What's on Your Mind?

The startup playbook that built Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash is becoming obsolete in real-time. As AI compresses jobs that once required hundreds of employees into algorithms, we’re witnessing the birth of a new company archetype—capital-efficient, immediately profitable, and surprisingly small. With a variety of software to use for all aspects of building a business—from Shopify for e-commerce to Stripe for payments—and low operating costs, innovation just keeps making everything that much more efficient. Advancements in AI are turbocharging this even further. Now, companies not only need less software and less capital for solutions to get off the ground, but they also…

The first 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet-from-space network that will rival SpaceX’s Starlink. The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper, a $10 billion effort unveiled in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses and governments—customers that SpaceX has courted for years with its powerful Starlink business. Sitting atop an Atlas V rocket from the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint-venture United Launch Alliance, the batch of 27 satellites was…

As a kid, Matt Stevens and his neighbor used to hunker down and get set up for a game of flick football. Stevens was always the Cowboys. His neighbor was always the Steelers. Only problem was, they barely ever got to finish the game itself. “We would oftentimes run out of time, because I would spend so long making the poster for the game,” Stevens says. The North Carolina-based independent designer has long had a knack for using his creative skills to bring fictive worlds to life based on real-world IP—and, well, it tracks that if anyone was going to make an idea as random as Good Movies as Old Books work, it would be him. MID-CENTURY MASH-UP Stevens’…

You’ve been knocking it out of the park. Your projects deliver, your name comes up in leadership meetings, and now you’ve been tapped for the next step: your first management role. It’s exciting. It’s validating. But it’s also a lot like stepping off a cliff with no parachute—especially if no one’s told you what leadership really requires. In fact, nearly half of first-time managers report feeling unprepared when they take on their new roles. Why? Because being a high-achieving individual contributor is a completely different job than managing people. It’s not a promotion—it’s a profession. So, before you accept that new title and the “corner Slack channel” that c…

Fans of the discount retail chain Big Lots will be happy to know that the company is just days away from making the second phase of its comeback. On Thursday, May 1, Big Lots will reopen an additional 54 stores, followed by another 78 stores two weeks later on May 15. Here’s what you need to know about the company’s continued retail revival, including which locations will be opening again soon. Big Lots back from the brink Back in September 2024, Big Lots filed for bankruptcy. Like many big box discount retailers, Big Lots had struggled from falling foot traffic and declining sales for years. In December 2024, the company announced it would go out of business a…

While 40 hours has been the standard workweek for the last few generations, the promise has long been that technology will give us more free time. Yet many Americans still find work spilling over into nights and weekends. Whether you want to cut back your hours to make room for a side hustle, to spend more time with your family, or to pursue your own interests and hobbies, it is possible to complete your full-time job in 30 hours a week. As a time management coach for over 16 years, I’ve worked with a lot of people in a lot of situations. What I’ve seen is that almost everyone can reduce the amount of time they’re working. Getting down to 30 hours or less per week i…

Ernest Hemingway had an influential theory about fiction that might explain a lot about a particular weakness of artificial intelligence, or AI. In Hemingway’s opinion, the best stories are like icebergs—with what characters actually say and do located above the surface, but making up only a fraction of the unfolding action. The rest of the story—the characters’ motivations, feelings, and their understanding of the world—ideally resides instead beneath the surface, like the bulk of an iceberg, serving as unarticulated subtext for all that transpires. Perhaps the reason Hemingway’s theory struck a chord is because human beings are like icebergs. Whatever people say or …

Former Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg launched Meeno less than two years ago with the intention of it being an AI chatbot that helped users through relationship issues. Now, the company is pivoting to focus on teaching predominantly male users how to connect romantically with women through interactions with voice-based AI characters. “[Male loneliness] is a problem that’s been getting worse for 30 years,” Nyborg tells Fast Company. “I never thought that this was something we could just go and snap our fingers and [fix].” The first iteration of Meeno, Nyborg says, allowed the company to prove that it could build something that appealed to men. She says the original platf…

Some places are simply nicer to walk through than others. Compare a tree-lined path along the Seine in Paris to the side of a six-lane highway in Tallahassee, Florida, and the differences are obvious. But what exactly makes a place walkable is a matter of some debate. Those of the urbanist persuasion might point to a place’s density or mix of land uses. Platforms like Walk Score might favor accessibility, proximity, and travel times. One person might want to have a café within walking distance, while another might want the safety of working streetlights. Conditions are varied, and uneven. To better understand what exactly makes a place walkable, the architecture …

There are so many ways to die. You could fall off a cliff. A monk could light you on fire. A bat the size of a yacht could kick your head in. You’ve only just begun the game, and yet here you are, stranded on some strange mountaintop, surrounded by ruins. If you’re a newcomer, you’ll be dead within moments. If you’re a hardcore gamer, you’ll probably be dead a few moments later. But death isn’t the end. Death is the beginning. You’ll respawn in a graveyard, and that graveyard will lead you to a vast chasm—a pitchblack pit of certain doom. Taking the plunge down into that pit will surely lead you to more death. If the fall doesn’t kill you, it’s reasonable to assume th…

One of the core theories of the office market circa 2025 is the flight to quality. Workers, either hybrid staff who spend ample time at home or those prodded back into traditional five-day workweeks, have grown used to the comforts of home and bored with drab, standard office spaces. They need something spectacular to justify a commute or keep them happy, so companies increasingly seek out top-flight offices—Class A or Trophy assets, as a broker would say—which has pushed landlords and developers to spend millions on office renovations and solely focus on building new, top-of-the-line workspaces. That same dynamic, where the top-of-the-market bustles with activity wh…

Raymond Ward wants to see solar panels draped over every balcony in the United States and doesn’t understand why that isn’t happening. The technology couldn’t be easier to use—simply hang one or two panels over a railing and plug them into an outlet. The devices provide up to 800 watts, enough to charge a laptop or power a small fridge. They’re popular in Germany, where everyone from renters to climate activists to gadget enthusiasts hail them as a cheap and easy way to generate electricity. Germans had registered more than 780,000 of the devices with the country’s utility regulator as of December. They’ve installed millions more without telling the government. He…

Middle management can be exhausting—particularly at the beginning of a managerial career. On the one hand, these employees have to get down into the weeds and help members of their team do their jobs in the most effective ways. They may have some inexperienced reports who need help and development to work effectively and independently. On the other hand, their daily work is governed by layers of leadership above that restrict their autonomy and require them to convince others that new things they would like to try are worth the effort. This combination creates a situation in which middle managers can feel locked in. They are constantly solving problems from their dire…

The cutting edge of zipper technology involves zippers that work remotely. Japanese zipper maker YKK says it has developed a prototype for a self-propelled zipper that zips up with just the push of a button. These self-propelled zippers aren’t meant for your jeans or jackets, but rather for industrial uses, like tall tents that can’t be zipped up without using a ladder. That’s the mostly likely place you’ve seen YKK’s logo (it has 40% global market share). The company says the tech will save time and be safer than putting workers high up in the air to zip and unzip in hard-to-reach use cases. YKK conducted experiments with the zippers in February. It says th…

When the Vietnam War finally ended on April 30, 1975, it left behind a landscape scarred with environmental damage. Vast stretches of coastal mangroves, once housing rich stocks of fish and birds, lay in ruins. Forests that had boasted hundreds of species were reduced to dried-out fragments, overgrown with invasive grasses. The term ecocide had been coined in the late 1960s to describe the U.S. military’s use of herbicides like Agent Orange and incendiary weapons like napalm to battle guerrilla forces that used jungles and marshes for cover. Fifty years later, Vietnam’s degraded ecosystems and dioxin-contaminated soils and waters still reflect the long-term ecolog…

Dive into the exhilarating world of innovation with FC Explains, a video series that spotlights the game changers and visionaries from Fast Company’s prestigious Most Innovative Companies list. This annual ranking celebrates the trailblazers who are reshaping industries and cultures, pushing boundaries, and transforming the world. First up is Bluesky. View the full article

Cancer research in the U.S. doesn’t rely on a single institution or funding stream—it’s a complex ecosystem made up of interdependent parts: academia, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology startups, federal agencies, and private foundations. As a cancer biologist who has worked in each of these sectors over the past three decades, I’ve seen firsthand how each piece supports the others. When one falters, the whole system becomes vulnerable. The United States has long led the world in cancer research. It has spent more on cancer research than any other country, including more than US$7.2 billion annually through the National Cancer Institute alone. Since the 1971 …