What's on Your Mind?

Below, Eric Becker shares five key insights from his new book, The Long Game: A Playbook of the World’s Most Enduring Companies. Eric is the founder and chairman at Cresset, an award-winning multi-family office with billions in assets under management. He also co-founded Sterling Partners, a value-added, growth private equity firm. With his long history of starting, backing, and nurturing companies, Eric advises founders, entrepreneurs, private equity partners, and ultra-high worth families. What’s the big idea? Companies that last not one generation, not two, but for a hundred years and beyond share certain things in common. It is no accident when a company en…

After raising billions in funding, vertical farming companies have struggled. Plenty, a Silicon Valley-based startup backed by investors including Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, filed for bankruptcy in March. Bowery, which was once valued at $2.3 billion, shut down last fall. Another startup, Fifth Season, shuttered its automated indoor farm in 2022. AeroFarms, a pioneer in the space, declared bankruptcy in 2023. The basic business model—growing crops like leafy greens indoors on tall vertical towers—hasn’t proven that it can work. But AeroFarms, which raised an undisclosed amount of money after its bankruptcy and found a new CEO, has managed to turn itself around. The …

Fewer Americans are signing up for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans this year, new federal data shows, as expiring subsidies and other factors push health expenses too high for many to manage. Nationally, around 800,000 fewer people have selected plans compared to a similar time last year, marking a 3.5% drop in total enrollment so far. That includes a decrease in both new consumers signing up for ACA plans and existing enrollees re-upping them. The new data released Monday evening by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is only a snapshot of a continuously changing pool of enrollees. It includes sign-ups through Jan. 3 in states that use Healt…

Walking around the factory floor of Twincraft Skincare, outside Burlington, Vermont, there is the unmistakable scent of soap. The general manager points out the luxury lines and designer labels for whom they manufacture soaps and lotions, as well as the basic, inexpensive bars and bottles left on hotel room sinks. The factory runs two 10-hour shifts per day, four days a week, with an overtime option as needed. At over 400 employees, Twincraft is one of the top employers in the state. In the last few years, there’s been a boom in skincare products and, to meet demand, Michele Asch, Twincraft’s chief people officer, says they’ve had to hire over 180 people over the pas…

If you’re feeling anxious about AI right now, you’re not alone. It’s reasonable to wonder whether AI will soon be able to do a lot of what we used to think of as human work. As of now, this technology has already shown some degree of promise for all of the following very human psychological skills: diagnosing diseases, writing code, summarizing and teaching information, predicting markets, brainstorming, product design, project management, coaching, and much more. We probably all know some optimists who think AI will be merely an efficiency tool that gets you 80% there and humans will still be needed for the other 20%. But even in a scenario like that, some current j…

This morning, news broke that the fast-credit fintech company Klarna has deposed its competitor Affirm as Walmart’s exclusive provider of “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) loans. Affirm stock (AFRM) dove over 10% Monday morning following the news, before regaining some of those losses. Shares are currently down around 5% as of this writing. According to a press release published this morning, Klarna will be partnering with Walmart’s majority-owned fintech startup, OnePay, “to exclusively offer installment loans for purchases at Walmart in the United States.” The partnership will be available both online and in stores, and will roll out at Walmart checkout this year. Kla…

One of the most popular smartphone apps in the world has finally come to the iPad. Today, Meta has officially released WhatsApp for iPad. The release comes nearly sixteen years after WhatsApp debuted on the iPhone, and went on to become the de facto messaging app for most of the world. WhatsApp comes to the iPad WhatsApp debuted on the iPhone in 2009, and within just five years, that messaging app had become so popular that Facebook (now Meta) announced in 2014 that it was acquiring it for a staggering $19 billion. But the extraordinary sum Meta paid for WhatsApp seems to have been worth it. On Meta’s financial conference call on April 30, Mark Zuckerberg annou…

For years, email, texting, and messaging apps have ruled how we communicate. But one timeless human skill—often neglected—is quickly becoming a true difference-maker in the digital age. Active listening. It’s both an art and a discipline, and it’s what separates average leaders from exceptional ones (while making them instantly likable in the process). The truth is, active listening is the foundation of effective communication and the heartbeat of strong relationships. Yet as technology consumes more of our attention, we’re losing touch with this skill—and with it, a powerful competitive advantage in business. When you focus on your people—their growth, th…

In the world of social impact and sustainability, 2025’s word of the year could have been “headwinds.” It became a euphemism for everything from political pressure and regulatory changes to economic uncertainty, AI disruption, and social upheaval. But in many ways, “headwinds” is an understatement for what impact and sustainability leaders across the corporate and nonprofit sectors navigated in a year of budget cuts and evolving risk factors. For much of the past year, leaders across the corporate and nonprofit sectors have been recalibrating approaches to advancing their missions against these trends. In 2026, we’ll start to see those new approaches in action. …

With all the news in the quantum world this month—including DARPA’s new list of the most viable quantum companies, and Quantinuum’s announcement of “the most accurate quantum computer in the world“—IBM, not to be outdone, put out a statement of its own. The top-line message: We’re doing great! IBM’s quantum program is hitting all the milestones it’s set out in its most recent road map—and it is accelerating progress toward a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, by shifting production of its quantum processors out of its research labs to an 300mm quantum advanced 300mm wafer fabrication facility at the Albany NanoTech Complex. The move will double the speed at…

Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, has tapped about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors such as OpenAI, Meta and Mistral, it said in a blog post on Tuesday. The team — roughly two-thirds of which comprises former OpenAI employees — includes Barret Zoph, a prominent researcher who left the ChatGPT maker on the same day as Murati in late September. Zoph will serve as the startup’s technology chief. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is the startup’s chief scientist. Schulman left OpenAI for rival Anthropic in August, citing wanting to “focus on AI alignment”. AI alignment refers to a…

Since 1818, loyal readers of the Farmers’ Almanac have turned to the publication for weather predictions, gardening tips, astronomy calendars, and more. But, on November 6, the Farmers’ Almanac announced that the 2026 edition of the magazine will be its last. The news came through a post to the Farmers’ Almanac website by editor Sandi Duncan and editor emeritus Peter Geiger. “It is with a great appreciation and heartfelt emotions that we write to share some sad news,” the note reads. “After more than 200 years of sharing a unique blend of weather, wit and wisdom, we’ve made the very difficult decision to write the final chapter of this historical publication.” P…

If you feel like you spent more time sitting in traffic this year than last, you’re not alone. Across the United States, drivers lost 49 hours to traffic congestion in 2025, a six-hour increase from the year prior, according to a new report from transportation analytics company INRIX. From Chicago to Philadelphia and Boston to Tampa, congestion increased in 254 of the 290 cities INRIX analyzed. But in New York, a city practically synonymous with gridlock, congestion stayed flat. Start spreading the news INRIX says the anomaly is likely due to congestion pricing, a program that charges drivers tolls when they enter certain, often gridlocked, areas of …

The $500 million Los Angeles Dodgers’ thrilling World Series win over the Toronto Blue Jays attracted record international attention for Major League Baseball, affirmed LA’s status as the sport’s best team and drew more attention to baseball’s payroll disparity heading into what is likely to be contentious labor negotiations. Los Angeles’ 5-4, 11-inning win over Toronto in Game 7 on Saturday night capped a postseason with seven winner-take-all games, two more than any previous year. Shohei Ohtani is building a case as the sport’s best player ever with his unprecedented two-way performances, captivating audiences outside the U.S. unlike any previous player. “It just abs…

Microdosing isn’t just about mushrooms any more. While taking tiny non-psychedelic doses of hallucinogens was once the health craze du jour, small, sub-clinical doses of weight loss drugs have taken over the term “microdosing” in 2025. Little research has been done on the efficacy of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic when prescribed in smaller doses, but that hasn’t stopped the craze from catching on. People are turning to microdosed GLP-1s to manage their weight, stave off side effects and to make the medications more affordable on a long term basis. For telehealth companies cashing in on off-brand formulations of popular weight loss drugs, microdosing is an option …

In a previous piece, I argued that large language models are not enterprise architecture. The response was clear: that argument is hard to dismiss. The harder question is what comes next: “if not this, then what?” It’s the right question. Because the problem was never that AI doesn’t work. It clearly does. The problem is that we tried to place it in the wrong layer. We didn’t fail at AI. We failed at where we put it. Over the last two years, companies have invested tens of billions into generative AI. The result is not ambiguity. It’s clarity. A growing body of research, including a widely cited MIT study, shows that around 95% of enterprise generative…

The day after the jewelry heist at the Louvre in Paris, officials from across Washington’s world-famous museums were already talking, assessing and planning how to bolster their own security. “We went over a review of the incident,” said Doug Beaver, security specialist at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, who said he participated in Zoom talks with nearby institutions including the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art. “Then we developed a game plan on that second day out, and started putting things in place on Days 3, 4 and 5.” Similar conversations are happening at museums across the globe, as those tasked with securing art ask: “Could that happen here…