What's on Your Mind?

These days, many founders feel pressure to raise tremendous amounts of venture capital. But it wasn’t always like this. Most people are surprised to learn that four of the most valuable companies in the world barely raised any VC funding at all by today’s standards. Apple is believed to have raised less than $1 million before its IPO. Amazon raised about $8 million. Microsoft raised about $1 million. Google raised $25 million. Add it all up, and it’s less than $35 million in total VC funding. Granted, that’s about $74 million in today’s dollars, but it’s still a relatively small investment that led to four companies that are worth around $14 trillion today. Before…

Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) begin today in Florida. Program recipients can no longer use their SNAP benefits to purchase soda, energy drinks, candy, and prepared desserts. This is part of a broader effort by the The President administration to give states more control over the public assistance program. Through a federal waiver process, states can now submit a waiver proposal to limit which foods and drinks qualify for SNAP purchases. Twenty-two states have already applied for waivers and received federal approval. Here’s what you need to know. Florida becomes the 10th state to implement such restrictions An estimated…

Elon Musk has been summoned to Paris on Monday, where investigators are looking into allegations of misconduct related to the social media platform X, including the spread of child sexual abuse material and deepfake content. The world’s richest man and Linda Yaccarino — the former CEO of X — have been summoned for “voluntary interviews,” while other employees of the platform are scheduled to be heard as witnesses throughout this week, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. It remains unclear whether Musk and Yaccarino will travel to Paris. A spokesperson for X did not respond to questions from The Associated Press and Yaccarino’s current company, eMed, did not answer a req…

I’m not one for binaries, but it’s likely you’re either aware of Gap’s 2025 comeback tour, or you have a healthy amount of screen time. For those of us who aren’t full luddite teen (aspirational), I’m here to tell you that Gap is continuing its play to cement its place among the fashion set—and cultural domination—in 2026. We’re seeing this with Gap’s announcement today of a new Spring collection kicking off a multi-season partnership with Victoria Beckham, bringing clean lines and refined classics that harken from the designer’s British sensibilities to the eponymous American brand. The 38-piece line of wardrobe staples will be available online and in select global G…

For years, premium credit cards competed on points, perks, and airport lounge access. Now the lounge itself is becoming the strategy. Chase is the latest to double down. With new Sapphire Lounge locations planned—starting with one at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and another at Los Angeles International Airport—the company is expanding its footprint at a moment when airport lounges have become one of the most competitive battlegrounds in consumer finance. The move follows a wave of recent openings that show how Chase is trying to differentiate not just on access, but on experience. “We’re really excited,” Dana Pouwels, head of airport lounge benefits…

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Before we go any further, an invitation: On Thursday, April 23, at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Jared Newman and I will be cohosting “The AI Productivity Playbook: A Practical Guide to Working Smarter,” a livestreamed event exclusively for Fast Company subscribers. We’ll highlight the AI work tools we find actually useful and share advice on how to get the most out of them. You can RSVP here. And if you have any questions or tips related to our topic, I would love to hear them. Over a lifetime of writing, I have used more word processors than I can count. Long-defunct obscurities such as Scripsit and Pfs…

Errands, Target runs, tennis games, and even flying to Europe—these are just some of the things employees have done while taking “soft off days.” The idea of taking soft off days, in which you use a work day to do just about anything else, has become a phenomenon. Videos across social media instruct employees on the best way to take a soft day while assuaging any guilt. While employers might see it as wasting company time, many people believe soft off days are harmless—even needed. So-called “time theft,” the practice of running errands or doing personal matters on the clock, has become widely pervasive since the pandemic normalized remote work. From consciously…

Despite Google’s status as one of the true giants of U.S. tech, it’s never quite been able to make its Pixel phones a mainstream success. Last year, for instance, the company enjoyed record U.S. sales in September after the launch of the Pixel 10 line, according to Counterpoint Research. But despite achieving 28% year-on-year growth, the Pixel still only accounted for 6.1% of the $600-and-up smartphone market in the U.S., which is dominated by Apple. There is one market, however, where Google has managed to turn the Pixel into a big hit, and surprisingly, it’s in a country that was one of the last to adopt its search engine. The entry-level Pixel 8A and 9A have b…

I tend to write about AI from the perspective of the bleeding edge, looking at how journalists and media companies are using the technology to change the way they work, reach new audiences, and transform their organizations. But the reality is that there’s a stigma around using artificial intelligence in the journalism community. In conversations I have with working reporters and editors, there’s clearly still a lot of reluctance, if not outright disdain, for using AI in almost any part of their work. Looking at recent coverage of journalists using AI, however, you might think some of that disdain is going away. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled how Fortune bu…

Five years ago, tech angel investor Chris Adamo and a few friends jumped on a burgeoning trend in the digital asset world: they used a virtual real estate broker to buy 23 parcels of property in a metaverse called The Sandbox. He doesn’t remember exactly how much he spent, but it was around $200,000 for the whole group. The real estate, to be clear, consisted of pixelated parcels in “hip,” “trendy” virtual “neighborhoods,” an asset that crypto bros and Web3 enthusiasts like Adamo saw as the future of tech and digital investment. At one point, it ballooned tenfold in value. Adamo was far from alone. Across the four major metaverse platforms, property sales topped $500 mill…

In a new neighborhood in Helsinki, you can skip owning a car. One key part of the district’s design? A new bridge that’s part of the city’s growing bicycle superhighway network. The 1.2-kilometer-long bridge, about three quarters of a mile, connects an island called Laajasalo to the city center. It opens to cyclists and pedestrians on April 18 and will soon also include trams. No cars can cross it; drivers have to take a longer route over an older bridge. On one edge of the island, a former industrial site is now filled with apartment buildings, and the population is quickly expanding across the whole island. “We’re looking at quite large new numbers of reside…

If you watched the Super Bowl in 2026, you likely saw Serena Williams share her weight-loss journey on GLP-1 medications in a commercial. Like millions of others around the country, if you’ve ever considered taking one of these drugs, you probably went online to learn more about where you can get them and how much they cost. Online searches for GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy have risen dramatically since 2022. Advertisements like Williams’s Super Bowl commercial both reflect and help drive that growing demand. More and more advertisements for weight-loss medications are appearing in people’s daily lives. These ads can be appealing, intrusive, confus…

At the Aysaita Refugee Camp in northeastern Ethiopia’s Afar region, there are about 40,000 Eritreans struggling to meet their basic daily needs. For the 10,000 children younger than 10 who live in the camp, that includes one often overlooked resource: play. At many refugee camps around the world, play can, understandably, become an afterthought as humanitarian organizations focus on delivering essentials like housing and food. But studies show that play is critical for helping kids develop executive motor function and relational skills. It’s also a key therapeutic tool for children who have experienced trauma. These insights inspired Playrise, a U.K.-based charity designi…

Work sucks for women. Not all women, but far too many. There’s the gender pay gap, where full-time working women earn 81 cents for every dollar men earn, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau. There’s the glass ceiling that prevents women from leadership advancement, as evidenced by the fact that only 37% of leadership positions in the U.S. are held by women despite representing 47% of the workforce. Let us not forget the disproportionate harassment at work that women experience compared to men, the gender sidelining, and the exclusion from the “boys’ club.” And if that’s not enough, there’s the additional unpaid domestic work that women are expecte…

It’s sometime after midnight on a Monday morning when Zach unlocks his phone and starts scrolling for something to bet on. He’s 26, tucked into his childhood bed at his parents’ house in Washington, D.C. He moved back in after a stint in Las Vegas that didn’t go as planned. The NFL is done for the night. The NBA’s late games have wrapped. Mainstream sports are fast asleep. In FanDuel’s live betting tab, he finds a women’s tennis tournament streaming from somewhere in Southeast Asia. Two unranked, unknown teenagers, one boasting a 0–1 career record. Empty arena, no ball boys. Between points, the players jog to the fence to retrieve the ball themselves. He puts mone…

As the United States was preparing a daring mission to rescue an airman whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, there was money to be made. Users on Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, could place bets on when the airman would be rescued. When Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., shared a screenshot of the activity on social media, an April 3 rescue was trading at 15% compared with 63% who were betting on April 4. After Moulton posted the screenshot and blasted this “dystopian death market,” Polymarket stopped the betting, saying the market “does not meet our integrity standards.” A former Marine who served four tours in Iraq, Moulton said he was “absolutely not…

Here in San Francisco, we live in a bubble, and we know it. While much of the rest of the country sees the city through the lens of Fox News cameramen searching out homeless encampments, we actually live in a very beautiful, very wealthy, and, currently, very AI-obsessed place. Traditionally, the billboards along 101 through Silicon Valley have offered a glimpse into the collective mind of the tech industry. These days, a big chunk of that industry, including most of the major AI labs, is based here in San Francisco, and the billboards have followed. The San Francisco Chronicle recently did the legwork to catalog literally all of the billboards in the city and found t…

A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) shows that more students are seeking out an associate degree first over a four-year bachelor’s degree. Surpassing those aged 21 to 24 for the first time, students aged 18 to 20 represent the largest share of first time associate degree earners in the 2024-25 academic year. That academic year, of the 2 million students who earned a bachelor’s degree, 532,464 of them had a prior postsecondary credential—either a certificate, associate or bachelor’s/masters degree. And of those, 419,766 students completed the bachelor’s degree pathway from an associate degree, accounting for the largest perc…

Anthropic Labs just announced a new product for its flagship AI model called Claude Design. According to Anthropic, the new tool “lets you collaborate with Claude to create polished visual work like designs, prototypes, slides, one-pagers, and more.” The company is billing the tool as a way for non-designers to mock up visuals, and a way for designers to quickly test out a range of initial prototypes. It’s powered by Claude’s most recent new model, Opus 4.7, which is trained to handle difficult coding prompts and complex, long-running tasks. Claude Design is available starting today to Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise Subscribers. Anthropic joins a grow…

Picture it: You’re in an economy seat on a 17-hour flight. Would you pay an extra $300 for just four hours lying flat? Air New Zealand hopes the answer is yes. The airline is finally launching its Economy Skynest lie-flat sleep pods, starting at $495 NZD ($291 USD) for a precious four hours. Passengers in economy and premium economy will have the option to book one of six individual pods nestled in three-tier bunk beds. The “nests” will be available on select Air New Zealand flights between Auckland and New York—one of the world’s longest flights. “For a country as remote as New Zealand, the journey matters,” Air New Zealand CEO Nikhil Ravishankar said in a …

Shares of Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) are getting battered this morning, one day after the company reported its Q1 2026 financial results—the first since the streaming giant abandoned its plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in February. In addition to its quarterly earnings, Netflix also announced a bombshell: its cofounder and current chairman, Reed Hastings, will be exiting the company this June. The departure of Hastings, who has been the de facto face of the company since its inception, has left many investors wondering about Netflix’s future. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Thursday, Netflix announced its Q1 2026 finan…

Time is precious, and conferences can be expensive—and time-consuming. If your name is not on the official agenda, should you attend anyway? Perhaps it’s an annual industry gathering, or it’s a niche conference that may bring in business. There are many reasons to attend, and just as many not to. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members if a conference is worth attending, even if they weren’t speaking at it. If you guessed that the answer is “it depends,” you’re right. It depends on a leader’s personal and professional goals, networking options, learning opportunities, and more. We share 13 ways that our members evaluate their conference attendance. 1. CAP…

Professional workdays are full, fast, and designed for productivity, not recovery. In Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index, 80% of global workers said they don’t have enough time or energy to do their work, and workers were interrupted about every two minutes during the day. That’s the experience of modern work: back-to-back meetings, endless emails and chats, and constant task-switching. The day doesn’t pause for you. We know breaks matter. But for most of us, the problem in taking them isn’t desire or discipline, it’s that the workday doesn’t seem to have room. The good news is you can build short, targeted recovery into the day you already have, once you learn to see …