What's on Your Mind?

Some people love watching the Super Bowl for the game. Others love it for the commercials. If you’re in the latter group, you’ll probably have noticed that the ad spots in between commercial breaks during Super Bowl LX last night were dominated by one big theme: artificial intelligence. As noted by AdWeek, the television advertising analytics firm iSpot found that nearly a quarter of all commercials during the 2026 Super Bowl featured AI in some way. To be more precise, 15 out of the 66 commercials—or 23% of them—either used AI in their creation (like the entirely AI-generated ad from the vodka maker SVEDKA) or were spots by big tech companies directly adver…

Investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary once declared that to succeed in business you must be willing to grind out 25 hour work days. He has since walked back on that idea, calling it, in his own words, “sheer stupidity.” In fact: “The worst advice I hear young founders talk about all the time is that they want to work 18 hours a day. How stupid is that?” O’Leary said in a video posted on his Instagram page last week. The eat-sleep-work lifestyle—also known as the “996” schedule first imported from China, which stands for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—has since gained momentum among Silicon Valley tech companies. Despite his previous declarations, O’L…

For many Black tech founders, raising venture capital is often positioned as the ultimate milestone. It signals that your idea is validated, your business is taken “seriously,” and opportunities begin to take shape. As the managing partner of an early stage VC firm, and a 3X Black tech founder that speaks and meets with thousands of founders a year, I can tell you the truth is far more nuanced. Venture capital can be powerful, but it’s not for everyone. Before chasing your first check, founders need clarity, preparation, and strategy. Fundraising is not just about storytelling or networking; it’s about understanding the system you’re stepping into and deciding whethe…

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Swedish fintech company Klarna, says the organization is set to employ drastically fewer people. And he says he shares his outlook on the workforce with another CEO: Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. Siemiatkowski made the comments on the 20 VC podcast with Harry Stebbings earlier this week, where the CEO didn’t deny that the company has been steadily shrinking. The CEO said that currently the company has about 3,000 employees. That’s down from 7,000 just four years ago. In another four, he says there will likely be less than 2,000—a reduction of one-third. Siemiatkowsk said employees leaving the company are not being replaced, and expla…

At a park near Canberra, Australia, a series of small white pyramid-shaped boxes are part of a new experiment: Can “frog saunas” help bring back an endangered species? The green and golden bell frog—an iconic Australian amphibian with a call that sounds like a cross between a power tool and a quacking duck—is already extinct in the area. Like other frog species around the world, it was a victim of a deadly fungus called chytrid that has been killing amphibians for decades. But scientists are reintroducing the vibrant frog with the hope that a design intervention can help it survive. The “sauna” is a simple design, with bricks inside a plastic enclosure that he…

It’s no secret that fast casual restaurants have struggled in recent years, with some companies turning to cheaper options as a way to lure customers back. The latest chain to do so is Panera Bread, which just announced its first-ever value menu. It includes 10 items that are each $4.99. Customers must pick at least two items to use the menu and will get the typical free side of an apple, chips or bread. Anyone who has been to Panera will recognize it as a scaled-down version of the long-standing You Pick Two deal. There are four half sandwiches, three half salads, and three cups of soup. There will be a rotating seasonal item, but to start Panera’s…

Most workplace frustration doesn’t come from a lack of effort or commitment. It comes from expectations that weren’t met—not because people failed to try, but because those expectations were never clearly stated or truly understood. In our organizational research over the past 30 years, we’ve seen this pattern repeatedly: when expectations are unclear, trust in leadership and collaboration begins to drop. When this happens, the frustration that follows is real. But the deeper cost is often invisible—trust begins to erode. This dynamic is increasingly common. Roles evolve, priorities shift, and teams are asked to move faster with less certainty. People continue to …

You’ve tried it all before. Waking up at 5:30 a.m. Journaling first thing in the morning. The exercises you’re supposed to do before work. But do your morning habits stick? Are you still practicing them? We all want to “win the morning,” to be productive and intentional. The trouble with morning routines is that they don’t work as they should if you don’t fix your evening habits. People are obsessed with morning routines. But they forget that winning in the morning starts the night before. Every single choice you make after dinner is either setting you up for a great morning or sabotaging tomorrow before it begins. That late-night binge doesn’t just keep you up. I…

The devil might’ve worn Prada in 2006, but two decades later, the fashion elite are wearing books. Case in point: Coach’s hot new accessory is a keychain made out of literal hardcovers. Coach revealed the new “book charms” in a series of social posts on February 25. Created in collaboration with the publisher Penguin Random House, the charms include adorably teeny, fully readable versions of classics like Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, alongside more recent titles like Untamed by Glennon Doyle and A Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita. The book bag charms will be available for $95 on the Coach website …

Below, Tom Griffiths shares five key insights from his new book, The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind. Griffiths is a professor of psychology and computer science at Princeton University and director of the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence. What’s the big idea? How can we study something we can’t see or touch? Mathematics allows us to develop rigorous theories about how minds work. It also lets us use those theories to build artificial intelligence systems. Just as physicists seek to identify Laws of Nature, cognitive scientists hope to discover the Laws of Thought. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bit…

The stock prices of the so-called Quantum Four are back on the rise today, after already accruing significant gains yesterday as well. The upward trend is a reversal for IonQ, D-Wave, Rigetti, and Quantum Computing Inc., which have all seen their shares decline since the beginning of the year. Why are they on the rise again? Here’s what you need to know: What’s happened? Yesterday, the stock prices of America’s four largest publicly traded quantum computing companies all rose significantly. As of yesterday’s close, here’s where the quantum computing companies’ stock prices stood: IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ): up 6.23% to $33.59 D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NY…

For most of modern business history, accounting has been something leaders looked at periodically. Numbers were reviewed and reports arrived on a schedule (often monthly, quarterly, or at tax time). Accounting happened when there was time, not necessarily when insight was needed. Across industries, a new model is taking shape: always-on accounting. These are systems that capture financial activity continuously, organize it automatically, and surface insights in real time. While this shift is relevant everywhere, it’s especially visible in the rental housing market where millions of small, independently run businesses (often managed by individuals or families who b…