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Stakeholders are individuals or groups that have an interest in the project. Learn about the different key stakeholders and their roles. The post Understanding Different Types of Stakeholders and Their Roles appeared first on project-management.com. View the full article

Getting older can be a time when declining vision, hearing, and cognitive abilities may mean it’s no longer safe to drive. It may even lead to giving up your driver’s license. In theory, those who age out of driving should be perfect new customers for ride-sharing apps. And yet, Lyft says only 5.6% of its U.S. riders are older than 65. The company sensed a disconnect. The app wasn’t meeting older riders’ needs, and it needed a redesign. Lyft Silver, now available nationwide, is designed specifically for older users, with a font that’s 1.4 times bigger than the standard app, and a simple interface. “Developing Lyft Silver was truly a labor of care and intention,” Audrey Liu, Lyft’s EVP of rider experience, tells Fast Company via email. “We started by listening—really listening—to the experiences and needs of older adults. We spoke with riders, caregivers, and organizations that serve this community to understand the specific challenges they face with transportation. Things like navigating complex apps, feeling unsure about who their driver will be, or needing a little extra time and assistance.” The new design represents a collaboration among experts on aging, as well as partners like AltaMed, Urban League, Self Help for the Elderly, and others. The specialized app leans on Lyft’s findings about how its older customers actually use the service, like matching riders with more accessible vehicles that are easier to get in and out of since Lyft data showed older adults were twice as likely to cancel rides when they got matched with a pickup truck. And because Lyft found older adults are 57% more likely to not show up for their rides, the app has a “Get Help” button that connects riders to a live agent during work hours. Lyft Silver profiles also have trusted contacts, so ride details can be shared with family and caregivers. “Personally, thinking about my own mom and aunt, and the desire I have for them to move through their day with ease and independence, was a huge motivator,” Liu says. “We focused on building features that directly address those paint points: things like a simpler app interface with larger buttons and clearer instructions, the option for drivers who have indicated a preference for assisting older riders, and a longer wait time to enter and exit the vehicle without feeling rushed. It was about creating a service that feels less transactional and more supportive, fostering a sense of comfort and trust.” It’s simple by design, and by basing the app on the needs and experiences of its actual users, Lyft Silver shows how tech companies can better adapt their services to an aging population. View the full article

The work-from-anywhere revolution has transformed the traditional 5-day in-office routine into a blend of on-site and off-site schedules, providing employees with more flexibility and freedom. In fact, according to Owl Labs' 2024 State of Hybrid Work, 38% of employees are not working in the office full time. View the full article

Chances are, if you’re not an Italian grandma or a skilled home chef from Rome, you’ve probably messed up while trying to make cacio e pepe. At least, that’s the thesis underpinning the scientific study “Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce,” published on April 29 in the journal Physics of Fluids. The study—conducted by a group of scientists from the University of Barcelona, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany, the University of Padova in Italy, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria—is pretty much what its title suggests: a full-on scientific investigation into the most “optimized recipe” for the creamy, peppery pasta dish. “We’re Italians living abroad, and we often get together for dinner to enjoy traditional recipes from home,” says Ivan Di Terlizzi, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute. “Among the dishes we’ve cooked, cacio e pepe came up several times, and every time, we were struck by how hard it is to get the sauce right. That’s when we realized it might actually be an interesting physical system to study. And of course, there was also the very practical motivation of avoiding the heartbreak of wasting good pecorino!” A very brief history of pasta-based physics experiments This isn’t the first time that pasta has been used as inspiration for physicists. Probably the most famous example of “pasta as experiment,” Di Terlizzi says, is the observation that spaghetti almost never breaks cleanly in half, tending to snap into three or more fragments instead. This fact originally puzzled renowned physicist Richard Feynman (who died in 1988) and wasn’t fully explained until 2005, when a team of French physicists showed that it’s caused by cascading cracks traveling along the pasta. Another example, Di Terlizzi adds, is the physics of ring-shaped polymers, which are “notoriously hard to understand.” A study in 2014 used a type of circular pasta, which the researchers called “anelloni,” to explain why these looped polymers behave so strangely in experiments. With cacio e pepe, the physics question of interest has to do with the sauce’s unusual behavior under heat. “The main goal of our work wasn’t just culinary; it was to explore the physics of this system,” Di Terlizzi says. “The sauce’s behavior under heat shares features with many physical and biological phenomena, like phase transitions or the formation of membrane-less organelles inside cells. The recipe is, in a sense, the practical byproduct of everything we learned.” The most optimal cacio e pepe recipe, according to scientists Cacio e pepe traditionally only includes three ingredients: pasta, pecorino Romano cheese, and black pepper. While it seems like a simple enough concoction, the sauce’s creamy smoothness (the backbone of the dish) can be quite finicky to achieve. When the temperature gets too high or the mixing of cheese and pasta water isn’t done carefully, the cheese proteins will denature—essentially “unfolding” and losing their normal 3D structure. In the unfolded state, the proteins then stick together and the emulsion breaks. “Instead of a creamy consistency, you get a gooey mess, which we call salsa impazzita . . . that is, crazy sauce,” Di Terlizzi says. The physics-based solution to “crazy sauce”? It’s all about starch. It turns out that, by perfecting the ratio of starch in the pasta water to cheese mass, the cacio e pepe sauce becomes far more resistant to heat, which stabilizes the emulsion and prevents clumping. AIP Publishing “Without starch, the so-called “mozzarella phase” kicks in at around 65°C, where the proteins start forming large aggregates,” Di Terlizzi says. “But if the starch concentration is above 1% relative to the cheese mass, the clumps stay small, and temperature becomes much less critical, making it much easier to get a good result.” This is similar to using polymers to stabilize emulsions in soft matter physics, he adds. “Phase behavior of cacio e pepe sauce” contains ultra-detailed steps to a foolproof cacio e pepe, but here are the instructions in condensed terms: Step 1: For a pasta dish for “two hungry people,” start with 300 grams of the preferred tonnarelli pasta—or opt for spaghetti or rigatoni, if you must. From there, you’ll need 200 grams of cheese. “Traditionalists would insist on using only pecorino Romano DOP [protected designation of origin], but some argue that up to 30% parmigiano Reggiano DOP is acceptable; though this remains a point of debate,” the recipe notes. Proceed based on your own personally held cheese preferences. Step 2: To prepare the sauce, dissolve 5 grams of starch—like potato or corn starch—in 50 grams of water. Heat this mixture gently until it thickens and turns from cloudy to nearly clear. This is your starch gel. Step 3: Add 100 grams of water to the starch gel. Instead of manually grating the cheese into the resulting liquid, blend the two together to achieve a homogeneous sauce. Finish the sauce by adding black pepper to taste (for best results, toast the pepper in a pan before adding). Step 4: To prepare the pasta, cook in slightly salted water until it is al dente. Save some of the pasta cooking water before draining. Once the pasta has been drained, let it cool down for up to a minute to prevent the excessive heat from destabilizing the sauce. Finally, mix the pasta with the sauce, ensuring even coating, and adjust the consistency by gradually adding reserved pasta water as needed. Step 5: Garnish with grated cheese and pepper, and serve. View the full article

Just two years ago, prompt engineering was hailed as a hot new job in tech. Now, it has all but disappeared. At the beginning of the corporate AI boom, some companies sought out large language model (LLM) translators—prompt engineers who specialized in crafting the most effective questions to ask internal AIs, ensuring optimal and efficient outputs. Today, strong AI prompting is simply an expected skill, not a stand-alone role. Some companies are even using AI to generate the best prompts for their own AI systems. The decline of prompt engineering serves as a cautionary tale for the AI job market. The flashy, niche roles that emerged with ChatGPT’s rise may prove to be short-lived. While AI is reshaping roles across industries, it may not be creating entirely new ones. “AI is already eating its own,” says Malcolm Frank, CEO of TalentGenius. “Prompt engineering has become something that’s embedded in almost every role, and people know how to do it. Also, now AI can help you write the perfect prompts that you need. It’s turned from a job into a task very, very quickly.” AI jobs are just jobs now Part of the prompt engineer’s appeal was its low barrier to entry. The role required little technical expertise, making it an accessible path for those eager to join a booming market. But because the position was so generalized, it was also easily replaced. Frank compares prompt engineering to roles like “Excel wizard” and “PowerPoint expert”—all valuable skills, but not ones companies typically hire for individually. And prompt engineers may not be the only roles fading away. Frank envisions a world where AI agents—already taking shape—replace many lower-level tasks. “It’s almost like Pac-Man just moving along and eating different tasks and different skills,” he says. AI has the potential to displace thousands of workers. Its advocates have long argued that it will create as many jobs as it destroys. Prompt engineering once seemed to support that claim—a brand-new job title born from AI. But that optimism may be misplaced. Rather than inventing entirely new roles, AI is largely reshaping existing ones. Tim Tully wasn’t surprised to see prompt engineering decline. As a partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, he’s witnessed the AI boom firsthand, especially through the firm’s investment in Anthropic. He also works closely with software developers—a profession already transformed by tools like Cursor. His view is clear: The real impact of AI lies not in boutique job creation, but in widespread productivity gains. “I wouldn’t say that [there are] new jobs, necessarily; it’s more so that it’s changing how people work,” Tully says. “You’re using AI all the time now, whether you like it or not, and it’s accelerating what you do.” Did prompt engineers ever exist? It remains unclear whether companies were ever truly hiring for individually titled prompt engineers. They certainly aren’t now, says Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab. “It looks to me like prompt engineering is more being combined with, say, a machine learning engineering title or an automation architect title,” Shrivastava tells Fast Company. “It’s probably a part of more job titles, but I’m not necessarily seeing it as a job title in and of itself.” But that’s always been the case—even in 2023, when LinkedIn was filled with self-described prompt engineers. Asked whether there was any change over time in the number of prompt engineer job postings, Shrivastava notes that it was never a large enough title to track mathematically. Which raises a larger question: Did prompt engineering roles ever truly exist? All experts interviewed for this piece were skeptical. The market itself was real enough: The North American prompt engineering market was valued at $75.5 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 32.8%. But whether that translated into formally titled roles is another matter. “I think the discussion online of [prompt engineering] was probably much bigger than the head count,” says Aline Lerner, CEO of Interviewing.io. “It was such an appealing thing, precisely because it was this on-ramp for nontechnical people into this sexy, lucrative field.” Where are the AI jobs, then? Lerner has observed a clear trend. While Interviewing.io has never offered mock interviews specifically for prompt engineering, it has offered them for machine learning engineering. The distinction is important: Prompt engineers focus on crafting questions for LLMs, while machine learning engineers build the models themselves. And while demand for the former has declined, demand for the latter is surging. “Demand for mock interviews for machine learning engineers was flat for a while, and then in the last two months, it has hockey-sticked up and grown more than three times,” Lerner says. “The future is working on the LLM itself and continuing to make it better and better, rather than needing somebody to interpret it.” Those easy-access AI jobs may no longer exist. Machine learning engineering roles demand deep technical expertise—skills that take years to develop, unlike the relatively shallow learning curve for prompt engineering. Even basic coding skills are no longer sufficient. Indeed’s Shrivastava notes that while demand for developers is declining, engineering roles more broadly are on the rise. For those without a coding background, becoming a founder is often the most lucrative—though risky—route. Management consulting has also seen a boom. As of February, consulting roles made up 12.4% of AI job titles on Indeed. “As time goes on, we might see [AI] in more variety of sectors overall,” Shrivastava says. “They need someone tasked with really implementing that technology into that company.” View the full article

Xellia Pharmaceuticals to close Copenhagen plant and shift some production to ChinaView the full article

George Arison is telling me about a hookup. Arison, the 47-year-old CEO of the LGBTQ dating app and social network Grindr, recalls an encounter with a man who ranked low in physical chemistry—“it was in my bottom quartile of hookups,” he says, as if reviewing a spreadsheet of them—but high in intellectual compatibility. That bottom-quartile hookup is now a good friend of his. To Arison, the story illustrates how meaningful relationships can grow from the random connections Grindr facilitates. And if Grindr’s short time as a public company is any indication, solid financials can too. It’s been a rough stretch for dating apps. Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, among others, commands roughly 42% of the dating services industry, according to market research firm IBISWorld. But its earnings—which stood at $551 million in 2024—have been steadily declining since 2022, even amid modest revenue gains. As of February, Match had replaced its CEO twice in the past three years, and activist investors have been pushing it to reverse declines in usage, particularly among Gen Z. Grindr, meanwhile, continues to grow after going public in 2022. The company increased revenue 33% last year, to $345 million, and boosted monthly average users 7% to reach 14.2 million people, with more than 1 million of them paying. Investors have been pleased: At press time, Grindr stock was up 70% over the past year. More importantly, among its core audience of gay and bisexual men, the app—which eschews dating-app features like swiping and matches for a distance-based grid of available users—remains synonymous with hooking up. Arison, who joined Grindr in October 2022 from used-car marketplace Shift, says the company still has plenty of room to grow. The married father of two’s vision for Grindr is for it to become “the global gayborhood in your pocket,” a kind of digital version of the Castro in San Francisco or Boystown in Chicago, where queer people meet up every day for companionship and commerce. The company is taking the next step in building that gayborhood: incorporating telemedicine services into the app. Users in Illinois and Pennsylvania can now sign up with Woodwork, an online service similar to Hims & Hers that offers easy access to erectile dysfunction medications. Woodwork will roll out nationally throughout 2025. Arison’s pitch, in a nutshell, is that other telemedicine services are for straight people. Woodwork, whose website features photos and videos of jacked dudes writhing on beds and grinding on logs, is a service proudly by and for gay men. If it works, Grindr could begin to peel off some of the nearly $3 billion that Grand View Research says ED treatments command. But there are no guarantees. Similar companies have sought growth by exploring adjacent markets—remember Bumble’s app for finding friends?—and discovered that their user base only really wanted one thing from them. (Bumble stock is down roughly 60% over the last year.) But Arison has an expansive vision for building out Grindr to appeal to people looking for relationships while still bolstering the company’s core business as a hookup app. His experimental approach of testing and refining new features—many driven by AI—that could eventually attract paying subscribers is a tall order, and he knows it. Arison pushes employees to work at least 10-hour days and promises that he pushes himself even harder. In conversation, he uses the word hardcore enough that it begs a comparison to Elon Musk’s approach to running businesses. “Elon Musk is the greatest entrepreneur that the world has ever produced,” Arison says, though he allows that “there are a lot of things about Elon that are not great.” Born under Soviet rule in Georgia (he moved to the U.S. at age 14), Arison relishes proving people wrong and pushing for high performance. “The only limitation on your ability to be better is your own belief that you cannot be better,” he tells me. “One of my fundamental mottoes in life is ‘Do impossible things.’ Most people think I’m nuts, but I’m just like, my entire life is impossible. So you cannot prove to me that what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense, because everything I’ve done in life so far has shown that actually it’s true.” Inside Grindr’s San Francisco office—where a neon eggplant emoji radiates on a nearby wall—he discusses Woodwork, the pressure of leading an LGBTQ-focused public company, and why he’s always in “founder mode.” This interview has been edited and condensed. Let’s start with the big news. Grindr is venturing into telemedicine by offering erectile dysfunction pills through a service called Woodwork. On one hand, this move feels obvious. Lots of gay guys use ED medicines recreationally. On the other hand, I never predicted Grindr would have a telemedicine division. How did you guys get here? When I started talking to shareholders, part of the conversation was: What do we want Grindr to be? Just a dating app or something more? Their view was very strong: We want to be a lot more. And so we developed a strategy for that, which was: We want to be the global gayborhood in your pocket. That involves making the core product exceptional, making AI front and center, and building out neighborhood expansion opportunities. What are other things that you get in the neighborhood when you’re there that you might not be getting on Grindr, but we could offer? We wanted to do things that were aligned with what users want and already use. The three big buckets that we thought were worth investigating were health and wellness, travel and luxury lifestyle, and local discovery. Health and wellness made the most sense to start with because Grindr already dabbles there; we were instrumental in making PrEP [pre-exposure medication to prevent HIV infection] acceptable and popular. We went to users and asked, “If we were to do things in health, what would you want?” One of the first things that came out was that a third of Grindr users actually use ED medications. That gave us a very clear opportunity. Users want it, but they’re buying these products from companies that in no way speak to who they are. Like, I’ve never seen a gay ad for a competitor product. How are you thinking about what other telemedicine services you could provide? Can you imagine offering PrEP or post-exposure medication to prevent STIs [DoxyPEP]? We already partner extensively with PrEP providers. But I don’t think ED meds will be the only thing. It’d be logical to extend into haircare, skincare, and other things of that nature. One area of health and wellness I’m hoping we’ll get to is helping you find the right physician. I used to go to the Stanford LGBTQ clinic and had a very good doctor there, but then he stopped doing clinical work. I really wanted a gay doctor, purely because it’s an easier conversation to have. I could not find a doctor I liked who was available in the Bay Area within 20 minutes of where I live. So now I have a straight concierge doctor, who’s very nice, but I do cringe about certain conversations that I have to have with him. If I, the CEO of Grindr, who, frankly, has a lot of financial means, have had such a hard time finding the doctor I want, then everybody else probably has the same experience, except it’s a lot worse. That feels like a unique opportunity to create access to medical practitioners, especially in a telehealth sense, potentially for people who are in rural communities. It’s been a tough year for dating apps, with lots of talk about Gen Z avoiding dating apps altogether. But Grindr stock is up. How are you bucking the trend? This whole Gen Z-avoiding-apps thing makes no logical sense. Gen Z loves TikTok and loves Reels and thinks you can read something in Google and you’re an expert in it, but they’re not gonna do dating online? What I do think, and what makes logical sense, is that if you don’t build a product that Gen Zers want, they’re not going to use it. That’s where I think some of our peers have fallen flat. Grindr is fortunate. Our younger, 18-plus cohort wants to be in an environment where there are older people as well. Friendships between younger and older people are much more common in our community. Secondly, we have a robust free product, which benefits younger users. And thirdly, we are doing product-led processes—it’s not just monetize, monetize, monetize. We’re saying: Build new things, and those things will lead to revenue. Do you see dating-app fatigue at Grindr? Is Grindr in a different business than Hinge? We’re partly in the dating business, but we’re actually a social network. So we don’t see dating fatigue here. What I do see is we need to do a much better job of making it easier for people who want to date to date. If there is one thing that people try other products for, it’s dating—and then they come back to Grindr. But they tried those other ones because we don’t have dating features like Hinge or Tinder. We have something that they don’t have, which is a critical mass of users. So for our users’ sake, we need to offer them better dating experiences and better dating features to satisfy their needs. We did a big survey of gay and bi men right before the election, mostly for our education. One of the most striking numbers was that for people 35 and under, 50% of gay men want to be in a monogamous relationship at some point. And 25% said they wanted to have kids. When I wanted to have kids, I was like 1 in 100. So to now be in a place where you have 25 of 100 people saying they want to have children is a game changer. Andrew Sullivan, back in the day when he was making a case for gay marriage, a lot of it was like, if you normalize gay marriage, then a lot of gay men will actually move more in the direction of wanting to be in monogamy. And I think the reality is proving him out to be correct in that sense—and I think that’s really encouraging, but also a message to Grindr that we do need to have a much better set of dating features. Let’s talk AI. You’ve talked a lot about building an “AI wingman” in Grindr. How’s that coming? So, I want an AI chat inside Grindr that is basically the wingman for your Grindr user experience—that can help you in any of the things that you’re doing. It’s composing the messages that you’re sending, or helping you find the right people to talk to, or helping you make your photos better. So that’s the goal. Given where the technology is right now, to make this be good is actually really hard. And so you could either say, okay, it’s gonna take me two years to make this be as awesome as I want it to be. Or, I’m gonna build a bunch of little things, and each of them is going to then create the circle that is the AI wingman. We’re building these little agents, and as we build more and more of them, they will kind of unify into one big tool. Most of the road map for this year is around using AI to create really unique and new experiences in the product. One of the things that I’m super psyched about, and we think will be really awesome, is what’s called A List. This looks at your entire chat history—obviously, with users’ permission—and comes up with people that we believe you should reengage with based on your past conversations and then over time, based on your other conversations as well. It is now in beta testing, live to a set of users. It’s for [$40 per month] Unlimited users only at this point, partly because it’s all AI and running it is actually quite expensive. I’ve read complaints about charging for things that used to be free. Cory Doctorow famously called this “enshittification”—the idea that pressure to grow revenues results in a worse user experience over time. How do you think about that? I think about it a lot. I don’t want Grindr to end up like some of our competitors, who hollowed out their products focusing only on monetization and building nothing. We have built a lot of very cool new experiences for people over the last three years. And if you create value for people, it’s a reasonable thing for people to have to pay for those experiences. Albums [which lets users share collections of photos with other users] was not in existence until 2022; over 2 billion albums were sent last year. Every user has access to a free album; if you’re a paying customer, you have access to more. We just launched Right Now [a feature focused on quick hookups], which is available to everybody for free. It’s fair to assume that at some point, some parts of the Right Now experience will be paid, but by no means will all of it be. Maintaining a robust free product is critical. We want free users to be very, very happy. But the way we can afford to have a very strong team to build all these new things is by having people pay for it. You faced a significant backlash in 2023 after you announced a return-to-office policy that led to half the workforce resigning. Was the scale of that turnover intentional? Do you have any regrets about it? It was not intentional. We tried really hard to get people to stay. But people were presented with a choice about how we wanted to work; return-to-office was a small component of that. For a bunch of people who were here before I got here, we’ve become an awesome company, frankly. And for a bunch of people, it’s not what they wanted. Ultimately, I was hired to do something, and that was to take this company public and then to drive incredible growth. For that, you needed people who would be on board and wanted to do that. I think we did the right stuff to make it happen. Transforming the team into one that is much more hardcore—and I don’t shy from that word, honestly—was really important. Working 50 or 55 hours a week should be completely reasonable at a tech company. We pay extremely well. We have very good stock packages. Everyone’s an owner at this company, and I want them to think like an owner. That’s founder mode. I’ve been in founder mode my whole life. What are big misconceptions Wall Street has about Grindr? The first is around people thinking of Grindr as purely a dating app. The biggest question there is around “Is there a significant risk that the same thing [that happened to dating apps] happens here?” Dating products have a shelf life. They constantly go out of favor. But we’ve been around for 15 years. We were here when OkCupid was really popular, and we were here when Tinder was really popular, and we’re around now, when Hinge is really popular. Think of us as a combination of a dating product and a social network. We monetize the dating part of the social network, but we do a lot more. That’s the single biggest area where we need to so some education. As the CEO of one of the only public companies focused on serving gay men, what kind of unique pressure do you feel? It’s a little different from running a marketplace for cars. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never actually experienced as much homophobia as a lot of people have experienced in their lives. I did a lot of work in places where you’d expect there to be homophobia. When I was doing Shift, I never ran into that; car dealers or car companies were always very supportive and everything. But it was surprising the level of homophobia that I experienced when I took this job—not on a personal level, but in a professional sense. There was a bank that we wanted to work with at one point, and they just weren’t able to do that. I don’t think individually anyone was homophobic, but as an organization, they couldn’t come to a place of saying yes. But now that bank is an extremely big supporter. I think the fact that we were public for a year, we execute really well, we’ve shown what we can do—that changed the organization’s mind and made a lot of people inside the organization extremely happy. To me, that has created incredible motivation, because part of our mission has to be we do super well as a business and we force everybody to change. Given that, how do you think Grindr should navigate politics at this moment, given that LGBTQ+ is inherently political? Our policy is we’re not in politics. We are in the business of creating a space for our users to have fun. In some ways, our users want to forget about politics when they’re in their app. Secondly, our user base is not monolithic. It’s actually far broader in its point of view than most people would expect. So I think my job is to do everything I can to create a safe, fun, happy space for them. There are some things that it’s actually very important for us to be very loud on, and they involve human rights and access to healthcare, especially internationally. We have Grindr for Equality, which does a lot of work around human rights and health access abroad, working with organizations in those different countries and giving them access to the Grindr app for advertising. We do similar stuff in the U.S. We do that generally under the radar and don’t talk about it, but we do a lot of messaging around issues inside the app. Where we know our user base is fully in alignment, we’re actually very willing to take a position. What are users aligned on? Gay marriage. So if that ever comes under threat, we will be very, very loud about it. View the full article

Grindr is expanding its scope in a way that is entirely on brand. On Tuesday, the company unveiled Woodwork, a telehealth service that will help users access medication for erectile dysfunction. Currently available to Grindr users in Illinois and Pennsylvania, Woodwork will expand nationwide throughout the rest of 2025, according to the company. Grindr CEO George Arison says the company performed internal research that found more than a third of its users take erectile dysfunction drugs. “That gave us a very clear opportunity,” he tells Fast Company in an exclusive, in-depth interview on how he’s growing Grindr’s scope. “Users want it, but they’re buying these products from companies that in no way speak to who they are.” With Woodwork, Grindr is working with telehealth provider OpenLoop to connect users to clinicians who will prescribe compounded versions of common erectile dysfunction drugs tadalafil (Cialis) or sildenafil (Viagra) that dissolve in the mouth. The company said OpenLoop clinicians have received inclusive care training and Grindr offers educational materials tailored to the LGBTQ community. “There’s a set of warnings [with Woodwork prescriptions] that are actually very specific to our users,” Arison says. “I don’t think most services like this would say, ‘Do not take this medication with poppers.’ We do.” Woodwork is Grindr’s first foray into telemedicine, but it’s part of a push from the company to add a host of features—including several powered by AI, like a chatbot for improving messages—to show that it can be more of a social network for LGBTQ users. Arison has called this his effort to make the app into a “global gayborhood in your pocket.” In the past few months, Grindr has expanded its “Right Now” feature (which lets users signal to each other that they’re looking for a quick hookup) to 15 additional markets, including London, New York, Paris, and Chicago. Arison also told Fast Company he wants to add more standard dating features to the app to satisfy users who are looking for relationships. “For our users’ sake, we need to offer them better dating experiences and better dating features to satisfy their needs,” he says. In March, Grindr reported a 33% year-over-year increase in revenue in 2024. Its share price is up 70% over the past year. That’s as companies behind more traditional dating apps—in particular Match Group—struggle, especially among younger users. “If you don’t build a product that Gen Zers want, they’re not going to use it,” Arison says. “That’s where I think some of our peers have fallen flat.” View the full article

Michigan has 24,000 known contaminated sites, a legacy of heavy manufacturing where industries carelessly discarded hazardous materials with minimal regulatory oversight. Taxpayers are often left to clean up these abandoned locations, known as brownfields, while the sheer volume of toxic sites has overwhelmed state regulators. With a little effort, these spaces can be more than a permanent blight on the landscape. Kelly Thayer, senior policy advocate with the state’s Environmental Law & Policy Center, envisions a future where Michigan’s brownfields are transformed into sites for diverse solar energy projects. The potential for new solar siting in Michigan aligns with growing nationwide support of the technology, according to a survey co-led by the University of Michigan. Among residents living within three miles of solar energy developments, positive opinions about the projects outnumbered negative ones by almost a 3-to-1 ratio. For the study, a large-scale solar project was defined as a ground-mounted photovoltaic system that generates one megawatt or more of direct current. The majority of respondents lived near new greenfield solar sites—“disturbed” industrial locations or retiring coal plants were strongly preferred for solar development over forests or productive farmland. Thayer, from Frankfort on the shores of Lake Michigan, said there is already precedent for solar on former industrial land in his home state. A 120-megawatt solar array on a long-vacant mining operation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, for example, was met by residents with little controversy. Yet, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources proposal to transition a former oil-and-gas plot in Gaylord to solar energy was met with substantial public backlash in January. Following resident protests against tree and grassland removal for the solar array, the agency extended the public comment period and halted state land leases for solar projects. This limbo period gives Michigan a chance to readjust its solar siting approach, with an emphasis on distressed lands that would allow the technology to flourish, Thayer said. “The work now is to chart the near-term future of how Michiganders get their energy,” said Thayer, whose advocacy group focuses on renewable energy and clean transportation solutions for the Midwest. “This can be talked about through the lens of climate or the environment, but the public health ramifications are enormous as well.” A Vital Asset Last year, the state of Michigan won a $129 million grant from the EPA for utility-scale renewable energy projects, including those on brownfields. These “orphan” industrial plots—landfills, auto plants and other properties left to molder by private industry—are vital assets for a state seeking to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, noted Thayer. Michigan aims to be a national climate action leader, driven by Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s 2050 carbon neutrality goals. Among the tenets of the MI Healthy Climate Plan is streamlining the siting process for wind, solar and battery storage projects. State legislation like Senate Bill 277, meanwhile, includes solar facilities as a permitted use for farmers under the Farmland and Open Space Preservation Act. Thayer’s organization, the Environmental Law & Policy Center, also views retiring coal plants as potential solar energy hubs, considering that they are already connected to the energy grid. For instance, the organization helped develop a blueprint for the Dan E. Karn coal plant site, slated as the future home for an 85-megawatt solar energy site expected to be operational in 2026. “These are flat, highly-disturbed sites that also have a substation in place that’s hard-wired to the grid,” Thayer said. “Having that infrastructure saves millions in development, and saves time because it takes four or five years to add new energy resources to the grid.” Some Michigan clean energy projects are hindered by years-long grid connection delays as well as restrictive zoning ordinances that impede their development. In addition, Michigan lacks a comprehensive database of brownfields that detail key characteristics sought by solar developers, said Julie Lowe, brownfield coordinator for the remediation and redevelopment division of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). “Developers will have to use multiple resources to site projects on known sites of contamination,” said Lowe. “They need databases for tree canopy cover, or have to do site reconnaissance to eyeball the slope and see if it fits their needs.” An Array of Solar Options EGLE does offer a list of guidelines for anyone asking to purchase a contaminated property for renewable energy development. Prospective buyers must conduct a two-phase Baseline Environmental Assessment before moving ahead with a project. Due diligence may encompass a deep dive into a site’s former use, as well as comprehensive testing of soil or groundwater samples. “You may have to go back to the 19th century to determine what the property was used for,” Lowe said. “And there might be drilling or radar work needed to see if there’s something in the ground. For brownfields, we see solvents [in the soil] for dry cleaning or auto repair, because those were chemicals used in those activities.” Various brownfield incentives and programs may subsidize environmental remediation or any additional assessment a site requires, added Lowe. EGLE’s Brownfield Tax Increment Financing utilizes the rise in tax revenue from a revitalized site to reimburse developers for the cleanup and demolition work that generated that increase. That is not to say developers should always foot the bill, said Thayer. A series of “polluter pay” laws—which force parties responsible for contamination to pay for site cleanup and remediation costs—are currently being proposed by Michigan lawmakers. Thayer also advocates for virtual power plant programs, enabling utilities to pay homeowners with solar and battery storage to contribute stored power during peak demand. Community solar, which involves installing arrays on vacant lots or working farmlands, can be another multibillion-dollar boon for Michigan, said Thayer. According to a 2021 study by Michigan State University, community solar could deliver a nearly $1.5 billion boost to the state’s economy over the next 30 years. For now, Michigan officials should prioritize cleaning up and advancing solar energy projects on the state’s innumerable polluted brownfields, said Sarah Mills, a University of Michigan researcher who directs the Center for EmPowering Communities at the Graham Sustainability Institute. “I go to meetings about large renewables projects, and it’s mostly for farmland,” said Mills. “People will say, ‘Why here, why not a brownfield?’ From a community acceptance perspective, this is what most people consider a no-brainer.” —By Douglas J. Guth, Inside Climate News This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for its newsletter here. View the full article

Design-minded home goods brand Simplehuman recently released a product that’s a little out of its wheelhouse—a limited-edition tequila with distillery Nosotros. It may be the company’s first foray into spirits, but the brand already knows how to work with the Weber blue agave that made the tequila. The agave fibers on Simplehuman’s Soapwell sponge begin their life cycle by being pressed into Nosotros tequila at the company’s distillery in Tequila, Mexico. Nosotros then supplies its leftover agave fibers to Simplehuman. The $100 Nosotros x Simplehuman Blanco tequila is made out of that same agave, and was released to mark a year that Simplehuman has been spinning the fibers into sponges. Simplehuman CEO Frank Yang says the company approached the tequila the same way it does any product—and notes that the agave-sourcing partnership shows off the “less is more” approach that guides both brands. “We’re trying to create cool things that exist in the world that people would miss if we weren’t doing this,” Yang says. High proof, high performance The story of how tequila ingredients became a kitchen product isn’t too complicated. It starts with Yang’s fondness for tequila. While on vacation in Mexico in 2022, he joined a tequila-making class and learned how agave is used to make the spirit. “They were telling me how the fiber is really tough,” he says, noting that after the juice was extracted, “it seemed like they were throwing the [pulp] away.” The Simplehuman R&D team was both skeptical and excited. It was a tricky process, working with jimadores (farmers who harvest agave plants in Mexico) to handpick specific fibers amid the gunky pulp. But after about eight months, they realized it was a solution that could help create a soft sponge that could also scrub without scratching pots and pans. “High performance is the most important,” he says. Besides the agave fibers, the sponge’s differentiator is a round reservoir—the sponge’s eponymous soap well. “[The soap] seeps down to the sponge so it doesn’t just wash away,” Yang says. The circular well is positioned to match where soap comes out of a Simplehuman soap dispenser, and also has a hard outer ring that can offer a deeper scrub for stubborn residue. A tequila influenced by terrain Nosotros approaches tequila like wine—each spirit taking on unique characteristics based on the land where its agave grows. The Nosotros x Simplehuman bottle of additive-free Blanco tequila is not made differently than Nosotros’s other bottles of Blanco, but is a particular vintage. Nosotros cofounder Carlos Soto describes this specific Simplehuman vintage as mineral-forward. “A lot of times with our Blanco, we’ve had the highlands carry a lot of it—more fruity notes and that cooked agave sweetness,” he says. He’s referring to the Mexican highlands of Arasco, Jalisco, where 50% of the agave for Nosotros tequila comes from. The other 50% comes from the city of Tequila, located in the lowlands of Jalisco, and comes across as more dominant in this vintage. “Lowlands usually have a lot more shade. . . . They tend to have soil that is very rich,” Soto says. “They become a little bit more peppery, more earthy.” The approach that Nosotros takes of utilizing these two agaves not only provides a more balanced taste across its line of additive-free products, but also reduces stress on the environment. “The farms that we work with are able to rotate crops a little bit more just because we’re only using 50% from each,” Soto says. “It really protects the soil, which keeps the quality of the agave.” The amount of agave required to yield one bottle of tequila produces enough fibers to make more than 2,000 sponges. Giving agave fibers a second life Soto says he thinks of Nosotros as an agave company, and he is always searching for ways to utilize agave fibers. Even before the Simplehuman partnership, Nosotros used fibers to create the labels on all of its bottles, and often recycles the fibers as fertilizer. But the company still regularly has a surplus. “We struggle to allocate [the remaining fibers] sometimes,” Soto says. “We don’t want to just throw it in a landfill.” Simplehuman is Nosotros’s first agave brand partner, and it sees more opportunity to work with other brands to give agave a second life. “There’s so much tequila being produced right now, Soto says. “There are more fibers than people who are taking it.” The company is in the early stages of creating a bigger market for products that can be made out of agave fibers like bricks, single-use cups, plates, and even glassware. Other tequila brands are also finding creative ways to eliminate the waste of agave fibers. Cazadores uses them, among other ingredients, as fuel to power its distillation process. Jose Cuervo has upcycled agave fibers to manufacture some out-of-the-box products including guitars and surfboards. Though the Simplehuman x Nosotros blanco tequila will only be available until the vintage is sold out, it’s a way to underscore how Simplehuman approaches its product development. Yang notes: “If it’s not functional, why is it there?” View the full article

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It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My coworker reacts out loud when reading about politics I work at a front desk position at a cultural institution, and usually there is a lot of down time at my job. I love this aspect of the job and usually spend several hours a day reading. There are almost always two people on staff, so there are a few different people I will work alongside for the entire day. One of my coworkers verbally reacts to a lot of things that they are looking at during this otherwise quiet time. This person will laugh abruptly and very loudly, or will make comments into the silence like “oh wow” or “ew, that’s horrible.” Sometimes these reactions startle me, and occasionally visitors to our institution look surprised/startled at this person’s random laughs or comments. For the record, the coworker is often reading political headlines when they make comments like this. I REALLY do not want to talk about politics at work so I do not ever engage or react, despite that totally ignoring it feels weird and rude. I know my politics align with my coworker’s; I have no interest in discussing current events because when we do the conversation is always like, Coworker: “This is awful, isn’t it?” Me: “Yes, I agree this thing is horrible.” Coworker: “How horrible do you think it will get?” Me: “Hopefully not too much worse!” Coworker: “I bet it will get worse.” So, both unproductive and anxiety-inducing. Is there any way I can curb the out-loud comments? Pointedly ignoring this person doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect. Yeah, those comments are attempts to draw you into a conversation about what he’s reading; he wants you to ask what he’s reacting to. Maybe he’s not consciously thinking of it as performative, but it is (and I’m sure he’s capable of reading without audibly reacting in other contexts). You could say: “I don’t know if you realize you pretty frequently react out loud when you’re reading the news. I can’t talk about politics at all right now — frankly I’d rather not even think about it at work — so I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t comment out loud on it.” You could add, “It can be pretty jarring when I’m not expecting it, and I think that last guest was confused because they didn’t have any context” (athough that might be overkill). Related: how do I draw the line on political conversations at work? 2. My coworker forgets the details of what she tells me to do I have been at my nonprofit job for 10 years, and in the past three years an amazing, more experienced senior colleague has taken me under her wing. My career has been vastly improved by her mentorship/collaboration with me, and I feel very grateful for her support and encouragement. Things have been rough since January because of the executive orders (our nonprofit receives a lot of federal funding) with many people being laid off through no fault of their own, and an intense re-focus on finding non-federal funding. My mentor is taking the lead on this for our topic area and is quite busy and stressed. My problem is, in the past few months when working on proposals, she will tell me to do something and then forget she told me that a few days later and criticize me for my actions. For example, she’ll say, “Let’s create a table in the narrative highlighting our work in X field” and then a week later will say, “Why did you do that? We don’t want that in here.” I’m not sure how to push back. I have said, “You told me to put the table in last week” but she doesn’t seem to believe that she said that. I do take notes when we talk but they’re my personal notes, so I’m not sure if it would help to refer back to them when talking to her. It’s incredibly frustrating, and I’m also concerned it’s reflecting poorly on me as an employee, which I really don’t want! She is truly a kind and helpful coworker who has a lot on her plate right now, so I want to be understanding, but I also don’t want to develop a reputation with her of sloppiness. Start sending a quick summary email after these conversations, framed as, “Just a quick summary of what we decided in case it’s helpful to refer back to later (and in case this jogs any other thoughts).” In fact, you could even say to her at the end of the next meeting, “We’ve had a couple of times recently where I thought you wanted one thing and you wanted another, so I’m going to start summarizing my takeaways from our meetings so you have a chance to see if there’s anything I missed or misinterpreted.” In other words, it’s not “you are losing your memory from stress,” but rather “this is an additional way to ensure we’re both on the same page.” And that’s actually true; it’s possible that in these conversations she’s using shorthand and really did mean X and didn’t realize it sounded like Y to you … and so when she sees Y later she’s stumped. Doing a quick run-down of your take-aways is a good way to spot any miscommunications like that. And then if she does forget things she said previously, you’ll be able to say, “Oh, it’s in the summary of our meeting from that day, but I can change it now if you want me to.” 3. Required voicemail greeting is saying my last name in a vulgar way My company is now requiring us to use the default voicemail greeting which says, in an automated voice, “The party you have called, (name), is unavailable.” The problem is that the text-to-speech not only gets my name’s pronunciation wrong, it pronounces it in a way that is decidedly not-safe-for-work. I’m not talking something like Dick which can be a name or a vulgar term — it’s straight up pronouncing my last name like a vulgar slang term that is definitely not how I pronounce it. What would you advise doing here? Talk to someone with the authority to waive the requirement for you! Start with your manager if you’re not sure who that is. Say this: “I’m happy to use the automated voicemail greeting, but it’s mispronouncing my last name in a very vulgar way. Could I get an exception to the policy so I can record it myself and not have it mangled into an obscenity?” 4. Asking for a new office chair after a period stain I need a new desk chair and I’m not sure how to go about out requesting one. I work as a public school teacher at a middle school, and recently proctored state mandated testing. The first morning of testing, I got my period and it was heavier than I have experienced in years. While I used a pad, within the first hour of testing I was aware that I needed to change it. I called for support, so I could excuse myself. No one answered and no one was able to relieve me at any point during the three-hour test, and I ended up staining my office-issued chair. Badly. I’m generally an open person who is period-positive. I work at a middle school, you know? But this was unexpected and embarrassing. My problem is that I would like to get a replacement chair. This one is damaged and stained. I know there are more chairs available, but I need a script to email our engineer/custodian. He is a kind and helpful person who I respect, but he’s older and this feels deeply personal, intimate, and embarrassing. I know I shouldn’t be ashamed that my body did a normal body thing, but how do I deal with this? They will see the stain. What should I say? Be matter-of-fact, but you also don’t need to get into details! “Unfortunately my chair got badly stained and I would like to get a replacement. What’s the process for doing that?” If for some reason you get a response that indicates you’ll need to get more specific (like if he’s like “oh, a lot of chairs are stained and we usually just live with it”), you can say, “This was body fluids so I’d really like to replace it.” 5. Can I leave during a project I’m leading? I have been at my current company for six years. It has always been fast-paced and given me a lot of opportunities for growth and responsibility. Lately, there has been a shift and I report to a different executive who I do not like. This is not a happy place to be, but work-wise I have never been busier. I am a project lead on a huge project and there is not really anyone who can fill in for me/fill my shoes. Another company has been aggressively pursuing me, and they’re making it hard to say no to what sounds like a better fit, culture, compensation, and benefits-wise. I would feel guilty leaving in the middle of this project, which will last at least six months. The recruiting company indicated they can’t wait that long. What should I do? Stay somewhere I’m not happy and hope there is something great out there 6-8 months from now, or jump ship and carry a guilty conscience? Take the other job! This is just a thing that happens in business settings, and it’s normal and common. In many jobs, there’s never a good time to leave and it will always be disruptive; that doesn’t mean that you don’t get to make the decisions that are in your best interest. Your employer will find a way forward, just like they would do if you were fired tomorrow for, I don’t know, having a massive cocaine stash in your desk or were taken out by a rabid raccoon. They’ll have a period of scrambling, and then they’ll figure it out. Managers are aware that people can leave and that they might leave at inconvenient times, including during projects they’re leading. That’s just how it goes, and it’s a very normal part of work life. Related: are there times when you can’t ethically quit a job? The post coworker forgets the details of what she tells me to do, voicemail greeting says my name in a vulgar way, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

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Small business sales in the U.S. rose slightly in April, according to the latest Fiserv Small Business Index released by Fiserv, Inc. (NYSE: FI). The seasonally adjusted Index increased by one point to 151, reflecting a 0.4% month-over-month increase in sales and a 3.2% increase year-over-year. The report highlights a shift in consumer behavior as buyers continue to prioritize essential goods and services while cutting back on discretionary spending. “Even as consumer spending shows resiliency, market uncertainties appear to be driving budget-conscious consumers to reprioritize where they spend their money,” said Prasanna Dhore, Chief Data Officer at Fiserv. “Small businesses providing the essentials, including healthcare and grocery, saw strong gains in the month; conversely, discretionary spending, including parts of travel and retail saw growth slow.” April’s year-over-year growth in transactions reached 6.9%, despite strong comparison numbers from the same period in 2024. Inflation contributed 2.4% to sales growth, consistent with March but lower than the 3.4% seen in April 2024. Services Outpace Goods in Sales Growth Services continued to outperform goods in April, a trend consistent throughout 2025. Year-over-year, services sales rose 3.6%, compared to 2.2% growth for goods. Leading service categories included Professional Services (+5.0%) and Ambulatory Health Care (+4.2%), while the steepest declines were seen in Accommodation (-5.0%) and Transit and Transportation (-1.9%). On a monthly basis, Ground Transportation (+4.1%), Insurance (+2.7%), and Rental and Leasing (+7.1%) posted the highest growth. Accommodation services declined 0.6% following strong growth in March (+3.7%), pointing to reduced consumer interest in discretionary categories. Dining Out Trends Show Consumer Caution Restaurant sales at small businesses grew 1.8% year-over-year, but dipped 0.1% compared to March. Despite a modest increase in foot traffic (+0.6%), average ticket sizes dropped significantly by 7.8% from 2024, indicating a continued trend of cost-conscious consumer behavior. Retail Sector Sees Mixed Results Retail sales rose 2.2% year-over-year with flat growth in transactions (+0.1%). Grocery (+7.0%), Clothing (+5.3%), and Building Materials/Garden Supply (+4.6%) led annual retail growth. Gasoline Stations (-4.1%) and Health and Personal Care Retailers (-1.9%) experienced declines. Month-over-month, retail sales increased slightly by 0.2%, while transactions and ticket sizes each rose by 0.1%. The strongest growth came from Gasoline Stations (+1.5%) and Building Materials/Garden Supply (+1.0%). Declines were noted in General Merchandise (-2.6%) and Sporting Goods (-1.5%). About the Index The Fiserv Small Business Index is a data-driven measure of U.S. small business performance, derived from actual point-of-sale transactions across roughly 2 million businesses. It incorporates cash, card, and check transactions conducted in-store and online. The Index is benchmarked to 2019 and includes sector-specific data, offering insights across 16 sectors and 34 sub-sectors, with regional and industry-specific filters based on NAICS classifications. Image: Canva This article, "Fiserv Reports Modest Uptick in Small Business Sales for April" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Small business sales in the U.S. rose slightly in April, according to the latest Fiserv Small Business Index released by Fiserv, Inc. (NYSE: FI). The seasonally adjusted Index increased by one point to 151, reflecting a 0.4% month-over-month increase in sales and a 3.2% increase year-over-year. The report highlights a shift in consumer behavior as buyers continue to prioritize essential goods and services while cutting back on discretionary spending. “Even as consumer spending shows resiliency, market uncertainties appear to be driving budget-conscious consumers to reprioritize where they spend their money,” said Prasanna Dhore, Chief Data Officer at Fiserv. “Small businesses providing the essentials, including healthcare and grocery, saw strong gains in the month; conversely, discretionary spending, including parts of travel and retail saw growth slow.” April’s year-over-year growth in transactions reached 6.9%, despite strong comparison numbers from the same period in 2024. Inflation contributed 2.4% to sales growth, consistent with March but lower than the 3.4% seen in April 2024. Services Outpace Goods in Sales Growth Services continued to outperform goods in April, a trend consistent throughout 2025. Year-over-year, services sales rose 3.6%, compared to 2.2% growth for goods. Leading service categories included Professional Services (+5.0%) and Ambulatory Health Care (+4.2%), while the steepest declines were seen in Accommodation (-5.0%) and Transit and Transportation (-1.9%). On a monthly basis, Ground Transportation (+4.1%), Insurance (+2.7%), and Rental and Leasing (+7.1%) posted the highest growth. Accommodation services declined 0.6% following strong growth in March (+3.7%), pointing to reduced consumer interest in discretionary categories. Dining Out Trends Show Consumer Caution Restaurant sales at small businesses grew 1.8% year-over-year, but dipped 0.1% compared to March. Despite a modest increase in foot traffic (+0.6%), average ticket sizes dropped significantly by 7.8% from 2024, indicating a continued trend of cost-conscious consumer behavior. Retail Sector Sees Mixed Results Retail sales rose 2.2% year-over-year with flat growth in transactions (+0.1%). Grocery (+7.0%), Clothing (+5.3%), and Building Materials/Garden Supply (+4.6%) led annual retail growth. Gasoline Stations (-4.1%) and Health and Personal Care Retailers (-1.9%) experienced declines. Month-over-month, retail sales increased slightly by 0.2%, while transactions and ticket sizes each rose by 0.1%. The strongest growth came from Gasoline Stations (+1.5%) and Building Materials/Garden Supply (+1.0%). Declines were noted in General Merchandise (-2.6%) and Sporting Goods (-1.5%). About the Index The Fiserv Small Business Index is a data-driven measure of U.S. small business performance, derived from actual point-of-sale transactions across roughly 2 million businesses. It incorporates cash, card, and check transactions conducted in-store and online. The Index is benchmarked to 2019 and includes sector-specific data, offering insights across 16 sectors and 34 sub-sectors, with regional and industry-specific filters based on NAICS classifications. Image: Canva This article, "Fiserv Reports Modest Uptick in Small Business Sales for April" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article