Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

When people choose their cofounder, it’s rarely scientific. They’re guided by trust, and trust is easiest to find in familiar places: former coworkers, college classmates, close friends, people who already sit in your orbit. While starting a company is chaotic enough without bringing strangers into the mix, I wanted to understand whether this instinct toward familiarity actually comes with a cost. Turns out it does. Having worked with hundreds of early-stage startups as founders and investors, including at Coatue, Kleiner Perkins, and NFX, we wanted to test whether the instincts founders use to choose partners actually hold up in the data. We surveyed nearly 350 U.S. te…

Most technology companies treat brand or product names like marketing. That’s a mistake. Names are infrastructure—not cosmetic choices or launch-day deliverables. When names are wrong, everything built on top of them pays a quiet, compounding price. We tend to think of infrastructure as physical or technical systems: roads, power grids, cloud platforms. But infrastructure is really something more precise: It’s the invisible system that enables everything else to function. When it works, no one notices. When it doesn’t, nothing scales. Language behaves the same way. Before anyone buys a new technology, it must be named. Before they adopt it, they must talk about it…

Work stress has become one of the most common challenges in modern life. According to recent national reports, nearly seven in ten employees say work is a major source of stress, putting us right back where we were in the early months of the pandemic. No matter where you work—at a desk in an office, from your kitchen table, or bouncing between the two—the pressure to perform has never been higher. Burnout has reached a six-year high despite the fact that most of us are doing everything we can think of to get rid of stress. We sign up for wellness webinars. We shuffle schedules. We tell ourselves we’ll rest “as soon as things slow down.” But instead of helping, those …

Having rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD, is physically painful, all-consuming, and disproportionate to the event that triggered it. While a neurotypical person is able to recognize rejection, rationalize it, feel bad about it, and then move on with their day fairly quickly, RSD feels like a bull has charged at you and headbutted you in the chest, and it comes with a tremendous amount of shame. RSD is defined by the Cleveland Clinic as “severe emotional pain because of a failure or feeling rejected,” and is a symptom of the emotional dysregulation often seen due to the extra criticisms a person with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) will have enc…

Meta must—quite literally—pay for endangering children across its platforms. A New Mexico jury has found Meta liable for misleading the public, exposing children to sexual exploitation, and fostering adverse mental health. Meta must pay $375 million in civil penalties for about 75,000 violations at the maximum penalty of $5,000 each. This decision marks the first time a U.S. state has successfully defeated a big tech company at trial. “The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in response to the verdict. “Meta exec…

Meetings look neutral on the calendar. Everyone’s calendar is stamped with the same blue 30-minute block. Everyone gets a seat at the table, and—supposedly—the same shot to contribute. But the moment you click “Join,” the pecking order kicks in. Meetings are where power is put on display, credit is scooped up, and the rules of who speaks and who doesn’t are enforced. If you want to understand how inequality festers inside an organization, start watching what happens in your meetings. At a time when women’s representation in the workplace has stagnated and their presence in senior leadership positions is slipping, we need to look closer at the everyday behaviors that ke…

Wednesday, April 1, marks 50 years since Apple was founded. Over the next week, you’ll no doubt see countless articles examining the company’s influence, with many likely focusing on which single Apple product had the most consequential impact on the tech industry and society as a whole. To be sure, there are myriad options to choose from, most notably, the original Macintosh, the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone. Yet to me, Apple’s most important contribution over the past fifty years isn’t a physical product. Rather, it’s a policy—one asserting that privacy is a fundamental human right, and, to protect that right, products must be designed with privacy in mind. It…

For 60 years, people have read Warren Buffett’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters to gain insights into his investment philosophies. Every year, thousands convened at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting to gain insights from Buffett and his partner, the late Charlie Munger. Buffett has also done countless interviews over the years. Winnowing all that advice down to four items isn’t an easy task, but this is my attempt. Here’s Buffett on leadership, focus, the best investment you can make, and the true meaning of success. Buffett on leadership What model does Buffett use for managing people? A baseball batboy. As Buffett wrote in his 2002 sha…

Another round of layoffs has hit the tech industry, this time at SaaS giant Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL). The job cuts reportedly came out of the blue for most affected employees, with many receiving an early-morning email announcing their job loss just hours before they were scheduled to go into the office. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On early Tuesday morning, Oracle employees around the world began reporting on social media that they had received an email from the company informing them that their employment had been terminated. According to these reports, the emails began arriving in employees’ inboxes at around 6 a.m. local …

Raising Cane’s CEO Todd Graves could go without veggies in his to-go box. More specifically, his go-to Cane’s order includes the box combo, extra toast and extra sauce—and no slaw, he said in a TikTok last month. The fast food executive admitted he’s not a fan of coleslaw, adding “that’s why you can trade it out,” in Joe Bonham’s “Financial Flex” social media series. His reasoning for including the shredded salad: “I wanted a vegetable component to the meal, and coleslaw is a Southern thing.” As the post went viral, one user asked the exec to swap the coleslaw for mac and cheese. Others pleaded to keep the coleslaw on the menu. Customers who order the Box Co…

AI is moving fast. But are we really keeping humans at the center? AI scientist, founder of Affectiva, investor at Blue Tulip, and host of Pioneers of AI, Rana el Kaliouby makes the case that human-centric AI isn’t just a safety guardrail; it’s the key to thriving socially, economically, and emotionally. She also cuts through the noise on the buzziest AI myths, including whether we’re in an AI bubble. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response recorded live at SXSW, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business …

Lean In, the feminist organization founded by Sheryl Sandberg, has a new focus: fighting the gender gap in AI adoption. The nonprofit has put out new research that digs into how women use AI in the workplace relative to their male counterparts, which captures an adoption gap that has surfaced in previous surveys. In a survey of over 1,000 adults, Lean In found that 78% of men had used AI in the workplace, when compared to 73% of women. Men also reported using AI more regularly: About a third of men used AI daily, while only 27% of women did the same. This might not seem like a major difference at the moment. But Sandberg argues that this gap is likely to grow over tim…

JPMorgan Chase released its 2025 annual report today, including letters to shareholders from senior executives. In his letter, chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon shared his thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) and the company’s plans to embrace it. Dimon argued that the pace of the adoption of AI is unlike that of other technologies that came before, like electricity and the internet. While the technology is “transformational,” he cautioned that no one can predict how exactly AI will unfold. “People will live longer and safer” His overall outlook is optimistic. Dimon says he believes that AI will improve many areas of daily life and business. “AI will affe…

Good news for this Monday: Jackie and Shadow, California’s world famous Big Bear Bald Eagles, are parents again. Fans were able to welcome the two new chicks to the world over the weekend thanks to a web camera maintained by the nonprofit Friends of the Big Bear Valley (FOBBV). Here’s some background information so you can be the resident Bald Eagle expert in your office. When did Jackie lay her eggs? The eggs that hatched this season were actually the second clutch laid by Jackie. The first two were laid on January 23 and 26, but unfortunately ravens breached the eggs while Mom and Dad were away. About a month later, Jackie laid an additional cl…

As the trial date nears for a showdown between Elon Musk and OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company has sent a letter to the attorneys general in California and Delaware accusing Musk of “anti-competitive behavior.” The letter, seen by both CNBC and the Sacramento Bee, alleges that Musk has been attempting to undermine OpenAI through a series of “attacks” on the company. OpenAI also accuses Musk of “coordinating his efforts” with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, saying the two billionaires are “turning to conduct and approaches that we do think are really highly questionable and sharply worthy of investigation.” “It appears that Mr. Musk has reached new lows, as…

Anthropic said Tuesday that it is sharing a preview version of its upcoming AI model in a new cybersecurity initiative with a coalition of tech companies to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software infrastructure. The Project Glasswing initiative includes tech stalwarts like Amazon, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, and Palo Alto Networks. Anthropic said the partners will use the model for defensive security work and distribute their findings within the industry at large. The company is also extending access to roughly 40 additional organizations that build or maintain critical software infrastructure. Fears have been …

Twenty years ago, honeybees first started to disappear in mysteriously large numbers. Stories in the media were everywhere, as were solutions to try to save the bees. But today, you hear less about the crisis. Has it simply been drowned out by the constant hum of breaking world news, or is the bee crisis over? There are some people who argue that we have “saved” the bees, while others say honeybees never needed saving in the first place. In truth, the problem hasn’t gone away. “Our losses have been getting higher and higher over the last few years,” says Zac Browning, a fourth-generation beekeeper from North Dakota. This winter, he lost more than half of his bees. Nati…

Steam cleaning should be a low-risk activity, but that hasn’t been the case for some owners of Bissell’s Steam Shot products. Michigan-based Bissell Homecare has recalled about 1.7 million of its Steam Shot OmniReach and Steam Shot Omni Steam Cleaners with attachments. The recall follows reports of the attachments coming undone and creating a burn hazard, according to an announcement from the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Another 96,000 or so units sold in Canada have also been recalled. Of the 206 reports of malfunctioning products, 161 accounts have included notice of minor burn injuries. In one case, someone reported a second…

In operating reviews and boardrooms, I keep seeing the same pattern: leadership asks for rigor, teams deliver the numbers, and promising AI efforts get judged as underperforming before the organization has actually learned what it takes to make them real. Then someone pulls the plug, scales back the investment, or lets the initiative quietly expire. Sometimes they’re right. But often, they’ve just used the wrong test. The problem isn’t that leaders care about measurement. Strong measurement discipline is exactly what separates organizations that scale AI from those that accumulate pilots. The problem is that many leaders are applying a mature-business scorecard to…

When Tiffany Davis has a question about a symptom from the weight-loss injections she’s taking, she doesn’t call her doctor. She pulls out her phone and consults ChatGPT. “I’ll just basically let ChatGPT know my status, how I’m feeling,” said the 42-year-old in Mesquite, Texas. “I use it for anything that I’m experiencing.” Turning to artificial intelligence tools for health advice has become a habit for Davis and many other Americans, according to a West Health–Gallup Center on Healthcare in America poll published Wednesday. The poll, conducted in late 2025 and backed up by at least three other recent surveys with similar findings, found that roughly one-quarter of U.S…

For investors hurtling toward retirement, sitting tight with stocks has been the path of least resistance in recent years. Stocks, especially U.S. names, have soundly outperformed bonds. However, recent events should serve as a wake-up call to take some risk off the table and give bonds a closer look. Stocks have recently encountered some volatility but they’re still near all-time highs. That provides pre-retirees and retirees with an opportune time to scale back equity exposure and plow the proceeds into safer assets like cash and high-quality bonds. The benefits of de-risking The key benefit that bonds confer to a retirement-decumulation portfolio is their lower volat…

For decades, brands functioned primarily as symbols. A logo, a name, a set of visual and verbal signals designed to convey trust, recognition, and meaning. Brand architecture emerged to organize those symbols. Companies needed systems to structure product portfolios and manage sub-brands. These systems ensured that names, identities, and messages worked together coherently across markets and channels. Frameworks were built for a world in which brands communicated. AI is changing that world fundamentally. When a brand is embodied in an AI agent or a conversational interface, it no longer simply represents a company. It interacts with people directly. It answers que…

Employees at Meta Platforms may soon feel like they’re spilling TMI to their employer’s MCI. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp is installing new software—reportedly dubbed Model Capability Initiative (MCI)—on its employees’ computers and workstations that will, among other things, track and capture mouse movements and keystrokes in an effort to train AI models, Reuters first reported on Tuesday. It’s all part of a broader effort to develop autonomous AI agents that can perform specific work tasks. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company was, indeed, pushing forward with the measure. “If we’re building agents to help people com…

Yum Brands is delivering on its promise to shutter hundreds of Pizza Hut locations. Three months after the fast-food giant announced its intention to close 250 underperforming Pizza Hut restaurants during the first half of 2026, the chain’s U.S. footprint appears to be notably smaller, according to a Fast Company analysis. A review of local media reports, online review platforms such as Yelp and Google Reviews, and Pizza Hut’s own store locator tool has found more than 50 locations that have closed in recent months, spanning cities across the United States. The true tally is likely much higher. Ranjith Roy, CFO of Yum Brands, indicated on an earnings call in…

As summer approaches, cities across the United States, Mexico, and Canada are readying to host the highly awaited 2026 FIFA World Cup kickoff. But with exorbitant prices and disruptions ahead, local officials are battling to tame discontent as fans try to keep their eye on the ball. On Monday, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that New York City, which is serving as a cohost to a series of World Cup soccer matches with New Jersey, will host free fan zones across the five boroughs. The free programming aims to offset the high ticket prices that may gatekeep fans from attending the event. For instance, some tickets to the final m…