApp automatically gives you a global ID, so everyone calls each other using that. I've rarely used cash.
In fact, on four recent trips to India, I still haven't gone through the $300 I took with me. And this is in a country that's overwhelmingly cash-driven. I don't think I've even downloaded a local app.
These upsides are not only just useful for individual entrepreneurs and solo business travelers, but they're also instrumental if you're setting up or moving a small startup overseas. In the early stages, you won't need to contract with an enterprise communication platform or payment solution in order to start doing business. Many of the most fundamental tools you'll need are already right in your pocket.
In my experience, pretty much all business people in Asia are on WhatsApp or WeChat. And forget email intros—I get way more WhatsApp intros. Meetings are set over messaging apps, and email is only used to send the calendar invite, which is great, because it avoids the tedious email exchange to set up a meeting. And if someone doesn't reply, you can just IM them to get a response.
If I did this back in Vancouver where we launched the company originally, the receiver would probably lose their mind over my invasion of their personal space.
My investor loves to tell a story about his first business meetings in Shanghai. No one had their laptops out, only their phones. Since just a few spoke English, people were talking to one another in a WeChat group and just hitting the translate function to convert Mandarin to English as the meeting progressed. Documents weren't emailed over afterward—they were being sent back and forth on the fly.
When I set up my first trip to Hong Kong, I had only a couple of meetings scheduled ahead of time and was getting worried. When I told my investor that, he said, "Just go. This is Asia—things will always come up last-minute, and you will be busy. If you don't get another three meetings while you're there, I'll reimburse all your costs."
He was right. I've found that people realize that you made the trip over and bend over backward as a result to find time to meet up. Even if they're busy, they'll graciously schedule a meeting at 7 a.m. or 7 p.m.—and these are senior-level people.
I've also found that if your contacts like what you're doing, they bring in the right associates immediately. More than once during an India trip, the person I'm meeting with has pulled out a phone, dialed a colleague, and said—with me sitting there—"Pavel is leaving tomorrow morning, so you have to meet him today." On my last trip, I left a day free after a conference at which I spoke because I knew people would want to meet the next day.
Growing up in Vancouver, I was taught to assume that North America is the global leader in women's opportunities. I believed this was true until I started doing business in Asia. I've mainly been active over the past year in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Malaysia, and the major business hubs in those areas do not represent the entire region. Still, the number of women in high-profile positions outpaces the gender diversity I've experienced in the West. A recent report by Credit Suisse Research backs up that impression, showing significantly higher percentages of women execs in many (if not all) senior roles:
And these aren't in companies that cater overwhelmingly to women consumers or work in industries stereotyped as "feminine," like fashion, beauty products, decor, and so on, but in banking, technology, and insurance. I've routinely seen women run meetings where 80% of attendees were men, and everyone was treated fairly. In my past year in Asia, this has been one of the most inspiring things I've seen.
For years I'd wondered what it would be like to launch and run an international business, and for the past 12 months, I've been doing it. It's pushed me and my growing company to new heights, and I'm excited to see what comes next.
Pavel Bains is the CEO of Bluzelle, which is accelerating financial inclusion through a suite of blockchain-based products that bring new customers to financial-services companies.
When an "emergency" hits over the weekend or after hours, it can be hard to know how to respond. Here's what to do.
You likely have a clear sense from the first few weeks at a new job what tasks and assignments are designated urgent. You know what's high priority and how deadlines are handled. Maybe you've got long-term projects that you and your manager discuss on a weekly basis.
You're a pro at managing your to-do list, and you know what you can leave for the next day, week, or quarter and what absolutely must be completed before you leave the office. You also know the email protocol: You don't need to check your inbox over the weekend. But you are required to respond to clients during non-business hours.
The only thing you're not sure about is what happens if there's a work emergency over the weekend.
Ah, the good ol' work emergency. What does that even mean? And what do you do about it if it happens outside of the stated office hours? Do you email a colleague? Your boss? CC someone in another department who you think can help or who should at least be in-the-know?
All of the above, of course, depends on the nature of the emergency and your particular workplace. Just as you know your to-do list back and front, you should also have a sense of what can wait until morning—or Monday—and what can't.
At a previous job, as much as I loathed waking up on Saturday morning and checking my work email, I knew there was no way around it. Our copyedit team worked until late on Friday nights, and I knew if there were any questions on any of my pieces, answering them first thing Saturday was a whole lot better than dealing with fires on Sunday. The expectation at that organization was that we were all on top of email, no matter the hour or day.
If it's not totally clear to you how your company expects issues to be resolved, use your best judgment—is it a matter that's stressing you out? Did you discover a glaring error on the report you sent to clients and would rectifying it before the weekend's over be in everyone's best interest?
A good rule of thumb is asking yourself the following:
Is there revenue at stake?
Does this make the company look bad externally?
Is this problem going to get worse the longer I wait?
If you answered yes to any of those, then reach out to your colleague or boss or whoever should be looped in.
For most of us, that's going to be email. (Unless you have strong reason to believe that your organization is made up of people who don't at least glance at their inbox again until Monday at 9 a.m.)
If it's a matter you're particularly concerned with, consider a subject line that includes the word "Timely," "Urgent," "Important," or "Please respond." If you're 100% positive that you need input or instructions from someone before you can proceed with troubleshooting, the latter is especially handy. It indicates to the receiver that it can't wait.
Email isn't the only way to go, though. Depending on your relationship with the parties you need to involve to handle the situation, you may choose texting or chatting on a group app.
Again, there's a lot to be said for knowing the medium your party prefers—and this is true whether you're in the office on a Tuesday morning or hanging out with the family on a Sunday afternoon.
If you're currently in the middle of an emergency and reading this like, "How the heck would I know that?"—resolve your problem first. Then find time over the next few days to ask your boss a few key questions:
How would you define an emergency?
How do you prefer I contact you?
Is there anyone else I should contact?
Knowing the answer to these questions helps you avoid the last-minute freak-out of "What do I do? Who do I call/email/text/chat?" and instead, get ahead of the game.
And yes, a lot of this is common sense, which, in a true work catastrophe, can be hard to dredge up. Hence, the importance of knowing the plan in advance and playing by the structure your team has set up. If you do that, it's unlikely you'll run into anything that leaves you flustered or freaking out.
A version of this article originally appeared on The Daily Muse. It is adapted and reprinted with permission.
Coach's executive creative director transformed the once moribund company into a modern brand that's about more than just leather goods.
Stuart Vevers, Coach's executive creative director, is an American pop culture aficionado. "I think the fact that I didn't grow up in the U.S. means that I romanticized America," says Vevers, who was born and raised in Yorkshire, England. "I learned about American style and culture through film so that those references have a Hollywood glow to them."
When he joined Coach in 2013, after two decades at European luxury houses like Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, he was excited about the sheer Americanness of the brand. He immediately noticed that Coach was born at the exact moment that the concept of "cool" was bubbling up in jazz culture. The first recorded use of the word "hipster," for instance, can be traced back to in 1941, the same year Coach was founded. "I'm interested in tracing Coach's timeline through these moments of counterculture, when American style was really being born and becoming influential," Vevers says.
Over the last three years, Vevers has transformed Coach's image by infusing everything he designs with Americana. Until Vevers arrived, Coach did not produce complete ready-to-wear collections or runway shows. But these days, Coach's New York Fashion Week presentations have become hotly anticipated events. Vevers creates elaborate, cinematic settings for the catwalk that tap into nostalgia for America's past.
A newly renovated Coach store in Milan.
Last month, his fall 2017 show was built around the concept of a prairie, complete with dry shrubs and the outline of a farmhouse, as models walked out in long, bohemian dresses covered in floral and gingham patterns. In previous shows, backdrops have included scrapyards, motels, and high school gyms. Beneath this scenery is always a darker undercurrent: Looks are peppered with biker jackets, hippie fringes, and faded rock band T-shirts. "I see the Coach girl and guy as an American dreamer," Vevers says. "They like subversive references, they're influenced by counterculture movements. It's about taking American style and making it their own, collecting pieces and mixing them in a fresh way that feels new and youthful. "
Through his creative leadership, Vevers has helped Coach evolve from a declining manufacturer of leather goods without a distinct identity or point of view into a rejuvenated fashion house that regularly receives top marks from editors at Vogue and The New York Times. His vision has been pivotal to helping turn Coach around not just visually, but also financially. He's been credited with helping to drive Coach sales back up after several years of downward spiraling.
In many ways, Coach is a great American success story. Lew Frankfort, who led the company in various capacities between 1979 and 2013, was responsible for transforming Coach from a niche leather goods maker into a household name and a publicly traded company. Under his leadership, Coach went from generating $6 million to $5 billion in sales. But all of this growth came at a cost.
To drive sales, Coach habitually slashed prices—and cut corners when it came to quality. The bags, emblazoned with enormous logos, became ubiquitous, distributed at retailers of all sizes. They were found at increasingly low-end stores, then at outlet malls and the discount bins at Macy's and T.J. Maxx, all of which eroded the brand's reputation.
Coach's board began to worry that the company was battling an identity crisis. The joke was that Coach purses were the bags of choice among tween girls because they were suddenly in their price range. Coach stopped showing up in boardrooms and started appearing on school busses packed with middle schoolers.
This was a far cry from several decades before, when Coach was known for its impeccable craftsmanship. Stephanie Sarka, who served in various leadership positions at Coach from 1990 to 1997, and now owns her own luxury handbag brand 1 Atelier, remembers that the company had all the hallmarks of a luxury brand. Products were constructed by expert artisans from the highest quality materials, such as English bridle and buckskin leathers. But as the brand became more popular and then a publicly traded company, the emphasis shifted to quantity over quality. Production was shipped off to China. "The shareholder pressures pushed the company to focus on sales," Sarka says. "But this had a negative impact on the quality of the products and tarnished Coach's brand."
To turn things around, the board brought on a new leadership team. Victor Luis was named Coach's CEO in January 2014, shortly after Vevers was hired, and together, they have been executing a strategy to help the company redefine itself as a luxury brand. On the business side, Luis revamped Coach stores, including launching plush flagship stores in New York, London, and Milan. Better materials, such as glove tanned leather, were reintroduced. Perhaps most dramatically, Luis pulled merchandise from 250 discount stores and no longer allows department stores to mark down products with abandon. This was a painful decision since it meant a short-term decline in sales. Indeed, comparable retail sales took a nosedive in 2014 and 2015, decreasing by 24% at the lowest point.
Coach has reintroduced higher quality materials, including glove tanned leather.
An important part of the turnaround strategy has been transforming Coach into a fashion house. And this is where Vevers comes in.
Karen Harvey, a well-known head hunter in the fashion industry, was tasked with finding the right creative to lead Coach through this transition. Harvey believed that the company needed much more than just a new look. "Coach was known first and foremost for creating leather goods," Harvey says. "But the brand didn't have a point of view. It wasn't connected to a broader lifestyle."
Harvey believed that Vevers could solve this problem. He began his career at top European brands, including Bottega Veneta, Givanchy, and Louis Vuitton, where he worked alongside Marc Jacobs. Later, he served as the creative director at Mulberry and Loewe, breathing new life into both. Harvey believed that Vevers had the potential to upend Coach and lead it into the future. "He understood the brand's heritage but could also see its future," Harvey says.
When Vevers accepted the job at Coach, he understood that he would be shepherding the company through the next stage of its evolution, which was a weighty responsibility. "We were bold in creating Coach's new image," Vevers says. "I think the feeling was that we really needed to be. This was a time to make change. We had to transform, we had to try something new."
The bold approach seems to be bearing fruit. Last year, sales were up by 7%, resulting in a 14% increase in gross profits.
For Vevers, the process of creating a fashion brand was anchored in creating two seasonal collections. In the past, Coach had occasionally made products besides bags and wallets, such as shoes and jackets. But it hadn't created a full line of head-to-toe ready-to-wear pieces that could be presented on the runway. These looks, Vevers says, were an important way to define and express Coach's take on the world. "The runway show is a place to tell stories," he says. "It becomes this amazing laboratory of ideas. I've never found anything else that can create those moment of magic."
The process of preparing for this semi-annual presentation is just as important as the show itself, Vevers says. It forces Coach's design team to get to the heart of what the brand stands for, over and over, which keeps the brand fresh and focused. "It's an intense moment of research and reflection," Vevers says. "It's a pure moment of creativity, where you really push yourself as far as you can. This generates a lot of ideas that you can work towards in the future."
Coach has been working to offer customers a more luxurious in-store experience.
But Vevers also acknowledges that part of his role as executive creative director is to run with his instincts to set the tone for the brand. When he joined the company, he tried to understand as much as possible about the legacy and what the customer was looking for, but he was also willing to ignore all of that when necessary. "I wanted to embrace the heritage, but I also felt it was important to trust my instincts of how Coach could be relevant today," he says. "In many ways, my work is about intuition and a certain conviction that's hard to quantify."
Vevers' very first collection for Coach, fall 2014, was presented to top editors and key retailers over five days of intimate shows in New York. The pieces were takes on classic American garments, like denim jackets and duffle coats, with more somber touches, such as a sweater that referenced The Shining. He received rave reviews.
Since then, Vevers has used the collections to tell a story about America's youth and moments of anti-conformism throughout the country's history. One season featured motorcycle boots that called to mind a biker gang crossing the country. Another incorporated psychedelic prints that wouldn't have been out of place on Haight-Ashbury. Sometimes references from different eras are mixed together, resulting in an overall feeling of subversiveness rather than capturing a specific moment in history.
Given that Coach is traded publicly, Vevers doesn't have completely free rein. He says that he's regularly in conversation with Luis. But part of what has helped Coach achieve lift-off again has been the executive board's willingness to take a leap of faith with Vevers' ideas. "Of course we talk through ideas," Vevers say. "We do some things, we don't do others. But my vision was supported from the word 'go,' and I think that's had a huge impact."
An example of this is Rexy. Rexy began as a little T-rex charm that appeared on a bag in the fall 2015 collection. But Vevers and his design team were so taken by Rexy they decided to turn her into a recurring image in future collections. She's now Coach's mascot, even though a dinosaur has no good reason to be the mascot of a heritage American brand. In the Spring 2017 collection, Rexy even appeared in the Coach logo, replacing the horses in the carriage. In the New York store on Fifth Avenue, there's an enormous 12-foot sculpture of Rexy made entirely of Coach bags, conceived by the artist Billie Achilleos.
"Rexy is playful and is something of a surprise from a luxury house," says Vevers. "Choosing her as a mascot was instinctive and just made me smile."
A 15-foot tall sculpture of Rexy, Coach's new mascot at Coach House, Fifth Avenue, New York.
But for all his good instincts, Vevers has also been clear-eyed about playing into Coach's strengths. For instance, the brand would never achieve the status of Louis Vuitton and Hermès. Rather than aspiring to be like these European companies, Vevers believes Coach's position as an affordable luxury—sold at price points that a much larger swath of the population can afford—is a good thing. "I felt that it was very important that inclusivity was not just about price," Vevers says. "It's about an attitude, a point of view that makes Coach different."
Vevers and Selena Gomez
Vevers has also embraced the fact that, not too long ago, young people made up the majority of Coach's customer base. Now runway shows are populated by fresh-faced models, including Emma Roberts and Zoe Kravitz. Coach has also picked celebrity spokespeople who appeal to younger women. In 2015, 17-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz was the face of the spring collection, and last year, Selena Gomez was chosen to represent the brand. "I think fashion has always been strongly influenced by the next generation," Vevers says. "Fashion is about the future. It's always looking forward."
Vevers is confident that celebrating the qualities woven into Coach's identity is the only way to go. "Coach has little to do with status and wealth," Vevers says. "It's more to do with shared tastes and inspirations. It's about taking the best of what I think Coach stands for and the reason that people love it, but then challenging, pushing the boundaries and doing new things."
Goldman Sachs, Digit, and others are changing the way we spend, save, and invest.
In the past year, the financial technology sector has seen a wave of innovations. Microfinance startups are finding their place inside of automated savings programs, social money sharing, and app-based investing, while legacy financial institutions are testing their own limits, putting payments inside of jewelry, appliances, and other unlikely places. Below are the top 10 organizations that are breaking with traditional notions about what it means to bank.
Click on a company to learn more about why it made the list.
The company thinks a big hurdle to the growth of high-end VR is price. And Rift-capable PCs are getting cheaper too.
Get ready for high-quality virtual reality to get a lot less expensive.
The consumer VR industry is currently in a bit of a chicken-and-egg loop, with most hardware makers seeing modest sales, in part because there's not enough great VR content available—which of course is due to the fact that many developers are wary of building content for platforms that aren't yet fully mainstream. Still, the market for VR hardware is expected to hit $3.6 billion this year, and $37.7 billion for hardware and software by 2020.
One stumbling block for wider adoption is the price of hardware. In an interview Monday in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference, Oculus vice president of content Jason Rubin told Fast Company that most people who have gone through demos of the Oculus Rift report they would buy one of the high-end VR systems, and then didn't—largely because of its $599 base price, not to mention the additional $199 cost of the essential Rift Touch controllers.
HTC, maker of the $799 Vive, the Rift's closest competitor, clearly senses that price is an issue. Just this week, the company introduced a new financing program that allows would-be buyers to get a Vive now and pay it off over six, 12, or 24 months.
Oculus, owned by Facebook, is going another direction. Today, the company is announcing that it is lowering the price of a Rift bundle—including a set of Touch controllers—to $598, fully 25% less than the base Vive, or 33% less than a Vive with that system's new $99 integrated headphones.
Oculus Rift
Of course, although a Rift with Touch controllers features positional tracking, it is not as substantial as the Vive's room-scale tracking. To get that on the Rift requires an additional sensor, which costs $99 more.
Still, Oculus is surely right in saying that a Rift bundle for $598—just $100 more than the $499 it costs for a fully-featured Sony PlayStation VR—is a very big deal, one that is likely to result in many more people buying the system, especially as the number of different titles for Rift increases. There are now more than 100 titles optimized for the Touch, and hundreds more for the base Rift system, Rubin said.
Oculus is also lowering the price of the Touch controllers themselves from $199 a pair to $99, making that accessory much more attractive to Rift users who hadn't upgraded. "We think that will drive Touch to every Rift user's house," he said. "They can't say no" to that price.
Oculus Touch
There's another element holding up the adoption of high-end VR: the requirement that systems like the Rift and Vive be tethered to a gaming-quality PC. Rubin said that prices are falling there too, making it even more likely the number of people who buy Rifts (and, by extension, Vives) will rise quickly.
A year ago, he said, Oculus pegged the cheapest PC capable of running the company's recommended specs for Rift at $999. By last fall, that number had dropped to $799. Now, Rubin said, thanks to software improvements that eliminate some of the hardware heavy-lifting required by the Rift, it's possible to buy a PC capable of powering the Rift for $499. All told that means that in less than a year, the cost of an all-in Rift setup has fallen from $1900 to $1100. And it's only likely to drop more over time.
Rubin noted that Oculus had been able to lower the price of the Rift so substantially because "the price of hardware comes down over time" naturally, and because Oculus now has a stronger team working on hardware development.
"We're comfortable with the price," Rubin said when asked about the $200 less Oculus will get per unit, "and it's sustainable. And, it's required for people to get PC VR to take off."
In the meantime, it's clear that although everyone in the VR industry would like it to grow quickly, there are those who caution patience. Among them is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently asked investors to treat VR hardware's growth much like that of smartphones, which took ten years to hit a billion units sold.
Asked if he thought Zuckerberg might be too conservative in that assessment, Rubin said "I'm not about to second-guess Mark."
Foursquare's new Pilgrim SDK opens up the company's geolocation data platform, allowing other apps to use your location in more useful ways.
For such a well-informed companion, your smartphone is remarkably good at playing dumb. Sure, it can quickly clue you in on world events with anxiety-inducing headlines and notify you of new social media followers, but these types of insights don't even begin to tap into your phone's extensive knowledge. What if, for instance, it could offer you a coupon for a free slice of pizza before you even noticed the new pizzeria up ahead? Or what if mobile games could adapt to your surroundings in a personalized way?
This is the sort of thing that Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley has daydreamed about for years. Today, the company is unveiling its Pilgrim SDK, a new way to let developers supercharge their apps with contextual, location-based awareness that can unlock all sorts of new functionality and make your phone feel more like a old friend who just got a new job as a chatty tour guide.
"The crown jewel of our technology at Foursquare is this thing called Pilgrim," says Crowley, who stepped aside as Foursquare's CEO last year, but stayed on as executive chairman. "It's our ability to understand when people are walking in and out of a place and whether that place is new or familiar to them."
Pilgrim's functionality will feel familiar to people who use Foursquare's city guide app and its Swarm social location check-in app. Both apps use the technology to keep track of users' locations in the background and send them relevant, timely messages. Swarm might remind you to check in to the dive bar you're sitting in, while Foursquare may tip you off to a hot new restaurant across the street that serves your favorite type of food—or even recommend a specific dish based on your tastes.
The Pilgrim technology is built on Foursquare's own proprietary blend of user location check-ins (11 billion to date), machine learning algorithms, and a unique, geospatial map comprised of "place shapes"—which is a spatial approximation of businesses, public spaces, and other venues that is drawn based on clues like nearby Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth signals. Pilgrim essentially lets Foursquare and its partners understand where people go in the real world and how the map looks in the eyes of the sensor-laden computers sitting in all of our pockets.
"It's really hard for developers to do this kind of stuff, because the tools don't exist," says Crowley. "No one has built this engine that runs in the background that can tell the app to wake up and do something when the person walks into a bakery or the person walks into the gym. That has been missing from the whole mobile development landscape."
In essence, Pilgrim aims to be the next generation of GPS for mobile development. Whereas GPS knows your general location, Pilgrim is able to pinpoint your whereabouts more specifically, thanks to Foursquare's custom map of the world, built in part with some unique technical wizardry, like tying specific locations to nearby Wi-Fi networks. Pilgrim also taps into real-world foot traffic patterns and understands your own history (assuming you've opted in via Foursquare, Swarm, or another Pilgrim-enabled map), so it can tie locations to human behavior and preferences.
"The Pilgrim SDK is something that can run in the background. So a developer can say: I want my app to do something interesting whenever you're walking through a supermarket. I want my app to behave differently if the user was in a gym yesterday or if they were in a bar."
At launch, Foursquare is only partnering with a select few developers (as opposed to opening the SDK up to everyone). One of its launch partners is a mobile coupon app called SnipSnap. The app lets users save coupons they see in print or discover new ones added by other users. It's a useful service, but one that depends on people to remember to use it—that is, by redeeming a coupon—when they're in exactly the right location. Pilgrim makes that much easier.
"The Pilgrim SDK solved a five-year-old problem we had at SnipSnap," says SnipSnap founder and Slyce CEO Ted Mann. "While we had built one of the most popular mobile coupon apps with six million users, we struggled to be able to deliver timely and accurate push-notification reminders when folks arrived in store."
Similar functionality has been possible using things like beacons and geofencing but, as Mann points out, these solutions present technical headaches of their own.
"Location targeting and location-based reminders were really tough to execute, and we were constantly trying to balance accuracy with battery drain," says Mann. "The best we were able to execute was geo-fenced mall notifications, but even those weren't as useful as store-specific reminders."
The launch of Pilgrim is part of Foursquare's broader effort to become a company that specializes in geolocation services, rather than strictly the mobile social network it launched as in 2009. The growth of Foursquare's consumer-facing mobile apps dropped off after a controversial move in 2014 that split Foursquare's popular location check-in functionality into a new app called Swarm. Since then, Foursquare has been slowly luring back app users, while leveraging its massive location data set in increasingly new—and, it hopes, lucrative—ways. In addition to licensing its location data, Foursquare now offers B2B location intelligence products to marketers and brands.
For eight years, Foursquare has licensed its location data to third parties in the form of an API that gives developers access to its massive database of places, as well as tapping into information about global check-ins and other aggregated user behavior. Foursquare's geolocation data has been an increasingly vital part of the company's business, offering a robust, freshly updated list of places to partners like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Pinterest and around 100,000 other developers. But by opening up Pilgrim in the form of a software development kit, Foursquare takes its role as a geolocation platform to a new level. But as Crowley sees it, the move is just the beginning of a new phase for Foursquare's platform.
"I think a lot of interesting things will emerge when developers have greater access to this type of data," Crowley says. Just as with the Foursquare API before it, the Pilgrim SDK will be used by developers in a variety of new ways beyond the use cases for which it was originally intended. One area he hopes to see Foursquare's data employed is in the much-hyped field of artificially intelligent personal assistants.
"Everyone is talking about personal assistants," Crowley says. "All of these things have a need to be aware of the types of places that you go and something is going to have to power that."
But first things first. Right now, the Pilgrim SDK is only open to a small group of partners. In the months ahead, Foursquare will be focused on carefully scaling it out to more developers.
It was bound to happen: There's that one person at work who, for whatever reason, you just cannot stand. If they're on another team or are one of your counterparts, it's workable, but what if you actually have to manage that person? If you happen to have a direct report that you're not particularly fond of, you're not the first manager to be in this situation. In fact, it's actually pretty common, given company restructuring at many organizations. For those who are struggling with this sensitive situation, we've laid out four steps to making the most of being stuck with a team member who just rubs you the wrong way.
If you really don't like someone who you're responsible for managing, it's important to know your reasons before you do anything about it. "Hopefully it's because of something work-related, but in some instances, maybe there is just something about a person that for whatever reason grates your nerves," says Keri Higgins-Bigelow, CEO and president of LivingHR. "Maybe they always bust into your office and chat for too long, they are loud when they are on the phone, they only talk about themselves, or they overshare about their political beliefs."
Higgins-Bigelow says that when she's coaching managers in these types of situations, it's typically uncovered that the dislike is more about the individual's attitude towards work than a genuine personality conflict. Maybe they don't take an active part in their team, aren't improving performance, or just have a blatant lack of interest.
On the other hand, sometimes the bad vibes are personal. "Many workplace conflicts are due to a difference in personality style," says Katy Caselli, organizational psychologist and author of Building Giants: A Proven System to Transform Your Workplace Through Effective Training. "Knowing yourself and explaining your style to others can help soothe growing conflicts," she notes, but sometimes further escalation is required.
Before you get to that point, though, Higgins-Bigelow suggests flipping around your thinking in order to examine the situation: "There are people we love dearly (or like a lot personally) in our lives that we would never want to work with. Who we work with and who we like personally are not likely one in the same." If the rift isn't super serious, sometimes reframing your thoughts like this can have a majorly helpful effect.
So now that you know exactly why you don't like this person, it's crucial to figure out how you can still do your job in spite of any feelings you have about them. After all, your job is still to be their boss. "Remind yourself that it is not all about you," suggests Higgins-Bigelow. "Managing and leading a team is not really about what you like and don't like. It is about how you can grow yourself and your team to be better," she adds.
The best thing you can do is act like a leader, according to Higgins-Bigelow. "We spend a lot of time coaching newly promoted managers on how to create a better experience at work for the people that work for them. Your role as their boss is to help them be successful in their role. You don't need to like them to give them feedback, make sure they know your expectations, and be there to help them develop and perform."
There are also very constructive ways to deal with your negative feelings toward someone. In fact, you might even be able to turn them into an asset as a leader. "The trick is to study the interactions and decide what behaviors are due to their personality style and what behaviors are simply poor interpersonal skills or poor conduct," says Caselli.
"Personality differences should be appreciated, as diverse ways of thinking end up creating better long-term solutions for the organization." Poor conduct, on the other hand, should be addressed through effective feedback. When you think about it that way, it's actually pretty simple.
If things are feeling tense even after you've refocused on doing your job as a leader, it might be a good idea to go ahead and bring up the situation with your direct report—because chances are they won't feel comfortable stepping outside their job role to confront you about it. "It is up to the manager to start a conversation to improve the situation," explains Caselli.
"For example, one of the best remedies is for the boss to sit down in private and start a conversation about the traits in the team member that are most valuable and appreciated. Finish the conversation with a discussion of what they would like out of the working relationship, such as further training or opportunities to try new tasks." The one thing you shouldn't do during this meeting? Do not get into a discussion of their negative characteristics.
Instead, give feedback about troublesome behavior in the moment as it happens. This strategy allows you to "take opportunities to deepen trust by listening carefully, asking for their opinion, and getting feedback," says Caselli.
If this tactic doesn't work and it's clear that the dislike is mutual, Higgins-Bigelow recommends you bite the bullet. As the manager, you need to swallow your pride and ask them first if there is something you could do differently to improve your working relationship. "Then, you listen before sharing your perspective," she says. It's always possible that there's more to the story than you know. "Seek to understand and resolve, not judge and be right," she adds.
If you're not able to work things out, there is still one thing you can use to optimize outcomes: Over-communicate your expectations. Even if you don't necessarily like each other, you can still set your team up for success, says Higgins-Bigelow. "Share up front what you expect in terms of cultural norms, behavior, and performance. It is amazing what people will do not to disappoint."
This article originally appeared on Glassdoor and is reprinted with permission.
Conventional wisdom may be to present your best self at work, but bringing your true self can have some unexpected career benefits.
Interviewing is stressful: Aside from the pressure to sound as informed as possible, you might feel like you have to present the most perfect (and not always real) version of yourself.
When Susan Lee, VP of people at Warby Parker and former HR professional at Spotify, first interviewed at Warby Parker, she definitely felt the tug to be someone else. It was the most simple of questions that caused her to consider lying during her interview: "What are you reading right now?"
"I thought, Oh jeez, okay," she told an audience at a New York event last week. "In my head I'm like, 'Think of something good! What's a really important book in HR or leadership?' And then I thought, 'I don't read those things!'"
Lee reads romance novels in her spare time. So she took a deep breath and talked about her romance novel. "I went into the whole story," she says. Lee says that Neil Blumenthal, Warby's CEO, was a bit confused and startled by her answer, but she was glad she was honest.
Susan Lee VP, Head of People at Warby Parker[Photo: via LinkedIn]
She said she realized that pretending to be someone else would backfire in the end. If she had to hide her personality in order to fit in at Warby, then she wouldn't thrive there. Just because she didn't read industry books in her spare time didn't mean that she wasn't serious about the position. She demonstrated knowledge and commitment in other parts of the hiring process.
"If you are hiding, then you're always afraid you're going to be found out," she says. That means having no shame about your personality quirks, and being up-front about things like family commitments. Lee believes this sort of attitude toward work can help you not only to be more comfortable at work, but also to express the things you are most passionate about.
That's exactly what happened with one of Lee's employees, Jen Zeckendorf. She noticed that Zeckendorf had an amazing capacity for empathy, and so she moved her from hiring talent for stores to handling employee engagement and relations. It wasn't long after Zeckendorf took on her new role that some of her coworkers started to tell her that their gender was being mislabeled in the administrative system, or they weren't being addressed by their proper pronoun. Lee recalls that there were about 10 people, or nearly 1% of the company at the time, that came out as transgender.
Warby had no diversity or inclusion program at the time, and the revelation that a number of employees were transgender raised a lot of questions about how the company could be more inclusive. "A lot of these questions were coming up, and Jen was naturally very passionate about this," says Lee. That passion became the starting point for Warby Parker's diversity and inclusion program. It's also worth noting that Warby Parker does now support gender reassignment surgery and other transgender services through its medical benefits package.
Being open about who you are and what you care about can even launch your career, Lee says. "Let it be known what you're passionate about. That trickles over to the work you do today, but it can also trickle over to the opportunities for tomorrow, and that may not even look like what you're doing today."
