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Can viral funding campaigns level the playing field in politics?

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Grassroots funding is piling up behind plenty of Democratic campaigns this year, even those in which a candidate has yet to be named. Take the fund for Senator Susan Collins’s (R-ME) unnamed future Democratic opponent, which is crawling toward $4 million. The crowdfunding effort first made headlines when Collins called for an FBI investigation into sexual assault claims against then U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh before she would vote to confirm him. The fund raise, which seeks to unseat Collins in the next election, was an effort by local residents in Maine to pressure her to vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. It is just one of many huge crowdfunded raises to make headlines this year.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), who isn’t up for re-election until 2022, has raised $6.43 million this year as of September 30, to make sure she keeps her seat. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) took in $5.3 million over the same timeframe, more than twice what he raised in 2016. He isn’t up for re-election until 2020. Of course, politicians in the midterm race are seeing the biggest bump—Beto O’Rourke in Texas has famously raised over $70 million for his campaign.

Indeed, this money is putting firepower into races where candidates typically face little competition, turning them into battlegrounds. In California, Democratic candidate for Senate Andrew Janz has raised $8.3 million to challenge Republican incumbent Devin Nunes for a seat the latter has held since 2003. That’s in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Louie Campo, who in 2016 didn’t even raise enough money to file with the Federal Election Commission.

The intense divide between the parties has motivated average citizens to throw small bits of cash behind viral fundraising electoral campaigns around the country, making this typically sleepy midterm election one for the books. In mid-October, the money raised during this cycle boiled to over $3.9 billion, according to the Center For Responsive Politics—a new record. It’s a reflection of both a heated election cycle and the massive changes that campaign financing has undergone since 2010. While crowdfunding technology has been in use for over a decade, it’s only recently become ubiquitous. Technological advancement along with the popularization of e-commerce and the growth of private fundraising has created the perfect climate for small donations to make a big impact. The question is, how are these viral campaign windfalls affecting elections?

“The campaign funding process is extremely inegalitarian, and its gotten much much worse, thanks to a series of Supreme Court cases,” says Rick Hansen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. The most famous of the cases he refers to is Citizens United, the 2010 decision that upheld the ability of corporations to inject money into election campaigns. Another case, Speechnow.org v. FEC, allowed for the creation of “super” political action committees that don’t directly fund candidates or campaigns and, it was argued, can therefore raise unlimited funds. These organizations typically campaign on behalf of candidates and support them in other indirect ways. But it’s not just Supreme Court decisions that have led to this moment.

By the time of the Citizen United decision, politicians had already realized the massive opportunities in privately financing campaigns. In 2008, when Barack Obama made his first run for president, he refused the public financing option, choosing instead to raise unlimited outside money. He was the first major party candidate to do so since the fund was created in 1976. Obama went on to raise $750 million in campaign financing, while his Republican competitor John McCain, who chose the more restrictive public option, was only able to raise $87 million. In 2014, as president, Obama killed the public fund.

Now, comically large campaign war chests are the norm. In 2018, President Donald Trump’s campaign funding raised $950 million, while Hillary Clinton’s campaign funding surpassed $1 billion. The shifting campaign financing landscape has meant that corporations and wealthy donors, who can shovel large amounts of cash to a particular candidate, have more power to propel a winning candidate.

Hansen says crowdfunding allows less affluent individuals to give their candidate of choice a fighting chance—though it has its limits. “The rise of the small-donor, internet-fueled campaigning doesn’t displace the super wealthy, it just serves as a counterweight,” says Hansen.

Since 2016, CrowdPAC, the crowdfunding platform supporting the fund raise for Senator Collins’s opponent, has seen its user base grow 400%. Meanwhile, ActBlue, a political action committee that makes crowdfunding tools explicitly for Democratic candidates, has funneled more than $3 billion to candidates in four years. Its average donation size ranges between $35 and $40, but that figure has been ticking upward as the midterm election nears. In September alone, driven in part by Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Justice Kavanaugh, Americans donated $184,841,230 to candidates using ActBlue’s tools.

The people’s choice

What’s particularly interesting about the small donation revolution is that it has given legitimacy to candidates that may not have ordinarily been supported by institutional political organizations like the Democratic National Committee. For instance, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used grassroots fundraising and campaign tactics to beat longtime Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley. In the months since winning the primary, she has raised $1.8 million in her bid for the House seat. As of September, her Republican opponent Anthony Pappas had raised a mere $1,935.

Some Democrats have complained that giving enormous amounts of funding to candidates in regions that tend to vote Republican is a waste. A recent New York Times article called out O’Rourke in particular as a source of Democratic ire. Though he has gained massive ground in Texas, he is still expected to lose to Cruz, according to polls. “It’s great that O’Rourke has inspired so many people and raised so much money, and if he can spend it all effectively in Texas, he is well within his rights to do so,” Democratic strategist Matthew Miller told the New York Times. “But he could have a huge impact for the party by sharing some of it with the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee], so it could be spent in states where candidates just need a little extra to get over the hump.”

Hansen disagrees with the concern that viral campaigns like O’Rourke’s are taking resources away from other candidates. He says there isn’t a limit on how much money can be drummed up for a campaign. “We’re not talking about people making a life decision to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars, we’re talking about people deciding whether they’re going to part with $20 or $50,” he says. That sort of money isn’t hard to move, he says, noting that other candidates are not getting the same boost because they aren’t charming their constituents. While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DNCC) might like to move a little more money their way, Hansen suggests the onus is really on the individual candidate to make a connection with voters.

“It’s not clear that people would be parting with their money if they were not inspired,” he says.

This concern over viral campaign funding is partially rooted in the fact that the money is pouring in from across state lines. In 2018, 82.4% of contributions on Crowdpac’s platform went out of state. And it may be going to candidates that the DNCC wouldn’t necessarily chose. What is most remarkable about the rise of crowdfunding in campaign funding is its ability to put party nominations in the hands of individuals, rather than political factions.

Furthermore, distributing money to unlikely candidates like O’Rourke may have wider-ranging effects. “Even if O’Rourke loses, if he loses narrowly, his candidacy might pull some Democrats running for Congress or state or local office over the finish line in a way that they never would have had without him participating. It’s not really clear that it’s a waste of money if he ultimately doesn’t capture the seat,” says Hansen.

O’Rourke could also decide to send some of his leftover funding to support future Democratic candidates in the state.

Shadow money

The increase in cross-border small donations isn’t just an intra-party concern. It’s causing tensions between parties as well. In a recent tweet, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) accused Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke of taking money from donors in California and New York, affixing the hashtag #dontcaliforniamytexas alongside an image of the Hollywood sign edited to say, “Betowood.”

Though out-of-state funding is a component of every election cycle, some Republicans, like Cruz, are using this idea that money is coming in from more liberal areas as a cudgel in their campaign messaging. But it’s not just Democrats bringing in money in from out of state.

The Texas Tribune analyzed campaign donations to Cruz and O’Rourke between January and June of this year and found that 47% of individual donors who contributed to the Cruz campaign came from out of state. Only 33% of individual donor campaign contributions to O’Rourke came from out of state. As the report notes, those figures don’t account for $4.3 million (Cruz) and $9.3 million (O’Rourke) of donations under $200 that are not required to report their donors, making it unclear exactly how much money is coming from outside interests.

“In the end, any strategic advantage that either candidates can find, they will use, especially in a race that is perceived to be closer than expected,” says Joshua Blank, manager of polling and research at the University of Texas Polling Project. “I’ll put it this way: [Texas governor] Greg Abbott is not asking where Lupe Valdez raised her $300,000. He’s not even mentioning her, because it’s irrelevant to his campaign, and he’d like to keep it that way.” Valdez, formerly county sheriff in Dallas, is running as a Democrat for governor of Texas, a state that has had a Republican governor since 1995.  Her opponent, Greg Abbott, has raised significantly more money than she has.

Money isn’t everything

The role of out-of-state money may be overplayed. “Having enough money to get your name out there effectively is a necessary but not sufficient condition to getting elected,” says Hansen.

In 2016, Jeb Bush famously spent $130 million during the primary race, and it didn’t buy him the Republican nomination. In Florida’s gubernatorial primary, Democratic candidate Jeff Greene, a real estate mogul, came in late to the race, but spent $29 million of his own money on campaign efforts to try and pull ahead. In the end, the Democratic nomination went to Andrew Gillum, who was behind in the polls leading up to the vote. Likewise, Adam Putnam, who was fighting for the Republican nomination in Florida’s gubernatorial race, outraised Ron DeSantis, who ultimately clinched the nomination. “That’s also why self-funded campaigns don’t do as well as people would expect,” says Blank.

At the end of the race, candidates need more than messaging, they need voters to care about them. That is why grassroots funding, small donations from locals, is so compelling. “You need people to buy in,” says Blank. “If they’ve already bought in with their money, then they’re going to buy in with their vote.”


NYC Marathon 2018 live stream: How to watch the race and track runners without a TV

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Fall is in the air, and that means the race is on in Gotham. The TCS New York City Marathon takes place this morning (Sunday, November 4), with runners beginning at Staten Island and continuing 26.2 miles through all five boroughs before finishing at the south end of Central Park. You can find the full route map here.

The races start at various times throughout the morning, with the professional wheelchair division being the earliest, at 8:30 a.m. ET. The pro women begin at 9:20 a.m. ET, and the pro men begin at 9:50 p.m. ET. Details on all the start times are available here.

If you’re a cord-cutter looking to live stream coverage of the race, you have a few options, but you may need either a pay-TV login or a subscription to a standalone streaming service. I’ve rounded up some choices below.

  • Local live stream: ABC7 will broadcast the race in the Tri-State area, and you can stream it either via ABC7NY.com or through the ABC mobile app. You’ll need login credentials to a cable or satellite provider, unfortunately. Coverage goes from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET.
  • National live stream: ESPN2 will broadcast the race for people around the country. If you have a cable login, you can use the ESPN app or website. A number of standalone streaming services also offer ESPNs, including PS VueHulu With Live TV, and DirecTV Now. Some of these services are offering free trials, and they’re easy to cancel.
  • Live runner tracking: You can track individual runners and stay up to date on their progress by visiting the “live results” website. The site also includes leaderboards and map tracking. The tracking feature works on mobile devices and even offers unofficial results right after the race. Find it here.

Amazon is now offering free shipping for all holiday orders

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It’s not even Thanksgiving and the holiday shopping wars have already begun. Last week, Target announced that it was going to give customers free shipping for all online orders with no purchase minimum. This was a clear swipe at competitors like Amazon and Walmart.

Well, Amazon has struck back; now it too is offering free shipping with no minimum to all customers, according to Reuters. Before, the purchase threshold was $25. That leaves Walmart as one of the only remaining e-commerce giants requiring a purchase minimum for free two-day shipping. We’ll see if it makes an announcement in the coming days.

For now, non-Prime U.S. customers can use Amazon and not pay for postage. The deal begins today and lasts until Amazon can no longer guarantee the product will be delivered by Christmas.

The tiny 1960s startup that became a global tech-media empire

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Patrick J. McGovern (1937-2014) spent 50 years spreading information about computers and technology around the globe through publications such as PC World, Macworld, Infoworld, the Dummies books, and the company’s flagship, Computerworld. In 1964, when the company was new, the computer industry was still emerging, and McGovern’s first project was to collect some basic data about it. Glenn Rifkin’s new book, Future Forward: Leadership Lessons from Patrick McGovern, the Visionary Who Circled the Globe and Built a Technology Media Empire, chronicles McGovern’s decentralized, entrepreneurial, and highly successful approach to business. This excerpt covers the company’s earliest days and first forays into publishing.


Of all the leadership lessons he took to heart during his long career, Patrick McGovern intuitively grasped one of the most important early in his career. In order to build a successful enterprise, you have to identify a clear mission from the outset and find effective ways to share that mission with your people. Before Google and Facebook turned hiring into a science and carefully screened every new hire, McGovern pulled together an eclectic and enthusiastic group of young employees for his fledgling company in a less analytical but highly effective manner. He shared the goals and strategies, but he imparted the mission—to propagate the benefits, understanding, and acceptance of information technology around the world—through sheer determination and passion for what he was doing.

New employees got swept up by this large man with an outsized dream. For example, when he was 23 years old, Burgess Needle lived in the gray house at 355 Walnut Street in Newtonville, Massachusetts. A student at a junior college across the street, Needle rented an upstairs room from McGovern, who owned the house and had reserved the first floor for his startup, International Data Corporation (IDC). It was 1964, and McGovern was just a few years older than Needle but had the ambition of a seasoned business veteran.

On that first floor, McGovern had created his first industry report, which was essentially a census of all the mainframe computers installed in the United States. With IDC up and running, McGovern accelerated his already ambitious efforts. IDC would become celebrated for its role in counting all the world’s computers, a staple of its practice to this day. But for McGovern, this was just a beginning. He foresaw a burgeoning audience for market share data and forecasts. In order to create a steady revenue stream, he created the Gray Sheet, which found a big audience among computer makers and their corporate customers who were seeking vital information about the nascent technology landscape.

The Gray Sheet was the first publication of what would become a global publishing empire, but its humble beginnings offered a glimpse of McGovern’s tenacity in creating the mission that would drive him for the next 50 years. He wrote the newsletter himself from data gathered by a tiny staff of young part-time stringers, and his new assistant, Susan Sykes (who would soon become his wife), typed up his notes. The youthful staffers were on the phone calling the giant computer vendors and their customers to gather as much information as they could about computer installations.

In the first issue, dated March 23, 1964, McGovern laid out an impressively detailed look at the computer industry landscape, a marketplace dominated by IBM but with an array of hungry and aggressive competitors. “From all indications,” McGovern wrote, “1964 will certainly be a turning point year in the development of the American computer industry.” Indeed, as more and more corporate, government, military, and academic institutions began installing these massive computers, the information technology industry was in the midst of explosive growth. McGovern knew he was tapping into something potent and lucrative—a game-changing shift in both business and society.

The lead story trumpeted a yet-unnamed new IBM computer system, predicted to debut in April. The headline noted that IBM “Expects to Install 5000 of Its New Computer Systems in Next Five Years.” McGovern, who’d been editor of both his high school and college newspapers, boldly predicted sales of more than $3.5 billion for Big Blue over that period, a stunning figure for any manufacturer in those days. The new computer turned out to be the IBM System/360, the first “family” of small to large computers, which would transform the industry.

That first issue also promised a monthly assessment of sales from all of the computer makers, including major competitors such as Honeywell, Univac, Control Data, Burroughs, and RCA, along with critical analysis of each company’s sales efforts. Given the dearth of such vital information, he found a ready audience more than willing to pay.

By the late 1980s, McGovern’s IDG published an array of technology-related magazines around the world. [Photo: courtesy of IDG]
“What struck me was his work ethic,” Needle, now a Vermont-based poet and librarian, recalled about McGovern. “He would be there day after day, morning till night, 16 to 18 hours, putting together the newsletter. I’d be upstairs, but one time I walked downstairs at 3 in the morning and there was Pat ready to go out for a run. He was wearing a T- shirt, running shorts, and running shoes. He said, ‘I’m too revved up. I have to work this off,’ and he went up to the track at the local high school and ran a few laps to clear his head. He came back, showered, and went right back to work. His energy was unreal.”

Needle, a liberal arts major and budding writer, had worked at a local deli, but one day the deli burned down, and he was out of a job. McGovern said, “Come work for me.” Needle responded, “I don’t know what I can do for you.” Computers and math were anathema to him. But McGovern suggested he take a generic aptitude test to see if he was qualified. Reluctantly, Needle agreed. The test got progressively more difficult as it went along, treading into logic, semantics, and other esoteric fields.

“There were 33 questions,” Needle said. “By the time I reached 28, I just stopped and said, ‘This is as far as I can go.’ Pat glanced at it and said, ‘You’re hired.'” McGovern explained that anyone who scored over 27 would be bored out of their mind by the work. Under 17 and they wouldn’t be up for it. “You had 23 correct,” he said to Needle, “so you are perfect.”

Needle joined the young company as a part-time employee. He cold-called companies up and down the Eastern Seaboard and, using a questionnaire McGovern had written, asked the data processing managers what kind of equipment they had, what they were doing with the equipment, and what their needs were. Needle wondered why these giant computer vendors would buy data from this tiny unknown startup operating in a tranquil Boston suburb. Didn’t they have their own resources to get the information? And why would data processing executives talk to him about proprietary corporate information such as their inventory of computer equipment? McGovern told him, “They’ll talk because they are proud. They’ll be delighted to share this information. These are people who don’t have the opportunity to share with anybody. You’ll have to shut them up.” And he was correct.

McGovern, reacting to his recent conversation with the CEO of Univac, only saw opportunity. “We need this information,” the Univac chief had told him, and McGovern saw quickly that he was right. His research might seem like small change to these giants, but it could spawn bountiful leads for their sales forces. It was audacious, and it worked.

His readers, who were eventually willing to pay upward of $500 a year for a subscription, were on board because the information was scarce, timely, and valuable. “I would see him on the phone with people trying to track down a rumor about a new high-speed printer or some other computer peripheral, and you could tell the person was not very forthcoming,” Needle said. “Pat would talk, tell a joke, circle back, and finally he’d smile, tap the desk, and I would think, ‘Got it.'”

A potent opportunity

At age 27, McGovern displayed the kind of doggedness and risk-taking spirit that would characterize a later generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. From the first days, he understood his mission, and the company coalesced around that mission. Burgess Needle stayed with the startup for less than a year, choosing instead to pursue a literary career. But tens of thousands of others, from California to Beijing, would eventually join IDG and embrace McGovern’s mission. The people he hired learned fast, bought in, and became expert in their various industry niches. He had an almost mythical persona that attracted these young, talented writers, editors, artists, and salespeople who propelled the company to the top of the flourishing information technology media industry.

Just three years after he founded the company, in June 1967, McGovern published the first issue of Computerworld, a weekly newspaper that chronicled the news and events shaping the now mushrooming computer industry. In so doing, he took IDC into the emerging technology publishing arena, established a brand that would quickly become a dominant force in the industry, and began a period of sustained and phenomenal growth.

A scientist by nature, McGovern believed in the data. He was among the first in the computer industry to understand the value of surveying professionals in the information technology field. Computerworld emerged, not on a whim, but from listening to these early computer users voice their concerns. McGovern recalled an early research project IDC was conducting for a client to identify the sources of information for people who bought computer systems.

“We went down and interviewed about 40 people who were data center heads or computer center heads,” he said. “They were all telling us the same story. They said, ‘I get a tremendous amount of literature from the manufacturers.'” These computer makers and their marketing and advertising campaigns, replete with the biases of companies pushing their own products and agendas, seemed to be the sole source of information for prospective buyers.

“What I don’t get,'” said one data processing manager, “is visibility as to what my colleagues are doing. Because I know that they’re having the same concerns about acquiring and using this equipment effectively and well, and problems with some of the reliability of the equipment, and how to train their people. It is a shared challenge for us.”

In 1980, well before Western tech companies saw China as a big business opportunity, McGovern inked a deal with the country’s minister of the computer and electronics industry for a local version of Computerworld. [Photo: courtesy of IDG]
The trigger for McGovern came next. “There isn’t anyone who keeps us connected as a community, who keeps us up to date and aware,” the manager added. “There are so many things happening, we’d really like to get high frequency information.” Hearing that, McGovern saw through the frustration and angst to a potent opportunity. A weekly newspaper, staffed with talented journalists and editors, could find a ready audience, an audience willing to pay a subscription fee to get the timely and discerning information they needed. In creating Computerworld, McGovern set a new template for his mission.

He changed the company’s name to International Data Group, split IDC into a separate research arm, and soon after, decided to legitimize the “International” in the company name by taking his vision overseas. The mission crystallized. IDG would provide information services about information technology, and though the elasticity of the objective allowed for occasional twists and turns, the ultimate success was built upon a steadfast devotion, over the next half-century, to the core mission. It was a lesson from which McGovern would rarely deviate.

Teach yourself how to make your city better, in 101 easy steps

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It does not take too much travel throughout the United States to understand that in most places, people prefer to get around by car: Over 76% of people, according to the most recent Census data, commute in an automobile, by themselves. Even in a city like Seattle, known for a strong bus network and environmental commitments, nearly 30% of people drive to work solo. In places like Oklahoma City, which seem to have been designed for the car, only 2.2% of people do not.

In addition to this being an environmental threat–pollution from vehicles is one of the leading contributors to climate change–it also makes for a fairly isolated, frustrating experience of the city. That was urban planner Jeff Speck’s point when he wrote the book Walkable City in 2012. It wasn’t strictly about the problems of car dependency or the benefits of walking; rather, it was a book about what makes cities work well for the people in them, and “walkability” seemed to be a word that resonated with people. Rather than the solitary experience of being alone in a car, walkability brought to mind people mingling in welcoming streets or in parks–essentially, bringing cities to life, and advancing their own well-being in the process.

In the last decade, urban designers and transportation planners have begun to think more imaginatively about how to increase walkability in cities. Speck, in his past work, has tried to make the case for why they should do so. But he realized that convincing planners and designers to create more walkable, livable cities left out some important voices–those of the people they’re creating city plans for.

[Photo: Island Press]
“The planning of cities has always had an impact on people’s lives,” Speck tells Fast Company. “But now, the difference is: People are beginning to see that they have a role in it.” Speck cites two reasons. One: As technology has sprung up to make everything from government to transit more accessible and responsive, people feel more connected to the systems around them, and more able to influence them. And two: Younger people, especially millennials, are gravitating more toward living in cities, based on the quality of life there. Around 64% of young people who move pick a city on its livability before anything else, and only then look for a job. As a result, Speck says, they feel a sense of ownership over the place where they choose to live, and an urge to get involved with shaping it for the better.

His latest book, then, is an effort, Speck says, to weaponize his previous work “for deployment in the field.” Called Walkable City Rules:101 Steps to Making Better Places, it breaks down the principles of good, livable urban planning and street design concepts into 101 digestible rules. He hopes, as he has done with his earlier work, that transportation planners and urban designers will read it and get something out of it. But really, Speck says, he compiled it for regular, albeit civically engaged citizens, so they can pinpoint specific improvements they want to see in their cities, and advocate most effectively for them.

“People were going to public meetings and demanding change and more walkable cities,” Speck says. “But they found that they were a little bit stranded when it came to details.” While citizens, intuitively, were waking up to the fact that they wanted more connected communities and safer streets, they often didn’t know what, exactly, they should be pushing for. Exactly how wide should a proposed bike lane be? What improvements would make crossing a wide street safer?

The “rules” in the book span a spectrum of complexity. There are simple suggestions for people to digest and recommend, like how to build great and safe crosswalks (when possible, use texture like pebbled paint or rumble strips to demarcate them, and use bright, high-contrast paint colors to stripe them directly onto roads). Reading the book, you can easily imagine feeling empowered to bring these recommendations before a planning committee that’s mulling street improvements in your neighborhood. Speck also drops in useful facts, like streets without dotted lines tend to encourage drivers to go more slowly, and that intersections with four-way stop signs are safer than those with traffic lights because they prevent drivers from trying to zoom through on yellow lights, and instead encourage more awareness.

But Speck also tackles the bigger questions, like what’s at stake in advancing urban walkability, in compact and direct chapters. The book opens with a section on how to “sell” walkability, and Speck breaks down how walkable cities improve overall prosperity, health, environmental outcomes, equity, and community cohesion. “Walkable and bikeable cities are more equitable cities,” Speck says. While good pedestrian infrastructure and bike lanes tend to be equated with more prosperous neighborhoods, bicyclists and pedestrians are more likely to be low-income. Speck reminds readers to approach these conversations with the facts, and let real needs (like stopping climate change and supporting equitable mobility) drive policy and design decisions.

Ultimately, it’s everyday people who have to live with the decisions that transportation agencies and urban design firms bestow on their cities. Speck’s book makes the case that they can, and should, have a say in those decisions, and how they shape the landscapes of where they live.

Report: Apple cancels iPhone XR production boost

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The latest iPhone may be one of the hottest flagships this year, but it seems like Apple has miscalculated demand for the product if a report from Nikkei is accurate. The publication says Apple has told its assemblers Foxconn and Pegatron to halt plans for additional production lines for the iPhone XR. A source familiar with the situation said:

“For the Foxconn side, it first prepared nearly 60 assembly lines for Apple’s XR model, but recently uses only around 45 production lines as its top customer said it does not need to manufacture that many by now.”

All in all, if Apple really is opting to not enable extra production lines for the iPhone XR it means around 100,000 fewer iPhone XR models will be produced every day during the next few months. The iPhone XR has received glowing reviews from users and the press, but the phone is still one of Apple’s pricier models–which may be affecting demand. The phone starts at $749.

Yet Nikkei is also reporting that while Apple may be choosing not to initiate extra reserved production lines for the iPhone XR, the company is boosting its production of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus this quarter by an extra 5 million units. Those phones are about 20% cheaper than the iPhone XR, showing that demand for iPhones is still strong but that some people aren’t willing to shell out the big bucks just to have the newest model.

Amazon opens yet another 4-star store, this time in Berkeley

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The company isn’t wasting any time opening brick-and-mortar locations just in time for the holiday shopping season. It was just last week that Amazon opened its second 4-star store in Colorado after opening its first in New York’s SoHo in late September. Though the new store in Berkeley, California, had been announced as being in the works, its opening comes as a surprise as Amazon set it up pretty much under the radar, reports the Verge.

The store is located at 1787 Fourth Street in Berkeley and will open at 10 a.m. today. Regular store hours are from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. As with other 4-star stores, the Berkeley location will carry about 2,300 products that have received a rating of 4-stars or higher on Amazon.com.

10 ways women entrepreneurs can outwit “mansplaining” investors

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When will the business world learn that women are essential to the bottom line? Women make up almost half the workforce, we drive 70% to 80% of all consumer purchasing, and we serve as primary decision makers for household purchasing. So why do innovative women still have difficulty getting funding? The answer is simple: Despite a push from collectives such as All Raise, which aims to double the number of female venture capitalists by 2028, and exclusively female-focused funds such as F3, the majority of investors are men. Last year, only 3% of venture capital went to female founded companies. While female- and minority-focused funds exist, these sometimes feel like concessions of policy, not recognition of merit.

As a female CEO and investor who helps many types of businesses scale and raise funds, I work within this reality. Recently a Harvard Business Review study showed that male VCs viewed young male entrepreneurs seeking funding as “promising” and young female founders as “inexperienced.” From the outset, therefore, women have to overcome obstacles they didn’t create.

Before their first funding pitches, I always run my female clients through a personal boot camp to prepare them for male investors. Many of them bristle at this blunt talk about gender, but I tell them: Recognize the reality, then reboot and relaunch.

Here’s some of my advice that I have given to female founders to help them cinch the deal:

  1. Know your investors before they are your investors. And that means everything—their investing philosophy, what they have invested in before and why, and how it has worked out for them. But your knowledge should also expand beyond that. Do they have children? Where did they grow up? What are their hobbies? What sports teams do they like? You never know when you will have to leverage personal information to put your pitch over the top.
  2. If you’re not a techie, hire a great one. Then promote the tech side of your company and underscore the tech leadership’s bona fides, even if it isn’t you. Male VCs will want to know who is running the tech side of your business, as many assume “women don’t understand technology.” Answer this investor question before they ever ask it. And be prepared to talk technology until you’re blue in the face.
  3. Lock your numbers and the size of the marketplace you’re entering. In a survey conducted by Fast Company and Inc., one female founder put it best: Men are presumed to be competent while women “just don’t get it.” As a woman, you will constantly fight the inherent assumption that you know less about an industry than a man. Prove that assumption wrong by having financials, projections, and business metrics at your fingertips.
  4. Use analogies that men can relate to. Let’s say you’re pitching the next Spanx, men are not going to be able to relate. I mean how many men would be willing to put themselves into torture devices just to give the appearance of losing an inch of belly fat? Use a comparative narrative that envisions the men getting the same kind of upper hand that Spanx gives to women—e.g., Rogaine and Viagra are profitable opportunities of male insecurity—even if it’s mostly in their heads.
  5. Don’t let the conversation get overly personal. You’re not there to have your private life investigated. Tell them you’re going to work 24/7 to get your company off the ground and grow their investment. Personal conversations can lead to thoughts of children, and the next thing you know they’re thinking you’re about to have babies and your attention will be diverted from the company. Yes, many men think like this.
  6. Think lean and mean. Trim ALL the fat from your budget. It shows investors you won’t waste money on anything frivolous. Men view women as spenders, since they spend more at home and do most of the purchasing for the home. Let male investors know that you’re willing to build a company by using Starbucks as your office until you can’t avoid getting office space. You don’t have to promise to live on ramen noodles—but they don’t want you making six figures either.
  7. Don’t give up too much equity just because someone says yes. This is a very common problem that women face. It’s exciting to have someone believe in your vision, but if the terms are too onerous, future scaling and later funding rounds become complicated.
  8. Provide personal references from successful men. Sounds ridiculous, right? Nope. Investing is a male domain, so having male allies is critical. You can go further and create a board of advisors that is comprised of successful women and men who have committed to help nurture your company and whose advisement and endorsement will be invaluable.
  9. Dress for success for your meetings with potential investors. Mark Zuckerburg may be well known for only wearing hoodies and jeans, but he put on a jacket and tie when he recently testified before Congress. You mean business, so dress accordingly.
  10. And finally, be confident. I know that isn’t easy for many women, especially for those early in their careers, but think of how many brash guys with awful ideas have gotten funding (and subsequently burned through it). If you’re not naturally confident, practice until you give the performance of a lifetime. If you can’t convince your best friend to invest in your company in a practice session, then you’re not going to convince an investor who’s a total stranger.

Alexandra Stanton is the CEO of Empire Global Ventures LLC, a New York City-based international business development firm that assists companies in complex and untested markets. 


Scooter Braun didn’t learn everything from his dad–but what he did changed his life

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Everything changed when Scooter Braun’s dad walked into the room.

Braun, the entrepreneur, investor, and manager who discovered Justin Bieber and Psy, last month spoke at the Fast Company Innovation Festival about his professional triumphs and stumbles, topics he’s never been shy about discussing. But when Ervin Braun took a seat near the front of the 92nd Street Y for his son’s interview, it became clear the younger Braun had never publicly told those stories–including examples of his parents’ impact on him–with his father present.

Braun said his parents “demanded a lot,” but also instilled in him the idea that “you can do anything. That idea is unrealistic, but I didn’t know it, so I thought, ‘Why not?’ If we’re all created equal, why can’t I be that guy?”

“Success and failure are neighbors,” he said. “They live right next door. The only thing you can do is keep pushing through.”

Braun dreamed big in bringing an unknown Bieber and his mother from Canada to a townhouse in New York,  stashing them “illegally,” he joked, while he worked on getting Bieber the recording deal that would turn him into an international superstar.

Down to his last two months of savings, he called Ervin to provide an update and found himself breaking down in tears on the phone, wondering out loud if he’d ever bridge the gap from Atlanta college party promoter to international talent manager. His father, he recalled, encouraged him to use up the rest of his savings and see it through.

But luck, or fate, or God–Braun seemed to talk about them interchangeably–intervened. A one-hit wonder from the white rapper Asher Roth, also stashed in a Scooter Braun safe house–one that reeked of marijuana–provided the cash Braun needed to keep Bieber in the U.S. until he could seal a deal.

There was no gloat in Braun’s retelling of this chapter of his life. Rather, a sense of humility inflected every story. “I was a grown man crying on the phone with me dad. I came this close. When you ask me what the difference is, there is no difference. I got lucky. You work really really hard and sometimes it happens early in life, sometimes it happens later in life. That isn’t up to you. What happens early is when you quit. Someone upstairs was looking out for me.”

Even as Braun was chasing a career in talent management, he had an eye on investing. In his early twenties he tried to put money into Facebook when it was just a website for college kids, but narrowly missed his window as his contact, cofounder Eduardo Saverin, was already on his way out of the company. (A broken heart also kept him away from flying up to Boston to knock on Zuckerberg’s door and beg to invest, something that haunted him for years–until he heard recently that he never had a shot at being allowed to take a stake.)

While he missed out on the social network, he did manage to enter an investing round in Spotify, thanks in part to landing on Billboard‘s 30 under 30 list. Braun asked for contact information for his fellow listers, and sent out a mass email introducing himself and asking to be in touch. Among the recipients was the creator of a then-small Swedish music streaming startup curiously named Spotify: Daniel Ek. A relationship was struck, and the rest of that story will eventually be history.

“You’re not going to build the business or be involved in the business that changes your life by finding someone that’s already done it,” said Braun, near the end of his remarks. “It’s [going to be] your peers. If you bet on each other, that’s the life-changing moment. I wouldn’t have been in [Spotify] if I didn’t send that email to everyone my age and say, ‘Let’s get to know each other.'”

And lessons like that are why it’s worth getting to know Scooter Braun. These anecdotes are highlights from a nearly hourlong talk that touched on many more subjects, including getting fired and rehired by Ariana Grande, and the “bad years” of Justin Bieber, namely how he skirted the line between friendship and a working relationship to support the pop star’s eventual turnaround. You can watch the entire interview in the embedded video for more of Braun’s tales–well worth it, no matter how you feel about “Despacito.”

Converse finally designs winter-proof Chuck Taylors

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Chuck Taylors have a cult fan base–people who appreciate the shoes’ timeless American style. But you can’t wear them year round, unless you want soggy, gross feet. The solution? The Chuck Taylor MC18–the latest release from Converse.

It feels like a Chuck Taylor from another dimension. The outer sole is thick and treaded, like any utility boot you know. But the upper doesn’t have the thick weight of a leather Timberland. It’s made of a backpack-like material, coated in DWR and lined in Gore-Tex.

So on your foot, the new Mountain Club version of the Chuck Taylor All Star is a pleasing bit of cognitive dissonance. It’s light and hefty at the same time. It’s raw with uncured rubber, visible seams, and instructions like “keep double laced to hold firmly” printed in bold on the upper. But it’s also structurally sound and completely waterproof, with a gusseted tongue so you can stand in water or slush and keep your feet dry.

[Photo: Converse]

Mountain Club is the latest, winter seasonal evolution of Converse’s Urban Utility sneaker line, which first debuted last year. It’s designed for 365 days of wear in city environments–perhaps not the most extreme cold since it’s not heavily insulated, but certainly the wettest stuff winter has to throw at you. Coming in three reimagined silhouettes, including the classic Chuck Taylor, the military-inspired Fastbreak, and the low top One Star, Mountain Club will go on sale November 8, ranging from $120 to $150.

[Photo: Converse]

For Converse, Mountain Club is part of a one-two strategy of brand reinvention, which began when Nike alum Davide Grasso took over the company as CEO in 2016. The strategy is focused on diversifying Converse’s portfolio–which was too reliant on the legacy Chuck Taylor itself–and putting more, different products on the market. On one side, Converse is teaming up with artistic “co-creators” like Tyler the Creator, to push the company outside its comfort zone and attract new audiences. On the other side, Converse continues to listen to its customers, and mine its own archives for inspiration, considering how it can capture the latest trends in a way that feels authentic, and recognizable, to the brand.

Mountain Club is born from the second strategy. Converse realized that many customers couldn’t wear its namesake canvas shoes in wet and winter months. But Converse was founded in 1908 as a company that innovated in rubber, specializing in winter footwear. Only in 1915 did the company begin manufacturing athletic shoes. And during World War II, the company refocused on manufacturing all sorts of rubberized gear, including real-deal military boots dubbed Bunny Boots, for troops.

Vintage Extreme Cold Weather Boot. [Photo: Converse]

All of this history–but the Bunny Boot especially–was mined to create the Mountain Club aesthetic. “We’ve used the classic styles of extreme cold, and rubber,” says Phil Russo, global creative director at Converse. “We thought it made sense to go back in time.” 

A bit of that rawness is broadcast in all of the printing you can spot on the shoes themselves. The Chuck Taylor version features your size on the heel, an explanation of Gore-Tex on the ankle, instructions on how the tongue is fused to the upper along one seam, and the aforementioned verbage about proper lacing. It’s a lot of exposition to put on a shoe, and, no doubt, a nod to designers who modernized the approach, such as Virgil Abloh.

Most of all, though, the Mountain Club line acknowledges that utilitarianism is a major movement in fashion that’s slowly been on the rise for years now. The trend exposes the construction methods of apparel, by design, rather than hiding them behind clever or sleek artifice. Russo believes there are a few of reasons for it. He posits that in an increasingly digital world, analog objects, and all their nuances, become more appealing. But he also believes that it’s part of a general zeitgeist of trying to be more conscious consumers of the precarious world around us.

“I think consumers are more informed and curious, and there’s a certain beauty to revealing how things are built and what’s inside. People want to be inside many things, what’s happening with the environment, and our government,” says Russo. “When those things are beautiful, it’s much more gratifying.”

Especially when they keep your feet dry.

Bad actors are reportedly spreading lies about election interference

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We’re one day out from the U.S. midterm elections, and all eyes are on whether foreign actors are trying to interfere with this election. According to a new Axiosreport, some bad actors may be trying to spread a certain kind of misinformation: the narrative that the election has already been hacked.

According to anonymous sources at the top technology companies, the platforms are seeing “evidence that the same bad actors looking to interfere in the U.S. elections are now looking to spread false claims of meddling.” Misinformation comes in all shapes and sizes, and it seems this strand of fake news is about furthering the narrative that election meddling has occurred. The sources reportedly said they saw multiple examples of this, but the details of these purported claims were not disclosed.

This would be one way bad actors could create distrust among Americans–by making them question the validity of the outcome. Of course, this doesn’t mean that actual meddling is not happening. Still, this report means people should be extra vigilant when digesting online information.

You can read the full Axios report here.

SoftBank CEO won’t shun Saudi investment despite the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi

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SoftBank has been on a tear in the last few years thanks to its $100 billion Vision Fund, which allows the Japanese giant to scoop up smaller companies and invest in new technologies, as most companies can only dream of.

But the Vision Fund unexpectedly saw itself in a nightmare PR scenario after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was carried out in the Saudi Embassy in Turkey. You see, SoftBank took a $45 billion investment from the Saudi government for its Vision Fund–in other words, the Saudis bankrolled 45% of SoftBank’s fund. So what is SoftBank to do in the wake of worldwide condemnation of the Saudi’s actions?

It turns out SoftBank won’t do anything, instead continuing on with the Saudi investment in their Vision Fund as normal–for now, at least. Speaking to investors after the company’s second-quarter results Monday, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was an “act against humanity,” but he went on to say that SoftBank “cannot turn our backs on the Saudi people as we work to help them in their continued efforts to reform and modernize their society.”

Here are his full comments, which were translated to English by a live interpreter (via Axios):

We were deeply saddened by the news of Mr. Khashoggi’s murder and condemn this act against humanity and also journalism and free speech. This was a horrific and deeply regrettable act. Therefore we have raised our concerns with the party and we believe that this should not have happened.

The other day there was an event held by Saudi Arabia, and I did not participate in the conference and I cancelled the participation. However I did visit Saudi Arabia and the reason is because I wanted to meet directly with senior Saudi officials and wanted to raise our concerns with them. We want to see those responsible held accountable.

At the same time, we have also accepted the responsibility to the people of Saudi Arabia, an obligation we take quite seriously to help them manage their financial resources and diversify their economy. As horrible as this event was, we cannot turn our backs on the Saudi people as we work to help them in their continued efforts to reform and modernize their society. So we hope to see those responsible held accountable.

How to manage your biggest distractions when working from home

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Offering flexible work arrangements is considered the most effective perk for attracting and retaining talent, according to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management.

The benefit for employers is that people who work from home tend to be more productive and happier, according to a new study by Porch, a website that matches homeowners with home service professionals. However, there are unique distractions to overcome that don’t always happen in the office.

According to Porch, the biggest distraction is the television; 76.1% of remote employees have worked with the TV on. The next is doing personal tasks while on the clock, with 64.6% of remote employees admitting to doing things like paying bills or online shopping. Other distractions include taking a shower, running errands, exercising, and going out for coffee at 27.6%.

“A lot of employees are catching themselves doing most of these things, but they’re also far more productive,” says Chris Lewis, project manager for Porch. “You can feel more inclined to take a break when you’re not in front of others, and once you get into that calmer mindset, you get an extra boost to get through the day.”

But just like in the office, distractions can be harmful. “If you are the type of person who can run a few errands, meet a friend for coffee, and go to the gym, and still put in your full work hours, it’s fine to have flexibility,” says productivity expert Laura Stack, founder of TheProductivity.Pro. “But if you’re the type who is unable to complete work tasks because your personal activities are interfering, you need a bit more structure.”

Here are a few ways to stay productive while working from home.

Set Work Hours

Flexible working arrangements can mean flexible hours, but if you’re not good about getting your work done and your performance is slacking, you’ll need to treat your home office like a regular office and set structured working hours, says Stack.

Create a contract with yourself, such as “Work begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m., and I will take one hour for lunch,” she says. “Create and maintain the boundaries with yourself that will acknowledge your personality and allow you to be your best.”

Decide which distractions are allowed while you’re on the clock and which are not. “Perhaps you allow yourself to do laundry or watch television only during your official lunch hour,” says Stack. “Perhaps you can create an agreement with yourself that doctor’s appointments during the day are okay, but getting your nails done is not. You must be honest with yourself about how personal tasks are distracting you and resolve to change.”

Manage Distractions

Whether you work from home or in an office, the problem with distractions is that we’re conditioned to seek them out, says productivity expert Maura Thomas, author of Work Without Walls: An Executive’s Guide to Attention Management, Productivity, and the Future of Work. “Our typical environment undermines our attention span,” she says. “Our attention is diverted every 30 to 120 seconds from things like email. We’ve been habituated into distraction. We all suffer from this; it doesn’t matter location.”

The solution is attention management, says Thomas. “It’s about focus, mindfulness, single-tasking, and an ability to be present and engage in flow,” she says. “Attention management is your ability to manage your attention; it’s the antidote to constant distraction.”

The first thing to do is to control your environment and create boundaries, says Thomas. “If other people are home when you’re working, make sure they know when you’re not to be disturbed,” she says. “Create boundaries around your environment. If you honor them, others will.”

“Sit down and make a list of your worst distractions, and then write your own rules on how to counter them,” adds Stack. “What will be your personal agreement with yourself? When you stop doing these things and refuse to bust your own boundaries, you will become more successful and more productive.”

Having discipline means that you make every effort to be aware of your weaknesses and create rules about what you can and cannot do during the day, says Stack. “If you struggle with turning on the television, put the remote in a drawer and post a sign on the television that says, ‘DO NOT WATCH,'” she suggests. “If you have the urge to take a nap, make your bed in the morning and put a sign on it that says, ‘DO NOT NAP.’ If you have your rules posted, it’s a constant reminder of your agreement with yourself.”

Manage Technology

Also, control your technology. “The more we allow it to interrupt us, the more we come to expect it,” says Thomas. “It keeps eroding and chipping away at our attention span.”

Reclaim your ability to focus by closing out email and working in offline mode, suggests Thomas. “Silence your phone or put it on the do-not-disturb setting,” she says. “Shut down Windows and do only one thing. If you need to, set a timer and commit to only doing this one thing for 20 to 45 minutes. Longer than that and it’s hard to stay focused; you get thirsty, need to stretch or get itchy to check your devices.”

Schedule Breaks

The best way to work is to focus on the task in front of you, then take a break, says Thomas. “The break has to be a different activity,” she says. “If your job is to write, don’t take a break that involves reading. It’s not a big enough break for your brain. Instead, walk the dog, throw in some laundry, or sweep the floor. This sends oxygen to your brain to keep you more alert.”

Everybody has the same amount of time, says Thomas. “Time is not the problem; distractions are the problem. You need attention-management solutions, not time-management solutions.”

Audio fitness app Aaptiv is headed for world domination

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Dubbed the “Spotify of fitness,” Aaptiv allows users to stream 2,500 guided audio-fitness classes for nearly every modality, including running, yoga, cycling, boxing, and even meditation and stretching. On average, 30,000 Aaptiv classes are taken each day.

Now, the popular app intends to dominate the international market. On Monday, the three-year-old company announced it is available in 20 countries. This includes a large chunk of Europe (France, Spain, Norway, etc.) as well South America, Australia, Mexico, India, South Africa, and more. The expansion begins with its current English offerings, followed by localized editions in 2019.

Founder and CEO Ethan Agarwal [Photo: courtesy of Aaptiv]
For its localized content, Aaptiv predicts it will start with Germany, as well as a Spanish offering for a number of Spanish-speaking countries. For each new country edition, the team intends to work with native fitness trainers, and will research modalities that best interest the region.

“We have to localize it for each country,” CEO Ethan Agarwal tells Fast Company.“That’s the only way this is going to work. There’s such significantly different cultural elements across different countries as related to fitness.”

Audio-first platform

Several years ago, Agarwal was on the road four days a week. He was, at the time, working in finance and consulting, and the grueling business travel schedule made it increasingly difficult to shed the 40 pounds he put on in graduate school. Wherever he went, he attempted to find a fitness trainer, but it soon became too frustrating.

“It turned out that it was hard if I was in a major city–and if I was in a smaller city, it was basically impossible,” recalls Agarwal.

Boutique fitness studios often weren’t any easier: Many were booked well in advance or nowhere near his lodgings. Some didn’t offer the modality he was interested in. It was then he realized that a modern fitness regimen should be far more accessible.

“Having a trainer and having guidance shouldn’t be about, can you book a class in time before it sells out, or that I have to show up at a specific place at a specific time, or I have to use a credit system to get access to training,” says Agarwal, referencing popular platforms as such as ClassPass.

“I wanted to create a product that brought really high-quality training to a very large market. I wanted to build something that removed the barrier that most people experience when trying to get great training, and that barrier can be financial, accessibility, or that they don’t know what to do.”

[Photo: courtesy of Aaptiv]
The frustrated consultant understood the future was in digital content, which consumers could use at their leisure, whenever and wherever they were. And the most obvious choice was video, already a competitive landscape with players like DailyBurn. (Today, it’s a far more crowded market that sees the likes of fitness influencers such as Kayla Itsines and boutique studios like Tracy Anderson.)

Except Agarwal didn’t think video was the best medium for exercise. In fact, he thought it often makes for a lousy experience.

Take, for example, running, which is the country’s most popular workout—by far. SoulCycle might boast an impressive 300,000 members, but there are 40 million Americans who run regularly. They obviously aren’t looking at any screens while on the road.

“If I’m going to be building a product that works for the most number of people, I can’t ignore the largest demographic, which happens to be runners,” stresses Agarwal. “So we focus on audio, which is the best delivery mechanism for all of this content because it allows for freedom of movement. You’re not anchored–staring at a screen while you’re trying to work out.”

The same goes for yoga, for which practitioners bend themselves into a number of varying positions that don’t always permit the head to stare forward, or even upright. If you’re in downward dog, you can’t crane your neck to glimpse the next move; you need to rely on the audio for commandments.

As Agarwal says, “It’s not that it doesn’t help the experience–it actually makes it worse. You’re doing the pose wrong by looking up to see the screen.”

[Photo: courtesy of Aaptiv]
For running or stretching, the audio method works well since it’s a mostly straightforward exercise in which fans understand the basics. But for categories such as weight lifting, body conditioning, or yoga, relying on audio–without visual aid–assumes one knows the poses or correct posture. In that sense, audio works as a great trainer or supplement for those who are already well versed in certain modalities. It’s not so much a teacher, but a guide.

Aaptiv launched in early 2016 and is now the No. 1 audio fitness app on the iTunes App Store, with more than 200,000 members. There are more than 26 modalities and counting. Membership runs $14.99 per month or $99 for a year.

Each class melds instruction with hit music in the background, be it hip-hop, electronica, or any array of popular tunes. That means you can listen to Beyoncé as you’re told to perform a full minute of burpees in the luxury of your living room.

What separates Aaptiv from competitors–and solidifies its reputation as a respected fitness trainer–is its ability to give members a thorough program instead of just one-off classes. When members sign up, they answer a host of different questions meant to gauge their fitness and health goals, as well as preferences (indoor or outdoor, beginner or advanced, etc.).

They are then given a set list, if you will, of day-by-day classes to get them to where they want to be, often with a medley of different exercises. The variety of classes is imperative: To better compete in a marathon, for example, you need to also work on core strength.

Each time a member finishes a class, they are notified of which class to take next. Or if they do legs one day, they’ll be recommended to do core the next. Sometimes, though, the app might suggest a rest day.

Aaptiv trainers [Photo: courtesy of Aaptiv]
“We invest a lot of time and energy in our programming such that it’s very journey-based,” says Agarwal. “So when you say, ‘my goal is to lose weight, be stronger, and I work out at home and I’m currently an intermediate athlete,’ we’ll develop programs that are custom designed for you every week.”

Aaptiv also built a solid following around its trainers, who each boast a distinct style and personality (and, often, distinct musical artist preferences). Agarwal says he’s “very, very picky” about his fitness instructors, noting that in the last year the company received 4,000 applications. Only a few make the cut: Aaptiv has five full-time trainers, with another 17 on a part-time basis.

Pioneering forward

So far, the formula works well beyond what anyone might have predicted for audio fitness. Over 18 million of Aaptiv’s classes have been taken to date, and the young startup raised $50 million in funding in the last 20 months. Agarwal says customer retention rate and engagement speaks for itself: Aaptiv users work out three times as frequently as the average American who works out.

Currently, the majority of Aaptiv’s community skews female, college-educated, under 34, with household income around $100,000. Most already have a gym membership or boutique fitness regimen, notes Agarwal, but they find that Aaptiv serves as a worthwhile add-on–either to fill in for the days they don’t head to the gym, or because the experience trumps what they get in a live class.

As the health and wellness category continues to explode, the U.S. fitness market has swelled to more than $30 billion, with approximately 16% of the population holding a gym membership card, reports the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association. But many consumers are contemplating taking the workout indoors with popular platforms such as Peloton.

A new report from user insights platform Alpha saw that 54% of Americans who work out at least once a month are interested in buying an at-home fitness system. Of those surveyed, 34% claimed they have “no room in their home or apartment” for the equipment, while 24% said the trendy systems were too expensive. Aaptiv, meanwhile, requires little to no equipment.

Aaptiv’s classes mostly see seasonal popularity, in that people prefer outdoor workout instruction in the summer and marathon training in the fall. More and more, the company is even starting to play with more niche and specialty categories, like maternity fitness.

Moving forward, Aaptiv is adamant about immersing itself in workout trends abroad and how they can best localize content in places like Australia, India, and Italy. Agarwal is confident that Aaptiv’s wide range of content (“everything under the sun,” he says) will prove itself useful as it enters the international market.

“We were the pioneers in this space,” says Agarwal. “We were the first ones to come out with it. We’ve been doing it longer than anyone else. As a result, we know how to build really high-quality audio classes–like this is our core product, our core functionality.”

How McDonald’s designs its wildly popular sweepstakes

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On Halloween, McDonald’s wrapped up its first sweepstakes in nearly two years: Trick. Treat. Win! The scale of the game was almost unfathomable. It awarded 140 million prizes to people, ranging from free McFlurrys to televisions to Hyundai Santa Fes, just for buying a meal. Since it featured QR-coded game pieces that required an app to unlock, McDonald’s leveraged the promotion to coax 5 million people to download the official McDonald’s app in the last week alone, propelling itself to the second spot in the App Store.

[Image: McDonald’s]
“[We’re] sitting there with YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat,” says Kenny Mitchell, McDonald’s VP of marketing. “That’s pretty impressive for a food and beverage company.”

McDonald’s pioneered fast food sweepstakes, today a promotional category unto itself. The company has used these limited-time games to boost customer spending for 40 years, offering the chance to win luxuries ranging from actual diamonds to free hash browns. The success of this tact is obvious in retrospect: People love winning stuff! But McDonald’s birthed an entire genre of sales tactics when it started giving out gold in the 1970s, and over the course of four decades of these contests, the company has learned a lot about customer behavior–not just how to tease the prospect of winning, but how to make everyone who plays feel like a winner to keep them coming back.

[Photo: courtesy McDonald’s]
The “peel and play” games that McDonald’s is now known for kicked off nationally in 1978 with Guess the Weight of the 50 Pound Hash Brown. Imagined as a promotion for hash browns that were a new menu item for McDonald’s at the time that Americans weren’t so sure about yet, the game introduced the mechanics of peel-off stickers with scratch cards. Players were prompted by the sticker with a multiple choice to guess the weight of the hash brown. The whole idea was a joke–of course the answer was “50 pounds”–but any guess would earn you a free hash brown anyway.

Another promotion that ran that year in northern California and Nevada was dubbed Big Mac Gold Rush, and it gave customers scratch-off game pieces that they could affix to a game board. The prize? Up to $125,000 in cash or gold. The game itself was essentially just modified Bingo, played one trip to the golden arches at a time. The idea scratched a cultural itch: In the mid ’70s, much of the world was in full-blown Bingo fever, as the game reached peak popularity (in the U.K., at least) since it was first created during the Great Depression.

[Photo: courtesy McDonald’s]
When McDonald’s introduced the One Million Dollar Diamond Hunt in 1979, it didn’t just offer big financial prizes in cash or gold. It also offered prizes in diamonds. Literal diamonds. The promise of gold and gems seems downright anachronistic just a few decades later. “I think they reflect the period of the time, or popular culture of the time, or what was the popular television or game program,” says Mike Bullington, McDonald’s internal archivist. “They really are a reflection of the current time when the game is being offered, for the most part.”

[Photo: courtesy McDonald’s]
Indeed, the One Million Dollar Diamond Hunt feels like it could have been straight out of a 1970s game shows, like The $10,000 Pyramid or Wheel of Fortune, both of which launched that decade. In these old sweepstakes, the art is hand-drawn, and the copywriting is downright cheesy. One ad features an old timey prospector holding a pan full of gold coins. Local “cash for gold” ads come to mind when scanning these strange artifacts.

It wasn’t until 1987 that McDonald’s released what is by far its best recognized sweepstakes, Monopoly. The mechanics from earlier games were largely unchanged: Customers still collected game pieces by buying food, then filled a board over time to win prizes. But by teaming up with the family-friendly Hasbro game, McDonald’s ditched the get-rich-quick aesthetic for a wholesome board game–promising that “Monopoly has come to life!” The prize pool diversified around this time, too. With Monopoly, you could still win $1 million, but you could win cars, houses, and trips, too.

[Photo: courtesy McDonald’s]
The impact of Monopoly on McDonald’s’s bottom line has been incredible. With over 14,000 restaurants across the U.S., just a 1% increase or decline in sales quarter to quarter is big news for the company. Monopoly has successfully boosted store sales numbers as much as 5% for McDonald’s in the past few years. In a world where you can get a burger anywhere, McDonald’s is the only place that might score you both Boardwalk and Park Place for the effort.

[Photo: courtesy McDonald’s]
As Mitchell explains, these sorts of sweepstakes have never run on a predictable cadence. They might be yearly, or every two years, not necessarily coordinated to any season. The sweepstakes was the event. But through market research, McDonald’s continues to optimize its limited run events–and you can see that in Trick. Treat. Win! It’s the first time McDonald’s has used a holiday to launch a sweepstakes, rather than a menu item like the Shamrock Shake.

“Candidly, because of the success and power of some of the programs we’ve done in the past . . . they were less connected to tentpole,” says Mitchell. “As we were doing research to continue to evolve our promotions, we learned connecting to a tentpole would give us a tailwind.” In other words, running an exciting sweepstakes during an exciting holiday could make it more exciting. Don’t be surprised to see McDonald’s launch more holiday-themed sweepstakes in the future.

The company also found that the more people win, the more engaged they become in these promotions. With Trick. Treat. Win!, customers had a 1 in 4 chance of walking away with a prize–a high probability that virtually guarantees an eventual win. “These are often the things that almost build upon themselves. You play a program, win something, you get excited. It’s not just, I played. I won! It’s a bit of a self fulfilling cycle,” says Mitchell. “That part is really important. We’ve learned with this consumer research, if it feels like the chance to win something feels too distant, it really takes away from the motivation to participate and engage. We want it to be accessible.”

It’s a game where you can’t lose–and in an era when luxuries are scarce for most of America, these sweepstakes continue to be successful because they’re designed to fulfill the promise of a better life . . . even if that promise only ends up being free french fries.


The super rich continue to control how change gets made

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The rich are making the richest cause groups richer–or at least extremely well funded. That’s the takeaway from a new report by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which found that the 100 highest-funded nonprofits in America drew 11% of all cash and stock donated to charity last year. That accounts for about $47 billion in contributions. But the real problem is not just that the biggest charities are vacuuming up the cash, it’s where that cash comes from: a few wealthy individuals.

“Institution that are powered by the wealthy are the ones that did very well,” says Chronicle of Philanthropy editor Stacey Palmer, who called the continued decline of groups backed by middle class givers somewhat expected–but still startling.

Some of those folks might not be donating anymore because money is tight or they don’t trust cause groups. But Palmer points out that there’s a potentially more disruptive force at work: “It could be the charities are turning middle-class donors off with all this focus on the wealthy,’ she says. “What differences does my $10 make if you’re receiving all these million-dollar gifts that people are getting all the attention for?”

The Chronicle‘s analysis compares how giving among top groups shifted over the last decade. Overall, nearly half of the most heavily backed institutions were colleges and hospitals, places that typically benefit from major gifts. Contributions to that sector rose an average of 44% over the last decade, including a 202% increase at Mayo, 100% increase for University of Notre Dame, and 77% increase for University of Nebraska.

In comparison, the rest of the top nonprofits experienced an average growth of less than 4%. Groups that typically rely on lots of smaller gifts fared particularly poorly. Funding for the Jewish Federations of North America, for instance, dropped 41% while there was a 28% decrease at United Way Worldwide. Another organization that took a big hit was the American Cancer Society, whose funding levels decreased 34%, perhaps because there’s a growing number of specialized health-related organizations that people are donating to instead.

Another trend is that major donors themselves are seizing control of cause work by starting their own philanthropies. The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a healthcare initiative started by tech power couple Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, received $580 million in 2017. Imagine if that money was spread around elsewhere. The Obama Foundation’s efforts to increase civic participation received more than $232 million.

Americans gave a record $410 billion in 2017, but obviously not everyone’s interests continue to be well represented. “One of the things that middle class donors tend to support are local causes and social services groups that benefit the community,” Palmer says. “So that’s where the biggest losses are probably coming from.”

A fake verified “Elon Musk” tried to scam people out of bitcoin on Twitter

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Just 18 hours ago, the publisher Pantheon Books was tweeting about, well, books.

This morning, however, its Twitter avatar was Elon Musk and the account had been retweeting nearly everything the Tesla founder writes. This is not because Pantheon has an adoration for the controversial billionaire. Rather, the account appears to have been hacked–which, of course, is something that happens quite often on Twitter. But what makes this situation a little more interesting is twofold. One, the hackers were able to impersonate Elon Musk—right down to his familiar Twitter profile picture. And two, Pantheon is a verified Twitter account with a blue checkmark.

As a result, when my editor was scrolling through Twitter this morning, he noticed a promoted tweet from a blue checkmarked account claiming to be Elon Musk, which is pretty convincing at first glance. It announced that he was giving away 10,000 bitcoin to his community and was doing it via a “crypto-giveaway.” All people had to do was send 0.1 to 2 bitcoin to a wallet–for which the account provided handy QR code–and then, poof, they would be “entered” in this supposed giveaway.

Of course, this wasn’t actually Musk. It was a scam–one that has been going on for a while now. But given that the hackers both seized on a verified account, and were able to place an ad promoting this supposed crypto-giveaway, it’s possible that some people took the bait. And it points to a big vulnerability in ad platforms like Twitter and their vetting processes.

Though the Pantheon account was apparently seized for a few hours, in the time it took me to write these paragraphs, the tweet was taken down and the account seems to be in the process of recovery. Still, it raises the question of why Twitter’s ad system was unable to see any of the red flags at play. Not only did the account change its display name and avatar to those of a frequently impersonated celebrity, but it also tweeted about a bitcoin giveaway, which is a common scam. And it was apparently able to amplify this message by promoting the tweet.

I asked Twitter for comment about this and will update if I hear back.

We’re just a day away from the election. For months, we’ve been asking questions about automated digital advertising systems. While Facebook and Twitter try to make it clear that they want to make it harder for bad actors to send ads on their platforms, every day we see just how easy it is. Sometimes, the ads are targeting white supremacists, other times they’re promoting a bitcoin scam.

Whatever the post is, the underlying problem remains.

Ask these 10 questions to understand the real truths about a company culture

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If you want to know what it’s like to work for a company, you can’t exactly waltz up to a recruiter and ask “What’s your company culture like?” Besides the fact that company culture covers a whole lot of ground and summing it up in one answer isn’t totally possible, it’s more likely than not to yield a polished, marketing-approved answer than a candid discussion.

“If you are asking… about the culture, [recruiters] will know that and attempt to tell you what you want to hear,” says Henry Goldbeck, president of Goldbeck Recruiting. “So, if you are going to ask about company culture, it’s better to ask specific questions.”

There are a number of questions you can ask during an interview that, while seeming fairly straightforward on the surface, can help uncover deeper intel about the inner workings of a company. We asked a handful of career, recruiting, and HR experts to share a few of their favorites–keep these in mind the next time you’re in an interview and want to know the scoop.

1. How long have you been with the company?

“This is a question to ask each of your interviewers. If everyone you meet has only been there a short time you need to probe further,” says career counselor and executive coach Roy Cohen. “Unless the company is a startup, expanding rapidly, or the department is newly established, this is a serious red flag. High turnover could be a sign of low pay, long hours, lack of opportunity for career advancement, or incompetent management.”

2. What was the last big achievement that was celebrated?

This question “gives [interviewers] the chance to reveal if employee efforts are acknowledged and appreciated and if people enjoy having company parties/gatherings,” says Valerie Streif, senior advisor at career services company Mentat. “If they don’t do anything to celebrate, it may be a thankless and cold environment.”

3. What’s the dress code like here?

“Companies that have no dress code or a very loose one are often less traditional than companies with full business-dress requirements. Certainly, there are exceptions, but I rarely find a company where everyone wears a full suit and tie or skirt suit every day that also has dogs in the office and nap rooms and free beer,” says Jill Santopietro Panall, HR consultant and owner of 21Oak HR Consulting, LLC. “Be careful, here, though, because an informal dress code doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s less pressure or stress. Many tech companies have no dress code but are also total pressure cookers. Appearance standards are only a small clue to the environment, not the whole picture.”

4. What activities do you offer for employees?

“If companies have softball leagues, trivia teams, company outings, retreats or other planned social events, it can often give you a clue to how important they think it is for coworkers to LIKE one another, not just work together,” Santopietro Panall says. This can be especially important if you “have recently moved, are entering the workforce after college or anyone else that needs a social aspect in the workplace,” adds Nikki Larchar, cofounder/human resource business partner at simplyHR LLC.

“On the flip side, that kind of togetherness may not be for everyone,” Santopietro Panall acknowledges. “If the thought of socializing with your co-workers leaves you cold, you may want to look for a company with a more 9-5 environment.”

5. What was the department’s biggest challenge last year and what did you learn from it?

It may come across as an obvious question, but it actually does a great job at revealing “whether or not the company blames processes or people when something goes wrong. The former indicates that they are a continuous learning organization and the latter may be a sign of a blame culture,” says Mary Grace Gardner, career strategist at The Young Professionista. “Listen to who or what gets blamed for the failure and if they have taken steps to learn from it.”

Keep an ear out for how their answer hints at the degree of politics present in the office, too. “Company politics play a huge role in overall job satisfaction, and it’s important to know ahead of time how decisions are made and conflicts are resolved,” shares Natasha Bowman, Chief Consultant at Performance ReNEW and author of the upcoming book You Can’t Do That At Work! 100 Common Mistakes That Managers Make.

6. How much time do the owners/leaders/founders spend in the office?

“This question tells you whether or not you have leaders in place who are in touch with the work and making knowledgeable decisions. The best and brightest ideas oftentimes come directly from the people actually doing the work, so if a leader rarely spends time with staff, it points to a lack of innovation and support in their culture,” says Gardner.

This question may not be quite as important to ask of a large business, but “in a small business, that interaction with the top level may be key to you getting ahead, being able to get things done and having that person’s vision be carried out by their team,” Santopietro Panall says. It “might also give you a key to the level of the workaholism that you can expect there. If the recruiter says ‘oh, our CEO Sally is here 90 hours a week, she never takes a day off!’ you’re going to know that the culture is going to be very focused on putting in a lot of hours with a lot of face time.”

7. What do people on the team that I’d be joining do for lunch every day?

“Finding out what people tend to do on their lunch hour will tell you whether they are slammed with work, don’t want to spend time with their colleagues, or tend to be social and enjoy each other’s company,” Bowman says. “This information can also tell you whether or not your potential colleagues might be more extroverted or introverted. Depending on your own preferences, this response can give you some valuable insight into the team that you’re joining.”

8. How do you measure success and over what time frame? How are these metrics determined?

If you want to avoid a boss with outrageous expectations, this is the question to ask. “Before you accept an offer you need to know that your new boss has realistic expectations with respect to what you will accomplish and by when,” Cohen says. “No matter how attractive an offer may be, if you do not, or cannot, deliver results you will fail. So, if you are told that the bar is outrageously high and you don’t have enough time to come up to speed, think twice before accepting the terms without discussion or negotiation.”

9. Would you be willing to show me around the office?

This question is probably best saved for a last-round interview so you don’t seem too intrusive, but “taking a walk around the workspace is a great way to get a real feel for the day-to-day culture,” Larchar says. “Are individuals interacting with one another? Do the workers look stressed? Are the individual workspaces decorated? What is the setup of the office? Does the work space seem inclusive? How are the departments organized? If you thrive on working with others, you’ll want a work environment where that feels natural.”

One thing Santopietro Panall recommends keeping an eye on in particular is how many senior-level employees have their own offices. “It’s a clue to how structured and hierarchical the company is,” she says. “Companies with few or no private offices tend to be less top-down than companies with a lot of private offices or a whole CEO floor. There’s a strong trend, in many businesses, of removing private spaces in offices and making all space communal — some companies are loving it and finding it effective and others are dreading it, but whether a company would even consider it is a sign of how much they are trying to embrace a certain kind of flexible, collaborative work style.”

10. Does the company give back to the community? In what ways?

“If it is important that you and the company are aligned in terms of shared priorities such as corporate responsibility or giving back, then understanding their level of involvement offers important insight,” Cohen says. “Some companies make a point of promoting their community activities. Others view philanthropy and volunteering as a distraction. At the very least, if there is a disconnect, then you will not be disappointed when the company opts for limited commitment.”

“This also ties back into the question regarding social activities,” Larchar adds. “Are there events outside of work that the company supports and do they align with what you believe in or value as an individual?”


A version of this article originally appeared on Glassdoor and is reprinted with permission. 

These two enormous cubes of blood make an important point about refugees

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In late 2019, the steps of the New York Public Library will be filled with a huge sculpture: two cubes weighing a metric ton each, both filled with frozen blood. One cube will hold blood donated by at least 2,500 resettled refugees; the other will hold blood from 2,500 non-refugees. The unlabeled cubes will look, of course, exactly the same.

[Image: Marc Quinn Studio]
“The concept of the sculpture came from the very simple idea that my blood and your blood is the same, and that my blood and refugee blood is the same–that under the skin we’re all the same,” says U.K. artist Marc Quinn, who will donate the proceeds from the $30 million sculpture, called Odyssey, to organizations that support refugees. Half will go to the International Rescue Committee.

[Image: Marc Quinn Studio and the Norman Foster Foundation]
In the past, Quinn used his own blood to build a series of self-portraits. “The evolution of using blood in Odyssey is that this is not a portrait of one person, but of at least 5,000 people,” he says. “Half of them refugees who settled into Western countries, and half of them ‘non-refugees,’ if that can mean anything in a country like the United States, which is predominately built on immigration.”

On the project’s website, anyone can donate blood to the project. “It is a massive logistical project to get the blood: We are taking it in a number of countries, and the entire thing is being run like a clinical trial with medical professionals and ethics committees and lawyers,” Quinn says. But volunteers, he says, are eager to donate.

The sculpture will tour the world after New York City (custom refrigeration units, in a pavilion designed by the architect Norman Foster, keep the blood frozen in any climate). Videos with messages from the volunteers who gave blood will play next to the art.

“I can’t say how people will react to the work–it’s the one element I can’t control,” says Quinn. “But I hope that by emphasizing our common humanity, it will make people think differently. I also think that looking at the subject in a different visceral way can open up emotional doors in someone that the news cannot.”

The FDA just approved an opioid painkiller 10 times more powerful than fentanyl

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In the midst of an opioid crisis that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives (in 2016, more than 11 million Americans misused painkillers, and more than 13,000 people overdosed), the FDA has approved a new opioid drug that is 1,000 times more potent than morphine and 10 times stronger than fentanyl. What could possibly go wrong?

The drug, Dsuvia, is a quick-dissolve tablet designed as an alternative to the rapid-fire infusion of pain meds available via IV at a hospital. It’s intended for short-term use only, and should not be used for more than 72 hours. And for good reason, as the side effects of the drug are a doozy: extreme tiredness, breathing problems, coma, and, of course, death.

The FDA is taking some precautions in the hopes that the drug will not be abused. In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that “very tight restrictions” will be placed on the drug. It will not be available at your local pharmacy and is designed only for use in a “certified medically-supervised healthcare settings.”

But those restrictions are not sufficient, claims Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), who blasted the FDA for failing to prove that the drug has enough “unique benefits over other available FDA-approved opioid products” to justify the risk of abuse. In a statement he noted that “an opioid that is 1,000 times more powerful than morphine is 1,000 times more likely to be abused, and 1,000 times more likely to kill.”

According to the FDA’s statement, the drug was designed for military use, and while no one wants soldiers to suffer, some may argue that in the war against opioid-related overdoses, there are plenty of battlefields right here at home—with more than 115 people dying after overdosing on opioids every single day in the United States.

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