fortune--2020-09-11--Peloton races to the future, but it’s still no tech company

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I can’t hide my admiration for Peloton.
I don’t own shares in the company, but I do own a bike, which my wife, to her continued amusement, had to persuade me strenuously to buy. And the only time I met CEO John Foley, at a Fortune conference in 2016, I was unimpressed with the fledgling company’s pitch.
But I am a fan in so many ways. I’m a fan of the company’s impressive head instructor and vice-president of fitness programming, Robin Arzon, who I interviewed in June. I’m a fan of the varied, high-quality classes, many of which are available for a lower price than the expensive bike and treadmill and the subscription they require. And I’m just a fan of the whole Peloton experience, in particular because the classes get me to try things I wouldn’t do otherwise. Example: I recently took a beginner’s yoga class with the suave and confidence-instilling Dennis Morton; it’s the first time I’ve felt successful in a yoga class after years of misfires.
Gushing about the product aside, I’ll gush now about the financial performance. Peloton reported its first quarterly profit Thursday. It has more than a million subscribers and an impressively low churn rate. The knocks against Peloton keep getting knocked down. Its for-rich-people equipment is getting a bit cheaper, and the digital app is affordable. The competition is fierce, but the line about how credit-card companies compete against cash comes to mind: Peloton is competing against gyms where people breathe on each other, not other fitness apps.
Peloton isn’t a technology company, of course, any more than NBC is. It too is a broadcaster, and even more like NBC when it was owned by TV-maker RCA: Peloton sells the “TVs” too. It uses technology well, including flat-screen monitors that connect to the Internet and Bluetooth headphones. But its business success revolves around implementing the technology others sell.
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JOIN US: The pandemic has rewritten business. Fortune is hosting a virtual discussion with experts across industries (Intel, Slack, Citi, Universal Pictures) to explore how companies can, through transformative tech such as A.I., become more resilient in a time of intense change. Register here for free to join on September 16 at 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
No soup for you. With possibly just four days left for ByteDance to sell TikTok or face some kind of U.S. ban, President Trump says there "will be no extension" of the looming deadline. “We’ll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons, or it will be sold.” The administration's previous orders include multiple deadlines. China threw a wrench in negotiations to sell to Oracle or Microsoft with new technology transfer rules. Elsewhere in Trumpland, the president is leaning towards nominating Nathan Simington, a senior advisor at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, to replace FCC commission Mike O’Rielly. That's because Simington is on board with Trump's push to have the FCC gut speech protections for social media and O’Rielly, consistent with his conservative credentials, is not.
The long and winding road. Speaking of the FCC, the agency has dropped all efforts to regulate cable boxes and eliminated rules dating back to 1998 that required cable services to provide CableCards for DVRS like Tivo and HDHomeRun. I will be very sad on the day my Tivo stops working.
Keeping up with the EVdashians. In the debate over whether there's a bubble in stocks of electric vehicle companies, short sellers at Hindenburg Research have a pretty strong hunch. In a report on Nikola Motor released on Thursday, they allege all kinds of fakery and fraud in "an ocean of lies." The company denied the charges. But Nikola, which has seen its stock bounce all over, dropped 11% and has now lost almost its entire gain since going public via a SPAC merger in June. Elsewhere on Wall Street, Oracle's revenue rose 2% to $9.4 billion, better than expected. Oracle's stock, heretofore up 8% this year, gained another 4% in pre-market trading on Friday.
I don't know why you look so worried. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has moved on from VR to drones. His company, Anduril Industries, has forged a new sword to fight Sauron...no, sorry, has developed a new military drone called Ghost 4 that's controlled by A.I. Maybe we'd be better off if it was a new sword. "I feel very comfortable saying that Ghost 4 is the best drone there is," Luckey writes in a blog post.
You better love me when my roots are showing. Oculus of course was bought by Facebook back in 2014, but now Mark Zuckerberg's company is really revisiting its early days. Perhaps cognizant that the young people favor other social platforms, the company released Facebook Campus, a limited online space just for college kids. Speaking of reviving old brands, Walmart has brought back the Gateway PC brand for a new line of very cheap laptops.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A few weeks ago, we noted that Rep. David Cicilline, chair of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, was talking about creating some form of the 1930s Glass-Steagall banking separation rule for big tech companies. Sam Bowman, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, thinks that's a really bad idea.
Cicilline is concerned that tech companies have an unfair advantage over others by being able to set the rules and gather data from platforms, and also able to sell their own products on those platforms. That's a completely different issue than the one Glass-Steagall was trying to address. The similarities are barely even cosmetic - it is as if he described the split between male and female athletes as "a Glass-Steagall for sport."
That spurious analogy aside, limits on whether platform companies can sell their own products on their platforms are a bad idea if your goal is cheaper, better products and more choice for consumers. Imagine if we proposed a rule like that for grocery stores. Walmart sells its own brand of milk, but also manages the stores in which other milk brands compete and sell to customers. Would consumers benefit if Walmart either had to discontinue its milk offering, or stop selling milk made by other companies? If not, what is it about (say) Amazon that makes Amazon's store brand products bad for consumers in a way that Walmart's aren't?
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
Reed Hastings: ‘Netflix is still in challenger status’ (Financial Times)
The streaming giant’s co-CEO on his ‘no rules’ culture — and why only world domination will do.
How a Massive Bomb Came Together in Beirut’s Port (New York Times)
Fifteen tons of fireworks. Jugs of kerosene and acid. Thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate. A system of corruption and bribes let the perfect bomb sit for years.
Targeted (Tampa Bay Times)
Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. It monitors and harasses families across the county.
The Democracy Factory (California Sunday Magazine)
For decades, the vote-by-mail business was a sleepy industry that stayed out of the spotlight. Then came 2020.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Quantum computers threaten to end digital security. Here’s what’s being done about it By Jeremy Kahn
The Nasdaq is again on the precipice of correction territory. Have investors lost faith in Big Tech? By Bernhard Warner
How Google, Facebook, and Twitter plan to handle misinformation surrounding 2020 presidential election results By Danielle Abril
How 2020 is like a colonoscopy By Aaron M. Sackett
How we can save small business from coronavirus-induced extinction By Dan Price
Book recommendations from Fortune’s 40 under 40 in media and entertainment By Rachel King
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
We rewatched the classic Gen Y romcom Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist last night and it's still just as funny as ever and the soundtrack is 💪🎶. It's also an appropriate love letter to New York City on this 9/11 anniversary. A big scene takes place in the horrid Port Authority Bus Terminal. But do not fret. Architecture firm STV and construction firm AECOM have a plan to bury the terminal and build beautiful parks and buildings on the land. Yes, please. Maybe we'll find Fluffy this weekend.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-09-11--New Citi CEO Jane Fraser gives Wall Street banks a fresh perspective

Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza on the importance of doing the work

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Bridgewater faces another claim of unequal pay, we learn more about an executive shake-up at Netflix, and a big U.S. bank finally gets a female CEO. Have a relaxing weekend.
– ‘A big and fantastic moment.’ Last year, I wrote about why Wall Street’s big banks had never had a female CEO. At the end of the story, I asked which institution would be the first to break that unfortunate streak. I got my answer yesterday, when Citigroup announced that Jane Fraser will become CEO when Michael Corbat retires in February.
As my colleague Maria Aspan reported yesterday, the appointment was an expected transition. Corbat named Fraser as his No. 2, tagging her as his heir apparent, last October. Still, Fraser’s new role is unprecedented.
Wall Street had corporate America’s most stubborn glass ceiling. Several women had come close to breaking it before the 2008 recession—Morgan Stanley’s Zoe Cruz, Lehman Brothers’ Erin Callan, Citi’s Sallie Krawcheck—but the ceiling stayed intact, even amid the fallout of the Great Recession, even as banks’ workforces diversified, even through the height of the #MeToo movement, even in the most analytical of industries that prizes performance above all else.
So women in the industry reacted with downright glee yesterday when Fraser finally smashed through.
“Congratulations to Citi for naming Jane Fraser as its next CEO! Great news for the company and for women everywhere! A big and fantastic moment,” Cathy Bessant, Bank of America’s chief operations and technology officer, tweeted.
“CEO jobs don’t come open very often,” said Betsy Duke, former Wells Fargo chair. “In the past the reason given for not choosing a woman was that none were ready. Jane is the first of many who are ready to step into these jobs now.”
Of course, Fraser’s promotion isn’t necessarily indicative of systemic change in the industry. In fact, it shows just how much of an outlier Citi is now. Citi’s board is already the most gender-diverse among S&P 500 banks. And with Fraser’s new appointment, it will become the only bank board at gender parity, according to Bloomberg data. On the operating teams that oversee the six biggest U.S. banks, collectively there are still two men for every woman.
When I asked women last year about the factors keeping women from ascending to the top of banking’s corporate ladder, not one cited the kind of blatant, sleazy sexism that once plagued trading floors. The bias, they said, was far more subtle than that, from “microaggressions” to “over-mentoring” and “under-sponsoring.” “It’s the small things, like men going out for a drink or men taking a business trip together,” Donna Milrod, head of State Street’s global clients division, told me last year. Those small things that disadvantage women “[become] emphasized over time.”
The small stuff won’t disappear in February. But for the first time, someone leading a big bank might know what the small stuff feels like.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Choppy waters. Karen Karniol-Tambour, the top-ranked woman at Bridgewater Associates, has reportedly issued a formal complaint to the hedge fund after discovering that she was paid less than men with similar or lesser responsibilities. Bridgewater didn't comment on the accusation to the WSJ, which broke the news. Karniol-Tambour's complaint comes after former co-CEO Eileen Murray sued the firm for gender discrimination and unequal pay this summer. Wall Street Journal
- Bad buzz. The Disney live-action remake of Mulan has generated the wrong kind of buzz, most recently for filming parts of the film in Xinjiang, a region where China has interned Muslim-minority Uighurs in what the government calls “voluntary reeducation centers.” The company finally acknowledged the controversy on Thursday when CFO Christine McCarthy said, “It has generated a lot of publicity. Let’s leave it at that.” Bloomberg
- Showstopper. Why did Netflix suddenly oust longtime exec Cindy Holland to promote Bela Bajaria to VP of global television? It was reportedly part of an effort by new co-CEO Ted Sarandos to streamline the reporting process within the TV group, but some employees were stunned nonetheless. Hollywood Reporter
- Back-to-school benefits. As companies try to meet the changing needs of employees whose children are attending virtual school from home, they're rolling out perks for parents. Emma has a run-down of companies whose back-to-school benefits are the most innovative. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: WeWork CFO Kimberly Ross is stepping down this month after taking the position in March. The New York Times announced a new podcast called 'Sway,' which will be hosted by Kara Swisher. Colleen Taylor, previously of Wells Fargo, is joining American Express as president of merchant services.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Her call. ESPN Radio's Doris Burke will be the first woman to call the NBA conference finals and finals later this month. Never before has a woman served as a game analyst on a network television or radio broadcast this deep into the postseason. Associated Press
- Still asking questions. Elle has a new profile of TV journalist Ann Curry. She's spent the pandemic trying to share reliable information about COVID-19, but, as Elle puts it, Curry can't "bring truth to power" when it comes to her own professional history. She still doesn't understand why she was let go from the Today show. "I know I did nothing wrong. I know I was good at my job." Elle
- A flexible firm. Eiko Hashiba left Goldman Sachs in Tokyo in 2002 to have a child at 23 and ten years later started consulting firm VisasQ whose advisors work as outside consultants. The idea was to give workers, women especially, a flexible way to stay in the labor force. VisasQ now has 110,000 consultants and, after listing in Tokyo in March, a market value of $238 million. CEO Hashiba, with a 52% stake, is a multimillionaire. Bloomberg
ON MY RADAR
Book recommendations from Fortune’s 40 Under 40 in government and policy Fortune
Inside ‘I Am Woman’: A new biopic tells the story of Helen Reddy and her famous song Fortune
How my mother and I became Chinese propaganda New Yorker
PARTING WORDS
"[Y]ou can’t always identify yourself as just one thing."
-Victoria Azarenka, who defeated Serena Williams to reach the U.S. Open final on Thursday, on being a mother and a tennis star.


fortune--2020-09-11--Quantum computers threaten to end digital security. Here’s what’s being done about it

For much of the past decade, cybersecurity experts have been warning of a looming threat: the advent of quantum computers.
These machines, which use principles of quantum physics to represent information, will one day be powerful enough to crack the most widely used encryption systems, rendering almost all digital communication insecure.
The question has always been exactly when that day would arrive. The most common digital encryption technique, RSA, which was invented in 1977, is based on multiplying two large prime numbers. One way to break it is to figure out what those two large primes were. In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor invented an algorithm, that if run on a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, would easily find these two primes. But at the time, quantum computers were still purely theoretical machines.
The first working quantum computers were built over a decade ago. But most were either not designed in a way that would allow them to run Shor’s algorithm. Others were simply not powerful enough to do so for a very large prime multiple. The moment when cybersecurity experts would have to worry about quantum computer-equipped hackers seemed a long way off—at least a quarter century by some estimates—and there were far more pressing threats.
But not anymore. Last year, Google claimed it had achieved a milestone known as “quantum supremacy,” having built a quantum computer capable of performing a calculation that could not be done on a traditional computer in a reasonable length of time.
Google’s machine is still unable to break RSA. But the rapid progress in building quantum hardware along with some clever advancements in algorithms mean the timeline for Shor’s algorithm rendering RSA obsolete have been moved up considerably. If lucky, we may have more than decade of data privacy protection left, experts say. But some think we have at best five years—maybe less.
In 2016, the U.S. National Security Agency issued a stark warning that government agencies and companies “must act now” to begin moving to a new encryption standard that is safe from quantum computer-based attacks. The only problem? No one was sure exactly what that encryption standard should be.
That’s why the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency with the U.S. Department of Commerce that is responsible for recommending standards that are often adopted by both government and business, began a competition almost three years ago to select new encryption techniques that would be resistant to attacks from quantum computers.
These new “post-quantum” encryption and digital signature methods will likely become mandatory for all U.S. government departments and for many companies that do business with the government, especially in defense and intelligence. Because of the size of the U.S. market, they are also likely to become the new global security standard. NIST is now on the verge of picking the winning encryption algorithms—and ushering in a new era in cybersecurity.
In July, the standards agency announced that it had winnowed an initial group of 82 candidates down to a long-list of 15, including four main finalists for encryption and three for digital signatures, which use cryptography to verify whether electronic messages and documents are authentic. (Eight alternates will advance to the final round as well.) NIST has said it will announce its final endorsements for a new encryption standard within the next 18 months.
So what does the NIST long-list tell us about the future of cybersecurity? Well, there’s a good chance that it will involve something called lattice-based cryptography. Three of the four encryption finalists come from this family of algorithms.
Lattice-based cryptography is based on the unique mathematical properties of grids of evenly-spaced points, or lattices. Because the points are evenly spaced, it turns out that from just two coordinates of the grid it is possible to compute all the points within the same lattice. But figuring out whether any given point is in the lattice can be difficult if the lattice is in many thousands of dimensions and if the angles between points in the grid are far from perpendicular. A number of encryption schemes have been created that use these properties to create a public key and a private key that work together—because they are calculated from the same lattice—but in which it is extremely difficult to derive the private key from the public key alone.
But some cybersecurity experts are surprised that NIST has leaned so heavily towards this kind of post-quantum encryption. That’s because while lattice-based problems are mathematically difficult and, unlike RSA, are not susceptible to Shor’s algorithm, they have not been mathematically proven to be impervious to a quantum computer-based attack. “We say that quantum algorithms cannot break them yet,” Delaram Kahrobaei, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of York, in England, says. “But tomorrow someone comes up with another quantum algorithm that might break them.”
Kahrobaei says she is disappointed to see that candidates from other families of potential post-quantum algorithms did not make it onto the final list for the public key encryption competition. This includes multivariate cryptography, which is based on the difficulty of solving systems of complex quadratic equations (remember those from high school algebra?), and group-based cryptography, which is the area that Kahrobaei herself works on. It is based on yet another area of mathematics involving transforming a set of numbers by combining elements, often according to elaborate geometric patterns, such as braids. One candidate from the multivariate cryptography family, an algorithm called Rainbow, did make onto the list of finalists in the digital signature portion of the competition, and another, called GeMSS, was selected as an alternate in that contest.
The only non-lattice post-quantum encryption candidate among the NIST finalists comes from a cryptographic family known as code-based algorithms. These all involve adding some sort of error to data—like a classic code where you shift the alphabet over two letters so that A is encoded as C and B as D, and so on. This error is then corrected to decrypt the message. The post-quantum algorithm NIST has chosen is called Classic McEliece, named for an error-correcting code algorithm invented by mathematician Robert McEliece in the late 1970s. It applies a different random error to each piece of information that’s encoded—which in theory makes it impossible to break without knowing the key.
“McEliece’s system has been around for 41 years and been attacked by the crypto community for all that time without finding a vulnerability,” Andersen Cheng, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Post-Quantum Group, a London-based cybersecurity company that joined forces with another team, led by Daniel Bernstein, a noted cryptographer at the University of Illinois in Chicago, to work on the Classic McEliece submission that made it to the long list of NIST finalists.
In 2019, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), concerned that the NIST process was taking too long, recommended the Classic McEliece as one of its two recommended post-quantum encryption standards. (The other was a lattice-based method that is among NIST’s alternate candidates.) Cheng says he suspects that NIST, like the German government, will ultimately endorse two standards—Classic McEliece and one of the lattice methods. The only drawback of the McEliece algorithm, Cheng says, is that the relatively lengthy keys the method uses, and the computational complexity of the algorithm, means it takes more time for a computer to encrypt and decrypt information than with its lattice-based competitors. “It’s slower by a few milliseconds,” Cheng says. But he says that for exchanging encryption keys—which is mostly what the algorithm would be used for—the method is still actually faster than RSA.
While there are researchers from established tech companies, such as IBM, Intel, and the chipmaker ARM, involved in the race to find quantum-secure encryption algorithms, what’s notable is how relatively few established cybersecurity firms are contenders in the NIST contest. Post-Quantum is among several startups that entered the competition—and which are poised to profit from the move to a new generation of encryption.
Kahrobaei says she expects a host of new companies to spring up to help commercialize post-quantum encryption, just as RSA Security—the company that was founded in 1982 to commercialize the RSA algorithm—became a dominant player in the cybersecurity space for the past three decades.
Cheng says that Post-Quantum Group, which was founded in 2009, once struggled to get chief information security officers and chief information officers at major banks and corporations to take the threat of quantum computers seriously. But, he says, the NIST process has belatedly focused their attention. “Now they know they have to do something in 18 months-time and they are starting to ask questions, ‘what can they do?’ ” he says.
This story has been updated to correct the definition of multivariate cryptography and to note that one multivariate cryptography algorithm did make into the list of finalists in the digital signature portion of the NIST competition. It has also been updated to clarify the type of encryption keys the Classic McEliece algorithm would likely be used to exchange.


fortune--2020-09-12--Got interruption insurance? These companies found it’s useless in the age of COVID-19

Trump Allegedly Lied About His Wealth to Get on the Forbes 400 List in the 1980s

To hear Century 21 Stores tell it, the New York retailer should have survived the pandemic because it had business interruption insurance. Instead, insurers refused to pay, and Century 21 is shutting down after almost 60 years in business.
More than 1,000 companies have found themselves in the same predicament and have sued, with cases playing out across the U.S. and U.K. Insurers are arguing they don’t have to pay out on pandemic claims in part because the coronavirus didn’t damage property.
Their stance will be tested as new cases are filed by bigger businesses with the resources to wage long, sophisticated court battles where the stakes are much higher. Until recently, the typical lawsuit demanding insurance payments came from smaller companies that couldn’t sustain a fight, said Walter J. Andrews, who represents Ralph Lauren Corp. in its $700 million insurance case filed last month in New Jersey.
“Their business model has proven to them that saying ‘no’ earns them more money than saying ‘yes,’” Andrews said. Until policy holders like Ralph Lauren start winning in court, insurers will refuse to honor the business interruption policies companies bought as part of their property coverage.
Century 21 fell into bankruptcy on Thursday after the pandemic forced it to close its stores in March. The chain and its 1,400 jobs could’ve survived if its insurance providers made good on $175 million that Century 21 says is due under its business interruption policies.
The insurers “turned their backs on us at this most critical time,” Co-Chief Executive Officer Raymond Gindi said in a statement about its demise. “While retailers across the board have suffered greatly due to COVID-19, and Century 21 is no exception, we are confident that had we received any meaningful portion of the insurance proceeds, we would have been able to save thousands of jobs and weather the storm.”
Century 21 sued several of its insurers in July over the lack of payment, arguing the existence of the novel coronavirus amounted to damage to its stores and to “the breathable air” inside and near the spaces covered by the policies. Insurers haven’t yet filed a response, and the retailer is seeking to move the suit into bankruptcy court, where it will ask for a speedy ruling.
Insurers for Century 21 include units of Allianz SE, Great American Fidelity Insurance Co. and Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. Representatives for the companies didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
More Busts
“I wouldn’t be surprised if more companies start filing bankruptcies” for the same reason, said former federal judge Judith K. Fitzgerald. While serving on the bench for more than 25 years, Fitzgerald oversaw multibillion-dollar coverage disputes waged between bankrupt companies and their insurers. Often insurance is a key asset for companies trying to reorganize and get a fresh start, said Fitzgerald, who is now with Tucker Arensberg law firm.
So far more than 1,000 lawsuits demanding insurance payments for business losses have been filed in state courts around the country, said Andrews, who heads the insurance practice at law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth. A second wave of cases brought by bigger companies with lawyers who specialize in insurance has started, he said.
The few cases that have been adjudicated have nearly all favored insurers, said Ronald L. Kammer, who represents insurance companies. In more than a half-dozen cases, the carriers persuaded a judge to throw out the lawsuit, in part because the court agreed that a property insurance policy can’t be invoked if there is no property damage.
That key defense won’t change as more suits are filed, Kammer said. Insurers have many other defenses as well, including policies that specifically exclude paying for pandemic-related losses. Those clauses were added in recent years after other viruses, like SARS, swept the globe.
Early Stages
Most of the current cases are still in the early stages and were filed in the first few months of the pandemic, Kammer said. That means courts in October and November will likely start deciding just how much, if any, property has been damaged by the coronavirus, he said.
“Do I believe additional cases will be filed? Yes. Do I believe the outcomes will be any different? No, because the policy language is the same. They still have to prove a direct physical loss,” Kammer said. “And I am not aware of any admissible evidence that would allow at the end of the day for a business to prove it suffered a physical change.”
Similar disputes have popped up in Europe. The U.K. markets regulator has taken some of the world’s largest insurers to court to establish whether they should pay out pandemic-related claims made by small firms, with a judgment expected next week. Almost 30 insurers including Allianz, American International Group Inc. and Chubb Ltd. could be affected by the ruling.
If the court were to find against the insurers, they could be forced to re-examine thousands of claims filed by firms holding business interruption and other policies that offered protection against unexpected halts to operations. Prior to the trial, the Financial Conduct Authority said policies held by around 370,000 customers could be affected.


fortune--2020-09-12--College tuition is seeing its steepest drop since 1978

College is finally getting a little cheaper as the pandemic reshapes the world of higher education.
The consumer price index for college tuition and fees fell 0.7% in August from the prior month, the steepest drop since 1978, according to a Labor Department report Friday. On a year-over-year basis, the index was up just 1.3%, the smallest increase on record.
Even with the drop, college costs have surged in the last two decades, far outpacing inflation. The median published tuition and fee price at a four-year institution came to $12,710 in the 2019-2020 school year, according to the College Board. Over the last 20 years, the price index for tuition and fees has increased 164%, compared with 50% for the broader CPI. The component accounts for about 1.6% of the CPI.
The Covid-19 pandemic has upended higher education, and many students are attending virtual classes instead of sitting in classrooms with professors. With health risks in mind, numerous schools have also chosen to limit or even cancel an array of typical student activities including sports for those attending in-person classes.
As a result, some schools have worked to soften the blow by skipping scheduled tuition hikes or even cutting the costs. Many colleges also offered refunds for room and board when they sent students home in March due to worries about the spreading pandemic.
Williams College reduced its cost by 15% on a one-time basis for the coming academic year. Princeton University also approved a 10% tuition reduction for all undergraduate students for the 2020-21 school year.
Georgetown University approved a 10% tuition cut for the fall semester for students who are learning remotely, and the College of William & Mary is rolling back a previously adopted increase for incoming in-state undergraduates.


fortune--2020-09-12--Could a TikTok shutdown cost Trump at the polls?

How a vacation—or a pandemic—can help you adopt better habits now

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All signs point to TikTok shutting down.
This week President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t delay his executive order that bans TikTok from operating in the U.S. unless its parent Chinese company, ByteDance, sells it to an American company by September 20.
And TikTok has yet to finalize a deal as Chinese government officials remain opposed to offers made by Microsoft/Walmart and Oracle. And on Friday, Reuters reported that China would rather see TikTok be shut down in the U.S. than it forced into a sale.
But if Trump—citing security concerns—actually shuts down TikTok will it cost him votes? To find out Fortune and SurveyMonkey teamed up to poll 2,478 U.S. adults between August 17 and 18.*
We found the public isn’t thrilled by the executive order, however, they aren’t strongly opposed to it either. Among U.S. adults, 50% oppose Trump’s executive order to force a sale of TikTok’s U.S. business, 41% support the order, and 9% are unsure.
But there is a huge generational divide: TikTok is synonymous with Gen Z, and they’re supporting the app in this fight with the White House. Among adults age 18 to 24, 62% oppose the executive order to force a sale of TikTok. And 65% of TikTok users oppose it.
And while TikTik has a -12 percentage point net favorability among the U.S. adult population, it has a +22 net favorability among 18 to 24 year-olds, finds the Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll. Among people who use the app, that net favorability is a staggering +63 percentage points.


fortune--2020-09-12--America’s $20 trillion debt is getting cheaper as it grows

The U.S. government is paying less as it borrows more, one reason investors appear more comfortable than Congress about funding another leg of stimulus.
Interest payments in the federal budget declined about 10% in the first 11 months of this fiscal year, when America was running up its biggest deficit since World War II. Over the next few years, servicing the national debt will be cheaper than any time in the past half-century when measured against the size of the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
That’s because yields in the $20 trillion U.S. Treasury market plunged to record lows early in the pandemic — and they’ve risen only slightly since then, even though the supply of debt has surged to a record.
Borrowing probably won’t always be this cheap, but for now the U.S. government is far from running up against any financial limits, as it seeks to shore up the economy after a wave of shutdowns and layoffs. Concerns that the country can’t afford much more spending have been voiced by officials from both political parties in recent weeks, as stimulus efforts ground to a halt.
“While there’s been a lot of concern about the mounting debt, it hasn’t caused the problems that were anticipated by the doomsters,” says Ed Yardeni, founder of Yardeni Research Inc. “It’s not just a question of how much debt is outstanding, but what is the cost to service that debt.”
The CBO predicts a deficit of about $3.7 trillion this year, or 16% of GDP, more than triple the year-earlier figures. Bonds issued to fund the shortfall have pushed the U.S. public debt past $20 trillion –- more than the economy’s annual output.
‘Not stretched’
Yet the average yield on the debt has dropped to 1.7%, from 2.4% in December, and it’s set to fall further.
Even after a few auctions that saw signs of faltering demand, the government can borrow for 30 years at below 1.5%. And the Treasury has tilted sales toward such longer-term securities, helping lock in historically low rates. The latest long-bond auction on Thursday drew a solid bid.
“The U.S.’s debt affordability is quite OK, not stretched by any means,” says Felipe Villarroel, a portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management in London. “We also look at what is the perceived use of the money a government is borrowing, which is now widely accepted as necessary.”
The idea that governments need financial-market approval for their budget policies has in any case been called into question.
Anti-vigilante
Yardeni coined the term “bond vigilantes” in the early 1980s. It described investors who were supposed to exert power over governments by selling their bonds, or merely threatening to, and thus making deficit-spending more expensive.
But now the dominant presence in markets is a kind of anti-vigilante, which does the opposite of all those things: the Federal Reserve.
Fed purchases have siphoned about $1.8 trillion of government debt out of the market since March, while the Treasury was issuing some $3 trillion of new bonds. The central bank is currently adding about $80 billion of Treasuries a month. It’s also promised to keep short-term rates at zero for the foreseeable future and tolerate above-target inflation, while urging the government not to ease up on fiscal stimulus.
Stanley Fischer, former vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said Friday in a Bloomberg Television interview that a low interest-rate burden means the Fed can do more to bolster the economy.
“It means that the Fed can keep going with very cheap money, that it can go on for a much longer time at this rate,” he said.
There’s a broad consensus among bond investors that if rates on longer-term government debt start to creep up, as they’ve occasionally threatened to, then the Fed can and will step in.
‘Still out there’
“If there were some bond vigilantes still out there to push the bond yields higher,” is how Yardeni puts it, “then the Fed will target the bond yields.”
In an Aug. 31 speech, Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida left the door open to a policy of capping Treasury yields at some point, though he indicated it’s not imminent.
Even the potential for such a move is helping to keep the government’s borrowing costs down, investors say.
The 10-year Treasury note has been trading around 0.7% for weeks, and it’s forecast to end the year within a few basis points of that level, according to Bloomberg surveys.
‘Look different’
In the financial world there are plenty who argue that the low interest bills America currently pays on its growing debt are just a short-term respite –- like a teaser rate on a jumbo mortgage.
“The Fed is greasing the system to make sure the financial markets are functioning well,” says Gary Pollack, head of fixed-income for private wealth management at Deutsche Bank. “But at some point in time the world will look different, and all of a sudden we are going to be stuck with a huge bill.”
That view still carries some weight in Congress too, even if deficit hawks –- Washington’s version of bond vigilantes –- aren’t the force they once were.
President Donald Trump’s Republican Party has used its Senate majority to push for scaled-back measures in the next pandemic bill. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised more spending if he beats Trump in November’s election, but a senior aide told the Wall Street Journal last month that it’s not clear what America can afford because “the pantry is going to be bare.”
‘Not worth anything’
Taking the opposite view is the emerging school of Modern Monetary Theory. It argues that countries like America, which borrow in their own currency, can set the interest rates on their debt as a policy variable –- and don’t really need to sell bonds anyway. The risk is overheating the economy rather than running out of market funds.
Also cited by the dovish camp is Japan, which has a national debt about two-and-a-half times bigger than America’s (by comparison with their economies). After more than two decades of low interest rates, its debt-servicing cost is approximately zero.
David Levy, chairman of Jerome Levy Forecasting Center LLC, says that ultimately there are limits to government debt –- but the U.S. is nowhere near hitting them, and has room for more borrowing to pull its economy out of the coronavirus slump.
“It would take a long time to get to the type of inflationary scenario where people thought the dollar was not worth anything,” he says. “You can keep this process growing without it breaking down.”


fortune--2020-09-12--How a vacation—or a pandemic—can help you adopt better habits now

Got interruption insurance ?
These companies found it ’ s useless in the age of COVID-19

When you’re trying to change a habit, what’s the first thing you learn about yourself?
How quickly you can fail … on incredibly easy tasks.
Have you ever tried to pick up meditation? Not intense, hour-long sessions—just a 10-minute-a-day meditation practice? It’s incredibly difficult.
Why? It’s not about the time—everyone can find 10 minutes in their day. And it’s not about the effort; the task isn’t to drive all the way to a gym and sweat. It’s to sit still—to not do anything. The only way to fail at meditation is if you try to do something.
This should be incredibly easy…and yet we fail. This is true for all kinds of habits you want to establish but haven’t yet—journaling, taking medication, drinking more water. They’re all technically easy to do, yet difficult to do consistently. Need more proof? Just look at how many self-help books are available on habit change.
So how do you change habits?
Imagine someone comes to you and asks you to take shorter showers, walk more (instead of driving), and start recycling. This person lists all the benefits of these environmentally positive behaviors, offers to make the actions easier for you, and gives you a fun goodie bag.
Researchers in the U.K. actually did this. They reached out to 800 households and gave half of them a series of nudges designed to encourage environmentally friendly behaviors. The good news? Their efforts paid off—environmental nudges worked. The bad news? It only worked for a certain percentage of the people.
In fact, there was one single factor that trumped all others when it came to those for whom the nudges worked. It wasn’t age or gender. It wasn’t income or education level. And it wasn’t how much the person in question wanted to help the environment.
The difference was whether the person had moved (that is, relocated) within the previous three months.
If someone had recently moved, they were far more likely to adopt the environmental behaviors than someone who had not moved.
Why? For most people in the study, the only thing that changed in their lives was that some random researchers tried to convince them to do something new. Everything else stayed the same—their commute, where they shopped for groceries, who their neighbors were, etc. But for those who’d recently moved, everything about their life had changed— their commute, their stores, their neighbors, their daily rhythm.
The people who hadn’t moved were likely comfortable. They were running a well-oiled machine called Life. Change was possible, but to do so would require adjustments to the well-oiled machine and a disruption to its operating manual.
By contrast, people who had just moved were in the process of creating a new operating manual. They’d already restarted their well-oiled machines and were in the process of booting up new routines and habits. So when random researchers nudged them to establish new behaviors, they were already in a headspace conducive to change. In other words, it was easier for people to change their behaviors when the environment changed.
Why does moving move the needle?
Here’s what you most likely think your process of change looks like (also known as the normalized model for behavior change):
I look at the pros and cons of a decision (driving to work vs. taking public transit). I make a decision in line with my preferences (public transit is better for me). I have the intent to execute the decision (i.e. I want to and am motivated to take public transit). I execute (I actually take public transit).
This chain of events implies that your behavior is determined by your motivation to act in line with what you want. Thus, if you declare what you want and you have a motivation to act, your behavior will change.
Makes sense. Reasonable.
The catch is that this particular chain of events only happens when you’re faced with a new or unfamiliar situation. In novel situations, you can set intentions about what you’ll do, and there’s a reasonable likelihood that these intentions will manifest into actual behaviors. However, if everything about your environment stays static, there’s a strong likelihood that your good intentions won’t manifest into new behaviors.
In other words, you may intend to take public transit, meditate, or drink more water, but your intention, in and of itself, is not the predictor of you taking action.
This is because habits are not based on intention; they’re based on environmental cues.
So, yes, you can read self-help books that explain how to form or break a habit. And, yes, you can create an intention to meditate, drink more water, and start journaling. But if your environmental cues stay the same, your good intentions almost certainly won’t be enough.
So how do you change a habit to improve your life?
Not by reading a book on habit-formation. Not by setting a strong intention. Instead, you change your environment. That’s how you get abnormally easy habit change.
Changing your environment to make healthy habits happen
In 2014, London Tube workers went on strike for 48 hours. During this time, commuters couldn’t take their normal routes—they were forced to use other subway stops to get to work.
As you can imagine, this must have been annoying to those affected. You arrive at your normal subway entrance and it’s blocked off. What do you do? You likely shrug your shoulders and carry on to the next one, assuming you’ll be late for meetings.
But when the strike ended, something funny happened: 5% of people didn’t return to their previous route to work. Instead, 5% of people had, in that two-day period, found a faster route, saving themselves on average six minutes a day.
Why did it take a two-day strike for people to realize they should take a different route to work? For the same reason that people who’ve just moved homes are more likely to start recycling and taking shorter showers. It’s also the same reason people who moved jobs were more likely to take a free bus pass.
When our environment changes, our automatic habits are disrupted and we’re more open to change.
If the environment of decision-making stays the same, your daily habitual behaviors will most likely stay the same.
If, before the strike, you had asked Tube-taking Londoners, “Do you want to shorten your commute?” people would have said yes. Yet they didn’t actually take actions to shorten their commute. It took shutting down the Tube to make this possible.
Abnormally easy habit change happens when we change our environment. Or, as sometimes happens, when we get lucky and the environment is changed for us! For example, when a strike happens…or we’re going about our normal lives, and—BAM!—a global pandemic arrives.
3 tips for changing your habits
Here are three tips for making habit-change easy, by focusing on environment rather than willpower.
1. Capitalize on moments of ‘life arbitrage’
Once you realize behavior change is possible and even easy, you can start to look for these moments of life arbitrage and capitalize.
For example, COVID-19 has dramatically changed our collective habits. Millions of us have started doing grocery delivery more, cooking at home more, and baking more. We’ve also been finding new ways to work out at home and exercise our creativity.
The Economist recently published some Google search data that highlights big spikes around these topics, as well as some stickiness. Google search traffic for cooking, exercise and crafts remains above normal levels. For example, in late July searches for “dumbbell” and “Strava”, a workout app, still hovered 60% above the usual levels. Searches for “recipe” were still up 20%. How crazy would it have seemed pre-COVID to see such massive behavior change?
2. Make moments happen
You don’t have to wait for a pandemic to establish healthy new habits; you can actually generate “big” moments yourself.
Life transitions are moments when behavior change is abnormally easy. These include events like changing jobs, moving homes, or having a baby. We’d go so far as to say some of the biggest “behavior change” companies are not apps that help you track your walking, but ones that help you change jobs or move homes.
Take the app Open Door. Open Door will make you an all-cash offer on your home within 24 hours, which makes finding financing for your next home a breeze. A process that could take months and require a lot of work is now reduced to the click of a button and a wait of a few weeks.
If you’ve already been thinking about moving, this app decreases the friction between you and a big change you’ve already been considering. And with that big change can come smaller changes, like (finally) establishing your meditation practice, cutting down on your sugar intake, and taking a daily walk.
It’s worth noting that if you’ve been in your home or job for more than a few years, you’ve also likely had the same habits and routine for more than a few years. So while you don’t want to move jobs or homes every year for obvious reasons, it’s good to understand that it actually deeply serves you and your habits well to make major life changes semi-frequently.
3. Design for moments
If it’s not possible for you to switch jobs or move houses (and we get it), there are also smaller steps you can take to change your environment in meaningful ways.
First, set intentions for your new you. Think about when, where and how you’ll start a new habit. Want to get up at a different time? Shower at a different time? Pick up running or a musical instrument? Cook more? Call your parents? Cut down on screen-time?
Then, for example, take an extended trip. Given the pandemic, many people are working from home—but this means you can really work from anywhere. If it’s feasible, take a two-week trip somewhere to change your space; if you can get away for even longer, do it.
This gives you two opportunities to change your habits: in the new place where you are for two weeks, and when you get home. Have you ever noticed that when you get back from a trip, it’s easier for you to establish a new routine (like getting up earlier)? Take advantage of that to consciously establish the new habits you actually want.
Our habits are the foundation of our lives; the rituals and repeated actions we take shape who we are. We can design our lives to support good habits by seizing the moment.
Kristen Berman is the founder and CEO of Irrational Labs.


fortune--2020-09-12--Apple’s leadership evolves ahead of a post-Tim Cook era

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and his top deputies are focusing greater attention on developing a new generation of leaders to eventually run some of the iPhone maker’s most important divisions such as hardware development, services and marketing.
As Cook begins his 10th year at the helm, his management group is filled mostly with senior vice presidents who have worked at Apple for more than two decades, made tens of millions of dollars and are at or near the ages of 55 to 60 when many previous executives have stepped aside. That, along with typical corporate planning, has spurred the Cupertino, California-based company to cultivate its next class of top managers, said people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified talking about internal company discussions. Apple declined to comment.
Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs in August 2011, has led Apple to become the world’s most valuable company and the first in the U.S. with a market capitalization that topped $2 trillion. Even with the company’s success, the next group of leaders will need to navigate rising global antitrust concerns, build stronger relationships with app developers, reduce the reliance on Chinese manufacturing and find devices or new services to carry the company beyond the iPhone.
The CEO has given no indication he’s ready to retire, but if the 59-year-old Cook moved on tomorrow, look no further than Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, 57, to take over. Williams is seen as the heir apparent, having run the company’s global operations under Cook for the past several years. In 2013, he took over development of the Apple Watch and Apple’s health initiatives, and last year, added oversight of hardware and software design.
In many ways, Williams is seen as pragmatic as Cook and as someone who wouldn’t let the company miss a beat. He is an operations-focused executive like Cook rather than a product visionary like Jobs or former design chief Jony Ive. With the company’s decade of success under Cook, it’s unlikely the board would want to shift away from this proven formula.
Below, Bloomberg takes a look at possible successors to the current executives in charge of each major Apple division.
Marketing
Greg Joswiak, 56, took over for Phil Schiller as Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing in August, but Schiller, 60, had been gradually handing off some responsibility for years, according to people familiar with the transition.
At Apple, the product marketing organization is broader than ads, as the group helps choose which features to add to devices and helps manage product development. Joswiak joined Apple in the 1980s, and is just about three years younger than his semi-retired predecessor. The company has a list of potential successors to Joswiak, with the “smart money” being on newly appointed vice president of iPhone marketing Kaiann Drance, 42, to eventually take over, according to a person close to the company.
Other potential contenders include Stan Ng and Susan Prescott. Ng, vice president of Apple Watch marketing, has been a mainstay in Apple’s marketing organization since the late 1990s, starting off on the Mac, transitioning to the iPod, and then working on the iPhone before the Watch. Prescott, 55, oversees marketing for apps and enterprise.
Software engineering
Craig Federighi, 51, is the youngest member of Apple’s executive team and is likely to remain in his role for several more years. But if he stepped down, Federighi has at least two key lieutenants that could fill the role.
Sebastien Marineau-Mes, vice president of Intelligent Systems Experience, and Jon Andrews, who was named a vice president in charge of CoreOS last year, are seen by people close to Apple as most likely to be promoted if necessary.
Andrews’s CoreOS is the most fundamental component of Apple’s operating systems, the layer that handles underlying features like wireless networking and the file system. Marineau-Mes used to hold Andrews’s role, but in 2016 was moved to oversee the Photos and Camera apps in addition to system security. More recently, Marineau-Mes was shifted to work on features like the new iOS 14 widgets.
Marineau-Mes was hired away from BlackBerry Ltd. in 2014 after running the Canada-based company’s software division, and Andrews joined Apple in 2006.
Services
Services are one of Apple’s fastest growing segments and a key driver for device sales. Eddy Cue, 55, was named the senior vice president of the unit in 2011.
Cue, who has worked more than 30 years at Apple, started at the company by managing customer service teams and now oversees Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud, Apple Maps, many of the applications that run on the company’s devices and dealmaking for content. As for Cue’s eventual successor, Peter Stern, 48, is at the top of the short list.
Stern, who joined Apple from Time Warner Cable in 2016, is a content dealmaker. He oversees the business side of Apple’s video efforts and leads work on Apple News, Apple Books, iCloud and the company’s advertising platforms. He also helped handle the development of Apple’s upgraded TV app last year and is leading the charge on Apple’s push into services bundles.
Operations
Apple’s operations division is perhaps the company’s most important. The team is responsible for cranking out hundreds of millions of devices from Asia and shipping them across the world. The group also must develop manufacturing techniques, source components and strike deals with suppliers.
Cook ran Apple’s operations before handing over that responsibility to Williams. Last year, Apple tapped Sabih Khan, 54, as senior vice president of operations. Beyond Khan, Apple has a team of several veterans such as operations executives Dan Rosckes, Rob York and Rory Sexton.
But the most likely long-term successor, according to people familiar with the group, is Priya Balasubramaniam, head of operations for the iPhone. Balasubramaniam has been in her current role since 2014 and joined Apple nearly 20 years ago. She is in charge of the production, supply chain and repair network for Apple’s most important product as well as underlying components.
In 2017, Balasubramaniam helped fix development challenges with the iPhone X’s facial recognition sensor at facilities in South Korea. The phone ended up shipping in time for the holiday season and helped lead to strong overall sales.
Hardware engineering
Dan Riccio, 57, has run Apple’s hardware engineering division since 2012 and oversees the hardware development of almost every Apple device.
The group has several vice presidents who run different areas, but John Ternus’s profile inside and outside of the company has steadily risen over the past several years. As a top lieutenant to Riccio, Ternus, 45, is in charge of hardware engineering for the iPad and Mac. He also contributes to the development of several other products.
A person who knows Ternus called him a well-respected manager who understands the technology, and despite his rising profile, has remained unassuming — all characteristics of a potential future division head or even CEO.
Ternus recently supervised the development of the new iPad Pro design, an increased focus on the Mac after the company let several lines languish and has been key in the company’s transition from Intel Corp. to its own Mac processors.
Hardware technologies
Johny Srouji’s Hardware Technologies group has increasingly become one of Apple’s most important assets. His team’s chips have powered the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch with performance outpacing many rivals. The group is also developing chips at the core of Apple’s upcoming augmented-reality headset and glasses, cellular modems for future iPhones and processors to replace those from Intel in Macs.
Srouji, 55, joined Apple in 2008 and was appointed to Apple’s executive team in 2015. He is a demanding leader who keeps a tight grip on a team that has a rising profile in the chip industry. None of his direct reports are seen as having Srouji’s clout to run such a demanding division. Still, Sribalan Santhanam, 54, is most likely to take the role if Srouji were to step down or retire, people close to the company said.
Santhanam, the company’s vice president of Silicon Engineering, joined Apple in 2008 when his previous employer P.A. Semi, was acquired to kickstart Apple’s in-house chip efforts. His profile has risen lately after he announced the iPhone 11’s processor and was one of the showmen of Apple’s Mac processor transition.
Retail & human resources
When Angela Ahrendts left her post as Apple’s retail chief last year, Tim Cook tried something new: promoting an insider to the job. Cook’s first choice as head of retail in 2012, John Browett, came from the outside and clashed with a culture of customer service, which triggered his departure after less than a year. While Ahrendts revamped the look and operations of stores, some employees and customers weren’t pleased with the changes.
Since taking over last year, Deirdre O’Brien has pushed Apple retail online amid the Covid-19 pandemic and navigated opening and shutting locations on an ad hoc basis. If O’Brien, 54, were to step down from her post as head of retail and human resources, Apple has a bench of lieutenants in place to take over.
The company could consider again splitting the role into two positions, such as promoting a retail leader of a major geography in addition to having a standalone human resources executive. Apple could also look to hire an outsider as it did before.
Chief Financial Officer, General Counsel and Machine Learning
About a year before the retirement of previous Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer in 2014, Apple hired current CFO Luca Maestri, 56, away from Xerox Corp. He served as corporate controller and vice president of finance before taking the CFO job. If Maestri were to leave Apple, it’s possible the company could once again look for an outsider to take the job. It could also consider Saori Casey, its current vice president of finance, who oversees the company’s books and is responsible for putting together earnings reports.
The company has also hired outsiders for its past two general counsels: the current holder of the job Kate Adams, 56, came from Honeywell, while her predecessor, Bruce Sewell, joined from Intel.
Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy role was created specifically for John Giannandrea, 55, who earlier held a similar job at Google. Giannandrea does not have a clear top lieutenant, so if he were to depart Apple, it’s unclear who would replace him or if Apple would fold the unit back into the Software Engineering department.


fortune--2020-09-13--The Gen Z founders of a boutique skincare brand tackling chronic skin conditions and stigma

Voting by mail is more secure than the President says .
How to make it even safer

This is an installment in a special series, Startup Year One, interviewing startup founders about the major lessons they learned in the immediate aftermath of their businesses’ first year of operation.
At 23-years-old, Olamide Olowe is purported to be the youngest Black woman to raise over $2 million in venture capital funding ($2.6 million to be exact). This year, she and cofounder Claudia Teng founded Topicals, a skincare brand with high-end beauty products intended to treat sensitive skin conditions at lesser price points.
As two young women of color, Olowe and Teng said they grew up settling for products that didn’t really serve them or represent their skin. With Topicals, they want to create an inclusive community around positive and authentic discussions about their skin. And as chronic skin conditions often lead to serious mental health issues as a result of associated stigmas, shame, and embarrassment often felt by those with them, Topicals is donating 1% of profits to various mental health organizations.
Topicals is touted to incorporate high-quality ingredients with clinically-tested formulas that tackle skin conditions like eczema, hyper-pigmentation, psoriasis, and more. The brand launched with two products: “Like Butter” (a whipped, hydrating mask moisturizing and soothing dry, sensitive, and eczema-prone skin; $32) and “Faded” (a gel serum combatting dark spots and discoloration from sun damage, scarring, and inflammation; $36).
Among the supporters and investors in Topicals are several high-profile Black women, including Netflix CMO Bozoma Saint John, entrepreneur and DJ Hannah Bronfman, and the Emmy-nominated stars of Insecure, Issa Rae and Yvonne Orji. Led by early-stage venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau, the recent fundraising round included participation from Mucker Capital as well as the CEOs of Warby Parker, Allbirds, Casper, Harry’s, Bombas, and Red Antler.
Fortune recently spoke with Olowe to learn more about her business, the lessons learned, the hurdles overcome, and plans for the next year.
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Olamide Olowe, cofounder of Topicals. Courtesy of Topicals
Fortune: What inspired you and your cofounder, Claudia Teng, to launch Topicals? How does it stand apart in the skincare industry?
Both of us grew up with skin conditions: Claudia has severe eczema, and I have post barbae folliculitis [a skin inflammation]. We knew what it felt like to live with these skin conditions and the effect it had on our mental health, which is why we wanted to create Topicals.
Topicals is taking the focus off of having “perfect” skin and putting the onus on making the treatment experience more enjoyable or as we like to say “Funner Flare-Ups.” Chronic skin conditions aren’t curable so chasing the unattainable goal of “perfect” skin set by the beauty industry did not fit with the new era of beauty that Topicals is pioneering.
Courtesy of Topicals
Skincare is increasingly outselling cosmetics in the beauty business. Why do you think that is? How much of a role does social media play in your branding and marketing?
We’ve entered into an era of wellness where people no longer want to cover up their skin. They’d rather get to the root of why their skin is flaring up, and I believe that has led to the boom in skincare. Also, the idea of skincare as self-care has now been ingrained into our minds. Skincare offers a mini escape from reality.
Younger generations, especially our target audience Gen Z, is always on social media. Social media plays a huge role in how people feel about themselves. That’s why it is important to us to create a brand that doesn’t focus on perfection or unattainable beauty standards. We want to transform the way people feel about skin and we do that on social media by showcasing people with visible skin conditions living life in full color.
Topicals cofounders Claudia Teng and Olamide Olowe Courtesy of Topicals
You recently just raised more than $2 million in venture capital, with some big name investors onboard, such as Netflix CMO Bozoma Saint John and Insecure actresses Issa Rae and Yvonne Orji. How did they, along with your other investors, get involved with Topicals? And given the ongoing economic crisis, what has been raising funds been like during the downturn?
I was super particular during my fundraising process. I wanted to have partners that could help me when things got rough so I chose to partner with funds and angels who were operators. I was also adamant about having women—particularly Black women—be key stakeholders of Topicals. By doing so, I was able to bring new, fresh perspectives and networks to the table that will ultimately help Topicals be successful.
Fundraising during an economic downturn is extremely difficult because no one knows how long it will last or how bad it will be. On top of that, I’m a 23-year-old Black woman, so the stats were not in my favor to begin with. I faced my fair share of bias from investors, but ultimately my overqualified background and my unique insights into the category got investors excited enough to back Topicals’ vision.
Post-pandemic and five years down the road, where do you see Topicals in the market?
At Topicals, we get excited about skin conditions and categories that the beauty industry has ignored. You’ll continue to see us create products and experiences for our community that innovate in taboo categories.


fortune--2020-09-13--Voting by mail is more secure than the President says. How to make it even safer

Quantum computers threaten to end digital security .
Here ’ s what ’ s being done about it

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread mail-in voting is essential to maintaining voter turnout and preventing the spread of the virus. Our unprecedented dependence on mail-in voting is precisely why it is important to take a serious look at the security of the process. We can only improve the safety of mail-in voting if we understand where there are legitimate concerns to begin with.
Some of the most widely circulated concerns surrounding mail-in voting fraud, however, are not grounded in fact. President Trump has alleged that widespread use of voting by mail would allow foreign countries to send in ballots and that there is “tremendous potential for voter fraud.” The technical reality is that fraud of the sort Trump has claimed is widespread would be easily detected by the ballot-scanning systems and ballot barcodes used by the majority of election jurisdictions. Ballot scanners verify that the ballot is printed on special ballot stock and most ballot envelopes have some kind of unique barcode that allows election officials to detect counterfeit ballots.
To be sure, there are valid concerns about the safety of casting your ballot via mail. A very real threat is that delays involving the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will prevent voters from receiving or returning their ballot on time. In Wisconsin, thousands of mail-in ballots requested by voters in the state primary were never delivered to them due to postal delays. In New York, one in five mail-in ballots received by election officials were not counted, many because they arrived past the deadline.
To mitigate the risks of delivery delays, we need better ways for voters to track the status of their ballot in the mail. Most states and counties provide a website that allows voters to look up when their ballot was mailed and determine whether the returned ballot has been accepted by election officials. This is an important first step, but what these websites do not provide is the ability to track a ballot once it has left the elections facility. Recent reports concerning USPS mail slowdowns highlight the importance of enabling voters to track the location of their ballot at every step of the process.
USPS Intelligent Mail barcodes, used by the USPS to sort and track mail, provide this tracking capability. Many, but not all, election jurisdictions use these barcodes on ballot envelopes, allowing both USPS and voters to look up the status of their ballot. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in June requiring county elections officials to use Intelligent Mail barcodes on all ballot envelopes in the state.
This mail tracking capability increases accountability of the USPS and boosts public confidence in voting by mail. A crucial step towards a safer voting by mail process is for more jurisdictions to use intelligent barcodes on their mail-in ballots. Voters can then use ballot tracking websites and apps, which rely on these barcodes, to check the status of their ballot if their state has adopted a ballot tracking system. Ballot Scout, run by the non-profit Democracy Works, and BallotTrax, created out of the private sector, are two such websites used by states where a voter can enter basic identifying information, such as name and date of birth, and view their ballot’s delivery status. Increasing the number of jurisdictions that use these systems will help assuage voter concerns about ballots being lost in the mail or never arriving.
The tradeoff of enabling voters to easily view their ballot status is that others can look up their voter file, too. The information requested by these systems to verify a voter’s identity is often easily discoverable,
and sometimes even a matter of public record in states that make voter files public. For example, numerous media outlets reported the precise date Donald and Melania Trump’s ballots were mailed to his residence in Florida, a fact which they figured out by looking up the Trumps’ voter records on the Palm Beach County elections website. Given the limited timeframe between now and the November elections, the necessity of accurate ballot tracking outweighs concerns over ease of access to voter data, but these systems do raise important privacy concerns for consideration in future elections.
USPS delays are not the only concern. Online voter registration, while not unique to mail-in voting, is a critical part of the remote voting process. It makes registration significantly easier, but state registration websites can be compromised in cases where web security protocols are not up to date. This could allow a malicious actor to tamper with a voter’s registration, including preventing it altogether, or to steal a voter’s personal information. Many security holes can be fixed in time for November if states have the technical expertise to do so. States should also consider sending notices of any changes in voter registration to voters, as Florida already does, so discrepancies can be caught.
Like all voting methods, voting by mail is susceptible to small-scale fraud, but there is no evidence, technical or otherwise, that widespread fraud is possible. As we wrote in a paper in May, fraud involving mail-in ballots requires the creation of a paper trail, making it very difficult to scale. The far greater threat to mail-in ballot security is that delays in postal service will suppress the vote count and reduce public perception of the safety of the process. Intelligent barcodes and ballot tracking systems can help with this. States should make use of both of these safeguards as much as is feasible, this November and beyond.
Jenny Blessing is a graduate student at MIT and a research assistant at MIT CSAIL’s Internet Policy Research Initiative. McCoy Patiño, Tran Nguyen, and Julian Gomez are recent graduates of MIT in computer science and are currently software engineers in the tech industry.


fortune--2020-09-13--50 years later, Milton Friedman’s shareholder doctrine is dead

Fifty years ago, Milton Friedman in the New York Times magazine proclaimed that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Directors have the duty to do what is in the interests of their masters, the shareholders, to make as much profit as possible. Friedman was hostile to the New Deal and European models of social democracy and urged business to use its muscle to reduce the effectiveness of unions, blunt environmental and consumer protection measures, and defang antitrust law. He sought to reduce consideration of human concerns within the corporate boardroom and legal requirements on business to treat workers, consumers, and society fairly.
Over the last 50 years, Friedman’s views became increasingly influential in the U.S. As a result, the power of the stock market and wealthy elites soared and consideration of the interests of workers, the environment, and consumers declined. Profound economic insecurity and inequality, a slow response to climate change, and undermined public institutions resulted. Using their wealth and power in the pursuit of profits, corporations led the way in loosening the external constraints that protected workers and other stakeholders against overreaching.
Under the dominant Friedman paradigm, corporations were constantly harried by all the mechanisms that shareholders had available—shareholder resolutions, takeovers, and hedge fund activism—to keep them narrowly focused on stockholder returns. And pushed by institutional investors, executive remuneration systems were increasingly focused on total stock returns. By making corporations the playthings of the stock market, it became steadily harder for corporations to operate in an enlightened way that reflected the real interests of their human investors in sustainable growth, fair treatment of workers, and protection of the environment.
Half a century later, it is clear that this narrow, stockholder-centered view of corporations has cost society severely. Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, the single-minded focus of business on profits was criticized for causing the degradation of nature and biodiversity, contributing to global warming, stagnating wages, and exacerbating economic inequality. The result is best exemplified by the drastic shift in gain sharing away from workers toward corporate elites, with stockholders and top management eating more of the economic pie.
Corporate America understood the threat that this way of thinking was having on the social compact and reacted through the 2019 corporate purpose statement of the Business Roundtable, emphasizing responsibility to stakeholders as well as shareholders. But the failure of many of the signatories to protect their stakeholders during the coronavirus pandemic has prompted cynicism about the original intentions of those signing the document, as well as their subsequent actions.
Stockholder advocates are right when then they claim that purpose statements on their own achieve little: Calling for corporate executives who answer to only one powerful constituency—stockholders in the form of highly assertive institutional investors—and have no legal duty to other stakeholders to run their corporations in a way that is fair to all stakeholders is not only ineffectual, it is naive and intellectually incoherent.
What is required is to match commitment to broader responsibility of corporations to society with a power structure that backs it up. That is what has been missing. Corporate law in the U.S. leaves it to directors and managers subject to potent stockholder power to give weight to other stakeholders. In principle, corporations can commit to purposes beyond profit and their stakeholders, but only if their powerful investors allow them to do so. Ultimately, because the law is permissive, it is in fact highly restrictive of corporations acting fairly for all their stakeholders because it hands authority to investors and financial markets for corporate control.
Absent any effective mechanism for encouraging adherence to the Roundtable statement, the system is stacked against those who attempt to do so. There is no requirement on corporations to look after their stakeholders and for the most part they do not, because if they did, they would incur the wrath of their shareholders. That was illustrated all too clearly by the immediate knee-jerk response of the Council of Institutional Investors to the Roundtable declaration last year, which expressed its disapproval by stating that the Roundtable had failed to recognize shareholders as owners as well as providers of capital, and that “accountability to everyone means accountability to no one.”
If the Roundtable is serious about shifting from shareholder primacy to purposeful business, two things need to happen. One is that the promise of the New Deal needs to be renewed, and protections for workers, the environment, and consumers in the U.S. need to be brought closer to the standards set in places like Germany and Scandinavia.
But to do that first thing, a second thing is necessary. Changes within company law itself must occur, so that corporations are better positioned to support the restoration of that framework and govern themselves internally in a manner that respects their workers and society. Changing the power structure within corporate law itself—to require companies to give fair consideration to stakeholders and temper their need to put profit above all other values—will also limit the ability and incentives for companies to weaken regulations that protect workers, consumers, and society more generally.
To make this change, corporate purpose has to be enshrined in the heart of corporate law as an expression of the broader responsibility of corporations to society and the duty of directors to ensure this. Laws already on the books of many states in the U.S. do exactly that by authorizing the public benefit corporation (PBC). A PBC has an obligation to state a public purpose beyond profit, to fulfill that purpose as part of the responsibilities of its directors, and to be accountable for so doing. This model is meaningfully distinct from the constituency statutes in some states that seek to strengthen stakeholder interests, but that stakeholder advocates condemn as ineffectual. PBCs have an affirmative duty to be good corporate citizens and to treat all stakeholders with respect. Such requirements are mandatory and meaningful, while constituency statutes are mushy.
The PBC model is growing in importance and is embraced by many younger entrepreneurs committed to the idea that making money in a way that is fair to everyone is the responsible path forward. But the model’s ultimate success depends on longstanding corporations moving to adopt it.
Even in the wake of the Roundtable’s high-minded statement, that has not yet happened, and for good reason. Although corporations can opt in to become a PBC, there is no obligation on them to do so and they need the support of their shareholders. It is relatively easy for founder-owned companies or companies with a relatively low number of stockholders to adopt PBC forms if their owners are so inclined. It is much tougher to obtain the approval of a dispersed group of institutional investors who are accountable to an even more dispersed group of individual investors. There is a serious coordination problem of achieving reform in existing corporations.
That is why the law needs to change. Instead of being an opt-in alternative to shareholder primacy, the PBC should be the universal standard for societally important corporations, which should be defined as ones with over $1 billion of revenues, as suggested by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In the U.S., this would be done most effectively by corporations becoming PBCs under state law. The magic of the U.S. system has rested in large part on cooperation between the federal government and states, which provides society with the best blend of national standards and nimble implementation. This approach would build on that.
Corporate shareholders and directors enjoy substantial advantages and protections through U.S. law that are not extended to those who run their own businesses. In return for offering these privileges, society can reasonably expect to benefit, not suffer, from what corporations do. Making responsibility in society a duty in corporate law will reestablish the legitimacy of incorporation.
There are three pillars to this. The first is that corporations must be responsible corporate citizens, treating their workers and other stakeholders fairly, and avoiding externalities, such as carbon emissions, that cause unreasonable or disproportionate harm to others. The second is that corporations should seek to make profit by benefiting others. The third is that they should be able to demonstrate that they fulfill both criteria by measuring and reporting their performances against them.
The PBC model embraces all three elements and puts legal, and thus market, force behind them. Corporate managers, like most of us, take obligatory duties seriously. If they don’t, the PBC model allows for courts to issue orders, such as injunctions, holding corporations to their stakeholder and societal obligations. In addition, the PBC model requires fairness to all stakeholders at all stages of a corporation’s life, even when it is sold. The PBC model shifts power to socially responsible investment and index funds that focus on the long term and cannot gain from unsustainable approaches to growth that harm society.
Our proposal to amend corporate law to ensure responsible corporate citizenship will prompt a predictable outcry from vested interests and traditional academic quarters, claiming that it will be unworkable, devastating for entrepreneurship and innovation, undermine a capitalist system that has been an engine for growth and prosperity, and threaten jobs, pensions, and investment around the world. If putting the purpose of a business at the heart of corporate law does all of that, one might well wonder why we invented the corporation in the first place.
Of course, it will do exactly the opposite. Putting purpose into law will simplify, not complicate, the running of businesses by aligning what the law wants them to do with the reason why they are created. It will be a source of entrepreneurship, innovation, and inspiration to find solutions to problems that individuals, societies, and the natural world face. It will make markets and the capitalist system function better by rewarding positive contributions to well-being and prosperity, not wealth transfers at the expense of others. It will create meaningful, fulfilling jobs, support employees in employment and retirement, and encourage investment in activities that generate wealth for all.
We are calling for the universal adoption of the PBC for large corporations. We do so to save our capitalist system and corporations from the devastating consequences of their current approaches, and for the sake of our children, our societies, and the natural world.
Colin Mayer is the Peter Moores professor of management studies at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, and academic lead of the Future of the Corporation program at the British Academy.
Leo E. Strine Jr. is the Michael L. Wachter distinguished fellow in law and policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the Ira M. Millstein distinguished senior fellow at the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School, former chief justice and chancellor of Delaware, and of counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, & Katz.
Jaap Winter is a partner at Phyleon Leadership and Governance and professor of corporate law, governance, and behavior at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.


fortune--2020-09-14--Oracle reportedly wins bid for TikTok’s U.S. operations after Bytedance rejected Microsoft’s offer

AstraZeneca ’ s COVID-19 vaccine is back on track after getting the green light to resume trials in the U.K @

Oracle Corp. has been selected as the winning bidder for TikTok’s U.S. operations, the Wall Street Journal reported, after Microsoft Corp. said its bid was rejected by parent company ByteDance Ltd.
Oracle will be announced as TikTok’s “trusted tech partner” in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unidentified source. The eventual deal won’t be structured as an outright sale, the Journal added.
“ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft,” Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said in a statement. “We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests.”
Microsoft, which was working with Walmart Inc., had been seen as the more likely winner earlier in the process, but its talks have cooled, a person with knowledge of the matter said earlier today. Microsoft hadn’t been asked to make revisions to its initial offer in the face of recent signs of opposition to a deal from Chinese government officials, the person added. That’s given competitor Oracle Corp. an upper hand in the negotiations.Play Video
Microsoft said in its statement that it was prepared to make changes aimed at addressing U.S. national security concerns. “To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combating disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas.”


fortune--2020-09-13--Why even the best stocks have to crash

Why even the best stocks have to crash

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Sometimes the biggest reason the stock market or certain stocks experience a severe decline in price is because they first experienced a massive rise in price.
Trees don’t grow to the sky.
The pandemic has changed the way we view the many previously held ways of doing things, which has led to some insane gains in certain stocks that have been able to capitalize.
Many of those pandemic winners finally took a breather in recent weeks. Overstock has crashed more than 44% after rising more than 2,000% since the bottom in March. Wayfair is down more than 25% after rising 1,000% since March 23rd. Zoom fell more than 23%. DocuSign is off more 26% from its recent highs.
It’s possible these stocks have gotten ahead of themselves. Maybe people have overreacted about how things will look in a post-pandemic world. But let’s assume these companies were not only in the right place at the right time, but end up becoming some of the biggest stocks from here on out.
Even if these companies live up to their now lofty expectations and their stocks end up being grand slam investments, it’s not going to be a straight line up and to the right. These companies could become some of the most successful stocks of the next few decades and they will still crash spectacularly at some point.
This is the way it has to be for even the best of stocks because it’s impossible for expectations to stay in line with reality when you have uber-successful companies.
Let’s take a little stroll down drawdown memory lane to see how some of the most successful companies, brands and stocks in history have done over their life as a public company.
Apple is up almost 120,000% (19.5% annualized) since the early 1980s. Yet the stock has fallen more than 75% on three different occasions and has been cut in half more times than you could count on one hand.
Facebook is up more than 600% (27% annualized) since its IPO in 2012. The stock has endured three separate declines of 30% or more since then including a 53% crash immediately after going public.
Netflix is up more than 43,000% (39% annualized) since 2002. The stock of the streaming giant has fallen 50% or worse four times including two 75% or worse crashes.
Microsoft is up nearly 350,000% (27% annualized) since the mid-1980s. It was, however, in a drawdown for nearly 15 years following the bursting of the dot-com bubble, which saw a price decline of 75% from peak-to-trough.
Amazon is everyone’s favorite “If you would have put $10k in at the IPO…” stock for good reason. It’s up almost 170,000% (38% annualized) since 1997. The worst crash in the company’s stock was a plunge of almost 95%. There have been multiple 30% slides since then.
Walmart went public in the early-1970s. In close to five decades its stock is up more than 321,000% (19% annualized). It has eight corrections of 30% or worse in that time along with an underwater run in price from 2000 to 2012.
McDonald’s is up 31,000% (13% annualized) since the early-1970s. There have been two crashes in excess of 65% for the golden arches in that time.
Nike is up almost 100,000% (19% annualized) since the early-1980s. Phil Knight’s brainchild has seen drops of 75%, 62% and 48%.
You get the point.
I don’t know if these work from home or workout from home stocks will end up being as successful as these companies. Probably not, but I suppose anything is possible.
Yet even if these up and coming corporations do become some of the more successful stocks in the world from here on out, they will almost certainly experience one or more enormous crashes to get there.
This is what happens to successful companies and successful stocks.
They have to crash because expectations get out of whack, company leadership has a misstep or an unforeseen event causes a severe disruption to the business.
If you want to earn big returns in the stock market, expect to live with big losses to get there.
Ben Carlson is the director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He may own securities or assets discussed in this piece.


fortune--2020-09-13--AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is back on track after getting the green light to resume trials in th

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is back on track after getting the green light to resume trials in the U.K.

Why even the best stocks have to crash

The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc have restarted a U.K. trial of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine after it was halted over concerns about a participant who fell ill.
The U.K. Medicines Health Regulatory Authority recommended that the study resume after an independent review of the safety data triggered a pause on Sept. 6, Oxford said in a statement. It declined to disclose details about the volunteer’s illness.
While temporary halts are common in vaccine trials, the interruption to the closely watched Astra-Oxford study had raised concerns about the viability of one of the fastest-moving experimental shots seeking protection from the pandemic. The race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine has compressed what is normally a decade-long process into a matter of months, with data from final-stage trials expected as soon as next month.
Statements from Astra and Oxford on Saturday didn’t say anything about the status of tests outside the U.K. Trials of the Oxford vaccine were underway in the U.S., Brazil, South Africa and India before being paused after the safety review.
A representative for the U.S. National Institutes of Health couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. An AstraZeneca spokesman declined to comment.
Suspected Diagnosis
AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said on Thursday that the vaccine could still be available by the end of the year. An independent safety board was reviewing whether the participant’s illness had been caused by the vaccine or was unrelated, he said.
Soriot said it wasn’t clear whether the participant had a condition called transverse myelitis, a suspected diagnosis. NIH Director Francis Collins told a Senate committee Wednesday the trial had been halted due to a “spinal cord problem.”
“We cannot disclose medical information about the illness for reasons of participant confidentiality,” Oxford said. “We are committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our studies and will continue to monitor safety closely.”
Oxford said some 18,000 people have received “study vaccines” as part of the trials. It had begun a large phase 3 trial in the U.S. at the end of August, with the aim of enrolling 30,000 people.
AstraZeneca is one of several companies taking part in the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program to fast-track a coronavirus vaccine. In May, the company inked a $1.2 billion deal with the U.S. to support clinical studies and supply 300 million doses of the vaccine. It has pledged to provide the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic and has lined up deals around the world to supply almost 3 billion doses.
Human Trials
Oxford began human trials of its shot on April 23 in almost 1,100 volunteers and at the end of May advanced quickly to a large-scale study in the U.K. involving more than 10,000 people including those over the age of 55. Researchers are looking for a significantly higher number of Covid-19 cases in the control group over the vaccinated group to show the shot is effective.
The trial started just as rates of infection in the U.K. began dropping in May, making it harder to demonstrate whether the vaccine works. In recent weeks, new cases have been climbing again.
In July, Oxford reported initial results showing the vaccine increased levels of protective neutralizing antibodies and immune T-cells that target and destroy infected cells. It didn’t report any serious adverse events as part of its phase 1-2 trial. Researchers pressed ahead with trialing a two-dose regime after finding it produced a stronger response in 10 volunteers. It’s unclear whether the participant who fell ill had two doses or one.


fortune--2020-09-13--Need to entertain your kids? These educational apps may help

Most parents aren’t looking to add more screen time to their kids’ schedule. But let’s face it: At the moment, devices are a necessary evil for many of us who are trying to work and keep our children entertained. And if you’re going to hand your kid a screen, why not preload it with tried-and-tested educational apps and websites—suggested by other parents?
The burden on parents is only growing. Recently released guidance from the U.S. Labor Department dictates that families that have opted to keep their kids at home, when given the choice by their school, will likely no longer be eligible for emergency paid leave for childcare as outlined in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. To be sure, many parents don’t have a choice and must send their children to school, despite very real fears of the virus.
Apps won’t solve the crisis. But they can provide some temporary relief for parents and an entertaining outlet for kids when used sparingly. Sound like something you want—make that need? Read on for recommendations from a handful of working parents around the country.
Haviland Rummel
Executive director of the Susan Crown Exchange, a non-profit in Chicago that aims to arm youth with digital skills
First up on her list is Wide Open School by Common Sense Media. Rummel says it provides free distance learning activities like multiplication quizzes and poetry tutorials for preschool through grade 12. Student activities are segmented by grade, and there is also a family resource center that includes tips on managing Internet use (and anxiety). “Another great resource is DoSomething.org’s Coronavirus resources and action campaigns, which provides ideas and resources for volunteering opportunities,” says Rummel.
Harold Hughes
CEO at Bandwagon, a fan identity and data and analytics startup in Austin
Kiddopia, which is optimized for preschool-aged kids, features fun lessons on ABCs and numbers but also includes skills-based things like baking a cake or making a pizza. Hughes also suggests trying Tankee instead of YouTube, because the former features fully vetted videos only. “Led by a Black founder and based here in Austin, [it] is a truly family-friendly platform,” says Hughes, whose four-year-old likes to watch other kids play video games on the site.
Sabrina Proano
Financial advisor at Capital Choice, in Buford, GA.
Duolingo, the popular app for learning languages, has plenty to offer children. “My kids do 20 to 30 minutes a day on the app, and it’s really helping to keep up with their Spanish,” says Proano. She also recommends Muzzy, which she describes as a “really old app that has little cartoons in Korean, Spanish and French.”
Ross Perkins
Cofounder of Istet Games, in Palo Alto, Calif.
He recommends CodeCombat, a platform for learning computer science skills. “The kids have enjoyed it and it’s teaching them about problem solving and perseverance as well as how to code,” says Perkins. “Even if they don’t end up with software jobs, I think the lessons learned here are well worth the time they invest into it. The best part is they don’t see it as an educational experience—to them it’s just a fun game to play.”
Jessica Sebastian
Owner of Sebastian Designs, in Boone, N.C.
Sebastian is a fan of GoNoodle, which offers games that aim to get kids moving. “We were in Spain for the year when COVID hit, and ended up having to get evacuated to get home,” she says. “While we were still there, we couldn’t leave our house—there were police officers patrolling the streets. Physical activity was the No. 1 thing for us.” (An added bonus: GoNoodle offers activities in Spanish too.) “Also, because of all of the anxiety at the time, we used a mindfulness and meditation app called Smiling Mind,” says Sebastian. “It’s done by a very soothing Australian narrator and we used it a lot at bedtime.