What's on Your Mind?

As buzz around women’s sports continues to grow, the largest dedicated female sports fund just got larger. Monarch Collective, the first and largest investment platform that exclusively invests in women’s sports, announced Thursday that it has expanded its fund size from $150 million to $250 million. The increased capital will allow the fund to capitalize on what it calls a “rapidly accelerating market”: women’s professional sports teams that have been increasingly filling seats. “Since launching our fund last year, women’s sports has experienced a cultural transcendence and the ecosystem has evolved dramatically, making the need for operational, value-added capit…

National Leadership Day, which takes place every Feb. 20, offers a chance to reflect on what truly defines leadership – not just strategy or decision-making, but the ability to build trust. In an era of rapid change, when teams look to leaders for stability and direction, trust is the invisible currency that fuels organizational success. As an economist, I know there’s a lot of research proving this point. I’ve conducted some myself, including work on how trust is essential for leaders in cross-cultural business environments. In an expansive study of China’s fast-paced restaurant industry, my colleagues and I found that leaders who cultivate trust can significantly re…

As cities continue to expand and infrastructure projects grow more ambitious, the construction sector is facing a crippling problem: There aren’t enough workers. The U.S. alone will need to attract around half a million construction workers in 2025 to meet anticipated demand for construction services, according to the trade association Associated Builders and Contractors. In fact, the construction industry in the United States has faced a significant shortage since the Great Recession of 2008 when it lost 30% of its workforce. In response, several states have launched apprenticeships and beefed up community college programs to attract people to skilled trade occupations. …

Lately it seems like collective uncertainty about the economy is mainly focused on one thing: eggs. This isn’t surprising. When the price of a kitchen staple like eggs nearly doubles in a year, it’s easy to make it a go-to symbol for the broader basket of financial anxieties many consumers are feeling. I get it, but I also worry all the egg-centric media coverage is overshadowing what is, for most households, a much bigger and more important line item: healthcare. So far this year, egg prices have generated roughly three times more headlines than healthcare costs have (per a quick Google News search)—which is pretty much the reverse of the relative impact those is…

Otter, the AI-powered meeting assistant and transcription service, is introducing a new AI agent capable of answering spoken questions from meeting participants in real time. The AI can also perform tasks like scheduling follow-up meetings and assigning action items to the meeting record stored on Otter’s platform. When responding to questions, it can draw on both publicly available information for quick research queries and knowledge gained from previous company meetings. The AI will only provide answers based on meeting records that all current participants have permission to view, ensuring confidential information remains protected. [Image: Otter]The tool can also be c…

You’re mid-sentence in a meeting, sharing an idea or outlining a strategy you’ve been thinking through for weeks—then it happens. Someone jumps in, cuts you off, and shifts the conversation. You fade out while they take the spotlight. It’s frustrating—but even more so when it’s subtle. Maybe you weren’t shouted over, but you were redirected, ignored, or sidelined. Over time, it takes a toll on confidence, clarity, and leadership presence. So how do you know it’s happening—and how do you stop it? Here are five signs you’re being talked over in meetings, plus practical strategies to reclaim your voice and authority. 1. You’re constantly “circling back” to what y…

As the 30th season of Major League Soccer (MLS) kicked off last month, the league unveiled an interesting new design addition: Each of its 30 teams sported a custom Apple TV logo on the left sleeve of its uniform featuring the colors and graphic elements of the team’s identity incorporated within the familiar Apple icon. For example, the Chicago Fire version includes the six-pointed star from the city’s flag and the team’s crest, while Atlanta United’s is filled with the characteristic five red and black stripes that adorn the club’s shirt. This effort, part of MLS’s 10-year deal with Apple to stream the league’s matches, represents an innovative step forward in its appro…

It took decades, but Rachael Kelly broke the insidious cycle of abuse she’d been stuck in since childhood. At the time, she was leading human resources at a restaurant group in 2020. “I’m new in this job, and my toxic marriage start[ed] to peak,” she says. Meanwhile, she was trying to help the employees at her restaurant who were suffering through the trauma and joblessness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ending her marriage to an abusive husband while helping those workers establish safety nets made her think: “How do we package [what I’m doing here] and model it forward?” Kelly ended up doing just that by first launching her nonprofit HiveStrong, which helps survivors of …

Getting an idea of how much a dental visit is going to cost can be difficult, even if it’s staring you straight in the mouth. One company hopes to change that, using artificial intelligence to give patients and dentists real-time cost estimates—all while the drills are still buzzing and fluoride is flowing. Overjet, a dental AI platform, just launched the Dental Clarity Network, a collaboration of dentists and health insurance providers that aims to give more clarity into dental billing. The first initiative of the Network is the deployment of ReviewPass, a program that helps deliver real-time cost estimates and insurance coverage information related to tons of dental…

TikTok just updated its desktop viewing experience to offer a smoother UX, expanded features, and more ways to watch. I wish it would go back to how it was before. It’s no secret that TikTok has a mobile-first design. Its beloved hyper-specific algorithm and For You page, as well as its wholehearted embrace of short-form video, has inspired copycats the likes of which include everyone from Instagram to LinkedIn and Substack. TikTok has even changed the fabric of culture itself, shortening attention spans and shaping the music industry as we know it. While TikTok shines on mobile, its desktop experience has historically been significantly less intuitive. The new de…

The financial services industry is facing an era of unparalleled fragmentation. Consumers are no longer limited to a single bank or financial provider in an increasingly nomadic digital environment. Instead, consumers can move seamlessly between services and products across multiple platforms. This creates a highly competitive marketplace while still maintaining some degree of segmentation. As fintech disruptors and traditional financial institutions compete for consumers, creating brand differentiation and customer loyalty has become one of the hardest and most critical aspects of growing a business. Adding to this challenge, banks and financial service providers fac…

As the economist Milton Friedman once said, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” Humanity has of course been faced with countless crises, leading to profound and often unexpected change. These crises define and differentiate generations and leave lasting impacts for years to come. In 2020, a crisis that would change everything hit the world seemingly overnight. Everyone remembers where they were the day the world shut down. Offices stood empty. Cars, previously stuck in traffic on daily commutes, sat parked in driveways. Trains and buses ran empty, if at all. The bustle of Times Square turned silent and Broadway went dark. As smog cleared from cit…

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD has launched a sale of its Hong Kong shares to raise up to $5.2 billion via an accelerated book-building, according to a deal term sheet seen by Reuters on Monday. The company has set a price range of HK$333-HK$345 per share for the offering, representing an up to 8.4% discount compared to the stock’s market closing price of HK$363.60 on Monday. The offering is expected to be priced on Monday, the term sheet said. BYD did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment. The company plans to use the proceeds to invest in research and development, expand overseas businesses, supplement working capital, and for gen…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings could suggest a market that is heating up. Generally speaking, local housing markets where active inventory has returned to pre-pandemic levels have experienced softer home price growth (or outright price declines) over the past 30 months. Conversely, local housing ma…

There’s more to winning than just winning. The way someone handles their tremendous success, after all, can transform a winner back into a loser—something Adrien Brody proved last night with a rambling, rule-defiant acceptance speech that managed to snatch reputational defeat from the jaws of career victory. With many of his peers gathered under one roof, and the whole world watching, he put on a masterclass in how not to behave at work. Not only did Brody win his second best actor award last night—this one for The Brutalist, putting him in an elite class of multi-winners along with Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson, and Marlon Brando—he also won a slot in the Guinness World …

Customer retention is more than a buzzword—it is a proven driver of sustainable growth and profitability. Sounds like common sense? Think again. Customer churn is on the rise. Yet, while many organizations recognize the value of keeping customers, far fewer appreciate the full spectrum of losses that arise when performance is merely “good enough.” The hidden costs of unremarkable customer experience—lost profit margins, missed cross-sell opportunities, shorter customer lifespans, fewer referrals, and reduced purchase volumes—can quietly erode the bottom line. These losses are often multiplied by the ripple effects of customer complaints or service failures, which ex…

In summer 2022, when artificial intelligence-based text-to-image generation tools hit the mainstream, architects were cautiously excited. The ease of generating real-ish images of design concepts and buildings with just a few simple sentences was irresistible, and many architects began experimenting with ways of letting AI quickly do some of the sketching and ideating they’d gotten used to spending hours or days laboring over. “It’s almost like you’re speaking a building into existence,” one architect said. But now, with AI maturing and getting integrated into tools and industries far and wide, a surprisingly low number of architects are actually using AI in thei…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Raycast is one of my favorite free apps. It’s a hidden gem that helps you do almost anything on your computer—add to your calendar, list tasks, search files, do math, or control apps—without touching your mouse. It’s free for Mac and coming soon to iOS and Windows. I use Raycast dozens of times daily for tasks that might take seconds individually, but cumulatively interrupt my flow. It saves me half an hour a week I can reallocate to deep work or family time. Read on for seven of my favorite ways to use Raycast and…

Have you ever noticed that the qualities we sometimes see as weaknesses can actually be our secret strengths? Think about the quiet, shy colleagues who excel at listening or those who seem a bit lazy but always find the most efficient way to get things done. Even self-doubt—which studies show 70% of professionals experience at some point in their careers—can lead us to make more thoughtful decisions and spark creative breakthroughs. These qualities, sometimes perceived as weaknesses, can be the traits that shape effective leaders. As the leader of a bootstrapped company for nearly two decades, I’ve faced my fair share of uncertainty. Between economic turbulence a…

Featuring Jerry Grammont, CEO, Mabï Artisanal Tea; Jori Miller Sherer, President, Minnetonka and Mika Shino, Founder and CEO, Issei Mochi Gummies.Moderated by Kc Ifeanyi, Executive Director of Editorial Programming, Fast Company. These executives have built their companies around their respective cultures, from creating iced teas derived from ingredients native to the Caribbean, to designing moccasins in partnership with Indigenous artists, to putting a fresh spin on Japanese mochi. Hear how they’re uplifting their communities and bridging them to the broader public—which is not without its challenges. View the full article

America has been dealing with a bird flu outbreak for some time, and now fears over possible contamination in cat food have led to a recall. Here’s what to know about the recall of cat food linked to possible bird flu contamination. What’s happened? On March 1, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a recall notice relating to certain products sold by Wild Coast LLC (dba Wild Coast Raw) of Olympia, Washington. The recalled products are raw pet food for cats. The reason? The products may be contaminated with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1, better known as bird flu. The bird flu virus can live in manufactured products, including pet …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Here’s the annual U.S. household income needed to finance the purchase of the typical valued U.S. home: January 2020: $51,646 January 2021: $51,740 January 2022: $62,669 January 2023: $86,184 January 2024: $92,006 January 2025: $92,538 That’s a +79% shift in just 5 years. Methodology: This Zillow calculation is conservative and assumes a 20% down payment and the homebuyer spends less than 30.0% of their monthly income on the total monthly payment. This is a financed purchase, of course. For typical home value, Zillow economist…