When a hard-nosed venture capital firm like Andreessen Horowitz puts money into your startup, you know you have money-making potential. Brooklyn fintech startup Propel has long had users for its app aimed at food stamp recipients. But, after its latest $4 million funding round, it’s sure the product is a bona fide commercial proposition as well as one helpful for low-income Americans.

“It’s a strong piece of commercial validation for a company like ours that operates in a somewhat non-traditional space,” says CEO Jimmy Chen in an interview. “If you talk to Andreessen Horowitz, they would tell you they don’t see this as a . . . special case deal. We see a real business opportunity in serving low-income Americans at scale.”

More than 250,000 people a week use the app, which was launched in early 2016. And Chen says there’s a good opportunity to reach more of the 45 million monthly recipients and their annual $70 billion grocery budget. Propel plans to offer an advertising platform for grocery chains and food companies and to expand its user-base by offering more grocery discounts.

Andreessen Horowitz is joined in the funding round by the Omidyar Network, a financial inclusion specialist fund, and the Durant Company, Kevin Durant’s investment vehicle. Propel already works with the AARP, and Foodtown, a Northeast grocery chain, both of which offer discount offers through Fresh EBT. The hope is to save users money as well as help them manage it, Chen says.

Chen’s family emigrated to the U.S. from China when he was small. Though they didn’t live on food stamps, Chen says his family was hardly wealthy. Another member of the Propel’s five-member team, lead designer Kaela Gallo, did live on food stamps for a time, giving Propel personal insight into its target market, he says.

Chen argues there’s often a lack of trust among low-income users towards financial services because their experiences have been “fairly negative, around fees and and predatory services.” “There’s been a level of trust missing among our users when it comes to the financial services industry and we’re trying to overcome that,” he says.

Propel was part of the 2015 cohort at the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), which is also an investor. (We previously wrote about Propel when its proposition was enrolling people to food stamp services).“At the end of the day, EBT dollars are going into the grocery industry and they are hoping to attract EBT dollars,” Chen says. “By helping consumers save money, grocers can compete for those dollars and we can offer a win-win experience for our users and the retailers.”

While feedback is intended to improve your performance, that doesn’t mean you’ll always agree with or even understand it. The greatest of managers are still occasionally going to tear apart a project you were proud of, make you change something you thought was perfect as is, or issue instructions you think are a fundamentally bad idea.

In situations like these, you can voice your disagreement, but when you reach the impasse of “I’m the boss and you’re not,” then you’ve just got to inwardly sigh and let them win. Here’s what it takes to avoid getting to that point in the first place, and what to do once you have.

You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Cranky

Again—you inwardly sigh. You do not outwardly sigh, nor do you roll your eyes, say something snotty, or complain to a coworker (except with extreme caution).

You don’t have to like your manager—technically, you don’t even have to respect them. What you need to respect is your manager’s pivotal role in your continued employment. Conveying any kind of distaste toward your boss will only work against you. They may be stoic enough not to care about it personally, but they absolutely will care that you’re disrespecting their authority, making the office less pleasant, and making their job more difficult. It’s a surefire way to end up on your manager’s shit list and ensure you’re last in line for promotions, raises, or any other potential perks.

Related:The 5 Best Times And Ways To Ask For Feedback 

And that’s the best-case scenario—if you’re being egregiously insubordinate, you could also just get straight-up fired for it. There’s a reason why “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” is drilled into us since childhood. It’s not fun to be around someone who’s an endless fountain of negativity. And anyone with the power to distance themselves from such a person—i.e., a manager—is going to exercise it. Even if they’re not consciously trying to retaliate, you’ll become the natural choice if they need to shunt someone off into an isolated department or eliminate a position. What’s more, they’re certainly not going to bother mentoring and nurturing someone who radiates hostility.

Some people aren’t destined to get along with each other, and that’s fine. If your boss irritates you to the point that you’re quivering with rage every time you interact, then it’s probably wise to start looking around for a new job that’s a better fit. In the meantime, clench your teeth and keep it cordial.

Reinventing Venting

There are benefits to having work friends—they can improve your morale immeasurably whenever you need a sympathetic ear. But you need to be judicious about confiding in them whenever you’re exasperated with management.

Now, look: I’m not an unreasonable person. I know that “complaining about your boss” is often the way office friendships get formed, and I’m not going to take that off the table as a bonding activity. It just can’t be the only thing you talk about, or it will quickly get toxic. Save it for the major issues.

Fixating on your manager’s annoying habits and questionable decisions will soon cloud your judgment to the point that their every action seems worthy of mockery. And you won’t be the only one infected by this negativity—your whole circle of snark will start feeling the same way. It may be fun in the moment to issue an epic takedown of your boss’s latest weird behavior, but in the big picture it helps create a sense that you work in a crappy place run by crappy people. Even if that is in fact the case, there’s no benefit to lingering on your job’s worst aspects.

Related:How To Handle The Four Most Common Types Of Bad Bosses 

Vent your frustrations to your coworkers only when you really need to: when you’re truly curious about their take on a situation, when you’re so pissed off that you desperately need an outlet, or when something’s so absurd that you know they’ll find it hilarious (see, I’m not a monster). But cut yourself off from going down a rabbit hole of “every little thing the boss does is bullshit” and try to encourage your friends to do the same. Giving in to that perspective will only make it harder for you to maintain a civil attitude—and if your coworkers can’t be trusted to keep your less-than-politic observations to themselves, the consequences could be even more dire.

An Arsenal Of Appropriateness

So how do you keep your cool when you desperately want to throw a stapler at your boss’s face? The specific contours of your polite-ified interactions will be determined by your broader personality, but here are some ideas to help you get started.

If you feel an eye roll or scowl coming on, try to raise your eyebrows and pull the corners of your mouth up into something resembling a smile. It might feel fake—it might even look fake—but that’s still an improvement on an active glower. (Note that this isn’t about counteracting “resting bitch face” or adhering to some icky standard of constant, mandatory smiling—it’s about preventing your specific face from telegraphing negative emotions against your will.)

Avoid monosyllabic responses like “sure” or “fine”—it’s too easy for irritation to attach itself to those without you even hearing it. More enthusiastic replies like “absolutely,” “right away,” and “of course”—delivered in the most pleasant tone you can muster— will help obscure whatever derisive commentary is running through your head. Mentally append an exclamation point to things. Anyone with a background in retail or waiting tables should be adept at this flavor of forced cheeriness, and there’s no reason those same skills can’t be transferred to an office context.

It might also be useful to consider that your boss may be dealing with their own stresses—including unreasonable demands from a workplace overlord who outranks them. Even if that’s not actually true, remembering that they’re probably not being obnoxious on purpose could defuse some of your frustration.

Finally, be kind to yourself and prepare accordingly when you know you’re about to endure a taxing situation. Before meeting with a manager you loathe, make sure you’re well fed, sufficiently caffeinated, and as relaxed as you can possibly be. It’s a lot harder to avoid seeming annoyed when you walk in with a metaphorical rain cloud over your head.

This article is adapted from Is This Working?: The Businesslady’s Guide to Getting What You Want from Your Career by Courtney C.W. Guerra (“The Businesslady“) and reprinted with permission from Adams Media, a division of Simon & Schuster.

It’s nice to be needed. Like a lot of people, I take great pride in knowing that I’m an integral part of a team, and I’ve worked hard to establish myself as a crucial asset to my employers—past and present. I have a feeling a lot of you approach your careers this way, too.

The only problem with this is, when it comes time to leave your job— whether it’s to pursue a new opportunity, to raise a family, or just to take a break —you end up feeling incredibly guilty. What will your company do without you?

I really loved my first full-time job. The work was interesting, I felt challenged, and my coworkers were great. I was a pretty strong performer, too. My sales numbers were good, I was (almost) always happy to work late, and I was even trusted to manage my boss’s accounts during her maternity leave. That was a huge deal to my 22-year-old self. They needed me!

Knowing that I had become an essential member of the team felt great; all my hard work had paid off. But, as time went on, I started thinking about my next move. Of course, guilt quickly crept in. Each step of my job search felt like I was secretly betraying my employer—I felt awful. When I finally received an offer for a job I was really excited about, I found myself seriously debating whether or not I could actually accept. I genuinely believed things would completely fall apart if I left.

I didn’t know what to do. So, I turned to a trusted and seasoned source for advice: my dad. With over 30 years of corporate experience under his belt, I knew he would understand my conundrum. But when I shared the details of my situation with him, he just shrugged and said, “You can leave. They’ll be fine without you.”

I think my jaw hit the floor.

Then he shared this analogy with me:

Imagine that your hand is in a bucket full of water. The water represents your company, and your hand represents you.

Now pull your hand out.

That’s how big the hole you leave behind will be.

In other words, my resignation would cause a temporary ripple (and maybe a few small waves) and then things would settle down and go back to normal. My boss, my coworkers, and my company would all be just fine without me.

This is not to say that my contributions weren’t important, or that my coworkers wouldn’t miss me. Of course they were, and of course they would. But, they didn’t absolutely need me to survive. They’d figure it out.

My dad went on to say that he’d never seen an employer decide not to lay someone off because that person needed the job. And to this day, I haven’t either (and I work in HR). Businesses just don’t really work that way—so why should you?

I ended up giving my two weeks’ notice the very next day—and guess what? My boss was totally supportive. So was everyone on my team. I’d spent hours on end stressing about giving notice for nothing. Aside from the minor (and probably necessary!) blow to my ego, I was completely relieved.

Since then, I’ve quit my fair share of jobs and seen tons of my friends and coworkers quit theirs, too. While some resignations go more smoothly than others, one thing remains the same: The companies never fall apart.

I’m certainly not saying that the decision to leave a job is one that should be taken lightly—quitting is a big deal. And yes, I realize that some departures create larger ripple effects than others. But ultimately, you need to make decisions based on your wants and needs first and foremost. In other words, put yourself first. That said, I always recommend doing your best to exit gracefully. Be sure to give plenty of notice and do what you can to make the transition as smooth as possible. You’ll then be able to move on to whatever comes next feeling excited and guilt-free.

It really does feel good to be needed—but don’t let that get in the way of putting your needs first. The next time you’re struggling with whether or not to pursue a new and exciting opportunity, think of that bucket full of water. Instead of worrying about the negative (and temporary) effect your departure might have, focus on what’s best for you.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my first employer—and every other employer I’ve left since then—are all just fine without me.

Jaclyn Westlake is a career advice columnist, creator of the Job Hopper’s Job Search Strategy Guide, and founder of The Job Hop. 

This article originally appeared on Fairygodboss and is reprinted with permission.

Films adapted to Broadway and vice-versa is by no means an even exchange. Both share the common creative challenge of avoiding a straight regurgitation of an existing work. However, filmmakers have a far more varied collection of storytelling tools at their disposal. It’s easy to take for granted techniques like close-ups and scene editing, but for Broadway directors and stage designers, they become paramount issues to solve.

Directors Matthew Warchus and Diane Paulus have had to contend with all of the above and beyond in their Broadway musical adaptations of Groundhog Day and Waitress, respectively.

Answering The Most Important Question Of All: Why Should This Be Made?

Warchus: [Groundhog Day is] kind of a popcorn film, romantic comedy, and yet it’s quite a long way from being middle-of-the-road storytelling. It’s got a depth and a dimension to its ideas that I think are unusual. So the fact that it’s a story that’s told mainly through comedy but it’s got enormous dimensions means that is a good candidate to adapt into a musical, because when you’re thinking about turning any story into a musical, you’ve got to think are the ideas in it big enough to sing about?

Paulus: Any time a movie is up for adaptation to a musical you really have to look at the film and decide does it deserve another life? There are certain films that have achieved ultimate realization as a film and for those, I think leave them alone. I’m hoping there will never be Godfather: The Musical. That’s not to say that a film like Waitress wasn’t a perfect gem as a film but when I looked at it, I thought there is a heartbeat inside that could give it a separate life as a musical. So that’s the first test for me: Is there something in the original DNA that merits another form?

Translating Car Chases, Close-Ups and Pie Fantasies To The Stage

Warchus: Film is a much more literal medium and theater is more poetic–the audience’s imagination is used to complete the pictures all the time. And so your tone and styles onstage are likely to be more abstract more playful, more imaginative. A good example in this particular case is we have a car chase in the stage version of Groundhog Day. A car chase in a movie is a genre cliche and but on stage, it’s very rare. But the ways we do it, the use of puppetry and blacklight techniques, are quite old-fashioned. With theater, you’ve got thousands of years of history to draw on, stylistically–you can be very inconsistent. And songs are rather like closeups but even more so. [When] you have a character in a film and you want access to their thoughts, and what’s happening inside their inner life, you use close up. And of course in theater we have no close-ups at all. Everybody is in a wide shot the whole time, but songs allow you to do close-ups, and suddenly you can feel much more than in a movie.

Paulus: In the film were these pie fantasies which were so cinematic. All of a sudden you had aerial shots of all the ingredients going in the bowl and sped up in time. I remember one of the early conversations I had with Barry Weissler who’s our producer on Broadway–he said we could have these videos of her pie projected. I said to Barry that is exactly how we’re not going to do it because that’s the cinema’s answer to those pie fantasies. Our choreographer for Broadway Lorin Latarro said this is a story about a woman who is stuck in an unhealthy marriage but she actually has an extraordinary fantasy life, and [it’s] expressed through pies. So she said we should physicalize all these pies. For instance, in the show Jenna has a pie ‘My Husband Is A Jerk Chicken Pot Pie,’ and rather than just see ingredients go into a bowl, you actually see Jenna get thrown a suitcase. She’s talking about stuffing ingredients in the pie, she’s grabbing clothes, she’s shoving it in her suitcase. That was a defining choreographic idea.

What Theater Can Do That Movies Can’t

Warchus: When you talk about theater, there’s jeopardy the whole time: Can they all run live in one single take without something going wrong? And we have to do that not just once–we have to do it over and over again. And we’ve experienced quite a bit of jeopardy on Groundhog Day–the lead actor had an injury during one performance which was an extraordinary thing to deal with. Things like that make you long to be working on film. But the live [theater] is an exciting thing. It’s all about giving the audience a collector’s item of some kind, an experience they’re not going to ever forget. I happen to be completely in love with theater, and I want to try to communicate that love to the audience so that they come out and think, ‘Wow I had no idea that two hours in a room with a group of people watching a group of people do this stuff could make me feel all of these different things.’ People remember that [for] the rest of their life if you get it right.

Paulus: What’s different about the theater is that you’re experiencing something in real-time together as an audience. In the film world, it’s a voyeur relationship. In the theater, you’re present as an audience. And in musicals, you’re really present because you’re interrupting the show and clapping at the end of a song–you’re screaming for the character. I’m addicted to the musical theater because it allows space for that audience to hoot and holler. I love that aspect of the audience coming to the theater and being another player in the event and being in relationship to what’s going on stage–to me that’s why we’re in a live art form.

If you’ve ever been a parent of young children or spent any amount of time at all around the wee ones, chances are you’ve asked yourself the question, “what are they thinking?” While Brawny’s new Mother’s Day ad doesn’t provide an answer, it does give us a toddler-eye view of all the little things moms do, using Snapchat Spectacles.

Created with agency Cutwater, the brand recruited four real mothers and their children from over 40 applicants. Director and producer Karen X shot the spot over two days in the actual homes of the families, with a goal to find as many natural moments as possible around the kids’ naps, feeding, and playtime–all with the social video glasses strapped to their tiny noggins.

Using Spectacles to shoot the ad is a cute gimmick and one that comes at an interesting time for Snap Inc. Some recent patent filings point towards the potential for AR; there’s a big push in acquisitions of Kickstarter projects, emerging apps, and struggling start-ups; and much talk around if the now-public company can keep pace with the hype.

The dot-com suffix at the end of URLs was originally intended to represent companies, just as dot orgs were meant for nonprofit organizations. As the idea of the web has expanded, the list of suffixes, maintained by the nonprofit Internet Corporation of Names and Numbers, which auctions the rights to control each top level domain, now includes a long list, including “web,” “shop,” “app,” “music,” and even “horse.”

Anyone can register for, say, a .horse domain name, even if your site isn’t remotely equine in nature. But communities that believe there’s a specific series of letters that should be set aside just for their web presences can propose exceptions in the name of public interest. Hence the more structured world of .edu (for accredited academic institutions only), .gov (for sanctioned governments) and .ca (for those in Canada). Now there’s one for environmental issues: .eco.

Big Room, a Vancouver-based consultancy, and B-corp has created a pathway for the environmental and sustainability-minded: It’s called the Dot Eco Registry. “What we did was a little bit weird,” says Trevor Bowden, the cofounder of Big Room and the new registration service. “There are lots of examples where registration and the extension is totally open. [But] we thought the only way that this was going to have any trust and credibility around it is if the environmental community was with us, and behind us and engaged in how .eco is run.”

Over about 18 months the group hammered out a set of priorities for the potential registry, the most important of which was transparency. To gain a domain name, all .eco applicants might take a pledge signifying their environmental commitment, and create a profile that highlights what they’re doing in the space.

Its a fairly easy and initially unregulated process. Users can register through any domain name intermediary (say, Name.com or GoDaddy) but before their site goes live they’ll receive an email that redirects them to a mandatory .eco registry page.

Taking the pledge requires a check-the-box agreement “to support positive change for the planet and to be honest when sharing information on environmental actions.” Users must then specify “sustainability priorities” from a menu of different causes, list their current “environmental actions” augmented if possible by links or files, and share “partners” to telegraph alliances, all of which are then publicly viewable. Applications may be reviewed but are not directly policed. It’s up to the community to spot issues and report them.

Information on each registrant’s eco priorities and progress toward those goals are posted on a community profile page, that’s also searchable by player (businesses, people, nonprofits, educational institutions), so others who might want to make similar efforts can figure how what’s happening in the space. Eventually, Bowden hopes that the registry will act as a sort of environmental LinkedIn. “One of the ways that we talk about dot eco is that it’s your online environmental identity,” he says. “The goal is to build an inclusive community so the people who were just starting out on their sustainability journey could register. It’s really of a range of organizations from around the world of different sizes and really different interests.”

Early adopters include an ethical-rating fashion app, eco-friendly cleaning products company, and oceanic-focused study abroad program. In Argentina, Greenpeace is already using .eco URLs, as is Vancity, a major Canadian-based credit union trying to highlight its community sustainability efforts. There’s even an environmental documentary with its own promotional landing page.

Bigger names like Google, Tesla, and LG have taken domains for various corporate-related eco efforts, prompting the question of what might happen when other well-known companies with troubled pasts try to plug in. The question of whether they’re using the extension effectively would ultimately depend on where they’re directing web users, whether when compared to claims made on the registry’s profile page the actions net out positively and in good faith.

Rather than see the most popular key terms bought up and harnessed by just one group, the Dot Eco Registry has also found a way to share them. Earlier this year, it started a grant program asking its community members specifically what names should be reserved to as especially valuable, and to submit proposals for how they could then be used to achieve the maximum good. While Bowden is light on details, sites like Rivers.eco, Ocean.eco, and Acts.eco have since been taken off the open market, assigned the winners, and will go live with the suggested environmentally-driven content in the coming months.

In the registry’s first week of operation, more than 1,000 groups have applied for registration, paying between $65 and $100 annually to secure a name. “It was super high-risk because the requirements to pass the community threshold were very high,” says Bowden. “But that whole track kind of reflected the ethos of the internet in a way. It’s built by communities of engineers and built by communities of interest.”

At its Build developer conference in Seattle, Microsoft brought to life a vision of the workplace of the future where workers are surrounded by all manner of cameras, sensors, and other recording devices connected to internet-based AI services.

Microsoft offers those AI services—like image recognition and machine learning—to developers, who use them in their applications to interpret and analyze data collected by the edge devices. It’s the Microsoft “intelligent cloud” sending data back and forth from devices on the “intelligent edge.”

Put another way, Microsoft sees the intelligent edge as a technology layer that could show up anywhere in the physical world. Whatever role Microsoft plays, it’s a mildly disturbing look at workplace of the future.

That feeling you have when you’re parked at a traffic light and you know the cameras are on you? That could be our 24/7 reality at work, as analyst Ross Rubin put it to me here in Seattle at Microsoft’s Build developer conference.

Microsoft showed demos and videos of the “intelligent edge” in a variety of forms, in a variety of use cases, and in a variety of industries:

• A heart patient was walking around wearing a sensor. He began to get tired, so the sensor sent that data up to the cloud for processing, and a nurse was notified to bring him a wheelchair.
• A camera detected an employee accidentally tipping over a barrel containing a dangerous chemical, information it sent up to image-recognition software in the cloud. Some other database likely helped determine that the liquid in the barrel was hazardous. Presumably an alarm was sent to a cleanup team.
• An employee in a shop was spotted taking a selfie while brandishing a jackhammer. The brain in the cloud recognized the employee, the activity, and the setting and concluded he was behaving recklessly, then contacted a supervisor.
• Someone else in a shop was seen not wearing safety goggles. Alarm. Supervisor notified.

All this involves some sophisticated, on-the-fly AI. In the words of the presenter demoing the intelligent edge developer tools at Build: “The solution is running more than 27 million recognitions per second across people, objects, and activities.” But the use cases Microsoft showed onstage sound equal parts helpful and intrusive. Sure, getting a heart patient back to bed or detecting a dangerous chemical spill are health-promoting. But the notifications to the supervisor suggest a completely different, and possibly unintended, consequence of the technology.

There is benevolent surveillance and then there is just surveillance, and the Microsoft technology could work in both scenarios.

Of course Microsoft didn’t invent the internet of things, the umbrella term reflecting the addition of connectivity and intelligence to devices from washing machines to factory presses to front doors in the physical world. A world increasingly watched by cameras and sensors is happening whether Microsoft plays a role in it or not.

But Microsoft embraced this paradigm enthusiastically here at Build, and carefully defined its place in it—in the same way it did with the chat bots that were a key theme at last year’s conference.

The company is acutely aware of the implications of imbuing the cameras and sensors and other stuff around us with intelligence. CEO Satya Nadella–a very smart and thoughtful guy–wasn’t four minutes into his opening remarks here before he began to talk about how technology could be used for bad, not good. He told developers it’s up to them to make sure the “intelligent edge” doesn’t become the “surveillance edge.”

He even referenced dystopian futures of George Orwell’s 1984, with its constant surveillance, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World with tech helping distract people from any kind of “meaning or purpose” in life.

“We should empower people with technology,” Nadella told developers in a tone that, on second listen, sounded almost sermon-esque. “People have to be in the loop.”

“It’s up to us as the world becomes more tech driven, as digital technology becomes a bigger part of everyday life, building trust in technology is crucial,” he added. “It starts with us taking responsibility for ensuring that there is more trust in technology each day.”

The scenarios Microsoft showed off were more about what third-party developers can do using the company’s services than offerings it plans to sell itself, and it’s not even clear how close they might be to being generally available. But Microsoft is staking its claim to the job of imbuing all those little edge devices with human-like intelligence and judgement.

How much control will Microsoft really have over the ways in which developers use those assets in the wild? Will all those little cameras and sensors on the edge act like helpful guardian angels? Or brainy little tattletales? Nadella raised some of those questions himself during his keynote, but the answers are yet to come.

A couple of months ago, Nucleus cofounder Morley Ivers believed his smart intercom startup was enjoying a “real partnership” with Amazon. Nucleus had received a major investment from Amazon through the Alexa Fund, which helps propel companies that use its voice command services, and Nucleus reciprocated by giving Amazon insights into its hardware development and user behavior. The intercom was even going to be the first non-Amazon device with visualized responses from Alexa.

Everything changed for Nucleus on Tuesday, when Amazon announced the Echo Show, a $230 smart-home device with a touchscreen, premium speakers, and a front-facing camera. Its headline feature is the ability to make video calls to other Echo Show users, just like Nucleus does with its own intercom. Now, Ivers is wondering how his startup and its 29 employees will survive.

“We feel a little bit like a guinea pig today,” Ivers says, “and yesterday’s announcement sure makes it feel like the guinea pig wasn’t put back into the field. It was put out to be euthanized.”

It’s not unusual for big tech companies to absorb ideas from smaller companies on their platforms, crushing them in the process. (There’s even a long-standing industry term for it.) What sets Nucleus’s situation apart is how the startup worked directly with Amazon to help the Alexa platform grow stronger. Even if Nucleus was naïve in that regard, its story could give chills to other startups who’ve taken money from Amazon and bet their future on the company’s voice services.

Aiding Alexa’s Arms Race

Although Amazon’s own Echo devices get most of the attention, the company has a longer-term strategy of trying to get its underlying Alexa assistant onto many more devices, including lamps, thermostats, fridges, phones, and even car dashboards.

Ivers says that Nucleus contributed to the guidelines that those devices must follow. When Nucleus started developing its Alexa support, there was no certification program for devices with far-field voice recognition, which lets a gadget understand spoken commands from a distance. To hash things out, Nucleus engineers would visit Amazon’s Lab126 hardware group in Silicon Valley and provide feedback.

“The prerequisite program and platform to have all that did not exist prior to us,” Ivers says. “So very specifically, our team on our engineering side put … an untold number of hours into helping with the development of that by providing feedback, and counsel, and thoughts.”

Nucleus also held nothing back in discussing what it had learned about intercom-based video chat, including how its software worked, the challenges the company was facing, and its approach to user privacy. (Ivers stops short of accusing Amazon of intellectual property theft, but notes that Nucleus has some broad patents around Wi-Fi intercoms that it’ll take a look at “when the dust settles.”)

Nucleus also shared data about usage, such as the average number of intercoms that Nucleus owners set up in the home. “When you’re a real partner, you share openly, and you try to build trust by sharing and not holding back, and that is the approach that we took,” Ivers says.

Still, that openness didn’t flow both ways. Although Nucleus learned in advance that Amazon was working on communications between Echo speakers, Amazon declined Nucleus’s request to work on interoperability before launch. And until Amazon announced the Echo Show on Tuesday, Nucleus had no idea that Amazon was working on a device with a video chat component.

Words Of Warning

Ivers argues that other Alexa Fund companies should be on guard, and that startups should think twice before taking money from Amazon. Since Tuesday, he claims to have already heard from a startup founder who’s having second thoughts about applying to the Alexa Fund.

“I think about Stuart Lombard at Ecobee,” Ivers says, referring to the CEO of a smart thermostat company that just announced an Alexa-equipped model and has future plans for an Alexa light switch. “What in the world is stopping Amazon from launching ‘Amazon Feel, the new way to control temperature in your home?’ How can you answer that question?”

Ivers also points to Ring, a maker of smart doorbells that joined the Alexa Fund in mid-2016. “They have an incredibly appealing and awesome mass-market doorbell,” Ivers says. “How do we know that the next thing Amazon does is they don’t launch ‘Amazon Chime, the perfect way to greet visitors at your front door?'”

“The litmus test is, if you’re the CEO of an Alexa Fund company, and you have traction … you’ve got to be questioning what’s going on, and be asking very serious questions,” Ivers says.

Despite those concerns, Ivers doesn’t believe Amazon was trying to bury his company on purpose. He had a “very direct call” with the company on Tuesday night, and believes they understand his perspective.

“I do think that they’re good people, and their leadership in particular, they’re good people,” he says. “I think what happened here is they are just moving so fast, and they’re so focused … people didn’t connect the dots and realize what the impact would be on us.”

As for what’s next for Nucleus, Ivers is still hoping Amazon will make amends and send a more encouraging message to other Alexa Fund companies. He’s not sure exactly what that might look like, though he mentions further investment, a promise of interoperability with Alexa’s voice chat features, or an acquisition as possibilities. It’s unclear, however, whether Amazon feels the same sense of urgency that Nucleus does.

“They have an opportunity, a very, very short window to respond to the marketplace, to the ecosystem, to the entrepreneurs, and say, ‘We didn’t connect the dots. This was a mistake, and we’ve made it right,'” Ivers says. “And I would take that call in a heartbeat.”

In early 2017, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a new initiative in the city’s ongoing battle with violent crime. The most common solutions to this sort of problem involve hiring more police officers or working more closely with community members. But Emanuel declared that the Chicago Police Department would expand its use of software, enabling what is called “predictive policing,” particularly in neighborhoods on the city’s south side.

The Chicago police will use data and computer analysis to identify neighborhoods that are more likely to experience violent crime, assigning additional police patrols in those areas. In addition, the software will identify individual people who are expected to become—but have yet to be —victims or perpetrators of violent crimes. Officers may even be assigned to visit those people to warn them against committing a violent crime.

Any attempt to curb the alarming rate of homicides in Chicago is laudable. But the city’s new effort seems to ignore evidence, including recent research from members of our policing study team at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, that predictive policing tools reinforce, rather than reimagine, existing police practices. Their expanded use could lead to further targeting of communities or people of color.

Working With Available Data

At its core, any predictive model or algorithm is a combination of data and a statistical process that seeks to identify patterns in the numbers. This can include looking at police data in the hopes of learning about crime trends or recidivism. But a useful outcome depends not only on good mathematical analysis: It also needs good data. That’s where predictive policing often falls short.

Machine-learning algorithms learn to make predictions by analyzing patterns in an initial training data set and then look for similar patterns in new data as they come in. If they learn the wrong signals from the data, the subsequent analysis will be lacking.

This happened with a Google initiative called “Flu Trends,” which was launched in 2008 in the hopes of using information about people’s online searches to spot disease outbreaks. Google’s systems would monitor users’ searches and identify locations where many people were researching various flu symptoms. In those places, the program would alert public health authorities that more people were about to come down with the flu.

But the project failed to account for the potential for periodic changes in Google’s own search algorithm. In an early 2012 update, Google modified its search tool to suggest a diagnosis when users searched for terms like “cough” or “fever.” On its own, this change increased the number of searches for flu-related terms. But Google Flu Trends interpreted the data as predicting a flu outbreak twice as big as federal public health officials expected, and far larger than what actually happened.

Criminal Justice Data Are Biased

The failure of the Google Flu Trends system was a result of one kind of flawed data—information biased by factors other than what was being measured. It’s much harder to identify bias in criminal justice prediction models. In part, this is because police dataaren’t collected uniformly, and in part it’s because what data police track reflect longstanding institutional biases along income, race, and gender lines.

While police data often are described as representing “crime,” that’s not quite accurate. Crime itself is a largely hidden social phenomenon that happens anywhere a person violates a law. What are called “crime data” usually tabulate specific events that aren’t necessarily lawbreaking—like a 911 call—or that are influenced by existing police priorities, like arrests of people suspected of particular types of crime, or reports of incidents seen when patrolling a particular neighborhood.

Neighborhoods with lots of police calls aren’t necessarily the same places the most crime is happening. They are, rather, where the most police attention is—though where that attention focuses can often be biased by gender and racial factors.

It Isn’t Easy To “remove” The Bias

Some researchers have argued that machine learning algorithms can address systemic biases by designing “neutral” models that don’t take into account sensitive variables like race or gender. But while it may seem possible in hypothetical situations, it doesn’t appear to be the case in real life.

Our recent study, by Human Rights Data Analysis Group’s Kristian Lum and William Isaac, found that predictive policing vendor PredPol’s purportedly race-neutral algorithm targeted black neighborhoods at roughly twice the rate of white neighborhoods when trained on historical drug crime data from Oakland, California. We found similar results when analyzing the data by income group, with low-income communities targeted at disproportionately higher rates compared to high-income neighborhoods.

But estimates—created from public health surveys and population models—suggest illicit drug use in Oakland is roughly equal across racial and income groups. If the algorithm were truly race-neutral, it would spread drug-fighting police attention evenly across the city.

Similar evidence of racial bias was found by ProPublica’s investigative reporters when they looked at COMPAS, an algorithm predicting a person’s risk of committing a crime, used in bail and sentencing decisions in Broward County, Florida, and elsewhere around the country. These systems learn only what they are presented with; if those data are biased, their learning can’t help but be biased too.

Fixing this problem is not a matter of just doing more advanced mathematical or statistical calculations. Rather, it will require rethinking how police agencies collect and analyze data, and how they train their staff to use data on the job.

Improving These Systems Requires Transparency

Using predictive analytics in the real world is challenging, particularly when trying to craft government policies to minimize harm to vulnerable populations. We do not believe that police departments should stop using analytics or data-driven approaches to reducing crime. Rather, police should work to understand the biases and limitations inherent in their data.

In our view, police departments—and all agencies that use predictive algorithms—should make their systems transparent to public scrutiny. This should start with community members and police departments discussing policing priorities and measures of police performance. That way any software the police use can be programmed to reflect the community’s values and concerns.

It is not enough to claim or assume an algorithm is unbiased just because it is computerized and uses data: A lack of bias must be proven by evaluating the algorithm’s performance itself. Police agencies should get independent experts or human rights groups to perform regular audits of the algorithms and the data they process. Much like the annual financial reviews large companies do, these examinations can ensure the input data are valid and are analyzed properly to avoid discrimination. If a company wants to claim its algorithm is proprietary and should be kept secret, it should still be required to offer robust testing environments so outside experts can examine its performance.

Further, police departments that use algorithms to make predictions about individuals, like Chicago’s Strategic Subject List does, should have policies similar to a new European Union regulation requiring human-understandable explanations of computer algorithms’ decisions. And no agency or company should be allowed to discriminate against people who have been identified by predictive policing.

Used correctly, predictive policing can be used to address the complex factors underlying crime trends. For example, rather than stepping up patrols, Toronto and other cities in Canada are using predictive modeling to connect residents to local social services. By improving the quality of data cities collect, and analyzing the information with more transparent and inclusive processes, cities can build safer communities, rather than cracking down harder on areas that are already struggling.

William Isaac is a PhD candidate in political science at Michigan State University, and Andi Dixon is a PhD student in communications at Columbia University. Isaac is a statistical consultant and Dixon is a policy analyst for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

This piece originally appeared on the Conversation. 

“The notion that we can go to college for four years and then spend that knowledge for the next 30 is over,” Thomas Friedman announced in yesterday’s New York Times. “If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.” He’s right on both counts. The returns students can expect from their bachelor’s degrees have been shrinking, and every worker out there needs to constantly pick up new skills in order to compete in the workforce long-term.

Then Friedman writes, “And that means: More is now on you. And that means self-motivation to learn and keep learning becomes the most important life skill.” (His patronizing italics.) The gist of the column, whose insurance-brochure headline is “Owning Your Own Future,” is that too few young professionals are ready to do that.

But there’s no crisis in “self-motivation.” There is, however, a shortage of resources and opportunities—disproportionately facing women, people of color, young people, and people without advanced degrees, among others—to learn enough marketable skills fast enough to get paid fairly for them. And Friedman’s brand of libertarian scolding isn’t helping.

It might be easy to imagine that every college student in the U.S. is a beneficiary of the kind of privilege that puts them vastly out of touch with everyone else in the country who’s trying to earn a living on a high school diploma or less. But go stand in the middle of a college quad or on the floor of a struggling manufacturing plant and declare that “having an agile learning mind-set will be the new skill set of the 21st century” (Friedman’s quoting an “education-to-work expert” here), and see what kind of response you get. I’ll bet they’d be identically unkind.

He’s right to assert that the workplace is rapidly changing, perhaps even more rapidly than in generations past. He’s also right that staying set in your ways won’t keep you competitive, and that you can’t secure a career’s worth of training in four years of college. Nor is it news to actual mechanics that “if you’re getting a degree in auto mechanics at a community college today, it’s not to be a ‘grease monkey.’ It’s to be a repairman for a computer with wheels.”

Young people entering the workforce have understood this kind of thing for years. Decades before the first Tesla was a twinkle in Elon Musk’s eye, parents were haughtily informing their teenage kids that they’d hold many different jobs over the course of their careers, some of which hadn’t been invented yet. This has long earned eye rolls—not out of disbelief, but out of sheer obviousness.

Informing the American workforce that “More is now on you” isn’t just unhelpful, it’s also grossly unfair. Plenty of employers don’t need or want workers to learn so many new skills that they outgrow their roles, and many others don’t offer the time or resources for additional job training—let alone raises and promotions to those who find their own ways to “skill up.” It isn’t individuals who’ve failed to keep up with the times. (“Some are up for that, some not,” Friedman sniffs.) It’s the government and employers that have yet to adapt to the realities of the modern workplace.

Had they done so, the pay gaps by both race and gender would be footnotes in history (both arealive and well), employment discrimination wouldn’t exist (companies are still struggling with diversity as Trump rolls back protections), real wages wouldn’t be stagnating (as they have for four decades), automation would be making room for all kinds of new and exciting skills-training opportunities (that’s possible but barely happening), American millennials wouldn’t be unemployed at three times the overall rate (which they are), and no one would be talking seriously about the need for a universal basic income (like Musk is).

This month, the class of 2017 is graduating into a much healthier job market than their peers did in the depths of the financial crisis a decade ago. But as Fast Company‘s Lydia Dishman points out, “2007’s economy is a pretty low bar.” Despite their gobs of student loan debt and the fact that they’ll be competing for work with a cohort of which the majority is underemployed, gen-Z job seekers remain amazingly optimistic about their career prospects.

So does Friedman, more or less. With just a little more willingness to learn, and maybe an assist from Khan Academy, he suggests that the next generation of employees—college grads and otherwise—won’t just wind up with happy, prosperous careers. They’ll also stop electing proto-authoritarians and start voting for “leaders who inspire and equip their citizens to be strong people who can own their own futures.”

Gen-Z, you’ll have to get back to Friedman on that one. You’re about to discover just how far your “agile learning mind-set” and the sheer force of optimism will take you. Good luck out there.

On Wednesday, the parent company of the Snapchat app announced its first earnings since going public three months ago—and it wasn’t pretty. The company reported a loss of $2.2 billion and missed analysts’ estimates almost across the board. The company’s stock, which was heavily talked about and one of the most valuable tech IPOs in recent years, tumbled in after-hours trading. Once $29.44 per share, Wednesday’s earnings report sent shares dropping to $17.27, just .27 more than its initial offering price of $17, and down $1.26 per share from the $18.90/share the stock was at going into Wednesday.

So, why such a loss? A large part of the $2.2 billion hit that Snapchat took last quarter was expected due to the IPO, which involved awarding $2 billion in stock-based compensation, $750 million of which went to the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel. That wasn’t a huge surprise to investors. The issue seems to lie in the company’s growth, which isn’t happening as fast as investors would like.

Most analysts blame Facebook and the recent launch of Snapchat-like features on Instagram via Instagram Stories and Facebook Messenger. While Snapchat struggles to grow outside of North America, Facebook flourishes, in part due to adjustments the company has made so that its app operates via the mobile web in countries where data isn’t as easy to come by, and speeds are slow.

“Snapchat’s growth is being cannibalized by Instagram Stories in literally every single market in the world,” DJ Kang, SVP of Research at consumer research company ValuePenguin said in a recent report. “Instagram Stories is the ultimate disruptor for Snapchat: when a general-purpose photo & video application (i.e., Instagram) has a good enough functionality (i.e., Stories) to replace a use-specific but high-performance app (i.e., Snapchat), most users will switch to the general-purpose app in order to reduce the “cost” (i.e., time & effort of opening & maintaining multiple apps).”

If you listen to Spiegel, that loss isn’t as big of an issue as you might think. During an earnings call with financial analysts Wednesday, the CEO said that despite what might look like troubling numbers, he’s pleased with how the company is performing, noting that revenue is up 286% from this time last year, and daily active users are up 36%, although that growth is decelerating quickly.

On the earning’s call, Spiegel took a jab at Facebook, saying that the company’s way of “hacking” its way to growth wasn’t sustainable. And just because Facebook has a product that’s similar to Snap’s doesn’t mean that it’s going to win.

“At the end of the day, just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google,” Spiegel says, a clumsy metaphor that improbably compares Snap to Google’s position in the search engine wars. “The bottom line is if you want to be a creative company, you got to get comfortable with and basically enjoy the fact that people are going to copy your products if you make great stuff.”

That sentiment is echoed by Forrester Research’s Jessica Liu. “I’m actually not sure why everyone is depicting Snap’s Q1 earnings call as a ‘tremendous loss,'” she told Fast Company via email. “Snap’s user growth is up, although perhaps not as accelerated as Wall Street projected. Q1 advertising revenue typically dips after Q4 due to seasonal advertising spend; this is true for Facebook, Twitter, etc. as well so this should have been no surprise.”

She adds that the industry should stop comparing Snapchat to Facebook and other social networks. “It’s not a ‘zero sum game’ with social networks,” she says. “If one social network wins, it doesn’t mean that the others automatically lose. Each social network offers a different value proposition. Users fulfill different needs on Facebook vs. Instagram vs. Twitter vs. Snapchat vs. LinkedIn. Snapchat and Facebook can both experience success in today’s world.”

Kang feels differently. After Wednesday’s report, he says that he sees Snapchat’s growth rate becoming even worse in the second quarter because of Instagram, and its stock price continuing to drop, following a similar pattern to Twitter. But Spiegel remains optimistic and even hinted at potential new products coming down the pipeline.

“I think at this point we’re famous for not giving guidance on the product pipeline,” Spiegel said. “Should be a fun rest of the year.”

Perhaps nobody should talk to noted white nationalist, Richard Spencer, he of the face-punch heard ‘round the world. If someone does have to speak with Spencer, however, and on TV at that, it’s for the best that it’s W. Kamau Bell. After all, Bell is such a virtuoso of the awkward conversation that if he doesn’t change Spencer’s mind—and let’s face it, he probably won’t—he’ll at least extract some valuable nugget of insight from hearing him out, and share it with the rest of us.

“This country gets better when we confront things we feel awkward about,” Bell says. “The seed of every protest is someone going ‘Hey can I talk to you about something that’s not working for me?'”

Productively uncomfortable conversations are a specialty Bell serves up on his Emmy-nominated CNN show, United Shades of America. They’re something he also does on his podcast, Politically Re-Active, alongside co-host Hari Kondabolu. And these types of talks are particularly abundant in the pages of his just-released book of essays, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell. Although Bell began writing the book long before November of 2016, it became a much more timely work following the election, when many people woke up to the fact that they don’t know their neighbors as well as they thought.

“This is like The Matrix but less fun,” Bell says, laughing. “We didn’t all learn kung fu.”

Although the book veers between straight-up memoir and trenchant essays about the issues currently dividing our nation–along with black superheroes and other illuminating diversions–one constant is awkward conversations. It’s clear from the book that Bell has learned a lot from wading through the muck of discomfort separating cultures, political beliefs, races, genders, and sexual orientations. Fast Company spoke with the comedian and author recently to find out more about how and why having these conversations can change a person’s life.

 Buy Lunch For Someone Who’s Nothing Like You

Everybody resides in some kind of bubble, geography be damned. The only way to pop yours is by meeting different kinds of people and finding out what they know that you don’t. The only problem is, it doesn’t just happen automatically.

“I think a lot of times people think like, ‘I asked that black guy at work, who I never talk to, to explain Black Lives Matter to me and he looked me like I was crazy,'” Bell says. “There are people around you every day who you don’t talk to enough. The way to get to these awkward conversations is to first form friendships. So instead of not talking to that guy at work, actually have a conversation. You don’t start on the first day going ‘Tell me about your deepest, darkest secrets.’ You start with ‘Let’s go out to lunch.’ Buying somebody lunch will go a long way to them one day divulging their deepest, darkest secrets. At some point, you can with your good friends go ‘Can you explain BLM to me?’”

Allow People To Explain What New Words You Should Use

The more you talk with people who don’t look or think exactly like you and share your confirmation bias, the more you’ll bump up against our hyper-evolving language. That’s where things get interesting.

“There’s a tendency in many of us, when somebody says there’s a new thing called cisgender, we’re like ‘What? Another new thing? I can’t learn another new thing!’” Bell says. “But if you’re friends with somebody who knows about that thing, they’ll explain it. Like when [comedian and TV host] Guy [Branum] explained cisgender to me the first nine times, I was like ‘I still don’t think I get it.’ But since this is my friend, Guy, I know he wants the best for me, so I’m not doing myself a service by not leaning into this office.”

Allow People To Explain What Old Words You Should Not Use

It’s difficult to consciously change the way you’re used to speaking–unless, that is, you listen to and ask questions about somebody’s case for doing so.

“If you want to live a life where you can use whatever words you want and it doesn’t seem to be hurting you in any way, go for it. I’m not gonna get into a free speech argument, but for me, it’s very clear,” Bell says. “Like with my friend, Martha Rynberg, and the word ‘bitch.’ She kept explaining why I should stop saying it, and I resisted. But eventually, I knew this was gonna be a thing that might lose me this friendship. Or at least it would alter this friendship from the thing I want it to be. At a certain point, you gotta ask: If you’re using the words you want, are you leading the life you want to be leading?”

Shame Is Your Friend

Awkward conversations about gender, race, sexual orientation, and politics are not always going to be fun. That’s why they’re awkward. Sometimes you’re just going to have to get your ass verbally kicked.

“It’s a little like those massages that scrub all your dead skin off. Sometimes people aren’t prepared to give you a spoonful of sugar as they give you the medicine, just because they’re not in that space, and you have to be okay with that,” Bell says. “Some people are always gonna say ‘But I just feel so much shame.’ Okay! What’s wrong with shame? The problem with any one emotion is if you stay in it for too long. Shame is fine if you use it as a motivator to move onto something else. Shame has turned me into a better person many times. I’m a much better husband because of shame. I’ve improved a lot as a result of some ‘My God, I can’t believe I screwed that up!’ moments.”

But Don’t Go Around Apologizing

Sometimes, people think they’re having a necessary awkward conversation by apologizing to someone else, unprompted, on behalf of their race or gender. They are not entirely correct.

“To quote Daniel Tiger, ‘Saying I’m sorry is the first step to how can I help,’” Bell says, laughing. “A lot of times people think the apology is the thing, but the apology is definitely not the thing. It’s like, ‘I’m sorry on behalf of all white guys.’ Okay. Now, what can you do to help make sure that the thing you’re apologizing for doesn’t happen again? And a lot of times people don’t even want to get caught up in that; they just wanna go, ‘I said I was sorry.’ When a kid goes ‘I said I was sorry!’ you go, ‘That doesn’t matter. What are you gonna do?’”

If It’s Too Awkward, Keep Going . . . Later

The thing about awkward conversations is that sometimes they end in an even more awkward place than they started. All that outcome means, however, is that there is much more to discuss next time.

“You can get caught into dead ends in these conversations. You can get caught in a place where you’re not going to resolve this point right now or agree on anything. But I think just thinking that every conversation has to end up in a solution is the problem,” Bell says. “These are a series of conversations you have to have with people. I hear from people all the time, like ‘I tried to talk to my grandfather and he wouldn’t listen.’ Once? You tried to talk once? That’s the problem is we expect too much from each individual conversation, and if you expect too much too soon, you’re not really understanding how this works. Sometimes, the conversation has to end with, ‘Okay, I need to sit with that for a minute.’ Some things, I’ve had to sit with and struggle with and come back to. And when that’s happened, it’s always been for the best.”

What can you learn from reviewing Excel reports or by weaving through Chinatown’s Canal Street traffic with a handcart stacked with mail? Maybe not much, but I’ve done both.

Internships usually aren’t glamorous, but they’re good introductions to the workforce before you have enough experience to join it full-time. Some internships veer into straight-up labor exploitation, and many others give unfair advantages to those who can afford to work for little or no pay.

Even so, some of the most most mundane, pointless-seeming internships can prove useful to your career, including in some unexpected ways. Here are a few lessons that veterans of lame internships learned after the fact.

Find A Daily Grind You’re Into

When my fellow Fast Company staffer, Editorial Assistant Kim Lightbody, was a senior in high school, she spent a couple of months interning at a theater in New York City. “At the time, I was really into theater,” she recalls, but her intern duties “had nothing to do with theater.” This didn’t exactly surprise Lightbody; like most interns, she’d expected to be saddled with tasks bearing little relation to the things that excited her about the field.

Related:Why A 70-Year-Old Retiree Went Back To Work—As An Intern

But Lightbody was surprised to learn, by the end of the experience, that “the day-to-day of what you’ll actually be doing is pretty important.” Lots of interns tell themselves they’ll have no trouble putting up with grunt work in order to get a foot in the door, only to realize how much of that drudgery is crucial to keeping an organization running. In Lightbody’s case, that meant printing out name tags for a big annual board meeting and organizing the supply closet.

She chalks up some of her disappointment to immaturity. “I was just a kid hanging out there. I had never had an office job before,” Lightbody says, so picking up menial assignments from the theater execs’ two administrative assistants wasn’t something that she was ready to approach like the baseline professional experience it technically was. “I wasn’t that serious about my future yet.”

But in retrospect, that realization was useful as she headed to college. By the end of her freshman year, Lightbody knew she needed more focus. Theater began to feel more like a passion than a potential career. She began looking for journalism internships and thinking harder about how she actually would like to spend her workdays.

Building An Unexpected Knowledge Base

“My most mundane internship was with the American Legacy Foundation  in 2011–12,” recalls Kemba Neptune, referring to the organization behind the antismoking “Truth Campaign” (the nonprofit rechristened itself Truth Initiative in 2015). President Obama had signed the Affordable Care Act into law in March 2010, so its regulatory changes were brand new by the time Neptune’s internship began. Her job there “was to monitor and examine the media around the ACA, as well as familiarize myself with it to track how it would affect smokers and cessation efforts.”

It was pretty dry work. “Collecting media links daily and sending them to the higher-ups seemed boring and pointless,” she says, since smoking cessation data and health care compliance issues didn’t exactly break headlines on a daily basis. But this experience laid an early foundation for a knowledge base that, to Neptune’s surprise, she still draws on today—and not just because the ACA’s fate now hangs in the balance.

“Now, I work in a public relations firm in the health care practice,” Neptune says, referring to Finn Partners, her employer until recently (she’s just accepted a position at Waxman Strategies), “so all that background knowledge came in handy in getting this job, and in fully understanding the landscape of health policy—which, of course, only benefits my clients.”

Stumbling Into Where You’re Best Suited

Sometimes you learn about your industry, and sometimes you learn about yourself. Amelise Lane also wound up in PR, but one of her first internships helped her hone a job skill she’d planned to use in a totally different field.

As an English major at NYU, Lane admits she “was under delusions of grandeur” that she might eventually become a book editor who’d discover the next Great American Novel. But as an intern at a literary agency, what she actually discovered was the “slush pile,” a hallowed institution of the book publishing industry, which refers to the disorderly stack of unsolicited manuscripts and proposals that arrive by mail week after week.

Related:Diary Of An Ex-Apple Intern

While Lane’s colleagues worked with authors they’d developed relationships with, Lane sifted through the slush, thinking to herself as many interns do, “This is silly, I can do so much more!” But after poring through sample chapters and galley letters, it was Lane’s job to write up quick, one-page overviews of anything that caught her eye. Though tedious, those reports made for a great crash course in “how people create a narrative . . . and helped me identify what makes a good story,” she recalls. Better yet, “it meant that I had to articulate why it was good or why it was not.”

That’s a skill she now relies on every day as an account director at Weber Shandwick. “We’re working with companies who want to tell a story, and it’s our job to articulate what that story is.” In fact, Lane must’ve done a great job sharpening those abilities, because she landed her first job eight days after graduating. By then, Lane had racked up a string of other internships at book publishers—first in the editorial department, then in publicity—that brought her closer to the communications side of things.

Looking back, Lane says it was probably an asset that as an intern, she “didn’t have a great idea of what I wanted to be.” That meant she could focus on her roles’ underlying challenges, not just the superficial tasks themselves. “Not being too stuck in a path,” she reflects, is a smart approach long after you’re done interning.

Experts within the philanthropy sector should consider funding fresh ideas from social entrepreneurs as much (if not more) than massive grants aimed at traditional programmatic solutions, many of which still struggle to make a huge impact on the world’s most challenging problems. That’s one key finding from a new report from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, which was formed by Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, and works in the U.S., India, and South Africa to improve the lives of children suffering from urban poverty. To that end, the Dell Foundation just committed another $1 billion to its endowment, in part, to fund just those types of ventures.

Since its inception in 1999, the Dell Foundation has spent freely, doling out a total of $1.3 billion in grants and loans, while countering the standard industry practice of just giving away the federally mandated minimum of 5%—a super-low threshold that many funders don’t exceed because they’re busily investing the rest of their endowment in the traditional market to recoup that expenditure. For many years, Dell has given far more than that—more like 15%—including impact investments in social entrepreneurs that, at least in the early stages, are the sort of allocations that can’t be expected to bring much return on their investment. In other words, the foundation has always been willing to make risky investments, giving away money that it may not be able to earn back, in order to incubate businesses and solutions that could save everyone in the space more money in the long term as they prove out or become sustainable.

“A lot of people are afraid to take risks because in philanthropy money only follows success,” says Susan Dell, the foundation’s cofounder and board chair, referencing the penchant for cause groups to chip away problems with demonstrable results rather than make bold plays that might cost their funders money. Dell would like to see that thinking shift. For every dud, there might also be an Ujjivan, which last year had arguably the most successful IPO in India’s history.

The new look at philanthropy comes at a time when many foundations are rethinking how they do business. In May, the Center for Effective Philanthropy released a report highlighting how 11 different organizations have converted to a limit-life format, opting to spend down their endowments to make a larger immediate impact on the causes they support. In April, the Ford Foundation, a classic minimum giver, adopted a new model, diverting $1 billion of its endowment over the next decade solely to mission-related investments.

With their new cash, the foundation plans to double-down on that market-driven philosophy. “We’re really looking to ramp up our investment in social entrepreneurs,” says foundation director Janet Mountain, who foresees a “new era of philanthropy” from these kinds of companies changing the world as they achieve sustainable growth.

To drive that point home, the foundation is releasing a set of “Social Impact Principles” based on its own experiences and the findings of the new report. (“IF IT DOESN’T WORK, TELL EVERYONE.” reads one intentionally all-caps koan. “Your outcomes, both good and bad, are opportunities for others to learn and do better. We all win when we learn together,” adds a short explainer.) You can find more about the report and principles here and watch a live stream of their announcement, along with past lessons and predictions and what’s next for the industry, from an event called The Dell Perspective: The Future of Philanthropy starting at 7:30 p.m. ET on May 11.

When former high-ranking FBI officials read one particular line in President Trump’s statement on the firing of James Comey on Tuesday evening, it just seemed odd. After bluntly informing the FBI director that he was “terminated” based on the recommendation of the attorney general and deputy attorney general, Trump added, in his own inimitable way: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation,” he was still going to fire him.

Trump’s assertion here is that Comey, the man leading the FBI probe into his campaign’s ties with Russia, had personally told him—not once, but three times—that he is off the hook. But would that really happen? Several former high-ranking FBI officials took the president’s claim as hard to believe.

“Trump’s statement was completely self-serving and I don’t trust it,” former FBI assistant director Ronald Hosko told Fast Company. “Comey knows his job and he’s smart. He’s going to keep things close to this vest and he’s not going to talk about sensitive matters to someone who has a smartphone close to him and likes to tweet.”

Though it’s not prohibited by law, the bureau has strict limits on communicating about pending investigations, especially with the subject of that inquiry. Per a 2009 memo by then-AG Eric Holder, the Justice Department will advise the president on such investigations or cases “when—but only when—it is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.”

That kind of discretion is part of the bureau’s culture, says former FBI special agent David M. Shapiro, who’s now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “You would never ever say anything about such an investigation to anybody. That kind of thing is so rare.”

And there are protocols that guide such interactions. “It would be unusual for the FBI director or the deputy director to have conversations with White House officials without the presence of the attorney general or deputy attorney general,” former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told CNN.

“When I read that, right away it stood out,” says a former FBI official, who is a lifelong Republican and prefers not to be named. “It’s something Trump would say, that he wants you to believe, though it doesn’t make any sense to anyone who’s worked at the bureau.”

Trump’s claim is not accurate, sources tell the Washington Post, though FBI officials declined to comment. When asked at a White House press conference about the statement, spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied: “I’m not going to get into the specifics of their conversations, but I can tell you that Director Comey relayed that information to the president.”

But to have Comey reach out to Trump to discuss such an important aspect of his investigation goes against the bureau’s ethos. “It’s about good judgment,” adds Hosko. “You keep an arm’s length from your subject unless you’re trying to get a confession out of them while you’re sipping coffee.”

The statement also is prompting skepticism due to Trump’s history of exaggeration and outright falsehoods. Per PolitiFact’s scorecard, 59% of Trump’s statements over the last two years have been mostly false, completely false, or “Pants on Fire” false.

The firing of Comey is reverberating through the halls of the bureau, raising concerns about interference in the FBI’s ongoing investigations. “His firing was insulting to the FBI,” says Hosko. “Comey is a dedicated American and patriot. Some at the bureau think he went too far and some think that Hillary Clinton was indictable [for her misuse of classified emails on a private server], but there is a great deal of respect for him.”

Hosko, who worked at the FBI for 30 years before joining the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, says that he hasn’t heard anything from his former colleagues about the squashing of the Russia probe, adding “the bureau is bigger than one person.”

When a Chinese newspaper broke a story in January about a ring of underground factories making counterfeit soy sauce–packaged in brand name bottles, but made with dirty water and carcinogenic industrial salt–it wasn’t an isolated case. In the first nine months of 2016, the government found more than half a million food safety violations.

A new food tech accelerator, the first of its kind in China, hopes to help tackle the problem of food safety–along with a long list of other challenges in agriculture and health in the country, from sustainably meeting a growing demand for protein to addressing the fact that there are now more overweight people in China than in the U.S. One in four diabetics in the world now comes from China.

“Our mission is to shape the future of good food by investing in early stage startups that use technology to solve food system challenges in China,” Matilda Ho, founder of Bits x Bites, a Shanghai-based accelerator that launched this year, tells Fast Company. “In China, there are so many signals that have been happening in the past few years that we need to start building an ecosystem platform for people to push for this.”

Ho, originally from Taiwan, worked as a consultant for BCG and Ideo on Chinese food projects before launching her own food startup, Yimishiji, in 2015. The startup is an online farmers’ market, similar to Good Eggs in San Francisco, that connects Shanghai consumers with chemical-free produce delivered by electric bikes. Each item was very difficult to source; it took nearly a year to find bananas grown without pesticides. In its first 18 months, it has gained 40,000 subscribers and is still growing. But Ho realized that she wanted to help build an ecosystem of other startups approaching better, healthier food in different ways. (Her work earned her a place in the 2017 class of TED fellows, a program that supports young innovators around the world).

“If you compare the nutritional facts, it’s almost the same and even [better than] the cricket flour that a lot of Western startups are using right now,” Ho says. “But it could be more cost-effective, and then the input is so much more efficient compared to all the other animal agriculture.”

Pork, for example, was once a luxury in China, but as incomes have increased, the average Chinese person now eats more than five times more pork per person than they did in 1979. As pork production has increased, so has mass water pollution from pig farms. A superbug resistant to last-resort antibiotics was traced back to a Chinese pig farm. Both producing grain to feed pigs and pig manure have a massive carbon footprint. Insects, by contrast, can be produced cleanly in a small area. (And, while a U.S. consumer might be reluctant to eat something made with silkworm flour, silkworms are already accepted as food in China).

Another startup in the accelerator, Frugee, is making cold-pressed, high-pressure pasteurized juice from fruits and vegetables, which it markets as an alternative to eating salad. “Chinese people don’t have a history of eating salad, and they can never understand why people eat salad for lunch or for dinner,” Ho says. “So the way that we try to encourage people to do it is to combine these two together–by saying you can drink this small bottle of juice, and you’re actually having the same nutrition of having a bowl of salad.” (Experts say that it’s not exactly the same–juice has less fiber, for example, and fruit juice is high in sugar).

The third startup, Alesca Life, produces hydroponic farms in shipping containers and the software to run them and is already installing systems in both Beijing and Dubai, focusing first on hotels that want to grow produce for their restaurants. Hydroponic and aeroponic farming is becoming more common in some regions of China, and Ho thinks it will quickly grow–partly because China has to feed around 20% of the world’s population with only 7% of the arable land.

“With very limited arable land, right now China imports lots and lots of food,” she says. “It’s not sustainable, in terms of the carbon footprint. So we do think this will be a growing trend.”

While the startups are related to similar future-of-food businesses in other parts of the world, they take a distinctly Chinese approach. Ho’s own company, Yimishiji, focuses on full transparency–providing details about each farmer and directions to the farm, along with results from lab testing to prove the produce is free of chemicals–rather than something like an organic label. “If you just put a label there, people don’t trust organic food,” she says. “They always think that this is about bribery.” Given the history of food safety violations in China, Ho says building trust with consumers is one of the biggest challenges for a food company.

Many challenges are similar to those faced in other countries, however. Yimishiji had to educate consumers about why its bananas are “ugly,” and look different than the unblemished fruit at supermarkets. The startups have to work to bridge the gap between people’s aspiration to eat healthier foods and the draw of McDonald’s. On farms, China’s struggles to grow food more sustainably are echoes of what’s happening elsewhere.

Ho is hoping that as more food tech companies around the world hear about the accelerator, they’ll be interested in bringing their own solutions to China. She also hopes to begin to change the food industry as a whole. Already, major Chinese food companies are visiting the startup each week, exploring ways to start their own food incubators or work on projects in the space. But Ho says that much greater participation is needed.

“If we’re just one single player trying to push this forward, this is not going to build at scale,” she says. We need more investors in China that are interested in investing in food tech or ag tech startups. We need more media that talk about food issues. We also need more and more entrepreneurs or [food and beverage] companies that are starting to think about this and invest in these directions . . . we need more and more partners to make our voice be heard.”

Stories of toxic company culture have become commonplace recently, including serious ethical breaches at Wells Fargo, Volkswagen, Uber, and more. 

Often, a big contributing factor is the lack of ways to report bad behavior. For example, one in four women (out of 10,000 surveyed) in tech said they’d been sexually harassed at work. And a broader study by Cosmopolitan in 2015 found that as many as 1 in 3 women were sexually harassed on the job. But the EEOC finds that only 40,500 cases were reported in 2015. That’s likely because it’s hard to define exactly what constitutes harassment, the reporting process is often overwhelming, and because employees fear retaliation. 

Todd Schobel, CEO of STOPit, says their reporting app was created to facilitate the process of reporting bad behavior and help companies address abusive behavior proactively. “Organizations are realizing that the investment in hotlines is simply not generating the return they need to protect them from the significant financial and reputational risks that come with behavior-based incidents,” he tells Fast Company. “They need to invest in their most valuable asset: their employees.”

Using the STOPit app, employees are able to report incidents such as harassment, intimidation, bullying, discrimination, and workers’ comp fraud anonymously. That includes attaching screen shots, photo, or video evidence. “We collect absolutely no information from the user or their device,” Schobel underscores. “At any point in the investigation, ‘upstanders’ [the person reporting the incident, often a bystander] have the ability to self-identify if they wish.”

Schobel explains that when an employee submits an incident report, they do not know who is receiving that report. “Organizations will designate people in HR, compliance, general counsel’s office, etc., to be report managers,” he says. Report managers receive and address the anonymous reports via STOPit Messenger that acts as an anonymous two-way chat so they can then ask questions or gather more information. “Traditional 800-number reporting lines do not provide for direct and immediate follow up and often create more work for organizations and cost them valuable time when investigating an issue,” Schobel points out.

Smith believes that a stronger level of trust is signaled when employees understand how to make a report, that they are speaking up, and that the majority of reports are being relayed face to face to leadership or HR in the office.

Kaiser Permanente just partnered with STOPit (employees can opt in to download the app, says Schobel) and Convercent has worked with Airbnb, LinkedIn, Petco, and a variety of others. However employees choose to report, Schobel maintains that the average cost of a settlement associated with behavioral-based liabilities outweighs the initial investment in software or apps.

Last year there were over 46,000 retaliation claims that made it to the EEOC, up from about 22,000 10 years ago, says Schobel, and that doesn’t include state or local claims. “The problem exists, it’s clearly growing, and companies need a way to change behavior,” he says. “Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it is costing them in many ways.”

You already know that asking for help in your job search is a smart thing to do—that’s why you did it. Research suggests that the vast majority of job offers come by networking (no surprise there), but especially through those “weak connections” in your professional circle—that intern manager from a few years back, the marketing exec you met briefly at a conference and forgot to take out for coffee afterward.

Since it’s these sorts of people who actually tend to prove most helpful, it can be tricky to enlist their support. They’re not close friends or colleagues, so they may not have a strong personal stake in seeing you succeed. But many are willing to offer a hand, just as long as you don’t give them reason to regret it. Here are some of the most common ways job seekers wind up stepping on their contacts’ toes or wasting their time, and what it takes to avoid doing so.

1. Your Request Isn’t Specific Enough

If you’re approaching someone, tell them exactly what you want. That means first decide on what you want. In my 30-year career, I’ve had many people come and ask me to open doors for them. The ones I’m happiest to help know what they need from me or how they think I can be helpful, and they’re direct about asking for it.

Other people just say, “I want to pick your brain, I’m between jobs” or, “I’ve been downsized and I need to find a new position.” This makes the request more about their predicament than either the type of solution they foresee or my role in bringing it about. It usually just frustrates me when people network without a clear agenda. Be specific. After a few pleasantries, tell your contact what industry and companies appeal to you, explain why, and suggest a few ways that they might be able to help you.

2. You’re Underselling Yourself

Sponsors want to believe in you, so give them a reason. This means getting your pitch down before contacting them (and yes, networking for a job search really is about pitching yourself). It should be short and compelling. Don’t just say that you’re gunning for XYZ opening; explain why you believe you’re right for the opportunity you’re talking about.

Say you’re speaking to a well-connected friend of your parents, and you’re asking for a lead into that person’s company. Don’t be afraid to sound confident. Share your excitement about that opportunity and give three or four reasons why you think you’d be a real asset. Trust me, this won’t sound presumptuous. Whatever you do, don’t end with something like, “I think I’d like working there”—too wishy-washy. You’re trying to convince somebody you aren’t that close with to go to bat for you. Instead, say, “I’d love a chance to contribute to your firm.”

Senior people expect you to sell yourself enthusiastically. One CEO told me he looks for “fire in the belly.”

Related:Four Words And Phrases To Avoid When You’re Trying To Sound Confident

3. You’re Being Presumptuous

This is the flip side of the previous pitfall. You do need to sound confident and excited, but there’s such a thing as overdoing it. You don’t want to come across as boastful or entitled. A healthy dose of humility goes a long way toward building a respectful relationship with someone who’s helping you—but being humble doesn’t mean being timid or sounding tepid.

Several years ago an undergrad approached me while she was looking for an internship. Her dad was a senior executive, and he’d asked the HR head of his company—a friend of mine—to pitch in, so the HR head referred her to me. From the second I met her I caught a whiff of entitlement about her. She knew her father’s circle had some pull; when we spoke, it was almost as though she were doing me a favor by coming in. And when I mentioned I was writing a business book, she chimed in, “I can write that for you.” That was the last conversation we had.

4. You Back Off When The Going Gets Tough

Once you’ve asked for help, hang in there—your sponsor expects you to play the long game.

I know a vice chairman of a bank who went to bat for a VP on his team, and fought for that person when a more senior position in another department came up. But another senior exec wanted to secure that same job for his own protégé, and a political battle erupted. As soon as the competition spilled into the open, the first candidate pulled out of the running, not wanting “to cause a stir.”

Big mistake. The sponsor wasn’t just disappointed, his credibility was tarnished. He might think twice next time before lending a hand to another candidate at that level. Once you have someone on your side, don’t leave them standing on the battlefield alone.

5. You Let Your Manners Lapse

Being gracious is a must when you’re indebted to a well-connected person in your network, especially when they’re somewhat distant from you. Most people with the power to help your job search have gotten where they are because they’re good with people. They expect the same thoughtfulness of you—after all, those “soft skills” are a major job qualification.

I once got an acquaintance shortlisted in a job competition for which there were over 200 applicants. He was interviewed along with four others but ultimately didn’t land the offer. The biggest disappointment for me, though, was that he never wrote me a thank-you note—in fact, I never heard from him at all after that. Would I help him next time? Not a chance. Showing some gratitude is important in every networking relationship, not just when they lead to something.

Related:Why You Keep Getting Close But Still Aren’t Landing Job Offers

6. You Eventually Lose Touch

One easy way to show you’re grateful for somebody’s help with your job search is by staying in touch with them after it’s ended. They will feel glad to know that your career is progressing, and that they helped you at an earlier stage. So give them a call or send a note when you get your next big promotion. Congratulate them if they receive an award, or maybe invite them to speak to your team. If you read a book you think they’d like, drop a copy in the mail. Or just take them to lunch.

However you choose to do it, keeping the relationship alive long after your job search you will make your contact feel good about having helped you. Not only will that keep them open to future advice and assistance later on your career, it might also help you turn a “weak connection” into a strong one.

Last year, photographer Chris Crisman was at lunch with some associates when one of them mentioned that her friend recently switched careers and is now a butcher. Realizing that he had never met a female butcher, Crisman asked for an introduction and soon found himself photographing Heather Marold Thomason in her shop a few weeks later. That photoshoot became the catalyst for Women’s Work, an ongoing portrait series of women working jobs that conventional society would deem for men.

“I was raised to believe that I could do whatever I wanted to when I grew up. I want to pass down a similar message to my children and without caveats,” Crisman said in an interview with aPhotoEditor. “I want to raise my children knowing that their dreams have no limits and that they have parents supporting them to dive into anything they feel passionate about.”

Unilever Ventures is diving into meal kits with an investment in Sun Basket, a do-it-yourself meal-subscription service focused on organic foods and “clean” eating. The $9.2 million investment comes as Blue Apron, the country’s biggest meal-kit operator, is rumored to be exploring an IPO, prompting big questions from analysts and investors about the future viability of this burgeoning but still-unproven industry.

Over the last four years meal kits, boxes brimming with a curated selection of groceries and recipe cards, have made their way into only a small number of U.S. kitchens. But while most consumers aren’t rushing to sign up for subscriptions, a new report from investment research firm Morningstar suggests these instructive dinner boxes are slowly appealing to the hearts and minds—and stomachs—of American consumers.

“There is already compelling evidence that these services are changing consumer behavior, with loyal subscribers spending as much as 13% of their food purchases on meal-kit services,” the report notes. (Disclosure: Morningstar’s founder is Joe Mansueto; Fast Company’s parent company is Mansueto Ventures.) Furthermore, these boxed grocery collections represent a new channel for smart consumer packaged-goods companies like Unilever, which owns hundreds of brands including many recognizable names like Hellmann’s, Lipton, and Ben & Jerry’s. Unilever has already shown its eagerness to capitalize on new consumer habits with its $1 billion acquisition last year of Dollar Shave Club.

Sun Basket could give Unilever a direct pathway from its distribution centers to consumer’s homes. Rather than posing a threat to grocery or goods manufacturers, meal kits might prove to be a boon. The biggest example of how brands are getting into the space is through meal-kit-building services like Chef’d’s. The company has boxed up individual kits for partners ranging from the American Diabetes Association to Runner’s World. But it’s not just white labeling that allows grocers or CPGs a new channel to get to consumers—it’s through marketing. Meal kits can include relevant promotional products (a breakfast bar, a single serving of coffee, snack-size packaged almonds) based on consumer data.

Our Jamaican Jerk-Spiced Pork with nutrient-dense blueberry-kale salad is light and easy to prepare and comes together in just under 20 minutes. Our house-made jerk spice blend gives the simple pan-cooked pork chops just enough heat ot keep things interesting. Wanna give it a try? Click the link in our profile to head straight to our menu. #sunbasket · · · · · · #spring #spicy #pork #recipe #food #foodbeast #eeeeeats #feedfeed @thefeedfeed #dailyfoodfeed #foodstagram #f52grams #tastingtable #huffposttaste #instafood #love #buzzfood #yum

A post shared by Sun Basket (@sunbasket) on May 10, 2017 at 6:05pm PDT

Sun Basket CEO Adam Zbar sees data as his company’s big advantage over traditional grocery. He says based on a customer’s choices (how easy or difficult they like their meal prep to be, what foods constitute favorites or alternatively requirements, etc.), his company can serve them unique products. For now, those products are mostly recipes, but eventually those customer profiles might be used to suggest or promote other products. As an example, Unilever has tested Instacart as a method for sending out free samples to customers. (Unilever Ventures also invested in Instacart.)

Biggest Barrier To Success

While there appears to be lots of opportunity in the growing meal-kit industry, there are many barriers to success. Last year, research firm 1010 Data revealed that customers drop off after the first week of trying meal kits from Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and Plated. The report from Morningstar estimates that, a year later, only 8% to 18% customers remain.

Meal kits also have high marketing costs, with companies spending between $30 to $80 per customer, according to the same report. “If we shut down our marketing, we’d be profitable instantly,” Zbar acknowledges.

Then there is the issue of saturation: Well over 25 meal-kit companies are vying for their place at your dinner table. They will all tell you that the grocery business is a $650 billion dollar market, meaning there’s plenty to go around. But more than likely, a period of consolidation is coming.

In the niche healthy-eating segment, though, there are substantially fewer players. Those include Green Chef, Terra’s Kitchen, Purple Carrot, and Sakara. But Zbar argues his company’s focus on specific dietary regimens is helping it to develop a loyal customer base. “Our retention is over double when we focus on on a need, and you’ll see that gets even stronger as it moves from a diet to an issue like diabetes,” he says, noting that roughly 50% of Sun Basket’s customer base either require a paleo or gluten-free package.

The Amazon Question

In a room crowded with elephants, Amazon is perhaps the biggest. With its scale and huge distribution footprint, Amazon could be a substantial player in the meal-kit space. The Everything Store currently offers meals concepted by Martha Stewart and Marley Spoon on Amazon Fresh. But its partnership approach could actually be good for meal kits. “If we assume that just 5% of U.S. Prime members become regular users of Amazon’s meal-kit service offering, the U.S. meal-kit delivery services industry could grow to $10 billion by 2021, with roughly $3 billion coming directly from Amazon,” Morningstar notes.

So if meal kits can strike deals with Amazon as a distribution partner, the e-commerce giant could be a great marketing device, putting more meal kits in front of more people.