fortune--2020-12-01--All Raise lands $11 million to fuel its fight for equality in tech

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Good morning, Broadsheet readers! GM slams the brakes on its Nikola deal, Nasdaq takes action on board diversity, and All Raise raises $11 million for its mission to overhaul Silicon Valley. Have a lovely Tuesday.
– All Raise raises. All Raise, the nonprofit led by CEO Pam Kostka, has raised $11 million to bring it closer to goal of bringing equality to the tech world.
The group, which is just two years old, has already made important strides in that direction. As this New York Times story by former Fortune-ite Erin Griffith points out, during that brief span All Raise has grown to 20,000 members and played a significant role in increasing the number of female investors in the venture industry—women now account for 13% of the field, up from 9% when All Raise was founded. I imagine those stats were one of the reasons Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, the Reid Hoffman Foundation, and GGV Capital decided to invest.
But the Times also lays out just how large the group’s challenge remains: the majority of VC firms still have zero female investing partners, the share of funding going to women-founded companies has actually fallen amid the pandemic, and—this one was new to me—the number of female founders who say they’ve experienced some form of sexual harassment has actually increased, according to a recent survey from Women Who Tech. And that’s before you even dive into how poorly the industry has fared in terms of hiring and funding women of color.
One reason change has been so painfully slow is pithily summed up by Emily Kramer, a former Carta executive who sued the company for wrongful termination and unequal pay (The company says it has been an advocate for gender equity): “People in power do not want to give up power.”
That’s a truism 2020 has made abundantly clear. And it’s a big part of what has made All Raise successful. The organization isn’t a group of outsiders pushing for Silicon Valley to mend its ways. Rather, it was founded by—and has since grown to include more of—the industry’s own, who know first hand what it is up against. So, for those who still refuse to release their stranglehold on tech industry power, this new round of funding comes like that classic scary movie reveal: the call is coming from inside the house.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- No diversity data? Delisted. Pushing for diversity via another avenue is Nasdaq, led by CEO Adena Friedman. The exchange will ask the SEC for permission to introduce a new requirement making sure listed companies have at least one board director who is a woman and one who identifies as either an unrepresented minority or LGBTQ. Nasdaq's 3,249 listed companies will also be required to report data on board diversity—and if they don't, could be delisted. New York Times
- Slamming the brakes. GM, led by CEO Mary Barra, and electric truck maker Nikola announced a landmark deal in September. But after a report of fraud at Nikola, which the company disputed, GM is scaling back its involvement. The automaker will no longer take an 11% equity stake nor will it produce Nikola's Badger pickup. Fortune
- Stock picker. What stocks should you bet on ahead of a potential economic recovery post-COVID? Katie Koch, cohead of fundamental equity at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is bullish on millennials' interest in experiences over things—and pent-up demand for travel and entertainment. Fortune
- One smart cookie. Dawn Davis took over Bon Appétit as the magazine tries to recover from a difficult period, including how it has treated its writers and contributors of color. Friends and industry peers expect Davis's Bon Appétit to be "dramatically more inclusive." CNN
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Elissa Fink, former Tableau CMO, joins Conversica's board of directors. Kerin Hempel is the new interim CEO for New York Road Runners, the organization behind the New York City Marathon.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Go team! The NCAA bars college athletes from making money—but cheerleading isn't governed by the association. So while college basketball and football stars may go on to sign lucrative professional contracts, cheerleaders are signing endorsement deals while still on their college squads. New York Times
- Death row deadline. Lisa Montgomery is the lone woman on federal death row, still scheduled to be executed after Dec. 31. Her case, though—Montgomery, who suffers from serious mental health issues, was convicted of federal kidnapping resulting in death—is attracting growing attention from criminal justice advocates. Some hope to delay the case until the Biden administration, which is less likely to pursue federal death row cases, takes office.
- Fairy-tale wedding? Princess Mako of Japan has been engaged to her boyfriend since 2017—a coupling that has sparked strong interest and complications because her fiancé, Kei Komuro, is a commoner. The princess's father, Crown Prince Akishino, said this week that he approves of the wedding, but implied that an official ceremony is unlikely because of public opposition to the union. New York Times
ON MY RADAR
Women do talk money, with their text group Wall Street Journal
10 nonprofits to easily optimize your Giving Tuesday for women and girls Philanthropy Women
The dangerous legacy of white male America The Cut
PARTING WORDS
"We have a right to walk in the park."
-Actor Laverne Cox, who said on Instagram that she and her friend suffered a transphobic attack in Los Angeles's Griffith Park


fortune--2020-12-02--Prosecutors are investigating a potential bribes-for-pardons scheme as Trump’s term ends

Now that Pfizer is the vaccine front-runner , should you buy the stock ?

U.S. prosecutors are investigating whether several individuals offered political contributions in exchange for a presidential pardon, according to an unsealed court document.
The names of the people under investigation were blacked out in the document.
The disclosure of an alleged attempt to purchase a pardon comes as Donald Trump’s presidential term winds to an end, traditionally a time when pardons are meted out. Trump’s prior pardons have stirred controversy, including his decision to grant them to former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona and former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Last week, Trump announced that he was pardoning former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The partially redacted opinion unsealed on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington said the Justice Department was investigating a “bribery conspiracy” in which an unidentified person would “offer a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence.”
The Justice Department was also investigating whether two unnamed individuals had acted as lobbyists to White House officials without complying with registration requirements, Howell, the court’s chief judge, wrote.
The opinion, dated Aug. 28, was in response to a government request to review attorney-client communications related to the probe.
The judge wrote that the scheme involved “intermediaries to deliver the proposed bribe,” and noted that the government hoped to present the evidence it had gathered to three unnamed individuals, at least one of whom is a lawyer.
Howell’s opinion provides few other details about the possible bribery scheme, and no one appears to have been charged as part of the investigation. But, according to the opinion, the person seeking a pardon surrendered to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, suggesting that person has already been convicted of a crime.
‘Who Is It?’
“The $10,000 question is—who is it?,” said former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers. “Is it someone who would be in a position to implicate the president in anything?”
She said she didn’t think that was necessarily the case because President Donald Trump has proven himself eager to help out the people closest to him—or those who pose a possible threat—so no bribe would be necessary.
No government official was or is currently a subject or target of the investigation disclosed in the court filing, a Justice Department official said.
Pardon investigation is Fake News!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2020
The origins of the probe appear to lie in a separate investigation that the Justice Department was pursuing before it unearthed evidence of bribery.
Using search warrants issued in that separate inquiry, the government seized more than 50 “digital media devices,” including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer and external hard drives, according to Howell’s opinion. Emails recorded on those devices provided evidence of the bribery scheme, the judge said.
The government asked Howell to allow investigators to access communications that might be shielded from scrutiny by attorney-client privilege. In the unsealed opinion, Howell agreed to allow the government to examine those communications, ruling that the documents at issue are “not protected by the attorney-client or any other privilege.”
“This political strategy to obtain a presidential pardon was ‘parallel’ to and distinct from [redacted’s] role as an attorney-advocate for [redacted],” the judge wrote.
Offering pardons for campaign contributions would be a crime, said Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor in New York.
“While the presidential pardon power is absolute, selling pardons is prohibited by federal bribery law,” Sandick said in an interview. “This investigation may well linger into the next administration.”
Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of 45 people since taking office, fewer than his predecessors.
Since the election, lawyers and lobbyists across the country have mobilized on behalf of a wide range of clients to secure pardons. On Nov. 25, Trump pardoned Flynn, who has twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. Many more pardons are expected in the coming weeks.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani discussed with him as recently as last week the possibility of receiving a pre-emptive pardon before Trump leaves office.
–With assistance from Chris Strohm.


fortune--2020-12-02--The Businessperson of the Year is….

The Businessperson of the Year is….

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning, and the winner is: Elon Musk.
I have never been a Musk fanboy; he is a mix of some of the worst characteristics of today’s leaders—more messianic than Adam Neumann, as allergic to rules and governance as Travis Kalanick, nearly as narcissistic as Donald Trump. Anyone remember “pedo guy” and “funding secured”?
But you can’t fake, bully or bulls–t your way to Businessperson of the Year. It’s based on a rigorous screen of company performance. First off, there’s Tesla’s stock, which is insane—up over 1,000% since the summer of 2019, giving the company a market value north of half a trillion. On top of that, the company now has five straight quarters of profit behind it. And SpaceX has skyrocketed as well, receiving a $46 billion valuation in its August funding.
Moreover, as someone who celebrates companies putting purpose before profit, I have to acknowledge that Musk beats all. His purpose is immense: to save the planet from climate conflagration… and create a colony on Mars, just in case. And as absurd as that may sound, he is making remarkable progress. So hats off to him. He has earned this honor. You can read Michal Lev-Ram and Andrew Nusca’s wonderful story on the phenom here.
Others on this year’s top 20 include the obvious (Reed Hastings, #4; Jeff Bezos, #7), as well as some surprises. Perhaps most interesting is that seven of the 20 are women, leading with AMD’s Lisa Su (#2) and including Fortune’s Most Powerful Woman, Julie Sweet of Accenture (#14). You can find the full list here.
By the way, Sweet was one of the speakers yesterday at Fortune’s virtual Brainstorm Tech conference. Among other things, she talked about how the events of 2020 had encouraged leaders to adopt new humility. Did anyone tell Elon?
More news below.
News below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Salesforce buys Slack
Salesforce is buying Slack for $27.7 billion, marking the business software giant's largest acquisition yet—and the second-largest buy in the software industry's history, below IBM's $34 billion purchase of Red Hat, but above Microsoft's $26 billion purchase. Here’s Marc Benioff on an earnings call yesterday: "We see Slack as a once-in-a-generation platform and company. It’s the central nervous system of so many companies on this call." Fortune
Vaccine approval
The U.K. is the first western country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, specifically Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine, which trials have shown to be 95% effective. The vaccine will become available from next week in the country. Fortune
Stimulus attempt
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators yesterday proposed a stimulus package worth in the region of $900 billion, which is more than the $500 billion proposed by Senate Republicans but way below the Democrats' favored $2.2 trillion package. The newly-proposed package would include $180 billion for weekly $300 enhanced unemployment benefits, $82 billion for education, $45 billion for transportation, and $25 billion in housing assistance. Fortune
Yellen warning
President-elect Biden's Treasury pick, former Fed chair Janet Yellen, yesterday appealed for "collective purpose" to support the pandemic-stricken U.S. economy: "It’s essential that we move with urgency. Inaction will produce a self-reinforcing downturn causing yet more devastation…We risk missing the obligation to redress deeper structural problems." Financial Times
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Lab meat
Singapore has authorized the sale of Eat Just's lab-grown chicken meat, in an apparent world first. This isn't a vegetarian meat alternative; it's actual meat, cultured from animal muscle cells. For now, that makes it expensive, and it will be sold at a premium in the Singapore restaurant that will first offer it. Fortune
Barr vs Trump
Attorney General William Barr said there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could flip the results of the election. That's a direct contradiction of what election loser President Trump and many of his supporters claim, and Trump's legal team says the Justice Department hasn't investigated closely enough. Wall Street Journal
Biden on tariffs
A must-read: The New York Times' Thomas Friedman had a chat with Joe Biden (just after the above Barr statement), in which the president-elect discussed his approach to Mitch McConnell, the Iran nuclear deal, and tariffs on Chinese goods. On that last point: "I'm not going to make any immediate moves…The best China strategy, I think, is one which gets every one of our—or at least what used to be our—allies on the same page." NYT
Chocolatey aftertaste
Big Chocolate's big case at the U.S. Supreme Court, in which Nestlé USA and Cargill argue they aren't responsible for human rights abuses in Ivory Coast cocoa farms, could prove to be a big deal for corporate America. As Fortune's Vivienne Walt writes: "It could have major implications for American businesses, whose labyrinthine global supply chains may reach into poor countries with patchy labor conditions far away from corporate headquarters." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-12-02--Elon Musk’s rocket ride

Elon Musk’s rocket ride

Things get serious inside the 45-minute mark. That is a relative term, of course, because there is nothing unserious about placing a $62 million, 208-foot-tall rocket on a launchpad with plans to send it beyond Earth’s atmosphere. It is a balmy Sunday in November. NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida teems with technicians nervously running through checklists. Nightfall has come and gone, and the disappearance of the sun’s warm hues lend the proceedings a clinical cast. Four astronauts—three from NASA; one from JAXA, the Japanese space agency—serenely sit in a row inside a Dragon spacecraft, which is in turn perched atop a Falcon 9 rocket that will carry it. Both are manufactured by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., otherwise known as SpaceX, the L.A.-area aerospace company led by Elon Musk.
SpaceX and NASA have partnered on this launch, which is not unusual—over the past decade SpaceX has completed more than 100 launches with its Falcon rockets, and SpaceX regularly transports government payloads. What is unusual, however, is that SpaceX, a private company, would be allowed to ferry American astronauts to and from orbit. NASA certification for that capability came less than a week before the planned mission. Launchpad 39A, where this SpaceX launch will take place, is the same spot where Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins left Earth on the Apollo 11 spaceflight. A successful mission today will take the astronauts to the International Space Station for six months of science experiments. It will also offer further evidence demonstrating that commercial spaceflight is viable.
At T-minus 44:55, a male voice breaks the silence. “The team is ready for crew access, arm retract, propellant loading, and launch,” the launch director says.
T-minus 1:47. Fueling is complete. With a roaring hiss, the rocket and capsule are consumed by a gigantic white cloud, the result of gaseous oxygen colliding with the coastal air.
T-minus 0:42. A voice crackles over the intercom: “Go for launch.” Another, from inside the capsule: “This is Resilience,” the name of the Dragon capsule. “Roger ‘Go.’”
Three. Two. One. The rocket’s rear ignites with the unholy scream of burning chemicals. Its deafening blast drowns out the radio. “And Resilience rises!” a ground observer excitedly proclaims as the thundering column of light races toward the stars. “Not even gravity contains humanity when we explore as one for all.”
At 8:09 p.m. Eastern, as the four astronauts hurtle toward low-earth orbit at 17,000 miles per hour and become the first operational flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, Musk—unusually out of sight, owing to a possible COVID-19 infection—publishes a new tweet: ❤
WHAT A BLAST: The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, on Nov. 15, 2020, carrying a crew of four to the International Space Station. Joe Burbank—Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Just another day in the life of Elon Musk. Some executives play golf in their spare time; others read, meditate, or go for a hike. Musk catapults people into space—and that’s only his night gig. At SpaceX, where he is founder and CEO, the 49-year-old Musk has built a private company currently valued at $46 billion—and projected to be worth much more—that is hell-bent on colonizing Mars. (Rekindling the storied U.S. space program? Just a side effect.)
Then there’s Tesla, which, with a recent market capitalization of north of $520 billion, is now one of the world’s most valuable companies, worth more than quintuple the combined value of U.S. auto icons General Motors and Ford. Through sheer force of will and a healthy dose of operating genius, Musk has built an electric-auto maker and battery manufacturer that is seemingly dragging an entire industry into the 21st century—and captivated investors around the world. Over the past three years, Tesla has averaged revenue growth of 52% and it recently reported its fifth straight quarterly profit. In November, it was announced that Tesla would be added to the S&P 500 index as of Dec. 1—giving the stock a further boost. That rocketed Musk’s personal net worth even higher to nearly $128 billion, according to Bloomberg—making him the world’s second wealthiest person behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and slightly ahead of Bill Gates.
Elsewhere, Musk’s Boring Co. aims to dig tunnels to relieve urban traffic congestion. His Neuralink Corp. is working to realize implantable brain-machine interfaces. OpenAI, which he cofounded and funds but no longer holds a board seat at—owing to possibly competing work at Tesla—is trying to develop “friendly” artificial intelligence that won’t threaten society. And Hyperloop? Just a sci-fi transportation idea he decided to open-source to the greater technology community.
Elon Musk, it’s worth stating, has the same number of hours in the day as the rest of us.
If Musk had accomplished any one of these feats, he would have a strong case to be Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year. (And indeed he was once before, in 2013, when we dubbed him a “triple threat.”) But this five-tool player—yes, even Elon Musk can get an upgrade—has managed to achieve it all in the face of some long odds. And he’s far from finished. Ask chief executives in any industry which CEO most inspires them, and far and away it is Musk’s name that most often crosses their lips. They say Elon Musk is the rocket man, the iron man, the savior of the sins of a fossilized auto industry. He is an ambition-emitting entrepreneur who has enough executive aptitude to make the impossible possible. He is a designer, a technologist, and a Renaissance man without peer. He is a turnaround artist with astonishing verve and little apparent fear.
Yet ask executives which CEO vexes them the most, and Musk’s name is first again. To some he is a con, a bully, a toxic male messiah who can’t take criticism. To others he is a hypocrite, a fake, a reckless distraction unfit to lead us into the future. Musk is a taskmaster who plays fast and loose with the rules. He’s a homeless billionaire who takes us all as fools.
But those who know the man best say the reality is somewhere in between. Elon Musk is complicated. Human, even. (Perish the thought.) And that truth, paired with Musk’s audacious successes this year, tells us more about the state of business in 2020 than anything else.
Elon the brain.
The sedans are lined up in tidy rows at socially distant intervals, 12 deep and two dozen wide, midday sun gleaming off hoods of silver, white, blue, and red. Every single vehicle is a brand-new Tesla Model S.
A 21st-century drive-in movie for the Silicon Valley set? Not quite. It is Battery Day here at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif., and the drivers assembled on this warm September afternoon have come to hear Elon Musk review the company’s annual performance and offer a glimpse into what’s in store for the future—including, they’ll soon discover, a racetrack-ready version of the Model S called Plaid, named not for its sartorial treatment but after the top speed of the spacecraft in the 1987 spoof movie Spaceballs. (No one said Musk didn’t have a sense of humor.)
Cheers and triumphant fists appear from rolled-down windows as Musk, in a black graphic T-shirt, takes the stage. Car horns blare in greeting. The CEO responds with a delighted chuckle. “Hi everyone,” he says, grinning, as he surveys the scene before him. “It’s a little hard to read the room with everyone being in cars, but it’s the only way we could do it.” Musk laughs at the apparent absurdity. This year’s event in the age of COVID is a far cry from last year’s traditional slide-deck session held indoors.
And Musk is in far better spirits than he was a year ago—for good reason. In September 2019, Tesla’s stock price had slumped by one-third in nine months, depressed by sluggish sales of its pricier models, a Walmart lawsuit (since settled) over fires involving solar panels made by Tesla subsidiary SolarCity, and escalating trade tension between the U.S. and China that threatened to affect the company’s soon-to-be-opened manufacturing plant outside Shanghai. When Musk took the stage then, his remarks were muted and aimed to reframe the conversation: “It’s been a hell of a year, but a lot of good things are happening.”
That, it turns out, was an understatement. As Elon addresses the car-bound crowd on this day, Tesla’s stock price has shot up eightfold in 12 months, in part owing to an August stock split that whipped investors into a frenzy. And there is plenty more good news. Reports suggest that partner Panasonic will increase its investment in Tesla’s Gigafactory 1, outside Reno, by $100 million. With its Shanghai plant online, the company is on track to produce and deliver a record number of vehicles. Construction of a Berlin factory—boosting the company’s capacity and further insulating it from global trade tensions—is well underway.
In other words, things are going according to plan—a plan that has led to Tesla controlling roughly a third of the nearly $200 billion global electric-vehicle market, which itself is slowly but steadily gaining ground in the broader, multitrillion-dollar automotive market.
This is no small feat. Tesla’s vertical integration, software orientation, and product differentiation—the result of years of loss-inducing investment in automation, battery science, and other proprietary technologies—are starkly different from that of its more conventional automotive peers. Tesla has navigated the trickiest of financial tracks as it has worked to secure the tremendous capital necessary to start and scale a new automotive manufacturer. Along the way Musk has fought a prolonged war against short-sellers and survived a near-brush with bankruptcy between 2017 and 2019 as his company scaled up to begin producing its least expensive vehicle, the Model 3. The skeptics are persistent: According to financial data firm S3 Partners, nearly 6% of Tesla’s tradable shares are sold short—a massive $22 billion bet against Tesla that has not paid off so far.
There are plenty of Silicon Valley technology startups that craft a business plan, raise money, and fail. With Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Co., and so many others, the scale, timelines, and stakes are exponentially greater. Though Musk will bend over backward to insist that the tens of thousands of people in his employ are responsible for the innovations he is credited with—and for the most part, they are—it is his executive aptitude that has kept such big bets on track through so many challenges. (Musk declined to comment on this story, stating: “I don’t wish to receive awards or recognition.”)
Matt Desch, chief executive of the McLean, Va., satellite company Iridium Communications, says he first met Musk 12 or 13 years ago, years before SpaceX logged its first successful launch. Today Iridium is SpaceX’s largest commercial customer, having launched 75 of its satellites on eight SpaceX rockets.
“No matter who we talked with or what issue was being discussed, Elon’s fingerprints were clear on the matter at hand,” Desch says. “Even as he was building Tesla and other ventures, he was still behind every critical strategic decision.”
And when you find yourself working directly with the man himself? You have to have all your ideas buttoned up—because Musk will politely interrogate you, says a former executive of one of Musk’s companies who, bound by a nondisclosure agreement, declined to be named. If you didn’t properly prepare, he will know. And he will remember—to your detriment.
“He really is, most of the time, the smartest guy in the room,” the executive says. “He will think through decision trees quickly and thoroughly—10 to 15 chess moves in advance. He will close his eyes, flip his head back, and you can see his eyes darting. It can last for a while.”
That dynamic can go awry, too.
“Elon sees himself as the smartest guy in the room,” the executive adds. “Most of the time he is—but not all of the time. His mistakes come from this. He doesn’t defer to others with more expertise.”
Elon the embattled.
Musk may be brilliant and shrewd. But his personality can sometimes be a liability to his success, just as easily as it can be a boon. “Part of maintaining innovation over time is that your tenacity doesn’t become pigheadedness, and that your optimism doesn’t disconnect you too far from reality,” says Gregory Shea, an adjunct professor of management at the Wharton School.
Like everything else Musk does, his flubs—whether internal or public-facing—are larger-than-life. Some people shrug these off as the eccentricities often associated with brilliance. Others aren’t so quick to dismiss his behavior as an example of “geniuses will be geniuses.” Sometimes, Musk gets taken to task. And when it happens, the world gets a front-row seat.
In mid-November, as COVID numbers broke all sorts of horrifying records in the U.S.—1 million cases were counted in just the first 10 days of the month—Musk took to Twitter to tell the world that he, too, has COVID. Or not.
“Something extremely bogus is going on,” tweeted the CEO, who had publicly downplayed the virus for months. “Was tested for Covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD [a leading provider of diagnostic tools].”
Musk did have a point: So-called rapid antigen tests have been found to be inaccurate if a person isn’t oozing with the virus. That, albeit with a slightly more scientific choice of words, is what the Food and Drug Administration said in a letter to health providers dated Nov. 3. That’s also what Emma Bell, a bioinformatics scientist in Canada who responded to Musk’s tweet, clarified in her own public post, which mocked the CEO’s seeming ignorance of how these rapid tests work—and don’t work. “What’s bogus is that ‘Space Karen’ didn’t read up on the test before complaining to his millions of followers,” Bell wrote in a tweet that quickly went viral. (A “Karen,” for those who don’t know, is a pejorative term for entitled white women.)
“Space Karen” became a meme, spawning images on the Internet of Musk with a blonde bob. But it was just the latest piece of work in Musk’s larger oeuvre of public relations kerfuffles, many of them also hatched on Twitter.
Elon sees himself as the smartest guy in the room. Most of the time he is—but not all of the time. His mistakes come from this. A former executive of one of Musk’s companies
Like President Donald Trump, Musk has used the social media site as his own personal megaphone to the world, with mixed results. He is both prolific and unfiltered with his more than 40 million followers, subjecting them to his bold and often bizarre musings, his spats with competitors and Tesla skeptics, and his declarations of often unrealistic and unmet timelines for product deliveries. “It’s interesting, as an engineer, to find out about a new deadline via a late-night tweet,” says one former Tesla executive.
Musk has had to pay a heavy price—in some cases literally—for his social media rants. In May of this year, he took to Twitter to proclaim that Tesla’s stock price was “too high imo [an acronym for “in my opinion”].” This short string of words managed to shave an impressive $14 billion off Tesla’s market cap, including $3 billion from Musk’s own stake in the company. And who can forget his debacle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission? In August 2018, Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private. “Funding secured,” he wrote. The SEC moved quickly, charging the CEO with securities fraud for his “misleading tweets.” The two sides reached a settlement, which included a $20 million fine, and forced Musk to step down from his position as the chairman of Tesla’s board, at least for three years.
It’s not clear whether there is a method to Musk’s tweet storms—or if he just can’t help himself. “I think he probably does care about his brand and reputation,” says Judy Smith, the renowned crisis management expert and CEO of Smith & Co. “But what one person wants to be known for and the way they want to be portrayed is different for the next person.”
Whatever his intentions may be, it’s clear that Musk’s public persona is uncensored to a level very few public-company CEOs allow themselves to reach. Internally, within his companies, he is also known for his candor—for better or worse. That brutal honesty, coupled with a demanding and fast-paced atmosphere that former employees say they have yet to experience anywhere else, has made it hard for many execs to stick around for too long.
Especially at Tesla, Musk has cycled through an alarming number of executives. The departures aren’t always voluntary. “There was a culture of fear,” says one former human resources staffer from Tesla who did not want to be named. “Anyone could get fired at any point. He [Musk] is ultimately the man at top. He is the king. He can fire, behead anyone he wants. He holds all the cards.” Musk owns some 20% of Tesla’s shares, and the company’s board is stacked with loyalists.
Of the five men who made up the original executive team at Tesla, only Musk remains. (JB Straubel, Tesla’s former chief technology officer, departed in July 2019 after 15 years with the automaker.) Many other key people have left, too—from George Blankenship, the VP of worldwide retail, to Greg Reichow, the former VP of operations and production. With every departure, there is presumably a loss of institutional knowledge. And perhaps there is also a ding to the company’s ability to attract yet another round of seasoned executives. One of Tesla’s most recent general counsels (three departed in a 12-month period), Todd Maron, was previously also Musk’s divorce attorney. That’s not to say Maron wasn’t qualified. But it does raise some questions about how wide a pool of A-list candidates Musk is fishing from these days as Tesla’s growth accelerates.
And yet: In interview after interview with employees who used to work for Musk, not one said they regretted having joined any of his companies. “For me, it was like getting a gig with Eddie Van Halen,” says Rik Avalos, a former recruiter at Tesla and ex-head of talent at Neuralink, the A.I. startup cofounded by Musk (Avalos is also a longtime musician). “But it takes a lot of mental toughness to be part of an Elon Musk company.”
Shea, the Wharton professor, says that Musk’s propensity to cycle through executives may actually have some positive by-products. He brings up a term called “creative abrasion,” coined by Jerry Hirshberg, who, apropos of Tesla, was an automotive designer. The concept is that creativity flourishes when ideas are constantly challenged and people clash, albeit in a productive way. “One of the things that characterizes people who are creative over time is that they end up with a creative network around them,” says the professor. Perhaps Musk’s way of staying innovative is to not just come up with new ideas but to introduce new people into the mix—and exit some of those who have been around for a while.
Whatever the strategy, or lack of one, Musk’s drive for creative undertakings is relentless, and he seems to approach virtually everything in his life with the same level of tenacity, whether he’s right or wrong. That has certainly created detractors along the way. But it’s also spawned loyal fanboys and fangirls.
The devotion to Musk is particularly strong among some Tesla owners, who watch for any signs of new product developments with Apple-like fervor. (Even a line of Tesla-branded tequila, which started out as a practical joke on—where else?—Musk’s Twitter account, sold out within hours in early November.)
Indeed, one of Tesla’s biggest challenges to date has been for supply to meet demand; the company has been plagued by production delays for years. To that end, the automaker has invested heavily in new manufacturing plants, including in China and Europe, where customers are waiting up to four months for new vehicles to be delivered. “Moving beyond, we believe that 2021 is shaping out to be a pivotal year for Tesla as it begins production at two new facilities and launches a number of new products in the lineup,” a trio of Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a recent report.
Musk has said that he expects Tesla to hit its production target for 2020, delivering 500,000 cars. And Wall Street analysts seem to agree that it’s plausible. In the third quarter of 2020, even as COVID-19 raged, Tesla delivered 139,300 vehicles, an all-time record. (True to form, Musk defied a California order and restarted production at the company’s Fremont plant before a stay-at-home order was officially lifted. “If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me,” he tweeted on May 11. No one was arrested, but several workers later tested positive for the virus.)
Tesla still has a lot to prove—not just its capacity to significantly ramp up production, but also its ability to deliver on promises of fully self-driving vehicles, which have also faced delays. And yet, these aspirations are exactly why the 17-year-old company has quickly surpassed traditional carmakers in the eyes of investors. And that’s just the mark Musk is leaving on terra firma.
Elon the Businessperson of the Year.
In 2012, Musk appeared on 60 Minutes to talk about his vision for commercial space travel. Correspondent Scott Pelley asked the entrepreneur how he felt about criticism from astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, who had gone before Congress to protest the commercialization of space, arguing that the American government’s reliance on private space vehicles could threaten U.S. space dominance.
“I was very sad to see that,” Musk responded as his eyes teared up and his voice trembled. “Those guys are heroes of mine, so it’s really tough. I wish they would come and visit … see the hard work that we’re doing here, and I think that it would change their mind.”
Fast-forward to 2020 and it’s clear that NASA’s launchpads are busier than ever, in large part thanks to SpaceX. Musk may not have had time to change the astronauts’ minds—Armstrong died later in 2012, and Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, died in 2017—but it is clear that he successfully sold his vision to the space agency that made them famous.
In a statement celebrating the Resilience mission and the milestone that it represents for SpaceX and NASA, Musk, perhaps expectedly, set his sights even higher: “This is a great honor that inspires confidence in our endeavor to return to the Moon, travel to Mars, and ultimately help humanity become multi-planetary.”
Sound far-fetched? Undoubtedly. But a controversial businessman who made electric cars cool and turned reusable rockets into reality is not to be underestimated. Even with so many critics rooting for him to fail, it’s hard to bet against Elon Musk and his out-of-this-world ambition. And if Musk gets his way—as he so often does—he will not only leave his mark on earth. His legacy, warts and all, will be multi-planetary.
How to lead like Elon: 4 Key lessons
We asked business experts, Musk-watchers, and former colleagues what makes him such an effective, if unconventional, executive.
1. Never innovate from the status quo.
To solve the biggest problems, don’t start with existing infrastructure—throw everything out the door and begin anew. True moonshots rethink the problem, not the solution. Everything else follows.
2. Hire brilliant people—then challenge them to shine.
When you work for Musk, you embrace the notion that creative engineers can solve anything and nothing is impossible. The executive has been known to give young engineers tremendous responsibility to solve problems, leaving them overnight in airplane hangars, for example, to tackle a complex technical challenge on a rocket.
3. Understand your customers’ problems.
Musk’s candid, quippy tweets often trigger news headlines for all the wrong reasons—“Area Executive Says Impolitic Thing”—but closer inspection of his communications reveals a rambling, unfiltered conversation between a CEO and his customers. That two-way street drives both Musk’s popular appeal and his occasionally unorthodox solutions.
4. Manners matter.
Despite the brash reputation he has on the Internet, people who know Musk best say he is extraordinarily polite and well-mannered, even under great pressure—“a credit to his parents,” one longtime colleague says—and an unheralded superpower when it comes to negotiating deals.
A version of this article appears in the December 2020/January 2021 issue of Fortune with the headline, “Businessperson of the Year: Elon the Bold.”


fortune--2020-12-02--Swedish government loses support as COVID-19 strategy comes under pressure

Sweden’s main ruling party, the Social Democrats, saw a significant decline in support in a fresh poll, adding to signs that voters are worried about the nation’s Covid strategy.
Backing for the party of Prime Minister Stefan Lofven fell by more than 4 percentage points to 29.4%, according to a bi-annual poll published by Statistics Sweden on Wednesday. It follows a November survey that showed 82% of Swedes are worried about whether their health-care system can cope with the pandemic.
SWEDEN INSIGHT: Tracking the Impact of New Measures – Dashboard
The polls suggest that Swedes are losing faith in their country’s handling of the pandemic. The nation has tended to avoid blanket restrictions on movement, which has coincided with a much higher Covid mortality rate than elsewhere in the Nordic region.
Lofven was last month forced to change tack amid signs that Sweden now faces a dangerous winter with the pandemic. New measures include a ban on public gatherings of more than eight people.
Meanwhile, support for Sweden’s main opposition parties is picking up. The Moderates saw an increase of 2 percentage points to 22.1%, while the nationalist Sweden Democrats saw their backing grow slightly to 17.6%, making them Sweden’s third-biggest party.
If an election were held today, Lofven’s current coalition would get 44.2% support, compared with 45.1% for the opposition, the poll showed.


fortune--2020-12-02--Shares of China smartphone maker Xiaomi were up 143% this year. They plunged on Wednesday

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Xiaomi’s share price plunged 12% on the Hong Kong stock exchange Wednesday after the Chinese smartphone maker was forced to place a temporary hold on trading because it failed to disclose plans for a $4 billion off-market bond and stock sale.
The Hong Kong stock exchange requires companies to halt trading if inside information is made public before an official disclosure is released. Bloomberg first reported the $4 billion private sale on Tuesday, prior to any announcement from Xiaomi, which necessitated the trading halt. In the offering, Xiaomi issued 1 billion additional shares to institutional investors off-market, raising $3.1 billion; the company carried out a $855 million convertible bond sale at the same time.
Xiaomi sold the shares at a 9.4% discount on the company’s closing price on Tuesday. When the share price dropped 12% once trading resumed, it likely was a matter of investors correcting to the unofficial price. Still, the plunge was Xiaomi’s largest intraday trading loss since its IPO in 2018.
Xiaomi did not immediately return Fortune‘s request for comment.
Xiaomi’s shares had surged this year, rising 143% from January through to Tuesday, making Xiaomi Hong Kong’s best-performing stock of 2020.
The rally followed a rough patch for the 10-year-old Chinese phone maker. It priced its IPO in June 2018 at the bottom of an expected range, and shares tanked 55% over the following 12 months. Investors finally warmed to Xiaomi when its rival, Huawei Technologies, faced crippling U.S. sanctions.
Washington views Huawei—which makes telecom network equipment alongside smartphones—as a threat to national security, claiming the privately held company could use future 5G networks to siphon sensitive data to Beijing. To combat that threat, the Trump administration placed export controls on Huawei this year, forbidding companies from selling U.S.-made semiconductor equipment to the Chinese manufacturer.
Those and other U.S-led restrictions put pressure on Huawei’s smartphone shipments, which dropped by 15.1 million units in the third quarter of the year. Xiaomi’s global shipments rose nearly as much as consumers, concerned about Huawei’s future, switched to the cheaper Chinese smartphone maker.
In Europe—Huawei’s biggest overseas market—Huawei shipments dipped 25% while Xiaomi’s rose 88%. Xiaomi is now the second most popular brand in Italy, third in France, fourth in Germany, and has been Spain’s preferred smartphone brand for three quarters. According to industry tracker Canalys, Xiaomi also rose to replace Apple as the world’s third most popular smartphone brand in the third quarter.
Xiaomi already has a war chest of roughly $7 billion in cash and equivalents, but the company carries $11 billion in debt and interest repayments. The strong third-quarter results the company reported last week—revenue rose 35% over last year—are an opportunity to rally investor support as Xiaomi tries to capture more market share from rivals. In a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange, Xiaomi said it will spend the $3.1 billion in share sales, in part, on efforts to “increase market share in key markets.”


fortune--2020-12-02--U.K. approves Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and will start distributing it next week

The U.K. became the first western country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, with its regulator clearing Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s shot ahead of decisions in the U.S. and European Union.
The emergency authorization clears the way for the deployment of a vaccine that’s expected to play a significant role in the global effort to halt the coronavirus. Pfizer and its German partner said in November that the shot, relying on novel technology called messenger RNA, was 95% effective in a final analysis of clinical-trial data.
The vaccine will be available in Britain from next week, according to a government statement. The U.K. regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said on Wednesday that the vaccine “met its strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness.”
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The U.K. had signaled it would move swiftly in approving a vaccine to protect its population, and doctors across the country were put on standby for a possible rollout. For the government, it’s an opportunity to make up for missteps during the pandemic as Britain’s death toll nears 60,000.
Regulators are facing pivotal decisions as companies including Pfizer, Moderna Inc. and the University of Oxford’s partner, AstraZeneca Plc, sprint ahead in a bid to deliver coronavirus vaccines in record time.
EU Application
Pfizer and BioNTech earlier this week sought regulatory clearance for their vaccine in the European Union, putting the shot on track for potential approval there before the end of the year. In the U.S., a Food and Drug Administration panel is set to meet on Dec. 10 to discuss the vaccine.
China has given authorization to its three front-runners for emergency use. Russia cleared a vaccine known as Sputnik V in August, while a second inoculation was approved in October, even as the last stage of trials to establish safety and efficacy are still taking place.
The British government in late November invoked a special rule allowing its drug regulator to move ahead of the EU as the country prepares for the Brexit transition period to conclude at the end of this year.
The U.K. has ordered enough doses of the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to immunize 20 million people. The companies also have deals to supply hundreds of millions of shots to Europe, the U.S., Japan and elsewhere.
The Pfizer-BioNTech shot dashed to the head of the queue after delays to the trials of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which has also shown promising signs in preliminary results of broad studies. The U.K. partners have faced questions after acknowledging that a lower dosage level that appeared more effective resulted from a manufacturing discrepancy.


fortune--2020-12-02--Singapore is first country to approve sale of lab-made meat

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Eat Just Inc., a maker of meat and egg substitutes, has been approved to sell its laboratory-created chicken in Singapore, which becomes the first government to allow the sale of cultured meat.
The product, created from animal cells without the slaughter of any chickens, will debut in Singapore under the GOOD Meat brand as a chicken bite with breading and seasoning in a single restaurant. Eat Just is initially working with local manufacturer the Food Innovation and Resource Centre to make the cultured chicken. Additionally, the company is buying more equipment to expand sales to other restaurants — and eventually grocery stores.
“We want Singapore to be the focus of our manufacturing globally,” Chief Executive Officer Josh Tetrick said in an interview. “They’re just really forward thinking in building an enabling environment for this kind of work.”
He added that the chicken’s flavor and taste are the same as the real thing.
Singapore is moving quickly to allow the sale of cultured meat, a move that fits into its broader food-security agenda. The densely populated nation, which relies mostly on other countries for food, has deepened its focus on getting enough to eat for its 5.7 million people as the Covid-19 crisis exposes fragility in supply chains worldwide.
In response to the pandemic, Singapore is trying to produce 30% of its own food by 2030, up from less than 10% today. It has recently accelerated funding for local farms.
“Singapore has really spent a lot more time and energy getting this right than Western Europe and the U.S.,” Tetrick said.
The new chicken product will be priced similar to premium chicken for the first six months, Tetrick said, adding that the cost will come down over time as the company builds global scale. “Eventually we want to get to the place where it is significantly more cost effective than conventional production.”
That could take a while, since chicken is one of the most inexpensive proteins. In the U.S., it’s also the most popular — with consumption being higher than that of any other meat. Grocery stores regularly sell $5 whole rotisserie chickens, and some restaurants offer $1 chicken sandwiches.
Humane, Sustainable
At the same time, fast-food chains and grocery stores have been rapidly adding meat alternatives to their menus. While cultured meat is real meat, and not a plant-based substitute, it can be marketed as more humane and environmentally sustainable.
In Singapore, cultured burgers may be next. Eat Just is planning to submit its application for lab-created beef there during the first half of next year. The approval process for cultured meat products is moving slower in Europe and the U.S.
San Francisco-based Eat Just, which isn’t yet profitable, is planning an initial public offering in the U.S. at some point.
“Our plan is to hit operating profitability before the end of next year,” Tetrick said, adding the company would look to go public at some point after that.


fortune--2020-12-03--How the Slack/Salesforce deal stacks up to history’s other Big Tech acquisitions

When software giant Salesforce announced this week that it had acquired workforce collaboration company Slack, the sticker price—$27 billion—raised eyebrows. While the acquisition will help Salesforce take on Microsoft in the great battle for corporate customers, some will inevitably ask if the company overpaid.
To put the deal in perspective, it’s useful to compare the Salesforce/Slack deal to other Big Tech acquisitions from the past decade or so. Here’s a list of other notable mergers, drawn in part from this tweet by business reporter Jon Erlichman. Our roundup includes the inflation-adjusted price in parentheses, the year the deal took place, and a comment on whether the acquisition paid off.
IBM buys Red Hat for $34 billion in 2019 ($34.2 billion in today’s dollars)
This still stands as the largest software deal of all time and came as Big Blue confronted years of shrinking revenue and declining relevance. Buying Red Hat, a company known for an innovative open-source approach to computing, offered hope that IBM could shake up its stodgy culture and reclaim its reputation as a tech leader. For now, though, it’s too soon to say if the deal will pay off.
Amazon buys Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017 ($14.6 B.)
Amazon, a master of newfangled commerce, entered the very old-fashioned business of groceries with its purchase of the upscale supermarket chain. So far, Amazon has struggled to wrest a profit from Whole Foods, and some see the grocery shops as an overall drag on the company’s business. The acquisition has, however, allowed Amazon to get its hooks deeper into Prime customers and to pick up know-how for its own retail stores.
Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016 ($28.4 B.)
This deal stands as the second biggest software acquisition of all time in real dollars. It also came as a reinvigorated Microsoft began a streak of torrid growth. The LinkedIn acquisition, then and now, has been seen as a way for Microsoft to entrench its dominance in business software and also muscle in on Salesforce’s client relationship tools.
Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014 ($20.9 B.)
Some initially questioned why Facebook plunked a seemingly staggering sum to acquire a messaging app. In retrospect, the deal looks like a steal as WhatsApp has become a go-to tool for billions and, more recently, as Facebook lays plans to make it the cornerstone of an e-commerce empire.
Apple buys Beats for $3 billion in 2014 ($3.3 B.)
At the time, this headphones deal created huge buzz in the press as it combined the star power of Apple and music titan Dr. Dre. But in the following years, the deal never lived up to its hype as Beats faded as a brand while other headphones—including Apple’s own iPods—eclipsed it in popularity.
Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011 ($9.8 B.)
Another major Microsoft acquisition—but one that never achieved its full potential. At the time of the deal, many saw Skype as the world’s leading video-chat platform. But in subsequent years, Microsoft appeared to let it languish. Today, it has been eclipsed by the likes of Zoom, Google Hangouts, and newer platforms like Discord.
Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 ($1.1 B.)
When the deal was announced, many were stunned that Facebook would plunk down a billion dollars for a company with 13 employees. CEO Mark Zuckerberg would have the last laugh, of course, as it’s now clear the deal was the bargain of the century.
Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 ($2.1 B.)
How would the world be different if YouTube had stayed independent? Today, Google’s purchase looks like another unbelievable bargain, but in 2006, YouTube was beset by legal problems and had an unclear future. That doesn’t change the fact that, in retrospect, this was another steal for the tech giant.


fortune--2020-12-03--Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten has a plan to conquer the telecom industry

Tokyo-based Rakuten started off in 1997 as an online marketplace but has since sprawled in Amazon-like fashion, moving successfully into fields like travel, payment and banking. But when its chief executive Mickey Mikitani told his CEO friends that he planned to take Rakuten into the telecom industry, they warned him we would fail.
The business is brutally competitive, Mikitani’s friends told him, and requires vast amounts of capital. Nonetheless, Rakuten believes it’s found a way to overcome these formidable obstacles.
Speaking at Fortune‘s digital Brainstorm Finance conference, Mikitani explained that gaining a foothold in the phone and telecom market requires three huge upfront costs: capital infrastructure, spectrum and customer acquisition.
Rakuten, however, has been able to enter the market with less than half of the capital investment that is typically required, Mikitani said. It has managed to pull this off by using software rather hardware to build out many aspects of its network. Meanwhile, it has been able to acquire a large number of customers by leveraging its existing business strategy, which touts Rakuten as a membership company rather than as simply an ecommerce forum.
Mikitani added that anticipates Rakuten will be able to further decrease its costs by “virtualizing, automating and using AI here and there.”
If its telecom gambit succeeds, Rakuten will have conquered another difficult industry after already becoming Japan’s biggest player in the fields of fintech and credit cards.
“Let’s go hardcore in the mobile space where the lifetime value of the customer is big,” said Mikitani, explaining why Rakuten set its eyes on telecom in the first place.
Mikitani also addressed doing business during the pandemic, saying that Rakuten has been able to navigate the unprecedented challenge thanks to its diverse business that provide a valuable counterbalance.
“If we have a typhoon, our travel and outdoor sports business is in bad shape, but our internet shopping goes up,” he noted.


fortune--2020-12-03--Adobe says women earn 99% as much as men

Adobe said in a new report that its female workers earn 99% as much as men, becoming the first major U.S. tech company to disclose worldwide median pay based on gender.
Adobe joins Citigroup, Starbucks and Mastercard in disclosing this kind of information, which measures the pay of women and men across all job classifications no matter their role in the company, said Arjuna Capital, which had pressured Adobe and a dozen other companies to disclose gender pay data. Based on this median-pay yardstick, the U.S. earnings gap of women to men is about 82%, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Companies have been more willing to disclose the wage gap for so-called equal work, which measures what men and women are paid for the same job. Median pay measures the distribution of jobs across society or at companies, showing that men tend to be in the higher-paying jobs and women tend to be in jobs with lower pay. Median pay disclosures by companies have been mandated in the U.K. since 2018 and are increasingly required across Europe.
“If companies continue to only compare work of people in the same job, to make sure they are paid fairly for that job, then they’re not doing the structural work to increase diversity throughout the ranks and have more women and people of color in higher-paid positions,” said Natasha Lamb, managing partner at Arjuna.
Adobe’s Wednesday report also introduced a new measurement from the company called “opportunity parity,” which will gauge the fairness of promotions and horizontal movement across demographic groups, Adobe said in a statement.
“We believe these measurements are where businesses, including Adobe, should focus our parity efforts,” Adobe said in an emailed statement. “At the same time, we are disclosing our unadjusted median pay for global gender for the first time and plan to update this number annually. We hope it will be helpful for our investors and moving the overall industry dialogue forward.”
Unlike Citigroup, Starbucks and Mastercard, Adobe hasn’t disclosed the median pay gap by race, and Arjuna is asking the company to provide that data before 2022, Lamb said. Adobe said it may consider additional disclosures in the future.
Mastercard said in March that women made 92% of men’s wages. Starbucks said in December that it was at parity based on median pay. A January update from Citigroup, which was the first company to disclose median pay in 2019, said women made 73% as much as men, an improvement from 71% the year before.
Adobe was among 13 companies Arjuna approached in the 2020 proxy season with shareholder resolutions seeking median pay disclosure. The group has not yet set its list for 2021, Lamb said.


fortune--2020-12-03--Vaccines can’t lift a flat day for global markets

This is the web version of Bull Sheet, a no-nonsense daily newsletter on what’s happening in the markets. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
Good evening, Bull Sheeters. This is Fortune finance reporter Rey Mashayekhi, filling in this week for Bernhard with a special PM edition of the newsletter.
It was a restrained day for the global markets. Wednesday morning’s news that the U.K. has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for distribution gave British markets a boost, but the reaction elsewhere was relatively modest. Meanwhile, stimulus talks rumbled on in D.C., the EU is already dreaming of post-Trump relations with the U.S., and the incoming American president shed some light on his China strategy.
Markets update
U.S.
Another day, another record-high close for the S&P 500 , which gained 0.2% to end Wednesday at 3,669 points . The Dow also ticked up 0.2%, while the Nasdaq was down marginally.
, which gained 0.2% to end Wednesday at . The also ticked up 0.2%, while the was down marginally. There was more back-and-forth on a new COVID-19 stimulus package on Capitol Hill, with Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi both throwing their support behind this week’s bipartisan $908 billion proposal. More importantly, there are indications that leadership on both sides of the aisle are prepared to work with each other on a deal.
on Capitol Hill, with Democratic leaders and both throwing their support behind this week’s bipartisan $908 billion proposal. More importantly, there are indications that leadership on both sides of the aisle are prepared to work with each other on a deal. Having faced the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell today appeared before the House Financial Services Committee. In addition to stressing the importance of additional stimulus measures, the two men again discussed Mnuchin’s decision to not renew the Fed’s emergency lending programs.
and Federal Reserve chair today appeared before the House Financial Services Committee. In addition to stressing the importance of additional stimulus measures, the two men again discussed Mnuchin’s decision to not renew the Fed’s emergency lending programs. Mnuchin also called on lawmakers to back U.S. airlines with another $20 billion in government payroll support .
with another . All that talk of stimulus is driving up the market’s expectations for inflation .
. In deal news, Uber is reportedly in talks to sell its business unit focused on developing flying, self-driving taxis to Joby Aviation, according to Axios.
Europe
Across the European bourses , London’s FTSE rode the high of the U.K.’s excellent coronavirus vaccine news to climb 1.2%. Frankfurt’s DAX slipped slightly (-0.5%), while the CAC 40 in Paris and the pan-European STOXX 600 were virtually flat.
, London’s rode the high of the U.K.’s excellent coronavirus vaccine news to climb 1.2%. Frankfurt’s slipped slightly (-0.5%), while the in Paris and the pan-European were virtually flat. With President Trump heading out the door, the EU and the U.S. should pursue a “new transatlantic agenda” once President-elect Joe Biden takes office, according to the European Commission.
and the should pursue a once President-elect takes office, according to the European Commission. But the EU also has its own problems: namely, a budget standoff that has seen Poland and Hungary hold hostage the bloc’s 1.8 trillion euro proposal.
that has seen Poland and Hungary hold hostage the bloc’s 1.8 trillion euro proposal. In Germany, the government has yet again bailed out TUI, the world’s largest travel and tourism company, to the tune of 1.8 billion euro.
Asia
The Asian markets were mostly flat, with only South Korea’s KOSPI (+1.6%) moving notably. Tokyo’s Nikkei ticked up less than 0.1%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed -0.1%. On mainland China, the markets in Shanghai (-0.1%) and Shenzhen (+0.2%) were similarly mixed.
were mostly flat, with only South Korea’s (+1.6%) moving notably. Tokyo’s ticked up less than 0.1%, while Hong Kong’s shed -0.1%. On mainland China, the markets in (-0.1%) and (+0.2%) were similarly mixed. In an interview with the New York Times, President-elect Biden said that he will not “make any immediate moves” to cancel President Trump’s “Phase 1” trade deal with China, nor lift Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports .
with China, nor lift Trump’s . The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would require Chinese firms to adhere to U.S. auditing standards, or risk being removed from U.S exchanges. President Trump is expected to sign the bill into law.
has passed a bill that would require to adhere to U.S. auditing standards, or risk being removed from U.S exchanges. President Trump is expected to sign the bill into law. Jack Ma ’s Ant Group is reportedly considering offloading its 30% stake in Indian digital payments firm Paytm .
’s is reportedly considering offloading its 30% stake in Indian digital payments firm . Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi saw its shares in Hong Kong take a dive on Wednesday, after the firm failed to disclose a $4 billion off-market financial deal.
Elsewhere
Gold notched upward.
notched upward. The dollar sank further on stimulus news
sank further on stimulus news Bitcoin gained slightly but remains some way off the $20,000 mark—despite reportedly getting talked up by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink .
gained slightly but remains some way off the $20,000 mark—despite reportedly getting talked up by CEO . Crude oil rose, with Brent settling at north of $48/barrel.
***
That’s all from me for now; please be sure to check out today’s reads below. Have a pleasant evening and see you again tomorrow.
Rey Mashayekhi
@reym12
rey.mashayekhi@fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
To infinity and beyond. Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year for 2020 is none other than Elon Musk. Our Andrew Nusca and Michal Lev-Ram dove into what was a banner year for one of the world’s most creative—and controversial—CEOs, from Tesla to SpaceX and everything in between.
Wheeling and dealing. Not only is Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) in the middle of a very competitive, hugely consequential reelection campaign, but he’s now facing questions about his stock-trading activities. According to the New York Times, Perdue has been by far the most prolific trader of securities during his time on Capitol Hill, with nearly 2,600 transactions to his name over the last six years—including some that raise possible conflict-of-interest concerns.
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Market candy
“He really is, most of the time, the smartest guy in the room. He will think through decision trees quickly and thoroughly—10 to 15 chess moves in advance. He will close his eyes, flip his head back, and you can see his eyes darting. It can last for a while.”
That’s an anonymous former executive of one of Elon Musk’s companies, who—though bound by a nondisclosure agreement—gave Fortune some insight into our 2020 Businessperson of the Year.


fortune--2020-12-03--Google illegally fired two activist employees, federal labor board alleges

Google illegally spied on several workers involved in labor organizing activities and then fired two of them, the National Labor Relations Board said in a complaint it filed Wednesday.
Last year, the tech giant said it had fired Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers for allegedly violating its data security policies. In fact, their firing was intended to quell workplace activism through intimidation, according to Laurie Burgess, the NLRB lawyer handling the case.
The employees were among several who had criticized Google over workplace issues including its hiring of union-busting firm IRI Consultants and contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The board will seek the reinstatement of the two employees along with damages for them. An administrative judge will determine the outcome.
Google responded to the planned complaint by saying it stands by its actions and that it takes “information security very seriously.”
“We’re confident in our decision and legal position,” the company said in a statement. “Actions undertaken by the employees at issue were a serious violation of our policies and an unacceptable breach of a trusted responsibility.”
The news comes as Google grapples with employees who have increasingly spoken out against management, such as its handling of sexual misconduct as well as authorizing work on a censored search engine for China. In 2018, thousands of Google staffers went to the unprecedented length of staging a walkout to protest the use of arbitration in sexual misconduct cases.
On Wednesday Berland and Spiers took to Twitter to applaud the NLRB for its complaint and to reiterate that they were fired unfairly.
“Just over a year ago, Google fired me, falsely claiming I violated data access policies, even though the documents and calendars in question were accessible by any employee,” Berland tweeted. “My coworkers and friends knew it was bullshit, and that’s what matters most.”
Spiers called for workers to unite to “tackle the power of the tech giants.”
“It’s the only way to hold them accountable,” Spiers said.


fortune--2020-12-02--Hyperloop wants to connect people to opportunity, but city leaders are asking who benefits the most

Over half of the world’s population now live in urban centers, and that percentage is expected to increase dramatically over the next decade. In order to accommodate this massive influx, cities will have to expand and upgrade existing infrastructure. But as COVID-19 wreaks havoc on state and local budgets, those preparations have largely been placed on the back burner. That’s where Josh Giegel, cofounder and chief technology officer at Virgin Hyperloop, said the company can step in.
On Nov. 8, six years after the company’s founding, Giegel became the first person to ride a complete Hyperloop system, a high-speed vacuum train that purports to move as quickly as an airplane at a fraction of the cost—and with less environmental impact.
At the current rate of expansion, Giegel said at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech virtual conference, 700,000 new miles of road will need to be built every year. While cities like Los Angeles, where Hyperloop is based, are “car cities” they’re also cities “constrained by cars.” Hyperloop wants to help solve that problem.
Giegel was joined by Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, who recognized the growing problem of an increasing population and limited budgeting. “Our battle is making the case that investment in city infrastructure is just as much the bread and butter of city government as keeping traffic lights on,” she said. But, she added, her mission is to “dismantle a legacy of overtly racist decisions that created the infrastructure of our cities.”
Highways were placed in the middle of neighborhoods, and areas that are underserved by public transport are typically majority minority, she explained. “When we evaluate any kind of new technology in our city, my questions are what kind of problem we’re solving and who we’re solving it for,” she explained. “We want to make transportation seamless and have it connect people to opportunity. Car sharing, public transit, and anything that makes paying for those things easier are the tech solutions we’re interested in.” Hyperloop, she said, was something the city is interested in, but it doesn’t work to solve the fundamental problem of serving the underserved in the city.
“We’re open to all tech but also rigorous in asking, Is this a solution for folks who already have a lot of options, or is this something that gets to the root causes of these issues? High-speed rail could be encouraging, but I’m not convinced that Hyperloop is going to address some of those issues we’re trying so desperately to solve,” said Reynolds. It’s all about balance, she added.
Hyperloop is not a “last mile solution” and would be more focused on connecting large cities that are miles away, said Giegel. Connecting areas in the Midwest, for example, could turn Kansas City into a global powerhouse and attract residents away from other already overcrowded cities.


fortune--2020-12-02--3 CEOs on how technology has transformed leadership in the COVID era

The seeds of transformation were already there; a pandemic just hastened the process—and forced corporate leaders to get creative with how they run their businesses.
That was the message from a trio of tech CEOs during a panel at Fortune’s virtual Brainstorm Tech conference on Wednesday. Increasing reliance on virtual communications combined with work-from-home culture may not be ideal, but it has yielded some surprising results along with a spirit of collaboration, according to Box CEO Aaron Levie.
“The [tech] CEOs have kind of come together, and we’ve been able to share best practices, learn from each other, get through the pandemic as we’re running our businesses,” he said. (Evidently, there’s a special Slack channel filled with Silicon Valley types hashing out ideas and picking one another’s brains.)
“I don’t think anybody that I know really enjoyed, you know, this experience,” said Levie. “But we’re making the most of it, making sure that we are continuing to build strong cultures, making sure that we continue to drive innovation in our software and products.”
Despite the inevitable cabin fever and logistical complexities, the digital workplace has its advantages. Levie believes that social media and communications technologies can actually streamline a business in some ways (as in not having that millionth in-person meeting). And that’s not the only advantage tech chiefs see in the current business environment.
“We’ve already hired executives during this pandemic,” said PagerDuty chief executive Jennifer Tejada. “We acquired a company, and I think that transaction went through faster than it normally would have.”
Ultimately, leadership is thinking about the well-being of your employees during a topsy-turvy time, according to Okta CEO Todd McKinnon, who spoke to the responsibility leaders have to listen to the concerns of their staff and make the proper adjustments.
“It’s kind of balancing your own vision and what you think is right with feedback on what other people think is relevant or appropriate,” he said.
As it turns out, tech leaders are learning to evolve during this languishing outbreak. And they’re doing it by taking a global tragedy and using it to implement fresh new business strategies, as shown by these three CEOs.


fortune--2020-12-02--Silicon Valley investing legend Ron Conway on the lessons learned from Napster

Ron Conway is a Silicon Valley legend. He was an early angel investor in Google, Airbnb, Square, and Pinterest, earning the moniker of one of tech’s “super angels.” But he’s had his fair share of misses, too, and he’ll be the first to admit it.
“It’s definitely a hits-driven business,” Conway said on Wednesday, speaking on a panel at Fortune’s virtual Brainstorm Tech conference. “About 60% of all the companies we invest in go out of business; we don’t make a nickel. Another 30% of them, maybe we will get our money back. And it’s that slight balance, 10% to 20%, that you make more than you put in, and it’s enough to pay for all the ones that went out of business.”
Despite the frequent losses, Conway said, it’s the businesses that don’t succeed that end up providing the most illuminating lessons. A favorite example of his? The infamous music download giant Napster.
“In the day, it was the most well-known tech company on earth…Napster was the most disruptive company, but because of egos at the record company labels and egos at the investor level of the company, the company went down in flames,” Conway said. “However, coming out of the flames are all the streaming services. Spotify is a company that Sean Parker, the cofounder of Napster, went over and took another swing at. Now streaming is an everyday thing.”
Conway considers Google his most successful investment to date, and the firm he cofounded, SV Angel, has invested in Facebook, Twitter, and Snap, as well. The key to his success, he said, has been networking.
“How you build the network is having a good reputation,” he said. “The first company I invested in, I stood by those founders, and then those founders recommended me to other founders.
“The founder network is kind of like the Mafia,” Conway added. “They all talk to each other, and they tell each other who the value-adding investors are, and that’s been very good for SV Angel. We keep our nose to the grindstone. Our moniker is ‘Advocates for founders.’”
Conway is also a noted philanthropist and said he’s currently focusing his efforts on the COVID crisis and addressing racial inequity. “We need to make sure there’s an environment for founders of color to build huge companies,” he said. “There’s a whole new pond of great companies waiting to be fished with founders of color leading them. We need to go harvest that pond.”
Asked about the most exciting trend he’s looking at right now, Conway pointed to Faire, the three-year-old online wholesale marketplace.
“They could be a contender for Amazon someday. [It’s] amazing, through the pandemic, the amount of deal flow has not reduced at all,” he said. “All of the angel investors are as busy as ever, and founders are starting new companies at the very same pace. I thought there would be a slowdown, but there has not been. Founders never sleep.”


fortune--2020-12-02--How the studio behind ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ made a blockbuster during a pandemic

It seems movie production, like life…uh…finds a way. Just 10 days into shooting the latest installment of the Jurassic franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion, Universal Pictures was forced to halt production as the world went into lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in early November, filming wrapped on the blockbuster, slated for a June 2022 release, after an unprecedented amount of protocols and precautions were put in place.
Forty-thousand COVID tests were administered to the 1,000-plus crew members over 100 days of filming. A robust system of track and trace was implemented for the few cases that cropped up. And a 150-page playbook was compiled so there was no ambiguity as to which protocols should be followed.
“It was important from a business perspective. Obviously you know we were paying rent on those stages [at England’s Pinewood Studios]. It was costing us thousands of dollars a month to keep the movie there,” said Donna Langley, chair of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference on Wednesday. “It was imperative, too, to try and jump-start our business again. The industry employs hundreds of thousands of people around the globe. And so it was important to try to see if there were a set of protocols that we could devise that could get the industry back up and running.”
Langley explained how the movie’s producers had to adapt to a new way of filming. So even though hundreds of crew and extras were involved in making the movie, filming was staged so that not everyone had to be there at the same time.
But not every mega-budget movie can be filmed under such conditions, Langley explained.
“Take the Fast and the Furious franchise as an example. These are big movies, with big sets and big action sequences. And the heart and soul of a Fast and Furious movie, other than family, is the forward-thrusting global nature of it, jumping from location to location,” said Langley, adding that it’s not unusual for such a film to jump continents. “So a film like that, we’ll probably need to wait until we’re on the other side of this.”
The pandemic has impacted all parts of the movie industry, from creation to distribution, and Langley made the decision early on in the pandemic to take a big-budget picture—Trolls World Tour—straight to home entertainment instead of delaying the release in theaters until they could reopen.
“We had spent the majority of our marketing dollars. We had a big consumer products program associated with it. There was just no way that I could pick that movie up and move it,” explained Langley. But she cautioned that going straight to home entertainment was not a trend she saw outlasting the pandemic. Instead, Langley believes the 17-day window Universal has negotiated with the major cinema chains strikes the right balance.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense is that you’re deploying all of those marketing dollars into [the] theatrical window, and then you’re wasting 90 days, then you have to relaunch it all over again for your home entertainment window,” says Langley, who is working with theater chains to shorten that window. “But we’re still big believers in the theatrical experience.”


fortune--2020-12-02--How the pandemic has changed the fitness industry

People have changed how they exercise during the coronavirus pandemic, turning to outdoor activities like biking and running as well as home gym equipment. The shift, some of which is expected to continue long after the pandemic has ended, has created new opportunities for companies that bank on the business of sweat.
“There’s going to be a little bit more of a hybrid approach, I think, going forward,” Under Armour CEO Patrik Frisk said.
Frisk joined Melanie Whelan, managing director of Summit Partners, and Brynn Putnam, CEO of home fitness company Mirror (recently acquired by Lululemon for $500 million), to discuss the business of sweat at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech virtual conference on Wednesday. The executives said that while some people will return to their gyms, others now prefer alternative ways of keeping fit.
In Mirror’s case, that means working out in front of a smart mirror, a high-tech computer screen that doubles as a regular mirror, for guided workouts. “What’s exciting to us is the sort of cementing of behavioral change that we’re seeing during this period,” Putnam said. “We think there’s an incredible opportunity to really unite the experiences people receive at home with those that they’re seeing at their studios or local gyms for a truly omni experience.”
The coronavirus pandemic has radically changed how people shop. For example, following pandemic shutdowns, people have increasingly relied on delivery services. People have also changed how they commute to avoid being stuck close to others on a train or in a stranger’s car. And they’re looking for convenient ways to exercise outside of crowded gyms.
But as competition heats up, the fitness companies aiming to capitalize on the shift will have to differentiate their products and create personalized experiences for their customers, Whelan said. If they can do that, the investment from venture capitalists will follow, she added.
“There’s a lot of capital available in the market,” Whelan said. “I think there will continue to be a space in place for great businesses that connect with their community in a very unique way.”
Under Armour is betting on its connected shoes, or shoes that track workouts and provide coaching along the way, as a big moneymaker. Since the outbreak started, customer interest in its connected shoes has increased dramatically, Frisk said, adding that more than 1 million of its customers’ shoes are now connected to Under Armour’s app, a milestone the company hit during the third quarter. And the company said that running, in terms of participation in the sport, has increased 150% compared with pre-pandemic levels.
“It’s an incredibly important part of our future,” Frisk said of the company’s connected shoes.
Putnam said there’s evidence that many people’s lifestyles have fundamentally changed, and that the length of the pandemic has likely solidified those changes into new habits.
“Most experts say it takes about 60 days to build a habit,” she said. “Our consumers have now had six, seven, eight, nine months to really begin to live the sweat life at home, and we’re excited to see those behavioral changes stick over time.”


fortune--2020-12-02--In-person work and store experiences are still often better options, according to Apple HR and retai

In-person work and store experiences are still often better options, according to Apple HR and retail chief

Even though Apple has adjusted well to the pandemic by having its legions of developers and store employees work from home, the head of the tech company’s retail and human resources says in-person contact is still ideal in many cases.
In a nod to the pandemic, Apple has had to limit the number of customers in its stores and make moves like shifting its popular “Today at Apple” series of in-store tutorials online. The maker of the iPhone also managed to launch a heavy slate of new products this fall despite minimal face time among staff.
Apple eked out a modest sales increase in its most recent quarter even as it coped with the pandemic and its effect on its operations.
“If you had asked me a couple of years ago, could Apple do what we’ve done this year on shifting to working from home?, I would have been challenged to imagine it,” Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of retail and people, said at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference on Wednesday.
But the reality of employees being separated from one another and customers unable to get the same full experience at stores is not always optimal in her eyes.
“We’re taking advantage of the new skills we’ve all learned [during the pandemic],” O’Brien said. “We also do feel that collaboration, and many times face-to-face work, does allow us to do our best work and sometimes move a little faster.” Apple will “find that right balance.”
The work-from-home versus in-the-office debate has raged in corporate circles as people imagine what work life will look like once the pandemic wanes. Echoing Apple’s sentiment that in-person collaboration can be better are companies like Walmart (which is building a massive new headquarters, like Apple did a few years ago), IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and Mastercard. Others, like Shopify, see work from home as the next standard, with in-person meetings optional.
And while Apple stores have adapted to the limitations imposed by measures to fight COVID-19, O’Brien says the full retail experience is still optimal for Apple and its customers.
“We want to make sure, especially as you come into our stores, that you can experience everything that we have to offer,” she says. That means, for instance, being able to come in, learn about the products, take in a seminar on a new product or feature, and get a Genius Bar consultation in person.
“That’s been a bit more challenging in this socially distant environment. I’m really hoping we’ll be able to go back to a full experience situation in our stores for our customers,” she said.


fortune--2020-12-02--Walking the fine line between antitrust and anti-tech

Antitrust is always a hot-button issue, but 2020 has proved a red-letter year for the oversight of anticompetitive business practices. Most notably, the federal government has the giants of Big Tech squarely in its sights, with the likes of Google and Facebook currently facing a considerable amount of regulatory scrutiny.
It makes sense, then, that this year’s virtual edition of Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference would feature two of the leading legal minds in antitrust law, who gave their thoughts on the government’s approach to regulating these companies. Makan Delrahim, head of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, and Katherine Forrest, a former U.S. District Court judge and partner at law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, joined Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts for the aptly titled panel, “Antitrust or Anti-Tech?”
When asked for her thoughts on the DOJ’s lawsuit against Google, Forrest said past cases—namely, the government’s landmark action against Microsoft more than two decades ago—have shown that “courts are able to deal with these very high-tech issues” despite concerns over whether they are “agile enough” to grasp the repercussions of fast-moving technological innovations. “Sometimes a judge may need additional assistance…[but] the courts can do this. They know how to deal with new innovations,” Forrest noted.
She added that since the Microsoft case, the courts have acknowledged the difference between a “monopoly position” and “monopoly maintenance.” While the first is achieved “through being the first innovator in an area,” the second involves taking actions that “maintain the monopoly”—an important distinction in determining whether a company is simply a “first mover” in its market, or deliberately anticompetitive.
Delrahim gave his perspective on whether or not Big Tech deserves its own dedicated government oversight agency—a specialist body, akin to the Federal Aviation Administration or the Food and Drug Administration, that would be charged with regulating America’s major tech firms. Delrahim expressed wariness at the idea, warning that it could lead to “inflexible rules that would end up benefiting [companies] with the greatest market and political power.” In turn, those powerful interests would “favor appointees to those specialized agencies that benefit them.”
“I believe that antitrust is law enforcement. It is not and should not be a function of picking winners and losers, but of protecting competition and free markets,” he said. “Creating a specialized agency could lead us into a path where we would actually diminish innovation.”
But Delrahim acknowledged Roberts’ assertion that antitrust legal proceedings are often too slow and ponderous at addressing the issues at hand. To that end, he floated the possibility of appointing more “judges with some expertise in the field” to quicken the pace at which cases proceed.
Forrest, for her part, disagreed with that assertion. “I think the courts right now are up to the task,” she said, noting that “virtually all of the judges” in her own former district, the Southern District of New York, “have experience with antitrust cases.”
Delrahim ended the panel by reflecting on the legacy of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division under his leadership. He heralded his staff’s “bold” approach to investigating major tech conglomerates that now have an unprecedented amount of reach and influence.
“The approach we took—that this is legitimate, to look at it and not be afraid of the tech companies—opened up the ability of the staff to investigate,” he said. With a new administration set to take the reins in D.C. next month, Delrahim said he hopes that approach “continues, but is not overzealous.”


fortune--2020-12-02--Amazon takes lead to acquire podcaster Wondery

Amazon.com is in exclusive talks to acquire podcasting company Wondery for more than $300 million, the Wall Street Journal reported, following a bidding process that also drew interest from the likes of Apple and Sony Music Entertainment.
The takeover talks are ongoing and could fall apart, the Journal said, citing unidentified people familiar with the discussions.
Bloomberg first reported that Wondery was exploring a sale in September. And Apple and Sony Music each held talks about potentially acquiring the company, which produces shows such as “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death.” The podcasting firm has sought a price of $300 million to $400 million, people familiar with the matter have said.
Amazon and Wondery declined to comment.
Amazon already has a dominant position in audiobooks, thanks to its Audible division, and it’s been looking to push further into podcasts and other nonmusic audio. The Seattle-based company has commissioned programs from best-selling authors and celebrities, emerging as one of the biggest backers of original audio shows.
Though Spotify has been the most aggressive buyer of podcasting companies over the last two years, the Swedish audio giant decided not to bid on Wondery.
Wondery is seeking to capitalize on a wave of deals in the podcasting industry. Spotify spent hundreds of millions snapping up companies like Ringer and Gimlet Media in the past couple years, and Sirius XM acquired Stitcher.
Founded in 2016 by former TV executive Hernan Lopez, Wondery has produced some of the most popular podcasts over the past few years. Revenue is expected to surge past $40 million in 2020, a person familiar with the matter has said.


fortune--2020-12-02--The number of Black female founders who have raised more than $1 million has nearly tripled since 20

The number of Black female founders who have raised more than $1 million has nearly tripled since 2018

While the $1 billion unicorn valuation is still the milestone of choice for many startups, for Black women a notable benchmark comes a lot earlier in a startup’s life cycle. In 2018, only 34 Black female founders had ever raised $1 million in venture capital for their company.
This year, that stat has nearly tripled, with 93 Black women now reporting they have secured $1 million in investor backing for their businesses, according to ProjectDiane, a biennial report on the state of Black and Latinx women founders by the organization digitalundivided. Ninety Latinx women have raised the same amount.
“These stats are the ones that are going to spark conversations and lead to real, true systemic change,” says Lauren Maillian, the CEO of digitalundivided.
ProjectDiane sources this information from a database of about 650 Black and Latinx female founders. Its survey finds that Black and Latinx women combined received just 0.64% of total venture capital investment between 2018 and 2019, for a total of $3.1 billion; 0.27% went to Black women and 0.37% went to Latinas. Those sums can be put in context next to the paltry 2.7% of venture capital that went to female-only founding teams across the board in 2019.
Their continued lack of access to institutional venture capital is influencing how Black and Latinx women run their businesses. Many businesses owned by Black women haven’t taken on venture funding at all; only 57% of those companies in the ProjectDiane database report having raised capital. The rest are self-funded or operating based on revenue. (A larger share of Latinx women have received funding, at 69%.)
That measured approach to running a startup—rather than the high growth, VC-backed model—may have helped some of these companies led by women of color to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued their peers. Of the 334 startups that were in this organization’s database in 2018, 73% are still in business—meaning these startups have a two-year fail rate of 27%. That number is far lower than the fail rate for all startups, which digitalundivided cites at 40%.
Anecdotally, too, companies led by women of color have avoided the cultural and leadership problems that have plagued others in recent years, from the high-profile failure at a company like WeWork to the issues that have recently led to executive departures at several female-founded companies led by white women.
“To make something out of nothing is something women of color know how to do,” says Maillian. “We’re scrappy. We treat money we do receive, whether revenue or investment, by making every dollar stretch.”
She adds: “Black women look at their businesses as a source of wealth creation, not just a job. Other founders look at building and failing and building and failing as a job. As women of color, we don’t get that privilege. We look at having the title of founder and CEO as a ticket to wealth creation.”
The organization’s report unearthed a few more insights. Latinx women are more likely than Black women to have a cofounder, versus going solo, says Maillian.
And Howard University, the Washington, D.C., historically Black school, produces more Black women startup founders than any other undergraduate institution.
Earlier this year, digitalundivided studied the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black female founders, finding that 82% reported a loss of revenue because of the crisis.