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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated that, beginning today, flights across America will be reduced at 40 airports due to the ongoing government shutdown. According to the agency, the flight reductions are being implemented due to safety issues stemming from a shortage of air traffic controllers, who are not being paid during the shutdown. The reductions are expected to lead to a wave of flight cancellations, the number of which is set to increase every day between now and November 14. Here’s what you need to know about the flight reductions, including the full list and a map of the 40 airports affected. Why is the FAA mandating flight reductions? The FAA says it has safety concerns stemming from the ongoing government shutdown, which began on October 1 and is the longest US government shutdown in history. Hundreds of thousands of government workers have been furloughed without pay during the shutdown. But some federal employees, including air traffic controllers, are designated as essential workers. Those workers are required to stay on the job during a shutdown, though their pay is paused. The problem is that those essential workers still have bills to pay, so as the shutdown drags on, necessity dictates that some are resigning to take on other paid roles in the private sector, while others are calling in sick. Fewer air traffic controllers and other essential airport staff reporting to work means the risk to flier safety increases. To help mitigate that growing risk, the FAA has now decided to restrict a select number of flights at 40 U.S. airports. What are the specifics of the FAA’s flight reductions? In a notice posted to the FAA’s website yesterday, the agency said that it would initiate a 10% reduction in flights at 40 U.S. airports starting today, Friday, November 7. However, the reductions will be phased in gradually over the next week. The first reduction begins today, with the full 10% taking effect a week later. Here is how the reduction phases will work: Friday, November 7: 4% reduction in flight operations Tuesday, November 11: 6% reduction in flight operations Thursday, November 13: 8% reduction in flight operations Friday, November 14: 10% reduction in flight operations Announcing the reductions, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said that the agency was “seeing signs of stress in the system, so we are proactively reducing the number of flights to make sure the American people continue to fly safely.” He also warned that the FAA will not hesitate to take further action if needed. What airports are affected by the FAA reductions? Most of the major airports in the country are impacted by the reductions, including central hubs like John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The full list of airports affected is as follows: ANC – Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport ATL – Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport BOS – Boston Logan International Airport BWI – Baltimore/Washington International Airport CLT – Charlotte Douglas International Airport CVG – Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport DAL – Dallas Love Field DCA – Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport DEN – Denver International Airport DFW – Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport DTW – Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport EWR – Newark Liberty International Airport FLL – Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport HNL – Honolulu International Airport HOU – William P. Hobby Airport IAD – Washington Dulles International Airport IAH – George Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport IND – Indianapolis International Airport JFK – New York John F. Kennedy International Airport LAS – Las Vegas McCarran International Airport LAX – Los Angeles International Airport LGA – New York LaGuardia Airport MCO – Orlando International Airport MDW – Chicago Midway International Airport MEM – Memphis International Airport MIA – Miami International Airport MSP – Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport OAK – Oakland International Airport ONT – Ontario International Airport ORD – Chicago O’Hare International Airport PDX – Portland International Airport PHL – Philadelphia International Airport PHX – Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport SAN – San Diego International Airport SDF – Louisville International Airport SEA – Seattle–Tacoma International Airport SFO – San Francisco International Airport SLC – Salt Lake City International Airport TEB – Teterboro Airport TPA – Tampa International Airport What flights will be reduced? If your flight is among the reductions, it will be canceled. But it appears that those cancellations will not be decided by the FAA itself. Instead, it will be left up to the airlines to decide which flights they will cut to meet their reduction requirements. In the memo the FAA posted, the agency states that “The order does not require a reduction in international flights. Carriers may use their own discretion to decide which flights are canceled to reach the order’s goal.” Can I get a refund if my flight is canceled? Yesterday, Fast Company reported that many major U.S. airlines, including United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, confirmed that they would issue full refunds to passengers whose flights are canceled. However, other airlines remained silent on the matter. But now it appears airlines will not have a choice in the matter. The FAA’s memo states that “Airlines will be required to issue full refunds.” However, the FAA says airlines will not be responsible for covering secondary costs, such as hotel stays. That means if your flight is canceled, you can get a full refund from the airline, but if that cancellation requires you to stay at a local hotel until you can get on another flight, the airline will not be responsible for covering your hotel costs. Will flight cancellations get worse? That remains to be seen and is largely dependent on how long the government shutdown drags on. What’s certain is that cancellations will increase from today until next Friday, when the full 10% reduction order takes effect. But there is no guarantee that reductions will remain capped at 10%. The FAA says that “Decisions to increase or decrease these flight reductions will be informed by safety data.” View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Studies have shown that a decluttered workspace can decrease stress and increase focus—and that stress at work can actually result in more clutter. It's important to clean up your environment so the place you work is comfortable, calm, and sanitary. If you want to get more done, you need to be working in a tidy, welcoming space. Borrow the 5S method to get it done most efficiently. What is the 5S method of workspace cleaning?The 5S method, like Kanban and Kaizen, comes from Japan, where organizational processes developed in factories and were so useful that their use expanded well beyond Toyota and other manufacturers. The method refers to the five s-words it relies on: seiri, seiton, seisō, seiketsu, and shitsuke, but if you don’t speak Japanese, don’t worry. They’ve been translated into five s-words in English, too: Sort Set in order Shine Standardize Sustain Occasionally, there’s a sixth “s,” safety, and that makes sense when you consider the uses of the system within factory settings, but it's not quite as relevant if you're putting in your time in a cubicle. The technique has a variety of applications outside of factories and is especially useful in healthcare settings, construction sites, and classrooms. For you, however, it may just be all about your desk, and that’s fine. The 5S system is adaptable. How to make 5S work for youThe five pillars of the technique provide a framework for organizing and cleaning in a way that minimizes waste and increases productivity. Instead of thinking of the five steps in order as a one-and-done operation, consider them a cycle you’re always repeating. When you’re done with the fifth (or, in some cases, sixth) one, you go back to the first. You should start with sorting for the most part, but at any given time, you can employ one of them and start moving through the cycle. Here’s what to do: Sort: Get rid of anything that isn’t necessary in the workspace. If it’s not needed for what you’re doing, put it away. Utilize drawers, storage bins, or under-desk organizers to keep the things that you don’t immediately need out of your sight. When possible, keep the storage bins opaque so you aren’t distracted by the contents. I prefer simple, easy-to-install organizers, like this clip-on drawer system that hides unwanted items under your desk. All you need is something that will obscure what you're not using when you're not using it. The sorting period is also when you should clear out clutter anything you don't use regularly. (If this is unfamiliar territory for you or you just need some ideas, I compiled my 17 favorite decluttering methods here.) Shine: With the space tidied up and freed of anything unnecessary, it’s time to clean. This can be as easy as running a disinfectant wipe over your surfaces or brushing crumbs into the trash, but cleaning for sanitary reasons is different from decluttering, so don’t skip it. Check out this list of gadgets to clean your desk thoroughly—but make sure you have space in those storage bins for them. Set in order: Now, look back at the storage bins. During the sorting period, you can just throw everything that isn’t necessary into those, but when you’re setting in order, you need to make them more efficient. Designate bins for different categories, like office supplies, reference materials, specific job tools, etc. Make sure the things you need most often are in a convenient location, like the under-desk drawer, and things you need less often are still available but more removed. It helps to use labels here for maximum efficiency. Standardize: This step is a little different from the first three, which are all about organizing and cleaning. Standardizing is about creating a protocol to keep everything organized and clean, plus integrating it into your actual workflow. You already started when you began labeling storage containers, but now it's time to get serious about implementing these changes consistently, and making the most of what you did in the first three steps. The easiest way to do this is building time into your schedule for regular 5S maintenance and desk cleaning. It should be part of your regular to-do list. For instance, if you’re using the 1-3-5 method of to-do list creation, 5S maintenance can be one of your five smaller tasks for the day. Make sure to carve out time for it at least once a week, ideally by putting time on your calendar when you’re timeboxing. When going through the 5S cycle going forward, you can always make changes to your standardization if you’re not cleaning enough, if things are piling up, or if your technique is otherwise not working, so don’t just skip the fourth step on your next time through. Sustain: This step is all about keeping with it. Commit to following the standardization protocol you set in the fourth step and working through all of the s-words regularly and in order. The more you do it, the more of a habit it will become and the more efficient your workspace will be. Again, sometimes this framework is expanded to include the sixth "s," safety. A clean, organized environment isn't just efficient and good for your focus; it's safer, too. When you're working through the five steps above, look for anything that could be a hazard, like tangled cords under your desk, items stacked too haphazardly on your shelves, or liquids too close to your electronics. Keep in mind that when sorting, your goals are not only to make more space available to work, but to decrease distracting items and reduce the amount of time you spend looking for what you need when you need it. When you shine, you want to reduce waste and keep the area safe, but also keep it pleasant to work in, which is an important element of productivity. Setting in order is all about making your work easier by making things available to you when you need them and finding them where you expect them to be, which wastes less time. Standardizing and sustaining will help you make sure the procedure is followed and is working for you, so eventually, you’ll even spend less time thinking about all of this stuff, and more time focusing on your work. View the full article

The 94-year-old doyenne of British abstract art on influences from Seurat to Mondrian, her wartime childhood in Cornwall — and ‘the healing power of looking’View the full article

This week on “The Exit Strategy” we talk about how when you create a business, you have to know when the right time to exit is. This is a talent not too many entrepreneurs have mastered. It’s hard to “go out” on top! Peter Shankman’s first major exit, The Geek Factory, stemmed from a realization that both he and the market had become complacent. He knew it was time to move on when the work started feeling “too easy.” This sense of ease, while comfortable, was actually a warning sign that innovation had stalled. If you find yourself coasting through work without challenge or excitement, it may signal stagnation, either in your own engagement or in the market itself. Complacency often precedes decline, particularly in fast-changing industries. Shankman also paid close attention to market trends, recognizing the early signs of the dot-com bubble’s burst. Staying attuned to these shifts and being honest about your business’s growth potential is essential. When Vocus, HARO’s largest advertiser, made an offer to buy his company, Shankman didn’t wait for a “perfect” deal that might never come. He advises founders not to reject a great offer while holding out for an imaginary better one. Regularly assessing both your business’s trajectory and your own passion ensures you’ll recognize the right moment to make your move. When either begins to wane, it’s time to consider an exit. Navigating the Sale: Due Diligence, Earn-Outs, and Letting Go Selling a business is as much an emotional process as a financial one. Shankman’s experience highlights how critical it is to balance preparation, patience, and perspective. During due diligence, founders often feel personally attacked by the level of scrutiny. But as Shankman points out, the process isn’t about you, it’s about the business. Trust your lawyers and advisors to safeguard your interests rather than micromanaging every detail. When it comes to earn-outs, clarity is key. Shankman’s agreements were based on measurable metrics such as revenue, audience growth, and service continuation, making progress easy to track. Once the sale is completed, remember that control shifts to the buyer. Accepting this new reality, and your new role, if you have one,is vital. Letting go can be one of the hardest parts. Feelings of loss are natural, but once the deal closes, the business is no longer yours. Prepare emotionally for this transition just as carefully as you prepare financially. Have a plan for what comes next, whether that’s a new venture, a sabbatical, or a personal project, to help you move forward with purpose. Balancing Founder Involvement and Business Independence Buyers are drawn to businesses that can thrive without their founders, yet founder involvement often remains crucial for maintaining quality and vision. Shankman advocates for building systems and teams that can operate independently, while still allowing the founder to “nurture and protect” the brand, especially when it carries their name. He suggests finding the balance between oversight and autonomy. Even a few hours a day of involvement can preserve standards and culture. However, knowing when to step back is equally important, if you’re unable to emotionally detach, it may not be the right time to sell. Before your exit, document systems thoroughly, delegate effectively, and gradually reduce your daily role. This transition period not only reassures potential buyers but also helps you adjust to a life beyond day-to-day operations. The Power of Personal Branding Beyond Your Business Many entrepreneurs struggle to let go because their identity is too tightly bound to their business. Shankman avoided this by cultivating a personal brand that extended far beyond any single company. By sharing his interests, such as skydiving, travel, and public speaking, he showed that a founder’s influence doesn’t have to end with a sale. A strong personal brand can open doors to new ventures and make transitions much smoother. Stay visible after an exit by writing, speaking, or consulting to maintain momentum and relevance. The key is to start early, long before you plan to sell, so you’re already known for your broader expertise and passions, not just your company. Neurodiversity as an Entrepreneurial Advantage Shankman’s is very open about his ADHD transformed since what was once seen as a challenge into one of his greatest strengths. His experience underscores that neurodiversity can be a competitive advantage in entrepreneurship. Many groundbreaking innovators, from Steve Jobs to Elon Musk have similar “different wiring,” which drives creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. Leaders should recognize neurodiversity as an asset and build inclusive workplaces that value diverse cognitive styles. Companies like Morgan Stanley, Adobe, and Google have seen clear benefits from hiring neurodiverse talent, as these perspectives foster innovation and stronger problem-solving. Combatting stigma early is crucial, Shankman’s own story of feeling “broken” as a child until reassured otherwise highlights how powerful positive messaging can be. For teams, education and flexibility are key. Offer training on neurodiversity, design adaptable roles, and share stories of successful neurodiverse individuals to normalize different approaches to work and thinking. For neurodiverse founders, the takeaway is simple: embrace your wiring as your superpower. For leaders, make it your mission to identify, support, and champion neurodiverse talent. Actionable Takeaways for Founders Regularly assess your engagement and market position to recognize when it’s time to exit. Don’t hold out for a mythical “perfect” offer, great opportunities rarely come twice. Prepare emotionally and practically for due diligence, earn-outs, and the loss of control post-sale. Systematize your business while maintaining enough involvement to preserve brand integrity. Build and nurture a personal brand that transcends your company. Embrace neurodiversity within yourself and your team, it can spark extraordinary innovation. Support neurodiverse individuals with encouragement, flexibility, and awareness. Listen or watch the entire episode. This article, "Peter Shankman Knows When to Exit" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

This week on “The Exit Strategy” we talk about how when you create a business, you have to know when the right time to exit is. This is a talent not too many entrepreneurs have mastered. It’s hard to “go out” on top! Peter Shankman’s first major exit, The Geek Factory, stemmed from a realization that both he and the market had become complacent. He knew it was time to move on when the work started feeling “too easy.” This sense of ease, while comfortable, was actually a warning sign that innovation had stalled. If you find yourself coasting through work without challenge or excitement, it may signal stagnation, either in your own engagement or in the market itself. Complacency often precedes decline, particularly in fast-changing industries. Shankman also paid close attention to market trends, recognizing the early signs of the dot-com bubble’s burst. Staying attuned to these shifts and being honest about your business’s growth potential is essential. When Vocus, HARO’s largest advertiser, made an offer to buy his company, Shankman didn’t wait for a “perfect” deal that might never come. He advises founders not to reject a great offer while holding out for an imaginary better one. Regularly assessing both your business’s trajectory and your own passion ensures you’ll recognize the right moment to make your move. When either begins to wane, it’s time to consider an exit. Navigating the Sale: Due Diligence, Earn-Outs, and Letting Go Selling a business is as much an emotional process as a financial one. Shankman’s experience highlights how critical it is to balance preparation, patience, and perspective. During due diligence, founders often feel personally attacked by the level of scrutiny. But as Shankman points out, the process isn’t about you, it’s about the business. Trust your lawyers and advisors to safeguard your interests rather than micromanaging every detail. When it comes to earn-outs, clarity is key. Shankman’s agreements were based on measurable metrics such as revenue, audience growth, and service continuation, making progress easy to track. Once the sale is completed, remember that control shifts to the buyer. Accepting this new reality, and your new role, if you have one,is vital. Letting go can be one of the hardest parts. Feelings of loss are natural, but once the deal closes, the business is no longer yours. Prepare emotionally for this transition just as carefully as you prepare financially. Have a plan for what comes next, whether that’s a new venture, a sabbatical, or a personal project, to help you move forward with purpose. Balancing Founder Involvement and Business Independence Buyers are drawn to businesses that can thrive without their founders, yet founder involvement often remains crucial for maintaining quality and vision. Shankman advocates for building systems and teams that can operate independently, while still allowing the founder to “nurture and protect” the brand, especially when it carries their name. He suggests finding the balance between oversight and autonomy. Even a few hours a day of involvement can preserve standards and culture. However, knowing when to step back is equally important, if you’re unable to emotionally detach, it may not be the right time to sell. Before your exit, document systems thoroughly, delegate effectively, and gradually reduce your daily role. This transition period not only reassures potential buyers but also helps you adjust to a life beyond day-to-day operations. The Power of Personal Branding Beyond Your Business Many entrepreneurs struggle to let go because their identity is too tightly bound to their business. Shankman avoided this by cultivating a personal brand that extended far beyond any single company. By sharing his interests, such as skydiving, travel, and public speaking, he showed that a founder’s influence doesn’t have to end with a sale. A strong personal brand can open doors to new ventures and make transitions much smoother. Stay visible after an exit by writing, speaking, or consulting to maintain momentum and relevance. The key is to start early, long before you plan to sell, so you’re already known for your broader expertise and passions, not just your company. Neurodiversity as an Entrepreneurial Advantage Shankman’s is very open about his ADHD transformed since what was once seen as a challenge into one of his greatest strengths. His experience underscores that neurodiversity can be a competitive advantage in entrepreneurship. Many groundbreaking innovators, from Steve Jobs to Elon Musk have similar “different wiring,” which drives creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. Leaders should recognize neurodiversity as an asset and build inclusive workplaces that value diverse cognitive styles. Companies like Morgan Stanley, Adobe, and Google have seen clear benefits from hiring neurodiverse talent, as these perspectives foster innovation and stronger problem-solving. Combatting stigma early is crucial, Shankman’s own story of feeling “broken” as a child until reassured otherwise highlights how powerful positive messaging can be. For teams, education and flexibility are key. Offer training on neurodiversity, design adaptable roles, and share stories of successful neurodiverse individuals to normalize different approaches to work and thinking. For neurodiverse founders, the takeaway is simple: embrace your wiring as your superpower. For leaders, make it your mission to identify, support, and champion neurodiverse talent. Actionable Takeaways for Founders Regularly assess your engagement and market position to recognize when it’s time to exit. Don’t hold out for a mythical “perfect” offer, great opportunities rarely come twice. Prepare emotionally and practically for due diligence, earn-outs, and the loss of control post-sale. Systematize your business while maintaining enough involvement to preserve brand integrity. Build and nurture a personal brand that transcends your company. Embrace neurodiversity within yourself and your team, it can spark extraordinary innovation. Support neurodiverse individuals with encouragement, flexibility, and awareness. Listen or watch the entire episode. This article, "Peter Shankman Knows When to Exit" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Senior City figures have been reassured that accountancy and law firms will not pay full national insurance rateView the full article

A decade ago, Ben Collins quit his job as a corporate accountant and started teaching other people how to use spreadsheets more effectively. That move, terrifying as it seemed at the time, paid off brilliantly. Today Collins is the proprietor of an online spreadsheet training academy and the author of a weekly newsletter dedicated entirely to Google Sheets tips. Some 50,000 people subscribe. And yet once again Collins is finding himself facing a sense of uncertainty over what’s next—as the very nature of what a spreadsheet even is enters a dizzying spiral of transformation. “We’ve had more innovation in the last two years than in the 20 before that,” Collins says, referencing the explosion of generative AI technology and its effect on the spreadsheet arena. He isn’t exaggerating. Up until recently, figuring out how to use a spreadsheet to its full potential was akin to learning a foreign language: You had complex formulas, mountains of cryptic functions, and a labyrinth of overwhelming options to decipher. If you were trying to do anything beyond just putting a few pieces of basic data into cells, you practically needed a dedicated spreadsheet expert to figure out how to make it happen. But generative AI is currently reshaping the humble and stubbornly complex spreadsheet—which, for the most part, seems to be a good thing. After all, no one wants a massive project (or migraine) every time the need for crunching numbers comes up. And while generative AI has plenty of issues both practical and ethical, working within the confines of a single spreadsheet and the black-and-white world of objective data seems to be where those limitations are least troubling, and where AI’s strengths are primed to shine. Still, there’s no escaping that a whole new era is upon us. The biggest question now is how, exactly, it all plays out from here—and whether the need for a spreadsheet expert, be it an independent consultant like Collins or the go-to problem-solver within any office or organization, is bound to evolve or destined to become a relic from a bygone time. The spreadsheet in the AI era When Collins quit his accounting job in 2014 and embarked on a self-made, spreadsheet-centric career path, Anna Monaco was 11 years old. Today, at the ripe old age of 22, Monaco is the founder and CEO of Paradigm, a next-gen spreadsheet service that makes Excel look like an abacus by comparison. Anna Monaco The idea behind Paradigm is to take all the complexity and manual effort out of spreadsheets and make managing data simple. Instead of worrying about formulas and functions and formatting, you just upload your data—or even tell the service what sort of data you need and let it source it for you. Paradigm creates your spreadsheet, makes it look slick and professional, and suggests next-step actions to work with the data and put it to practical use. “Manual data entry shouldn’t exist,” Monaco says. “We’re not just a spreadsheet. We’re replacing weeks of labor.” Paradigm and its AI-centric spreadsheet startup contemporaries—services such as Sourcetable, Grid, and Julius—aren’t only replacing labor. They’re also replacing an entire way of thinking about spreadsheets and their role in our lives. And while the reigning spreadsheet-service royalty aren’t exactly rushing to rebuild their long-established interfaces, the same basic principle is already appearing in those environments as well, albeit on a much smaller scale and in a more tacked-on sense. To wit: Microsoft’s AI Copilot is now thoroughly integrated into Excel and can be summoned to help you create formulas and analyze data without needing to do all the traditional heavy lifting. And Google is doing something similar with Gemini in Sheets, now making the chatbot available on demand in any cell with a simple (though extremely familiar-feeling to any longtime spreadsheet user) “=AI” command for summoning its assistance. “You don’t need to be an AI or spreadsheet expert to do it,” Google wrote in its announcement of the expansion. Ben Collins Of course, not everyone is ecstatic about the in-your-face AI in those more traditional spreadsheet setups—especially people who aren’t seeking out such features and find their presence can be annoying or even downright dangerous. AI features often insert themselves into situations regardless of whether they’re actively summoned. And while AI-introduced errors within a spreadsheet generally seem at least a little less egregious than generative AI at its most hallucinogenic, Microsoft is warning that Copilot is best suited for “scenarios where deterministic accuracy is not required” and not for “any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility” (ouch). So where, then, does all of this leave the spreadsheet experts—folks like Ben Collins who have spent decades building up deep knowledge in the inner workings of the spreadsheet and all the logic around it? The answer, it turns out (much like the conventional spreadsheet itself) is complicated. Expertise, reinvented Collins sees what’s happening with spreadsheets at Google and Microsoft, and at the more ambitious scrappy spreadsheet startups like Paradigm, as an unambiguous net positive. “All the AI stuff is democratizing spreadsheets in the same way it’s doing for coding,” he says. “It lets more people have access to those insights and that knowledge rather than just the technically savvy crowd.” And yet—like in so many other industries right now—it’s impossible to avoid questions over the effects this shift could have on the future. We’re all living through a transition where some say AI is taking away countless jobs and others insist it’s creating as many as it’s killing, or at the very least just changing what types of roles matter. As with many careers, the only real certainty surrounding spreadsheet-related professions right now is a complete and utter sense of uncertainty. Collins, for his part, remains upbeat. He says he’s seen a shift in the sort of information knowledge workers are seeking around spreadsheets but that he continues to see a strong demand for a deeper understanding of the tools themselves and the data philosophies around them. “There’s still a need to have a foundation of knowledge and an understanding of how these things work,” Collins says, even if only so you can figure out how to ask an AI assistant for what you need and then assess the quality of what you’re given in return. “It’s less emphasis on pure syntax and the mechanics and more [on] how we can use these tools at a higher level and be more effective,” he adds. Collins also notes that for all the buzz around newer AI-centric spreadsheet tools, the vast majority of people—and businesses—are so deeply engrained in the Google or Microsoft ecosystems and so familiar with those environments and the security assurances around them that they won’t be making a major night-and-day change anytime soon. Even if AI does slowly seep its way into their work within those domains. That’s a point Monaco is well aware of. She sees Paradigm as being less of a play at pulling the masses away from Sheets or Excel and more of a forward-looking option for a different generation of businesses. “There’s a new way that companies are being built, where smaller teams are commanding a lot more resources and doing a lot more powerful things with the resources they have,” she says. “Paradigm is building for that future.” One thing she and Collins agree on is that the need for expertise isn’t going anywhere. Monaco says she’s already seeing the emergence of what she calls “Paradigm consultants”—people who specialize specifically in supporting the tool she created and helping users figure out how to get the most out of it. “It’s a different expertise,” Monaco says. “There’s still a huge value in becoming a power user and knowing how to harness these tools. There’s an even bigger value now that these tools are more powerful.” Collins also envisions his role evolving. And he is 100% up to the challenge of adapting right alongside that. “The need for training is as strong as ever,” he says. And that, it seems, is something where a genuine human touch and the type of critical-thinking perspective AI can’t entirely emulate remains—for the current moment, at least—as important as ever. View the full article

The debate around AI ROI has gotten loud—and, frankly, a little cyclical. One moment, we’re hearing that AI is the key to exponential growth; the next, that 95% of AI pilots fail. At Addi, we’ve been able to leverage AI to grow 4x faster while operating at ~2x the profitability of BNPL peers. This year alone, we’ve saved more than $500,000 from our AI initiatives. But how have we accomplished such strong AI ROI? The difference between performative AI and AI with returns isn’t in which model or tool you’re using; it’s how your team is using them. Here’s how we’ve driven genuine AI-native team adoption and built a workflow/data pipeline that actually makes sense. 1) Hire and grow for fluency We run nationwide, admissions-style assessments to find talent in unexpected places (from the Amazon to the Ecuador border), then teach AI-native workflows from day one. From our intern program through our senior leadership, we design our interview process for the AI age. We assign a relevant project—something candidates could use AI to help with—but then have a panel interview where they present their project, ensuring that candidates actually know the ins and outs of their work without an AI aid. Our interviews additionally probe into potential candidates’ own familiarity with AI tools, while our intern cohorts get hands-on with agents and graduate into teams already expecting that fluency. The pipeline is designed to recruit for an AI era from the get-go, versus being an afterthought once already employed. 2) Codify AI-native rituals into culture When it comes to cultivating an AI-native work culture, AI-native is a learned behavior. We invested in extensive AI onboarding and habit-building, pairing every knowledge worker with the right agent or copilot, and encouraging AI usage as the company default. Today, more than 90% of our engineers are weekly active copilot users and ~80% of AI-generated code is accepted. This translates into efficiency gains of up to 60% without increasing headcount. We’ve kept our core product engineering team flat for three years while shipping more products. The story here isn’t in the savings; it’s in the deep level of AI adoption we’ve witnessed among our employees by securing their buy-in, setting expectations for an AI-friendly environment, and offering targeted training. Rollouts fail when AI is treated as a “here only if you need it” tool. They work when companies rewire rituals around it—e.g., code reviews with AI diffs, CX stand-ups that inspect agent transcripts, legal postmortems that include our AI’s outputs—to normalize the behavior. You might even consider baking AI proficiency into employee reviews. In other words, don’t over-index on tools; over-index on culture. That cultural shift is why AI usage at Addi is voluntary yet ubiquitous. 3) Design AI as a colleague There’s a reason our in-house agents have regular names like “Addri” and “Aegis.” Every agent at Addi is treated like an employee—one with a clear scope, service-level agreements (SLAs), and metrics. Addri’s job is first-contact resolution with target customer satisfaction (CSAT); the merchant agent owns KYP throughput and reactivation; Aegis owns escalation latency and evidentiary completeness. Human owners review outputs and tune prompts like they would a new hire’s playbook, and we always welcome teamwide feedback on how our fellow “agentic employees” can improve before their next review cycle. Moreover, our AI “employees” have the same depth of contextual knowledge and understanding that a human employee would, to help them function side-by-side with our team and minimize the frustration that comes with false or limited context. Our agents are tailored to specific roles, not catchalls from an outside vendor that shoehorns a base agent into a wide variety of situations. We ensure they’re trained with high-quality, high-volume, company-owned data. We spent four-plus years building a world-leading data platform, ensuring more than 40 terabytes of data was instantly available as it began building AI agents, giving our “digital teammates” the best possible training. 4) Invest in the right foundations “AI-first” isn’t what works; “data-first” is. This is how you ensure your “AI colleagues” have that employee-like context. More than four years ago (pre-LLMs!) we made the decision to invest in a next-generation data engine that would ensure everything that happened on our platform (from a single text message to a full underwriting analysis) would be stored and could be queried by anyone and anything—traditional AI models, human analysts, and, yes, even LLMs via vectorization. With a single monorepo and an event-based system that logs everything, we have nearly perfect context: 50 terabytes of clean, searchable data. If you don’t own your stack (i.e., control your data and event logs) you will rent your advantage to a vendor. Set your AI-native team up for success by logging everything, and reap the benefits of a database that can be read by humans and AI alike. 5) Celebrate adoption Reward employees’ usage of AI by celebrating adoption rates, cycle-time reduction, and defects avoided. This year, our AI initiatives saved upwards of $500,000 in annual operating costs. For lean teams where a startup’s success is their teammates’ success, these metrics (and transparency) matter. That $500K isn’t a bottom-line cut; it’s $500K back into the pockets of our employees in the form of raises, better benefits packages, and profit sharing. Tie budgets to solved tickets, minutes saved, merchants activated—then compound wins into subsequent quarters. That mindset of “AI gains are your gains” is why AI can comfortably power half of our legal and coding throughput, a big chunk of CX, and critical onboarding flows. In Summary Train your people to be AI-native and give them the infrastructure to thrive. The models will change. The muscle you build won’t. This approach is how we’ve been able to launch more products more quickly while maintaining a generally lean team—and it’s why I’m confident the best AI ROI stories are still to come. View the full article

For decades now, we have been told that artificial intelligence systems will soon replace human workers. Sixty years ago, for example, Herbert Simon, who received a Nobel Prize in economics and a Turing Award in computing, predicted that “machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do.” More recently, we have Daniel Susskind’s 2020 award-winning book with the title that says it all: A World Without Work. Are these bleak predictions finally coming true? ChatGPT turns 3 years old this month, and many think large language models will finally deliver on the promise of AI replacing human workers. LLMs can be used to write emails and reports, summarize documents, and otherwise do many of the tasks that managers are supposed to do. Other forms of generative AI can create images and videos for advertising or code for software. From Amazon to General Motors to Booz Allen Hamilton, layoffs are being announced and blamed on AI. Amazon said it would cut 14,000 corporate jobs. United Parcel Service (UPS) said it had reduced its management workforce by about 14,000 positions over the past 22 months. And Target said it would cut 1,800 corporate roles. Some academic economists have also chimed in: The St. Louis Federal Reserve found a (weak) correlation between theoretical AI exposure and actual AI adoption in 12 occupational categories. Yet we remain skeptical of the claim that AI is responsible for these layoffs. A recent MIT Media Lab study found that 95% of generative AI pilot business projects were failing. Another survey by Atlassian concluded that 96% of businesses “have not seen dramatic improvements in organizational efficiency, innovation, or work quality.” Still another study found that 40% of the business people surveyed have received “AI slop” at work in the last month and that it takes nearly two hours, on average, to fix each instance of slop. In addition, they “no longer trust their AI-enabled peers, find them less creative, and find them less intelligent or capable.” If AI isn’t doing much, it’s unlikely to be responsible for the layoffs. Some have pointed to the rapid hiring in the tech sector during and after the pandemic when the U.S. Federal Reserve set interest rates near zero, reports the BBC’s Danielle Kaye. The resulting “hiring set these firms up for eventual workforce reductions, experts said—a dynamic separate from the generative AI boom over the last three years,” Kaye wrote. Others have pointed to fears that an impending recession may be starting due to higher tariffs, fewer foreign-worker visas, the government shutdown, a backlash against DEI and clean energy spending, ballooning federal government debt, and the presence of federal troops in U.S. cities. For layoffs in the tech sector, a likely culprit is the financial stress that companies are experiencing because of their huge spending on AI infrastructure. Companies that are spending a lot with no significant increases in revenue can try to sustain profitability by cutting costs. Amazon increased its total CapEx from $54 billion in 2023 to $84 billion in 2024, and an estimated $118 billion in 2025. Meta is securing a $27 billion credit line to fund its data centers. Oracle plans to borrow $25 billion annually over the next few years to fulfill its AI contracts. “We’re running out of simple ways to secure more funding, so cost-cutting will follow,” Pratik Ratadiya, head of product at AI startup Narravance, wrote on X. “I maintain that companies have overspent on LLMs before establishing a sustainable financial model for these expenses.” We’ve seen this act before. When companies are financially stressed, a relatively easy solution is to lay off workers and ask those who are not laid off to work harder and be thankful that they still have jobs. AI is just a convenient excuse for this cost-cutting. Last week, when Amazon slashed 14,000 corporate jobs and hinted that more cuts could be coming, a top executive noted the current generation of AI is “enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.” Shortly thereafter, another Amazon rep anonymously admitted to NBC News that “AI is not the reason behind the vast majority of reductions.” On an investor call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy admitted that the layoffs were “not even really AI driven.” We have been following the slow growth in revenues for generative AI over the last few years, and the revenues are neither big enough to support the number of layoffs attributed to AI, nor to justify the capital expenditures on AI cloud infrastructure. Those expenditures may be approaching $1 trillion for 2025, while AI revenue—which would be used to pay for the use of AI infrastructure to run the software—will not exceed $30 billion this year. Are we to believe that such a small amount of revenue is driving economy-wide layoffs? Investors can’t decide whether to cheer or fear these investments. The revenue is minuscule for AI-platform companies like OpenAI that are buyers, but is magnificent for companies like Nvidia that are sellers. Nvidia’s market capitalization recently topped $5 trillion, while OpenAI admits that it will have $115 billion in cumulative losses by 2029. (Based on Sam Altman’s history of overly optimistic predictions, we suspect the losses will be even larger.) The lack of transparency doesn’t help. OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI creators are not public companies that are required to release audited figures each quarter. And most Big Tech companies do not separate AI from other revenues. (Microsoft is the only one.) Thus, we are flying in the dark. Meanwhile, college graduates are having trouble finding jobs, and many young people are convinced by the end-of-work narrative that there is no point in preparing for jobs. Ironically, surrendering to this narrative makes them even less employable. The wild exaggerations from LLM promoters certainly help them raise funds for their quixotic quest for artificial general intelligence. But it brings us no closer to that goal, all while diverting valuable physical, financial, and human resources from more promising pursuits. View the full article

Beijing had blocked exports of vital carmaking component after row with Dutch governmentView the full article

Dole invented a new fruit. The Dole Colada Royale Pineapple is sweet and tangy with notes of coconut and, as the name suggests, piña colada. Unlike its golden yellow counterpart, the Colada Royale has a cream-colored pulp with a green-to-golden shell. It also took more than 15 years to get it just right. The suggested recipes the company released with the new fruit include snacks like a pineapple and coconut carpaccio and a basil-wrapped pineapple with pine zest. Clearly this is meant to be a luxury pineapple experience. The fruit, which is now available in select grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada, is 100% non-GMO and naturally bred. The company didn’t share its suggested retail price, but the Colada Royale comes amid a wider trend toward “designer” pineapples. Just last year, Fresh Del Monte released a pink pineapple it called the Pinkglow, which it followed up with a $400 Rubyglow. A new growing process Developing new pineapples requires patience since the natural process can stretch out for nine years or more. “You have to go through thousands of pollinations and develop thousands of seeds and then have the capacity to pinpoint that particular plant that combines what you are looking for,” says Roberto Young, director of pineapple breeding at Dole’s farm in La Ceiba, Honduras. He led the team that developed the Colada Royale variety. The new pineapple also had be grown in different seasons, since temperature can affect the taste of the finished product. All in all, that means it takes thousands of attempts that go wrong in hopes of getting one that goes right. Roberto Young “Usually, you have to discard most of the fruit because it could taste very good during the summer, but in the winter you cannot really taste it because it’s too tangy, it’s very acidic,” Young tells Fast Company. Plant breeders consider factors like size, productivity, and color as they’re developing a new product, but taste, of course, is the most important. “It doesn’t help if the fruit is a good size, good productivity, but doesn’t taste like pineapple,” Young says. Dole’s new pineapple had the right taste, but its cream-colored pulp was at first a concern since consumers today are used to yellow pulp in pineapples. At the produce and floral trade show in Anaheim, California, where Dole unveiled the Colada Royale in October, Young says people were hesitant about the fruit—until they tasted it. Then, he says, their reaction was “Wow, this is something different.” Developing a new market The goal from the beginning was to develop a unique flavor and bring something new to the market. Pineapple is genetically very variable, Young says, and the biggest challenge was consistency. Plant breeding doesn’t have a high success rate—“If you are a plant breeder, you might be successful, or you might not,” he concedes—and pineapple is especially tricky since it has a relatively long harvest cycle. The process requires first planting parents, which take about a year to produce flowers that can be pollinated. From there, it’s about five more months until the fruit can be harvested. The seeds from that harvest are then planted to get all new plants, repeating the cycle. The results need to be repeatable to ensure the fruit can be mass-produced, so it takes at least three generations—roughly nine years—to develop a new product. The Colada Royale took longer, and Young, a Honduran native who’s been with Dole for 28 years, has been on the project from the start. He considers it his legacy. “I feel really very, very grateful,” he says. Dole is also looking at the new fruit as a legacy play of its own. The company plans to reinvest a portion of the proceeds of every box of the pineapple sold to create a community center in La Ceiba that will provide healthcare services, language classes, and vocational training. In its most recent earnings report, Dole said its second-quarter 2025 revenue was $2.4 billion, an increase of 14.3% over the same period in 2024. The company is expected to report third-quarter financials on November 10. Designer pineapples may sound like a novelty, but since they can be upsold, fruit growers and grocers alike may find they’re a sweet addition to the produce section. View the full article

Amid the mass layoffs in tech and retail in the past month, YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan sent out a recent internal memo that he’s also looking to lay off employees—who volunteer. Mohan details how YouTube is undergoing a major AI-focused reorganization and introduces a “Voluntary Exit Program” with a severance package to eligible YouTube employees. This voluntary exit deal has been couched as an opportunity for employees, but it’s really just a buyout. Companies have long used this strategy as a way to reduce headcount, usually to avert traditional layoffs. For employees approaching retirement, voluntary severance may be a great opportunity, a wonderful deus ex machina late-career plot twist. But many employees worry that saying “no, thank you” now may mean an involuntary layoff later on. So how do you decide if you should take a voluntary layoff? Here are four questions to consider. What’s happening in your industry? YouTube has offered its employees a buyout because of AI restructuring. Duke University created a voluntary severance program in April 2025 in response to federal funding cuts. UnitedHealthCare invited an undisclosed number of employees to take part in its Voluntary Resignation Separation Program in early 2025 in response to the financially tumultuous fallout of the murder of its CEO, Brian Thompson, and to a 2024 cyberattack that cost the company $3 billion. In all of these cases, the organizations are offering buyouts because of larger technological, political, and economic forces. The decisions are about more than just what’s happening in the organization itself—which may indicate that more changes are coming as the industries adapt. But not all buyouts are prompted by larger industry forces. That’s why it’s important to understand the bigger trends. Then you can better predict whether voluntary layoffs are likely to be the end of your company’s reduction in force—or just the beginning. Typically, voluntary buyout packages are more generous than the kinds of severance packages that come with involuntary layoffs. What are your employment prospects? The best-case scenario for a voluntary layoff is either stepping straight into retirement or having a new job already lined up. Then your severance package becomes an unexpected pot of gold in the path you were already walking. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t that lucky. So if you weren’t planning on leaving before the buyout was announced, what prospects would you have if you took the voluntary severance? One of the upsides of voluntary layoffs is the opt-in window. Typically, employers offer a window of several weeks to several months to opt-in to voluntary severance, giving you some time to put out feelers for other potential job prospects. This can let you see what the job market is like before you make your decision. What’s in the severance package? While the specific severance package will vary from one organization to another, voluntary layoff programs typically make the buyout a tempting carrot in order to avoid more painful involuntary layoffs later on. Often, these severance packages will give volunteers several weeks’ or months’ worth of base pay, depending on the number of years of service. (And depending on which state you live in, you may be eligible for unemployment benefits once the severance pay has run out.) For instance, when Duke University offered voluntary severance earlier this year, it gave volunteers a compensation package equal to one week of severance pay, multiplied by years of service, up to a maximum of 26 weeks. But cash may not be the only benefit in your severance package. Your employer may also offer to pay health insurance benefits for a few months, provide career counseling, or offer financial planning services to help with the transition. What do you want? Learning that your employer is offering voluntary layoffs is stressful, but it doesn’t mean the company has all the cards. The organization wants something—a reduction in force—which means you have leverage. Because you can help give that to them, if they give you what you want. So just like when you were hired, figure out what you want and decide what you’re willing to compromise to get it. Don’t assume the severance package your employer offers is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Start with the severance compensation package. Just because the severance pay offered by the voluntary layoff program is capped at a certain amount doesn’t mean you can’t ask for more. The company is willing to pay people to quit, so feel free to ask for more money to give them what they want. Similarly, you could ask to be vested in the company’s retirement plan if you’re not fully there yet or ask to stay on the organization’s health insurance until the next calendar year. The worst they can say is no. Deciding what you want to make leaving feel good can make a voluntary layoff a winning proposition for you, rather than an employment catch-22. Lay off me! If you’re facing a “Voluntary Exit Program” or other euphemistically named quit-or-we’ll-start-laying-people-off process, there are four questions you can ask yourself to help determine whether or not you should opt in. First, think about what’s going on in your industry as a whole. If there are larger technological, political, or economic forces that are causing structural changes in your organization or in your industry, then it may make sense to take the buyout, since there may be bigger shakeups on the horizon. From there, think about your employment prospects. Since buyouts typically have a window of several weeks for you to decide whether or not to opt-in, you have some time to determine if you can quickly find another position. Then consider what’s in the severance package your company is offering, including the full payment amount and any additional perks that are included. What’s offered and how much is it worth to you? Finally, think about what you want. What would the company have to offer you to make walking away worthwhile—and ask for it. Because a voluntary layoff is a negotiation, and you should treat it like one. View the full article

The value of higher education has been on a steady decline for Americans over the past 15 years. According to a September Gallup poll, only 35% of U.S. adults said a college education is “very important,” compared to 75% in 2010. This is what a marketer would call a brand problem. The University of North Carolina is unveiling a refreshed brand identity and reorganizing its marketing structure to meet these 21st-century challenges. The centuries-old university has a storied history as a top-ranked academic institution and a legendary sports brand (thank you Michael Jordan). Chancellor Lee Roberts says that awareness isn’t UNC’s problem. Everyone in North Carolina knows the school, and applications continue to climb each year. “The truth is, it is a competitive landscape across higher ed. We are in a competition for research dollars, for rankings, and for the best students,” Roberts says. “We thought it was time to do a better job telling our story in a more proactive and effective way. In the contemporary media environment, you can’t just sit back and hope that everyone will recognize what makes you great and unique. You need to be a little bit more aggressive about communicating your story to the world.” “First. And for all.” It’s an obvious observation, but universities are not the same as corporations. The stakeholders involved in a brand refresh are many more than you’d find in a typical boardroom. It’s why marketing at UNC has long been decentralized, spread across its more than 25 schools and units, all telling their own stories in a variety of ways. As a result, even the UNC logo had been spread thin. All told, there were 666 variations of the UNC logo being used. In order to more effectively tell the university’s story, as Roberts wanted, the decision was made to break down these silos and create a centralized marketing department. Adrienne King was hired in February, coming from Indiana University, as UNC’s associate vice chancellor for marketing to lead the effort. Roberts also brought in former Phoenix Suns CMO Dean Stoyer, a veteran of brands like Nike, Under Armour, and ESPN, as vice chancellor for communications. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a centralized marketing team at the university,” King says. “But this isn’t a situation where we needed to come in and start all over.” King and her team partnered with creative agency 2×4 to conduct market research, do a comparative analysis, and develop an updated brand positioning. The research included surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one discussions with alumni, faculty, staff, students, and North Carolina residents. For starters, they found that the school’s interlocking NC logo dates back to the 1870s, and it has remained the symbol alumni and North Carolina residents most identify with. “From a brand perspective, it is internationally recognized. But more importantly, back at home we feel like it represents the people in the state that we serve,” King says. “This is the university for the people. And you can’t create a new logo that would have better equity than that.” The brand refresh utilizes one version of that logo, as well as a standardized version of the iconic “Carolina Blue” color. For a tagline, the school looked back at its history as America’s first public university and landed on “First. And For All.” In terms of the declining opinion about higher ed, Roberts says people tell pollsters they think universities are expensive, elitist, and don’t do a good job preparing students for the workforce. “Well, here at Carolina, our tuition’s been flat for 9 going on 10 years in nominal terms, meaning it’s gone down by about 20% in real terms, and 82% of our undergraduates are from right here in North Carolina,” Roberts says. “We were just No. 3 nationally in the Princeton Review’s ROI survey. So we don’t think any of those concerns really apply to us. But again, that comes back to telling our story as effectively as we can.” Meanwhile, competitors are stepping up, and not just the traditional rivals. Roberts name-checks schools like the University of South Florida, which is now a leader in new patents. “You have an entire crop of new entrants who are gunning for the traditional top tier of public higher ed in the United States, and it requires everyone to continue investing, continue raising the bar,” he says. Demographic cliff vs. Reputation cliff Twenty years ago, King wrote her dissertation on the role of marketing and higher education. “I remember at the time marketing was seen as very much a negative term, and when you thought of marketing and higher ed, it was strictly enrollment focused,” she says. For years, the postsecondary education industry has been bracing for what it calls the demographic cliff, when high school graduation numbers—and consequently potential enrollment numbers—will decline significantly. A Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education report says high school graduates will peak this year at about 3.9 million, and then start falling until there are about 13% fewer graduates by 2041. Kings says that given all the other challenges and narratives around the perceived value of a college education, more people within the industry are recognizing that while they were focused on that demographic cliff, they missed the reputational cliff that it has fallen off of. Now the work to repair and rebuild that reputation includes acting like a world-class brand and telling the story of its value. “I think often we in the public higher-ed sector take for granted that we are uniquely positioned within our states to drive economic development to benefit the people of the state,” King says. “I like to think our greatest investors are the citizens of North Carolina, and we need them to know all the ways that we are positively impacting their lives. That’s a very different position than strictly focusing on enrollment. That really is about reputation, and that’s what the focus is now.” View the full article

The volume of home equity lines of credit expanded for the 14th consecutive quarter, driven largely by fintechs and other nonbanks that are accounting for more and more of the business. View the full article

A trade group for participants in the clean energy loan program argues the upcoming regulations will be too burdensome and costly for participants. View the full article

When corporate crises hit, the public looks to the CEO. From product recalls to workplace discrimination to customer mistreatment scandals, CEOs are often thrust into the spotlight and forced to apologize. But do the exact words they choose really matter? I’m a professor of marketing, and my preliminary research suggests the answer is yes. In fact, they can even move stock prices. A tale of 2 apologies Consider two examples from the not-too-distant past. When Samsung Electronics had to recall 2.5 million smartphones in 2016 due to battery fires, the company ran full-page ads in major American newspapers that said, “We are truly sorry.” Despite the apology, Samsung’s stock continued falling, wiping out billions of dollars in market value. Contrast that with a famous case: the 1982 Tylenol crisis, in which seven people died after taking capsules that a still-unidentified criminal had laced with cyanide, circumventing the company’s safety protocols. The then-CEO of Tylenol’s parent company, Johnson & Johnson, said “I apologize” to consumers and immediately ordered a nationwide recall, costing the company over US$100 million. His direct acknowledgment of responsibility and swift action helped restore public trust and became a case study in effective crisis leadership. The company’s stock price didn’t take much of a hit, either. While the two cases are different in many ways, together they illustrate a pattern my colleagues and I observed in our study: Markets respond differently to “I apologize” versus “We apologize.” Investors reward personal accountability I collaborated with marketing professors Jennifer H. Tatara and Courtney B. Peters to analyze 224 corporate apologies between 1996 and 2023. Using event-study methods common in finance, we tracked unusual stock returns around apology announcements and linked them to how CEOs framed their statements. Our results, which we are preparing for publication, were striking. CEOs who said “I apologize” often saw short-term stock returns rise by a statistically significant amount. CEOs who said “We apologize” saw no such effect. Saying “I apologize” lessens the market penalty by roughly 86%, we found. We think this is because markets reward leaders who take individual responsibility. “I” signals personal accountability and decisiveness. “We,” by comparison, dilutes ownership of the problem. But context matters, we found. When we zeroed in on diversity-related cases—those involving mistreatment based on race, gender, disability, or LGBTQ+ status, for example—the positive effect of “I apologize” weakened or disappeared. That’s because investors often interpret diversity crises as signs of systemic failure, rather than isolated mistakes. In those cases, investors, employees, and the public may expect accountability that goes beyond the CEO. A lone “I apologize” can seem hollow, while “We apologize” may resonate more by acknowledging shared institutional responsibility. Beyond CEOs: Why stakeholders should care Apologies are among the most scrutinized executive communications. Their effects ripple across different audiences. For investors, apology language provides a real-time signal of leadership quality and future governance. Our research shows these signals are strong enough to move stock prices. For corporate boards, an apology can be as important as a balance sheet in shaping market perceptions. Our research suggests that boards should insist leaders prepare for crisis communications as a standard part of risk management. For employees and customers, apology language sends a message about corporate culture. “I” can demonstrate accountability; “we” can affirm inclusion and shared responsibility. Both matter, depending on the situation. Leading in a skeptical era Corporate apologies are nothing new. But in today’s environment—where social media amplifies every word and trust in institutions is fragile—the stakes are higher. A single poorly framed statement can trigger outrage, stock sell-offs, or viral boycotts. The good news is that “sorry” doesn’t have to be the hardest word. In fact, this research suggests that a good apology can pay off, literally. The key is to remember that apologies aren’t one-size-fits-all. The right words depend on the nature of the wrongdoing. Prachi Gala is an associate professor of marketing at Kennesaw State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

‘Hello, I need the biggest business transformation project you have. No, that’s too big . . .’View the full article

Racing along the Potomac River at 26 knots (almost 30 mph) usually guarantees a raucous ride—but not on a battery-electric Candela C-8 hydrofoil. Instead of the roar of a conventional boat’s fossil-fueled engine and the smack of its hull on the water, this vessel smoothly whirred along, barely shuddering over the wake of a passing water taxi as its foils cleanly sliced through the surface. The placid experience belied the speed shown on the C-8’s touchscreen. And the loudest noise heard on a mid-October ride came not from the C-8’s electric motor, but from planes taking off from Washington National Airport that were following a prescribed course above the river. Stockholm-based Candela (a Most Innovative Companies honoree in 2025) doesn’t just want to electrify the boating-for-fun experience, however. Along with a few other companies, it aims to purge fossil fuels from the passenger ferries that regularly ply city waterways. A ride for the ruling class You can think of the C-8, starting at $300,000, as a Candela equivalent of the Tesla Roadster—the high-priced plaything that helps boot up a line of more useful electrified conveyances. The hardtop edition we took around the Potomac and the Anacostia rivers is a sleek machine that drew compliments from boardwalk passersby when we pulled up to the Washington Harbour development in Georgetown.    The C-8 pulls out of a marina as a boat, but then starts flying on its foils at about 17 knots (19.5 mph). Candela’s engineers are fixated on foils—not only because of the speed they allow but also because, by getting the hull above the water, they vastly cut down on the drag. Candela quotes a range of 57 nautical miles (almost 66 miles) for the C-8’s 69 kWh battery, with the ability to go from 10% of a charge to 80% in under 30 minutes with 135 kW DC charging. You helm the C-8 via a steering wheel, a throttle, and a 15.4-inch touchscreen. Candela’s software monitors the boat and will automatically slow it down if you bank it too much—as I found out firsthand during an August 2023 ride on the San Francisco Bay in an earlier model of the C-8. Three seats and a bench aft of them can accommodate up to six passengers, while a cozy belowdecks space forward of the controls hides sleeping quarters and, below a cover, a small toilet. Almost two hours of cruising up and down the Potomac and the Anacostia, most of it on the foils, took the battery from 100% of a charge to 63%. Candela has sold more than 100 C-8s and delivered about 90, spokesman Mikael Mahlberg says; about half of those deliveries have gone to U.S. customers. It has also delivered 32 C-7 boats, the company’s debut electric hydrofoil that it no longer produces. The privately held firm has raised $96.2 million in funding so far, according to Crunchbase data, but isn’t disclosing financial details. “We’re aiming to be profitable next year,” Mahlberg says, describing Candela’s current phase as “a hyper-growth curve” optimized for research, development, and sales. Fossil-fuel-free ferries That joyride on the C-8 doubled as a chance to show off how passenger ferries can provide a useful transportation alternative. With Washington roads gridlocked due to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House meeting with President The President, as well as the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, my boating-enthusiast friend Bob Vanasse couldn’t make it to Columbia Island Marina on the south side of the Potomac. So we zipped up to Washington Harbour to pick him up there instead. Vanasse, whose day job is representing seafood and fishing-industry interests, pronounced himself impressed and gave an impromptu sales pitch to a guy at his boat club by the District Wharf in Southwest D.C., when we pulled up there. Candela aims to offer that convenience to larger groups of people with its P-12 battery-electric hydrofoil ferry. It can transport up to 30 people at a cruising speed of 25 knots (almost 29 mph), with a range estimated at 40 nautical miles (46 miles). Candela doesn’t specify a price for the ferry; Mahlberg only says it’s “of course more expensive” than the C-8 and “slightly more expensive to purchase than the cheapest diesel vessels of the same size”—offset by annual operating costs about 60% to 70% lower. As with electric vehicles, the low maintenance of an electric motor makes a large contribution to those savings. The P-12, however, is just pulling out of the dock in terms of commercial deployment. One P-12 is providing ferry service around Stockholm—where Candela was able to get a waiver from no-wake speed limits, cutting travel time on an 11-mile commuter route from an hour to 30 minutes—and another serves as a demo vessel for the firm. Candela has 50 P-12 orders booked, with plans to deliver the first eight starting in the first quarter to customers in Saudi Arabia and Mumbai. And it has one new U.S. ferry operator, FlyTahoe, that’s considering the P-12 for a planned service going north and south across Lake Tahoe. FlyTahoe CEO Ryan Meinzer says that the company, based in San Francisco and Tahoe Vista, California, considered and rejected non-hydrofoil ferry concepts. “Conventional hull and propulsion designs—even when electric—still displace water as they push through it, making them far less efficient and less comfortable in choppy conditions,” he says. Meinzer isn’t disclosing FlyTahoe’s financial arrangements with Candela but says the company is “advancing toward a tentative 2026 launch for our cross-lake service, subject to regulatory approval.” Candela, meanwhile, will need to start building boats in the U.S. to advance its own ferry business here—pre-Depression U.S. laws impose a buy-American requirement on vessels transporting people between American ports. “The U.S. is potentially our biggest market potential,” Candela’s Mahlberg says. “We’re in advanced discussions with several states regarding a U.S. factory, and we hope we can shed more light on this soon, as we aim to deliver our first U.S. vessel in 2026.” Other passenger ferry prospects Candela already has company in that market. Belfast-based boat builder Artemis Technologies inked an agreement in February with the U.S. firm Delta Marine to develop battery-electric hydrofoils for Puget Sound routes. Artemis’s EF-24 will carry 150 people at a cruising speed of 34 knots (39 mph) and a range on foils of 70 nautical miles (80.5 miles). And in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Ferry placed an order in December for three battery-electric, 150-passenger catamaran ferries from All American Marine, with the first vessel set to begin service on its shorter routes in early 2027. That ferry operator’s electrification ambitions include converting four 400-passenger diesel ferries to electric power. Putting batteries in a boat might seem like a much more ambitious venture into zero-emission transportation than electric cars, but the concept also has some nonobvious virtues. “Ferries are the largest vessels capable of becoming pure electric due to their well-defined operational profiles—often the exact routes, energy profile, stoppage times, size, load requirements, etc., are accurately known during the powertrain design, eliminating range anxiety and allowing high-cost batteries or other energy storage systems to be right-sized,” says Mika Takahashi, senior technology analyst at IDTechEx, a Cambridge, England-based research firm. But electric ferries also constitute a tiny fraction of the worldwide ferry fleet. IDTechEx estimates that only 280 e-ferries have been sold, with 440 more sales predicted through 2030. In the U.S. alone, 604 passenger ferries were in service in 2022, per the latest Department of Transportation statistics available; the industry group Interferry estimated there were 15,400 in operation worldwide in 2019. Takahashi also notes two other possible obstacles. One is “being a relatively small subset of the EV industry” relative to cars, meaning a slower pace of innovation. Another is “unpredictable policy shifts” in the U.S. and other countries—such as the The President administration’s weird and evidence-detached hostility to EVs. View the full article

You may have seen warnings that Google is telling all of its users to change their Gmail passwords due to a breach. That’s only partly true. Google is telling users to change their passwords, but not because of a breach that exposed them. In fact, Google’s real advice is to stop using your password altogether. Here’s what I mean. The breach traces back to Salesforce, whose systems were compromised by the hacker group known as ShinyHunters (also tracked as UNC6040). Attackers obtained business-related Gmail data, including contact lists, company associations, and email metadata. No actual Gmail account credentials were stolen, but the nature of the stolen data makes phishing and impersonation attacks far more dangerous. Google confirmed the link between the Salesforce breach and a rise in targeted phishing campaigns and said attackers are already impersonating Google, IT departments, or trusted vendors to trick people into handing over login information. Some campaigns even involve “vishing,” or fraudulent phone calls made from spoofed 650-area-code numbers that resemble Google’s corporate lines. Phishing attacks increase For years, phishing has been one of the most effective tools hackers use to break into accounts. Google’s own data shows that phishing and vishing now account for roughly 37% of successful account takeovers across its services. With the data from Salesforce in hand, hackers can customize attacks that look far more authentic than the usual spam message. Imagine receiving a message that references your actual employer, colleagues, or recent communications. That level of detail raises the likelihood that you’ll trust the email, click a malicious link, or provide sensitive information. Once credentials are stolen, hackers can bypass additional protections and take over accounts—sometimes without the victim realizing it until significant damage has been done. Protect your email password Look, the most important rule here is that you should literally never give anyone your Gmail password, especially not someone who calls you and purports to be tech support. No matter how convincing it may seem, Google is never ever going to call you and ask you for your login information. Seriously, even if your son calls you to help you with tech support, you should not give him your Gmail password. Why? Well, because your email is basically the key to everything. In an interview I did last year, Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming explained the problem. “If you do not have a good password on your email, the rest of your life is pretty much wide open, because every single service out there does reset password by sending you an email,” says Graham-Cumming. “So if I can compromise your email, I can compromise pretty much everything else you have.” Of course, even better than not giving out your password or clicking on links in fake tech-support emails is to stop using passwords altogether on your Gmail account. Google has been encouraging users for years to adopt passkeys instead. Switch to a passkey I also spoke with Jeff Shiner last year about passkeys. As the CEO of 1Password, Shiner knows a few things about how people use passwords and why they should be switching to more secure ways of protecting their accounts. “A passkey, from an end user point of view, looks like the biometrics on your device,” says Shiner. “The cool thing about a passkey is that to the end user, you never have a password for that service. You just use your biometrics, and then a passkey is created. But, from a security point of view, it’s actually stronger than a password—even a strong password—because it can’t be phished.” In light of the breach, Google is encouraging Gmail users to change their password. In fact, you should change your password on a regular basis in the event it is ever compromised. But even better is to stop using passwords at all. Google is also pushing users toward stronger forms of authentication, including passkeys and app-based two-factor authentication (2FA). Unlike SMS codes, which can be intercepted or spoofed, authenticator apps and passkeys make it much harder for hackers to break into accounts even if they trick you into handing over a password. Google’s warning for users Google’s guidance can be summed up in five steps: Reset your Gmail password regularly. Choose something unique and complex. Do not reuse passwords across accounts. Turn on two-factor authentication. Preferably, use an authenticator app or a passkey. Be skeptical of unsolicited messages. If you receive an email or call about account security, go directly to your Google account dashboard instead of clicking links or giving information over the phone. Use Google’s Security Checkup. The tool provides a quick overview of devices, apps, and settings tied to your account. Stay alert. If something feels off—strange login notifications, unexpected password reset requests, or unusual email activity—act quickly by securing your account. This episode underscores a broader truth about modern cybersecurity: Your accounts are only as safe as the weakest link in the chain. In this case, a breach at Salesforce created risk for Gmail users who had no direct relationship with the company. Even if Google’s own infrastructure remains secure, attackers can exploit data leaked from partners to undermine trust. With more than 2.5 billion Gmail users, it isn’t surprising that the world’s most popular email service would represent one of the most irresistible targets for hackers. Google’s latest warning is a reminder that in a world of constant breaches, vigilance is the only reliable defense. —Jason Aten This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. 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“Get laid off with me.” So read the closed captions of a recent TikTok post. “My boss just put a 15 minute sink on my calendar,” creator @mbraindump said in the now-viral post. “I can’t believe this is really happening. Getting laid off, okay, here we go.” It is a sinking feeling that’s sadly familiar to myriad workers. In just the past week, thousands have fallen victim to mass layoffs at Amazon, Target, Paramount, CBS, and other large companies. After Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate employees last week, or 4% of its white-collar workforce, a number of workers started cropping up on social media to document their experiences. The trend of documenting being laid off first emerged post-pandemic and gained traction as mass layoffs hit in 2023 and 2024. Now it is back, as a fresh wave of workers joins the ranks of the unemployed. “Pretty sure I’m about to get laid off from my 9-to-5 right now, so come with me to my meeting,” one TikTok user posted in late October. The video has over 670,000 views. “Day in my life as a software engineer, except I got laid off before I could finish it,” another posted around the same time, which has almost 250,000 views. Rather than posting a LinkedIn update, being laid off is now lucrative content. On TikTok, the hashtag #layoffs has almost 60,000 videos. Many of these riff off the ubiquitous “Get Ready With Me (GRWM)” genre of content, in which creators showcase their hair, makeup, or outfit while chatting about their inner lives or zeitgeist-y topics. Some, like @mbraindump, go on to turn unemployment into a content series post-layoff. In an era of mass unemployment, layoffs are no longer seen as an individual failing. Instead, they are an unfortunate fact of life. For many, it’s not their first rodeo. Some are on their second—or even third—layoff in just one year. Amid the job losses, a new culture around layoffs has emerged. As more layoffs have hit in the past year, the stigma has lifted. Studies have shown that employees are more disengaged than ever, making them more inclined to hold their employers accountable, even on the way out. @mbraindump’s video has received hundreds of comments of support and solidarity since it was posted. “I’m so sorry. This sucks. These companies really don’t view us as humans. Something has got to change. Sending you a hug!” one person wrote. “Living in this constant state of anxiety at your job is AWFUL. My God, they couldn’t have made this any less humane,” another commented. “I’ve dealt with 2 layoffs within 12 months. I am really sorry you’re in the club now,” a third commiserated. Of course, filming and posting workplace meetings to social media—for former and future employers to see—does come with some risk. It could give hiring managers pause, or even put severance packages at risk. And while watching others get laid off online might help destigmatize the process, it certainly doesn’t make it any easier when a call with HR gets added to your calendar. View the full article

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Ann Hummond knew the office software like the back of her hand. Based in Yorkshire, England, she could untangle any spreadsheet snafu in her sleep. Over the past 23 years, she had worked her way up from a data entry clerk to her finance company’s administrative director, quietly becoming the person everyone relied on when things went sideways. She was, in short, indispensable. And then, one Tuesday morning last year, during a quarterly team meeting attended by directors, colleagues, and a team leader, her boss—who is nearly 10 years her senior—told her publicly, in a roomful of people: “You’re too old to do this job.” “I must have looked like a goldfish with my mouth open,” says Hummond, whose name and location have been changed for job security reasons. “I felt like I had been hit on the head with a shovel,” she says. Hummond, who speaks about her experience for the U.K.’s Age Without Limits campaign to raise awareness of ageism in England, says she didn’t break down in the meeting. “I didn’t want to give him the pleasure of seeing how much he had hurt me,” she says. Instead, she coolly finished her work day, gathered her belongings, “and then went home and fell to pieces.” Although she took two weeks off work, quitting at the age of 64 was not an option. “I can’t afford to give up working. I have lots of responsibilities and a family to support, and I need to build up more savings.” She also knows the prospect of finding a new job often collides with the cold reality of age bias, and is still working at the company. Age discrimination is one of the last accepted prejudices—tolerated in jokes, embedded in hiring, and often brushed off as pragmatism rather than bias. In the U.S., legislation against it has existed since the passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in 1967. Yet, “Between 1997 and 2024, the number of age discrimination charges filed with the EEOC exceeded 15,000 in every year except four—three of which were right after the pandemic, which caused a dip in all employment discrimination litigation,” says Nicole Buonocore Porter, law professor at William & Mary Law School. Research suggests ageism is underreported to begin with. Jobs, across cultures, are quietly coded by age. Regardless of industry, workers experience age discrimination across their careers: negative stereotypes, discriminatory recruitment processes, being passed over for training opportunities, not being recognized. Some studies suggest a staggering 77 to 93% of older adults report experiences with ageism, and 42% of hiring managers admit they consider age when reviewing résumés. And most insidious of all: it compounds mentally and emotionally for those experiencing it, to the point where they really do feel like they might be incapable of doing great things at work. “It’s illegal, it’s wrong, and it’s bad for business,” says author, speaker and activist Ashton Applewhite. “Older people make up the fastest-growing segment of the workforce, both because they need to work and because they want to.” “Everyone, everywhere, is living longer, and everyone is old or future old.” Microaggressions, major consequences The rules are there, tucked neatly into HR handbooks and federal law. The trouble is, they rarely make it off the page, and holding people answerable is complicated. “We’ve made progress in policy awareness, but not in accountability,” says Sheila Callaham, cofounder and board chair of Age Equity Alliance. “Many policies that would strengthen age protections at work have languished in Congress for years, leaving outdated frameworks in place.” Even when cases do make it to the courtroom, such as 63-year-old James Barrios’ recent lawsuit against Atmos Energy Corporation and its affiliate, Atmos Energy Services, LLC, there are myriad reasons his case, and many others like it, will probably fail. Most large employers require workers to agree to binding arbitration, which moves age discrimination claims out of court and into private proceedings, limiting transparency and reducing external enforcement of anti-age-bias rules, Callaham explains. Another reason may simply be because of how deeply we internalize socially constructed beliefs. A 2024 study found employees mimic the age discrimination they once experienced themselves, practicing negative observed and learned traits in a self-perpetuating cycle. “Age discrimination varies from other types of discrimination—specifically race or ethnicity discrimination, and perhaps sex discrimination—in that most age discrimination is not based on animus, but rather, it is based on stereotypes about declining competence as one ages,” explains Porter. Age discrimination also persists because of the subtle, covert ways it slips into daily life. Ariane Froidevaux, associate professor of management at the University of Texas, Arlington, cautions research of overt age discrimination can overlook subtle “microinsults.” Seemingly innocuous comments like the once-ubiquitous “Okay, Boomer!” or “You’re pretty tech-savvy for someone your age,” she explains, can be insulting. Froidevaux’s recent research about the changes in perceived age discrimination over time followed Swiss employees with the mean age of 42.64 over a six-year period. She examined how workers’ sensitivity to age discrimination is shaped by their cognitive frameworks: Those who see the world as fundamentally fair—”belief in a just world”—appeared to be less sensitive, and less likely to perceive increasing age discrimination at work, she explains. Surprisingly, some older workers may also perceive decreased age discrimination over time—not necessarily because of a tangible reduction in patterns of behavior, but because, darkly enough, repeated exposure gradually numbs their response and desensitizes them. For instance, an older worker repeatedly passed over for high-profile projects may start to notice it less over time, as bias fades into background noise. Yet, even when repeated exposure lessens its sting, other research finds that age discrimination still quietly chips away at workers’ confidence and perceived work ability—making it one of the more insidious forms of bias. Hummond says it poisons even things like sick leave. “My advice is try not to take too much time off for anything,” she says. “If you’re ill, you’re ill, but I feel judged in a way that youngsters aren’t.” Nothing personal—and everyone’s next We know discrimination against older workers has impacts on their well-being, mental health, and motivation. But it reshapes workplace dynamics for others, too. “When exclusion of a certain group is embedded into the work culture, the safety of belonging is threatened,” explains Callaham, who calls this the “shadow threat” of ageism. She coined the term after a 31-year-old tech worker told her that his 38-year-old manager was stockpiling savings in case he was fired for “being too old,” stoking the younger employee’s own fears of being next. Collectively, this spawns a frenzied attitude—you’re never too young to start running out of time. What we can do Research suggests age diversity statements have a positive impact, while Applewhite makes a case for blind interviews. “Many orchestras use blind auditions, where musicians perform behind a screen, in order to diversify their ranks. How about replicating this in business practice? Conducting virtual interviews with the camera off?” Callaham adds debunking age stereotypes starts with awareness, which can in turn increase accountability. “When organizations talk openly about how age bias shows up, they’re better able to build systems, habits, and expectations that make inclusion real,” she says. “Managers and HR professionals can do a lot to prevent age discrimination at work by modeling and adopting an age-inclusive culture,” says Froidevaux. In Hummond’s case, she was (and still is) the person the office turns to for her technical prowess and knowledge of the company, but things have turned “pretty sour.” Over the past year, her responsibilities have been reduced and flexible work arrangements withdrawn. “I don’t feel trusted,” she says, “I’ll knock on a door and hear the conversation stop.” For her colleagues, too, the atmosphere in the office is different, more guarded: “You go in on a Monday and nobody’s talking.” With its innate universality, few realize how toxic age discrimination can make workplaces, with everyone wondering “Who’s next?” Hummond keeps working, still indispensable, still sidelined. “I’m working down to retirement, but it’s not fun anymore,” she says. View the full article

If one founder is good, then more must be better, right? Not necessarily. New research shows that the benefits of cofounding a startup with strangers can be eclipsed by the risks. Yes, cofounders can bring their own perspectives, along with “access to wider networks, greater capacity, and access to funding,” says Monique Boddington, a management practice associate professor at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, whose research includes early-stage venture formation and startup strategy development. And yet: “An increasing number of individuals have been setting up businesses with no intention of taking on employees,” she explains. That’s because more people are identifying as solo entrepreneurs—“solopreneurs”—since the pandemic, Boddington adds. And while the distinction between self-employed, freelancer, and solopreneur is still murky, “the way to spot [solopreneurs] is whether their venture pursues novelty and scalable opportunity or mainly income replacement or replication,” she says. For those running startups, many such workers are choosing to go it completely alone. In 2022, 84% of all U.S. firms had no employees, meaning there was just the one person running the business. These 29.8 million “nonemployer businesses” accounted for $1.7 trillion, or about 6.8% of the economy. And the momentum hasn’t slowed; in 2023, Americans filed over 5.5 million new business applications, and Gusto’s 2025 New Business Formation survey suggests more than 4 in 5 small businesses in the U.S. have no employees. Why people do it According to the same Gusto survey, over 50% of solopreneurs cite career autonomy—“being one’s own boss”—as the reason for adopting a lone wolf, owner-only business model. Many, like growth marketing consultant and content creator Kevin Fernando, do so because of the “unmatched freedom” it affords them. Fernando, who is the founder of Solopreneur Digital, where he helps entrepreneurs and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies grow, says that “you get to move quickly, make decisions that align with your vision, and build something that’s fully your own.” Of course, going solo, and starting a venture with no cofounder or employees, doesn’t come without its challenges. “The flexibility and autonomy of being your own boss often come with the vulnerability of being on your own,” says Filip Majetić, sociologist and senior researcher at the Ivo Pilar Institute in Croatia. While strong social support from family and friends can improve solopreneurs’ overall mental and physical health, he explains, “this support does not buffer specific stress-related health problems” such as exhaustion and headaches. Like many others, Fernando finds everything falls on him, and the constant context switching can be draining. “When you’re a solopreneur, you’re not just the strategist. You’re the marketer, customer support, designer, and operations manager—all rolled into one. You have to be self-motivated and resilient because there’s no one else,” he says. That’s especially the case if you’re not sharing responsibilities with a cofounder in your venture’s early days. But new research posits that this may be a good thing. Stranger danger Conventional wisdom would suggest that bringing on a cofounder with a vastly different network from your own leads to more potential funds, as the chances of overlap in who you know would be lower. While that may be true, an analysis of over 3,500 Kickstarter campaigns in a study titled, “The ‘Devil’ You Don’t Know,” reveals that new ventures that include strangers on the team are less than half as likely to deliver the product or service they pitched, and almost twice as likely to cease operations. Studies challenging beliefs that resilience is universally beneficial to entrepreneurial teams are gaining traction, suggesting the very advantages that seem so compelling on paper can also introduce friction—making teams less reflexive, slowing decision-making, and complicating execution. “While having people with diverse skills and experience on a founding team has significant benefits, their ability to work together effectively is just as important,” explains Kimberly A. Eddleston, the Schulze Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and Montoni Research Fellow at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. “They need to be compatible, trustworthy, and able to communicate.” It’s one of business’s oldest truths: If you work with the right people, everything else falls into place. The problem? Nailing the people part of the equation is really hard. The limitations of going it alone “Solopreneurship can be a great starting point to get an idea off the ground. A single person can bootstrap with greater resource efficiency, greater control, rapid iteration, and hire-in capabilities,” Boddington says. But to scale, she explains, a team is critical. Founding teams are also more likely to attract funding in the first place, and the Kickstarter research revealed that teams comprised of strangers garnered more crowdfunding backers because they served as novel bridges to resources. Crucially, operational struggles (such as coordination breakdowns, delays in delivering promised products or services, differing work styles leading to relational uncertainty, misalignment of vision and goals, and potential early stage dissolution) appeared in teams with strangers in the boardroom, not businesses bound by strong family or friendship ties. Not all cofounders are a liability, Eddleston says. In ventures with family, for example, team members can rally quickly in a crisis, and “[they] have a ‘survival’ advantage because family members are willing to work for below-market wages, and even for free, to keep their business afloat,” she says. Still, entrepreneurs can thrive totally alone, without a cofounder or a team. “With AI revolution, the next wave of entrepreneurship won’t be about bigger teams, but smarter individuals—AI-powered solopreneurs who turn technology into their growth partner,” says Areti Gkypali, an assistant professor at Athens University of Economics and Business in Greece. The strategy has worked well for Fernando. By automating repetitive tasks and building systems to handle things like client communications, lead generation, and content distribution, he’s shaved 20 to 25 hours off his workweek, freeing him to focus on strategic priorities. Ultimately, for anyone eyeing a new startup, it’s worth being strategic about who, if anyone, to partner with. As Fernando says: “It’s a lifestyle that rewards focus and leverage more than raw effort.” View the full article

If it’s one thing that can consistently break the internet, it’s pets. Take Pancho the diva: The 1-year-old English cream mini dachshund started his career early in the fame-hungry world of LA, and is now a celebrity with 148,000 followers on Instagram. “We created this personality of this dog that is a diva and a brat who loves the lavish, luxury lifestyle—but his poor little parents can’t afford it,” says his owner, Felix Levine, entrepreneur and host of the popular podcast Unlike Me. He and Serena Kerrigan, founder of the dating game Let’s F**ing Date, are seasoned content creators, so when friends joked about giving their new dog an online persona, the idea stuck. “We thought maybe a ‘Dear Diary, I hate my parents’ vibe,” Felix recalls. The content quickly evolved into vlogs with AI-powered voice-overs, where Pancho shared his spoiled rants at his parents. And the idea gained momentum: from Central Park to a European summer, Pancho’s following snowballed—gaining 30,000 followers in just two weeks. Brands took notice. Pancho’s first deal was with Five Below, followed by partnerships with Pet Life Unlimited, Target, Amazon, and even Kiehl’s. (Yes, the skincare giant now has a dog line). From toys to gourmet snacks and premium grooming, each partnership was endorsed with his signature “diva” flair. Serena KerriganPancho The pup’s collabs don’t scream ‘ads’, and that’s precisely why it works. In the last month alone, his posts reached 24 million viewers and drew over 9 million engagements, a rate many of his fellow human influencers would feel a twinge of envy for. With affiliate links, brand partnerships, and his own storefront, Pancho has a mini-media empire—and he’s only turning one. Levine and Kerrigan declined to disclose exactly how much revenue Pancho has generated, but confirm it’s in the six figures. The “petfluencer” trend isn’t new. But it’s just as profitable as ever. Charming, and delivers results A study published earlier this year in The Journal of Advertising Research found that pet influencers outperform human influencers, particularly since they’re seen as more sincere and trustworthy than their human counterparts, who are often met with skepticism due to perceived commercial motives. Social media endorsements from petfluencers have been shown to generate stronger consumer responses, including higher engagement and greater willingness to pay. Pancho Lead researcher Dr. Laura Lavertu, a lecturer in marketing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, echoes this idea: “Petfluencers offer distinct advantages compared to human social media influencers. While human influencers often persuade through relatability or aspiration, petfluencers are seen as more genuine. They have no hidden agenda, no baggage, no scandals.” The study also noted that as the number of sponsored posts by human influencers rises, their perceived sincerity declines—a phenomenon researchers call “influencer fatigue,” which in turn makes pets a more credible alternative. (The more fur or legs you have, the more credible you are, apparently.) Some have even become household names: As reported by Forbes, TikTok user @princesshoneybellex, a big-shot Australian cat influencer, earned $74,148 in 2023 alone, surpassing the U.S. average salary. Could your pet create a cash flow? Our four-legged friends offer brands countless opportunities in the pet care market, which is anticipated to reach over $427.75 billion by 2032. And it’s not just pet-focused companies cashing in—larger brands like Dyson are tapping into the rise of petfluencers, partnering with celebrity pups to extend their reach in a way that resonates directly with pet owners. In today’s oversaturated media landscape, where ads are swarming from every corner, partnering with a celeb pet might be your smartest marketing move. As noted by The Journal of Advertising Research, “people follow and engage with petfluencers for the joy and entertainment that they bring, and are, overall, universally loved given their ability to communicate with diverse audiences and transcend cultural differences.” When Pancho first came home weighing just a pound and a half, his owners thought they were getting a dog. As it turns out, he’s now running his own business, landing brand deals—even managing his own intern to keep up with his demanding schedule. View the full article