fortune--2020-02-14--North Dakota tribes win a landmark voter law settlement

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It’s Valentine’s Day! North Dakota tribes win a voting rights victory, California childcare workers would love a union, and a whole new human has been discovered.
But first, your week in review in Haiku.
If you loved me, you
wouldn’t tweet so much, maybe
even speak at all
But spend? Go ahead!
It’s a trend: Big Chocolate
gonna rake it in
this year, thirty-two
percent more Valentine love.
Anything for a
friend! Especially
when it feels as if the world
will surely end. But
love is love, time is
dear. A thought for those not here:
in the name of love.
We are grateful for you! Hope you feel the love this weekend. RaceAhead is off on President’s Day and will return Tuesday, February 18.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
A voting rights win for North Dakota tribes It’s a significant victory for North Dakota's tribal citizens, who have been fighting state officials over a restrictive law that requires voters to provide identification that shows a residential address. Many Native American reservations do not use traditional addresses, and the law would not recognize an ID with a post office box. The settlement includes a legally binding consent decree.
New York Times
California childcare workers are preparing to unionize Some 40,000 childcare workers have been organizing after Assemblywoman Monique Limón (D-Goleta) made it possible for them to collectively bargain with the state last year through Assembly Bill 378. This week, a group of the workers delivered 10,000 union cards to the state Public Employment Relations Board to begin the process. Family childcare provider Rasiene Reece was on hand to organize and celebrate. “I know that we’re going to get this through this time,” she said. “We’ve been in this fight for 16 years.
Sacramento Bee
Human DNA: It’s complicated A new study of the genomes of West Africans has detected signs that an extinct human species interbred with homo sapiens some 43,000 years ago. Researchers are calling the mysterious humans a “ghost population,” and have found that West Africans can trace anywhere from 2% to 19% of their genetic ancestry to this species. It’s big news in the evolution business. “We don’t know where this population might have lived, whether it corresponds to known fossils, and what its ultimate fate was,” UCLA professor Sriram Sankararaman, who led the study, tells Reuters.
Reuters
On Background
The current hottest dance craze was created by a 14-year-old Atlanta girl All hats off to Taylor Lorenz who tracks down the uncredited creator of the biggest hit dance currently online: the Renegade. Jalaiah Harmon is 14 years old, busy with school, her many dance classes, and a growing career online. She’s a master in the making. All the cool kids, including some really cool ones—Lizzo, Kourtney Kardashian, an influential TikTok’er name Charli D’Amelio—have filmed themselves doing the dance, a very specific sequence of moves. But Harmon has been left behind. “I was happy when I saw my dance all over,” she told Lorenz. “But I wanted credit for it.”
New York Times
Teachers: Knock it off with the mock slave auctions They’re surprisingly common in education; this entreaty from Dani Bostick, a high school Latin teacher, wonders why the Junior Classical League, an academic club with 50,000 members, routinely uses them for fundraisers. “Ideally, the notion of mock slave auctions in an organization sponsored by the American Classical League should prompt outrage, activism, and sustained action,” she writes.“Too often, though, this kind of racism is tolerated and normalized by those both inside and outside of secondary classics.” They’re humiliating and hurtful. Please stop. Educator Rann Miller breaks it down below with specific tips for white educators.
EducationPost
Intimate partner violence is a workplace issue It’s always the right time to talk about intimate partner violence, one of the greatest predictors of other violence to come. But most employers have yet to consider how they would handle the issue if it should arise within their ranks. (It will.) The total costs to the US economy associated with intimate partner violence – including medical care, mental health services, and time away from work — exceed $8 billion a year. And some 65% of employers don’t have a policy in place. Click through for some good resources and a run-down of the practical and emotional needs that victims often have.
Fortune
Tamara El-Waylly produces raceAhead and manages the op-ed program.
Quote
“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like ‘struggle.’ To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
—Fred Rogers


fortune--2020-02-14--AstraZeneca stock slips on mixed earnings report and coronavirus uncertainty

Michael Avenatti is convicted of trying to extort Nike

AstraZeneca stock fell nearly 4% in Friday morning trading on a mixed earnings report and full-year guidance for 2020, shedding more than $2.3 billion off the British drug giant’s market value.
A combination of factors—including fourth quarter 2019 profits that missed Wall Street expectations—led to the stock hit. But the latest coronavirus outbreak in China is also holding back AstraZeneca’s 2020 financial outlook.
“All guidance assumes an unfavorable impact from China lasting up to a few months as a result of the recent novel coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak,” the company wrote in its latest earnings report.
In the final quarter of 2019, Astra’s core operating profit fell 29% to $1.55 billion while rising 13% to $6.44 billion for the full year, falling short of estimates.
As for the coronavirus effect, it’s not hard to see why the outbreak may have an outsized effect on AstraZeneca’s business. China is becoming a larger and larger share of the company’s revenue pool as more AZ products, such as the popular cancer treatment Lynparza, are approved for more uses in the country.
In 2019, China constituted $4.9 billion out of the firm’s $8.2 billion (nearly 60%) in products sales from emerging markets, and nearly 21% of total product sales.
The supply chain disruptions wrought by Covid-19 and the difficulty of moving inventory into China has AstraZeneca executives actively monitoring the severity and length of the current outbreak.
In its earnings presentation, the company stated it expects the outbreak to hit its sales numbers for “up to a few months”—but it could easily last longer. And that could change 2020 from a year of double-digit revenue growth for AstraZeneca to a single-digit one.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Can you catch it twice? Answers to 5 pressing coronavirus questions
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—Bernard Arnault was briefly the world’s richest man. Then coronavirus struck
—Will summer kill the coronavirus?
—My boss wants me to travel during the coronavirus. Do I have to go?
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-02-14--Major ice cream makers vow to stop marketing to kids

Ice cream might be the favorite treat of many kids, but the parent company of some of the best known ice cream brands says it plans to stop advertising to children by the end of the year.
Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, Klondike, Good Humor, Talenti, Magnum, Cornetto, Viennetta, Choc Ice and others, has announced plans to stop television and print marketing to children younger than 12, and will curb any social media promotions for children under 13.
Rising child obesity rates are behind the decision.
“The World Health Organization names childhood obesity as one of the most serious public health issues of the 21st century,” the company said in a statement. “And it’s a key reason why Unilever is committing to new principles on marketing and advertising foods and beverages to children.”
Unilever pledged to change its practices before the end of the year, offering an extensive list of new marketing principles. Children under 12 will not appear in ads. And parents will always be “portrayed in control of the access to the product,” the company said.
It also vowed to no longer use influencers, celebrities or social media stars who primarily appeal to children under the age of 12. The use of cartoon characters in advertising will also be curtailed.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Mall developer Simon’s Taubman purchase shows high-end is the last refuge
—Bernard Arnault was briefly the world’s richest man. Then coronavirus struck
—Land O’Lakes wants to introduce you to the farmer behind your butter—Why Bud Light gave its new hard seltzer the family name
—WATCH: Inside the algorithm powering Stitch Fix
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-14--‘There will be MWC in Barcelona next year,’ mobile trade show group vows after canceling this year’s

‘There will be MWC in Barcelona next year,’ mobile trade show group vows after canceling this year’s event

The wireless industry trade group that canceled this year’s huge annual Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona over coronavirus fears said it’s determined to revive the event next year.
“There will be MWC in Barcelona next year,” Stephanie Lynch-Habib, chief marketing officer for the GSMA group, told Fortune. “We have had overwhelmingly positive support from exhibitors and attendees looking forward to next year. We believe in the power of the event in person.”
The annual trade show draws over 100,000 visitors to Barcelona from 200 countries in late February every year, including a mix of people from wireless operators, device makers, software developers, and almost anyone else who has a business related to the mobile market. But as coronavirus fears grew over the past few weeks, numerous exhibitors dropped out of this year’s conference including telecom gear maker Ericsson, phonemakers LG, Vivo, and Sony, as well as U.S. tech giants Intel and Amazon.
But the primary reason for canceling the show was to protect the health and safety of attendees, not due to financial reasons, GSMA’s Lynch-Habib said.
“It was an incredibly difficult decision to make but in the end became impossible for the event to go ahead,” she said. “There was one definitive factor which was the health and safety of the exhibitors and the attendees..it was absolutely health and safety.”
“The last reason was anything to do with anything financial, at all,” she adds. The group was swayed in part by recent advice from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control that large events posed a risk of helping the outbreak spread.
The event’s cancellation comes as the impact of the coronavirus outbreak that began in Wuhan, China continues to roil the global economy. The outbreak has significantly disrupted other economic activity, triggering corporate travel bans, the temporary shutdown of Tesla’s Shanghai factory, and the closure of casinos in Macau.
The Spanish government has questioned the cancellation, noting that the country has suffered few coronavirus cases.
“With due regard to the safe and healthy environment in Barcelona and the host country today, the GSMA has canceled MWC 2020 because of the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak,” Lynch-Habib said.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Airbnb’s bottom line is hurting. New safety efforts could make matters worse
—How businesses lost an extra $500 million from email scams last year
—Antivirus software Avast investigated for selling user browsing histories
—Huawei poses a 5G spying risk, but other options are hard to come by
—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-14--What to watch (and skip) in theaters and on Hulu this weekend

Whether you’re standing in the theater lobby or curled up in bed, deciding what to watch next is often the most difficult part of any pop-culture junkie’s day. And with dozens of films in theaters on any given weekend, plus virtually endless layers of streaming purgatory to sort through in search of your next binge-watch, there’s more out there—and tougher decisions to make—than ever.
Fortune‘s here to help you navigate the week’s latest offerings, boiling all the entertainment out there down into distinct recommendations: should you see it, stream it, or skip it? Find out below.
SEE IT: ‘The Lodge’ (In theaters, expanding through February)
There’s a haunted quality to Riley Keough, a soul-deep disenchantment she can gather in her shoulders and pour forward through heavy-lidded blue eyes. Her characters are cold to the touch, detached and somewhat alien, miles away from the often grim circumstances in which they find themselves. Check her out in the first season of Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience, bringing spooky focus to the part of a high-end sex worker, or on screen as two very different kinds of den mothers with hidden depths in American Honey and Hold the Dark. Keough’s characters are often terrifyingly unknowable, but the actress plays these ciphers with such intensity that watching her is never anything less than a hypnotic experience.
Keough would have thrived in the silent film era. Her innate magnetism and propensity toward intricate, calculating characters also makes her an ideal match for the horror genre. The Lodge, from Goodnight Mommy codirectors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, offers Keough one of her most chilling roles yet, in a film fiendishly calibrated to reflect its star’s spiritual disquiet at all levels.
Stationed somewhere between Hereditary‘s creeping, trauma-steeped terror and the uncanny aura of something like The Shining, The Lodge centers on Grace (Keough), who’s decided to marry the older Richard (Richard Armitage) after falling for him at some point early in the dissolution of his marriage to Laura (Alicia Silverstone, briefly). The kids, Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), are understandably cold to Grace, even months later. That Grace has an uncertain past with a doomsday cult only makes her more suspicious to Aidan and Mia, and their rightful anger at the way Grace’s arrival wrecked their household is heightened by a cocktail of other, more tangled emotions that come to roost when she’s left alone with them for a few days at a remote cabin.
The less said beyond that, the better. The Lodge is a profoundly despairing piece of work, and its snowed-in premise creates a particularly suffocating atmosphere of dread in which to strand the characters – most of all Keough, whose elusive cool eventually cracks under such subzero conditions. There’s something wrong with their cabin, with the foreboding woods that surround them, certainly with how impossibly dark it seems to get this time of year. But even with a final reveal that leads the film back into more predictable territory, The Lodge is a grim, ghastly thing to behold. It gets in your bones, right down to the marrow, and rattles them.
STREAM IT: ‘Utopia Falls’ (Hulu)
If one was to trace the rise and fall of dystopian YA storytelling across this past decade, the Divergent franchise might serve as the best case study in how it all went wrong.
Divergent, based on the books by Veronica Roth, was higher-profile than most, and its flameout more spectacular; after audiences voiced their disinterest in Allegiant (the third, “Part I”-style installment in the movie series), its fourth and final chapter was unceremoniously paused, delayed, overhauled, and ultimately canceled outright. The dystopian YA genre, at least for a time, appeared to die out.
That brings us to Utopia Falls, a new Hulu series that (at least in its early going) would appear hopelessly behind the ball. Its setup suggests Hunger Games meets The Get Down, or a futuristic Footloose. Three hundred years in the future, in a city called New Babyl, musically gifted teenagers are gathered to compete in The Exemplar, essentially a talent show in which graceful dance routines or soaring ballads are measured against one another for the glory of New Babyl’s messianic founder.
It’s a lighter-hearted riff on this subgenre from the get-go, the stakes for the teen contestants considerably less high than those competing in the tooth-and-nail bloodsport of Panem in The Hunger Games. But Utopia Falls twists by the end of its first episode into something much more tantalizing. After two contestants stumble into a hidden archive of ancient information outside the city limits, they’re greeted by a repository of hip-hop music, an art form frowned upon by the Exemplar’s flashy Authority Phydra. And in a last-minute reveal, the pilot shows us than this archive has a built-in voice, which belongs to none other than… Snoop Dogg.
That’s right: hip-hop serves as the most forbidden and important form of self-expression for Utopia Falls‘ young protagonists, who find themselves the vanguards of a revolution when they bring raps back to civilization. It’s not made entirely clear why hip-hop has been eradicated from New Babyl’s culture, given that its overlords claim to pride themselves on inclusivity in other forms, and most other genres (including soul and R&B) have survived intact. But its rediscovery nevertheless drives the teens at Utopia Falls‘s center to push back against all they’ve been raised to believe, calling into question the hidden levers of power, prejudice, and social control only a select few officials are able to access. The series’ timely exploration, through protagonist Bodhi (Akiel Julien), of how racism can be perpetuated within the confines of a self-decidedly “post-racial” society is particularly fascinating.
There’s a lot nestled into this show’s setup, and Utopia Falls uses its 10-episode structure wisely, teasing out information about hip-hop’s status in New Babyl and the ways in which it gradually begins to radicalize the characters. Issues abound in terms of pacing and plotting, and the series perhaps functions better as an ode to the galvanizing power of hip-hop than it does as a tale of dystopian uprising. But for a subgenre as creatively drained as this, there’s surprising joy to be found in Utopia Falls‘ music-is-the-mission vision of a tomorrow in which sonic self-expression remains as vital a freedom of speech as it is today, and one equally worth fighting for.
SKIP IT: ‘Downhill’ (In theaters)
Even considered in abstract, without the lived-in knowledge of how bad they often turn out to be, Americanized remakes of foreign-language films carry all kinds of troubling implications.
Is Hollywood truly so hegemonic that it has no place for films outside the English language, despite 41 million Americans speaking Spanish at home? Is the “one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” referred to by the great South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho—four-time Oscar-winning director of Parasite, the reigning Best Picture—too elevated a hurdle for American filmgoers to clear? Or has this always simply been a lie sold by Hollywood, to justify its busy, empty, occasionally lucrative reworking of foreign-language films?
There’s an Oscar Wilde quote for most situations, and one certainly applies here: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” Funny how people tend to forget the second half of that one. Hollywood, too.
This is an admittedly unfair amount of analysis to fling at Downhill, an Americanized remake of 2014’s bracing Force Majeure, Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s darkly comic tale of existential crisis and bourgeois delusion. It’s unfair both because the remake—from codirectors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash—is a symptom rather than the disease, and because the film itself appears frozen in the act of hand-wringing over this exact issue.
In replicating the original’s tale of a family divided while skiing at a luxury resort in the Alps, Downhill casts Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell in the role of the central couple, whose pre-existing tensions are exacerbated by the fish-out-of-water surreality of vacationing in a foreign country. They had issues before they got to the mountain, and those are only accentuated after what first appears to be an uncontrolled avalanche leads the husband, Pete, to hurriedly abandon wife Billie and their kids to certain death in hopes of saving his own skin. Snowmageddon does not come to pass, leaving Billie rightly incensed that her life partner would so blithely turn his back on what they built at the first sign of trouble.
This is more or less as it happens in Force Majeure, with some specific shots restaged exactly. Downhill‘s issue is that it lacks the original’s savage willingness to follow through on what unfolds in that avalanche’s aftermath. Part of this is in the filmmaking. Östlund’s long shots and screw-turning patience behind the camera amplified the audience’s discomfort as they, like the characters, were forced to sit in silence with the fallout of its patriarch’s cowardice. Faxon and Rash, even shaving 33 minutes off the original’s two-hour runtime, restage most of the main sequences in Force Majeure but rush through almost all of them. A key confrontation between Billie and Pete in which Louis-Dreyfus finally uncorks the confusion and rage she’s kept bottled up is the best scene in Downhill, but it’s over far too quickly, the film hurrying along to the next gag without allowing audiences to marinate in the truly horrifying weight of such an outburst.
Faxon and Rash are gifted writers, as their Oscar-winning script for The Descendants made clear, and with an assist from Succession scribe Jesse Armstrong on this screenplay, it’s somewhat shocking that their film is clipped to such a degree. One senses, almost, that in tackling Östlund’s tonal black diamond, they realized they were skiing well out of both their comfort zone—and more importantly, Searchlight’s (which has separately proven how little it understood the high tension and trauma of Force Majeure by slotting its remake for Valentine’s Day weekend). What’s left of the original’s cringe-comedy and marital anguish is watered down, and Downhill seems self-conscious about this. It should be. The adaptation carries itself like a tourist, ungainly and ultimately clueless as to the richer meaning of the filmic terrain it was so eager to occupy.
The best of the rest
Also in theaters, lesbian romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire—one of the most acclaimed films to hit the festival circuit last year—is finally expanding across the country beginning this week. It charts the forbidden affair that erupts between a painter (Noémie Merlant) and the young woman (Adèle Haenel) whose wedding portrait she’s tasked with secretly painting. Set in France in the 18th century, it’s one of the most handsomely composed pieces of period filmmaking in years, even if its themes—of art, desire, queer love, and subjectivity—reach thrillingly into the present. Read our interview with filmmaker Céline Sciamma here.
And what better way to celebrate Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar victory last weekend than by diving through streaming services in search of his earlier work?
Parasite (now available for rent on Amazon) was by no means a one-hit wonder. It’s been said that Bong is a genre unto himself, and his knack for savage, sharp-witted social satire is on full display across his past films.
Check out his directorial debut, dark comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), on Tubi for free, or on Shudder with a subscription. That’s also the case for monster movie The Host (2006), about a family looking to save their daughter after she’s abducted by a kaiju-esque sea monster. His twisty crime drama Memories of Murder (2003), about detectives racing to catch a serial killer, is streaming for free on a smaller streaming site called Popcornflix, or on YouTube via Viewster’s channel. Shudder also has Mother (2009), a powder-keg drama about a mother struggling to clear the name of her mentally handicapped son after he’s framed for murder.
Bong really broke out into the mainstream with his first major U.S. release, Snowpiercer (2014), now streaming on Netflix. A dystopian thriller in which a class uprising breaks out at the back of a futuristic train as it travels the remnants of a ruined Earth, it stars Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Go Ah-sung, John Hurt, and—in one of many prescient echoes of Parasite—that film’s leading man, Song Kang-ho. Also on Netflix: Bong’s lesser-seen 2017 adventure Okja, about a genetically modified super pig.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Contagion writer, scientific adviser reflect on film’s newfound relevance amid coronavirus crisis
—Ava DuVernay on the “radical act” of black love in OWN’s Cherish the Day
—How history-making wins for Parasite and The Farewell can shift Hollywood’s diversity narrative
—Summertime director and cast on crafting a “love letter” to Los Angeles
—The best movies that came out of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-14--Report: PlayStation 5 could cost nearly $500

The PlayStation 5 is key to Sony’s future, but rising component prices are threatening to push the game system out of the comfort zone of many consumers.
A report from Bloomberg says the cost to build the still-unreleased video game console is currently $450 per unit. That means if Sony hopes to break even at retail, the system’s price could range from $470 to $500. That’s considerably more than the PlayStation 4, which currently retails for $299-$399, depending on the model.
Sony could, of course, sell the system at a loss. For years, that was the model followed by most console manufacturers, who counted on making up the loss in software sales. (Console makers get a cut of every game title sold—and also supplement their income with subscription services required for online play.) With the release of the PS4, though, Sony opted to break even at retail.
Sony last tested consumer pricing comfort levels with the PS3, which launched at $500 and $600 (and even that high price represented a significant loss for the company). That gave a big boost to Microsoft, as consumers favored the less-expensive Xbox 360.
The PS5 will be loaded with advanced technology, including a solid-state hard drive, which will load levels and other game elements in significantly less time, and a new 3D audio technology to let players hear steps behind them and beside them without any additional hardware.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Airbnb’s bottom line is hurting. New safety efforts could make matters worse
—How businesses lost an extra $500 million from email scams last year
—Antivirus software Avast investigated for selling user browsing histories
—Huawei poses a 5G spying risk, but other options are hard to come by
—Predicting the biggest tech headlines of 2020
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-02-14--Liberal Democrats don’t want Iowa to be the first primary state anymore: Fortune-SurveyMonkey Poll

The chaos that surrounded the vote counts of the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3 has yet to be resolved, with both Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg requesting recanvasses in multiple counties.
But once the final votes are tallied—and the malfunctioning app the Iowa Democratic Committee tested on primary night is long sunsetted—the repercussions of the disastrous primary will still be felt by the party, according to a new Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll.
Moderate Democrat Buttigieg, a 38-year-old upstart, was credited as winner of the first test of the 2020 election season. But Sanders wasn’t far behind him, and the shroud of mystery and uncertainty that enveloped the Iowa elections left Sanders supporters dissatisfied with, and unsure of, his loss.
By a ratio of 8-to-1, very liberal Democrats oppose Iowa remaining the first primary state during the 2024 presidential election. That ratio is around 2-to-1 for liberal Democrats and moderate Democrats.
“All I can say about Iowa is it was an embarrassment. It was a disgrace to the good people of Iowa who take their responsibilities in the caucuses very seriously. They screwed it up badly, that is what the Iowa Democratic Party did,” Sanders told Jack Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union following the primary.
Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump in their own caucus, had an unsurprisingly negative view of the Democratic caucuses. Approximately 67% said they had a negative impression, while just 47% of Democrats said they did. However, only 13% of Democrats had a positive impression of the Iowa Democratic caucus.
And despite the drama that surrounded the evening, and the months of campaigning that came before it, the vast majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (86%) said that the results of the first primary did not change their mind about which presidential candidate they support.
The Iowa caucus is typically characterized as a momentum-building race, and with only 41 pledged delegates awarded, it doesn’t do much to aid candidates in their quest to be the first to cinch the 2,376 out of 4,750 delegates needed to claim the nomination without contestation.
A win in Iowa is intended to convince voters in other, more delegate-heavy states that candidates are viable and exciting.
The results of this survey, which show that said momentum building didn’t do much to change the minds of Americans, shows that the theory may be wrong.
Still, 68% of all Democrats and Democratic leaners say that they have confidence in the primary process’s ability to select the best presidential candidate, though moderate and conservative Democrats were slightly more likely to say they were confident than liberal or very liberal Democrats (71% vs. 66%).
Fortune-SurveyMonkey polled 1,667 Americans between February 10 and 11, 2020. Our poll has a 3.5% margin of error.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—These are the Democratic candidates who qualify for the next debate so far
—2020 candidates’ positions, and records, on economic issues that affect women
—The case for a national primary
—Fortune Explains: The debt ceiling
—Can Amazon convince a federal court to depose Trump over a $10 billion Pentagon contract?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.
Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump in their own caucus, had an unsurprisingly negative view of the Democratic caucuses, 67% thought said they had a negative impression while just 47% of Democrats said that they did. The majority of Independent voters, meanwhile, 55%, had neither a positive or negative view of the caucuses.


fortune--2020-02-14--5 things Madewell’s CEO always packs when traveling

Every morning, Libby Wadle likes to follow a routine: wake up her two young children, make sure they’re dressed and fed, then send them to school before heading to work—and that’s pretty much where the consistency ends.
As Madewell’s first-ever CEO, Wadle is laser-focused on aggressively expanding the brand, which is set for an IPO later this quarter. Ever since J.Crew Group relaunched Madewell in 2006 after acquiring it from its original 1937 founder, the brand has largely been perceived as J.Crew’s younger sister, with a strong focus on high-quality denim. That clear vision has certainly resonated with a younger female audience—including celebrities like Taylor Swift and actress Emma Roberts—driving Madewell sales, which rose 13% year over year during the company’s fourth quarter last year to $151.6 million. J.Crew also plans on spinning off the brand for an IPO some time during the first quarter of this year.
Much of Madewell’s success is due to Wadle herself, who previously spent 12 years as president of J.Crew and carves out time once a month to travel to any one of Madewell’s 130-plus stores across the U.S. to ensure they’re running smoothly. While on the road, she also likes to hold what she calls “coffee talks,” meetings with groups of between 15 and 20 store directors to solicit feedback.
“I literally pick the questions out of a bag that they thought about and they wanted to ask,” explains Wadle. “You really get a sense of what’s on their mind and what’s important to them based on the topics that keep coming up. It’s a good gut check if you really focus on the right thing, because then you really get to bring that back to your team here and make sure that the team knows that the customer is asking about, say, sustainability or that the customer is just about a certain product category.”
Given her road warrior status, Wadle has assembled a particular group of must-have items she takes with her everywhere she travels.
Here, in her own words, are the five things Madewell’s chief executive never travels without:
“Because most airlines and countries haven’t caught on to the milk-alternative trend yet, I always pack these dairy creamer pods,” Wadle says. “I’m nondairy, because dairy doesn’t make me feel great, but we won’t get into that! They pass the liquid security requirements, and I also pack them in my carry-on for longer trips. I mean, sometimes there’s soy, but I don’t care for soy. I’m just shocked that it’s everywhere at this point, but not in the air.” SRP: $5.78 for two.
“I’m a big fan of clean beauty, and Josh Rosebrook Hydrating Accelerator Mist is my go-to for waking up your skin after a long, drying flight,” Wadle explains. “With most mists, you just get wet. Your hair gets wet. This is a true kind of moisturizer and toner, and you can have some makeup on, and you put it on. It doesn’t ruin anything. You don’t feel like you just doused your face with water, and you don’t have to rub it in. It’s just a nice little freshen-up wake-up. Really, it’s the only kind of indulgence I do like that, but I do carry it in my little pouch in my bag.” SRP: $35.
“I like to pack light, but I also love to find local goods along the way,” Wadle says. “My Tumi Voyageur ‘Just in Case’ packable tote easily folds into a flat pouch for packing ease and is sturdy enough to be checked if needed. I may stuff my work bag in there along with all the excess things that I may have bought, and it houses your check-in carry-on. It’s an incredibly versatile bag, and I always bring it when I travel to places where I know there’s a good possibility I might shop as well, which is most of the places I go. It’s genius for carrying home all of your excess goodies!” SRP: $100.
“I love traveling in a sweat suit, but please don’t tell my Nana Laura, who always said to dress up for a flight!” jokes Wadle. “This Madewell sweat suit is super cozy while keeping you looking refined and chic on a long-haul flight.” SRP: $49.50 for the sweatpants; $44.99 for the sweatshirt
“There are certainly less expensive things on the market, especially right now,” says Wadle. “So it [the Rimowa Cabin] was definitely, to me, a very luxury purchase. But as my travels started to ramp up, traveling without checking in luggage has just become very critical for me—to get in and out of the airport as quickly as possible. (It’s really important to cut down on that travel time.) So I gave it a try, and, I mean, you can appreciate that you literally can lift your finger on it, and it just goes. It never falls over, and it’s pretty compact. So we just bought the whole family of them for our family travels: The kids can actually help with the luggage when you have these suitcases, because they’re so easy. So I’m just a really giant fan. They also, by the way, weigh nothing, so you can really push the limits on the weight limit, which I like to do, because I like to make sure I have all my bases covered when packing.” SRP: $1,050.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The mental health benefits of cow cuddling
—Couples are including cannabis at their weddings. How you can, too
—These tailors show that custom suiting is no longer just for men
—The food scene in South Philly is more than just cheesesteaks
—The best travel destinations for every season of 2020
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-02-14--As coronavirus spreads, even furniture sellers in the U.S. are starting to feel the fallout

China’s significance in the global economy is front and center with the spread of coronavirus.
Companies around the world turned to China for cheaper labor and materials costs over the past several decades. Now, as factories delay operations in the country due to the rapid spread of the disease, industries from the automotive sector to apparel are warning that coronavirus will lower production or deliveries.
Now the virus is spreading to an unexpected spot: furniture sellers in the United States.
“We have received notice from various manufacturers and suppliers that they are extending the ‘Chinese New Year’ [holiday] for at least one extra week to accommodate the quarantines.” said Jesús Capó, Chief Information Officer at Florida-based El Dorado Furniture. “We will run a little short on some products—but if it continues, after a while you are going to have to find products somewhere else.”
While some plants have begun reopening across the middle kingdom this week after lunar year closures were extended over fears of coronavirus, it’s still unclear how long it will take for workshops to become fully-functional as cases continue to mount.
Capó estimates of the delays in shipments could rise to a month, depending on how the virus spreads.
“We have a buffer to deal with unforeseen circumstances, but if we continue to see delays, we may not have enough stock or have to source inside the country,” says Jameson Dion, vice president of global sourcing at interiors retailer City Furniture. “We anticipate a material impact on the business—we just don’t know how bad.”
Coronavirus, which has killed 1,107 and infected 44,138 worldwide, has brought the world’s largest exporter to a standstill and severed supply chains around the globe. Seeking to contain the spread of the disease that emerged in December, China banned travel to-and-from Wuhan and temporarily shut down factories. Several countries meanwhile have imposed travel restrictions as major shipping companies such as Maesk reducing and cancelling shipments to Chinese ports.
Now, companies hailing from multiple industries have told investors to brace for interruptions as a result of coronavirus. Athleisure maker Under Armor warned of shipping delays, while Nissan halted production at a Japanese plant due to a shortage of Chinese parts.
In particular, alongside the auto industry and discount retailers, analysts say furniture and interiors companies have a high level of supply chain disruption risk. In recent notes, Wells Fargo pointed to At Home and Wayfair, while Morgan Stanley added the likes of Floor & Decor Holdings and Lumber Liquidators to the group of companies it says sources a percentage of its products from China.
“Inventories currently are in good shape, as companies pulled forward product to get ahead of tariff issues and the Chinese New Year,” Wells Fargo Securities analysts led the round by Edward Kelly wrote in the Tuesday note about retailers in general. But the team added: Consumers may start seeing out-of-stock signs “within 60 to 90 days if disruptions continue beyond the next few weeks.”
The problem is, restarting the “world’s largest factory” will be a more painful and more gradual process than simply setting a date. While some of City Furniture’s Chinese vendors restarted their engines this week, more delays may still be in store: the vendors’ own suppliers—the fabric and glue makers for instance—may not be up and running yet.
Analysts also worry how long it will take for factories to start running at full capacity. China’s manufacturing sector depends on migrant workers returning from outside the city to revitalize production, but with a raging health crisis outside, workers may elect to stay away.
“Ultimately, if this continues for an extended period of time, it may accomplish much more quickly what the tariffs intended to do, and force retailers into moving their sourcing to other countries, even the United States,” says Capó.
And while homebuilders and renovators say they have yet to see an impact on their sectors, economists and constructors are keeping an eye on the developments.
“I think the impact will depend on the length of this epidemic,” said Bruce Case, CEO of Case Architects and Remodelers. “In the short term and to date we have not seen an impact. But if the virus continues, inventories will be depleted and we will see supply shortages and price increases.”
Fortunately, home retailers may have a slightly larger moat than some other retailers that work with a higher inventory turnover. Broadly across his products, Capó estimates he has enough to tide him over for 90 to 120 days. What impact coronavirus may have on public home goods retailers like Wayfair and At Home, which report earnings later this year, remains to be seen. Wayfair reports Feb. 28 while At Home reports March 25.
Companies though are repeating one main piece feedback for long term impacts: We just don’t know. Coronavirus often garners comparisons to the SARS outbreak of 2003—but unlike 2003, China is at the center of a global trade ecosystem.
The only thing that is certain: When Chinese companies come back online and the tangled wires of global trade plug back in, companies all over the world will be in for a logistical nightmare of backlogs and accounting as all parties to get back up to speed.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—Coronavirus risks universities’ reliance on Chinese students
—Stock scammers are using coronavirus to dupe investors, SEC warns
—A new coronavirus red flag on the horizon—a stronger dollar
—WATCH: Coronavirus outbreak has disrupted global economy
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-02-14--4 ways to get your resume noticed by companies like Google

If doing what you do now—only at Google—is your idea of a dream job, you’ve got plenty of company. About 3.3 million people applied last year. That’s a new record, and an 18% jump from 2018. Says chief of of talent and outreach Kyle Ewing, in a classic understatement, “We read a lot of resumes.”
Given such ferocious competition, how do you make yours stand out? Certain basic rules apply, whether at Google or anywhere else—like making sure it contains the same keywords that appear in the job description, so applicant tracking (ATS) systems can spot you quickly.
Beyond that, Ewing offers these four tips for snagging Google recruiters’ attention:
1. Explain what value you can add
Take a look at the first paragraph of your resume. What’s in there, which Ewing calls “prime real estate for grabbing attention”? Rather than writing about how your skills and experience makes you a good fit for the role, emphasize what you can bring to the table, and how you envision it benefiting the company. “You can also incorporate your ‘add-value’ in other ways,” Ewing says. “Instead of a list of previous job titles, for instance, structure your resume to provide examples of what you did and the results you achieved.”
Likewise, if you’re an IT person with a bunch of certifications, incorporate those into your descriptions of your previous jobs. “People tend to give us a list of all the computer languages they know—C++, Java, Python, and so on,” Ewing says. “It’s much better if you can show us how you’ve applied that knowledge by saying something like ‘Used Python to do X’.”
2. Base it on time and experience
“Not one single job at Google requires a four-year college degree,” notes Ewing. That’s not to say that recent or soon-to-be grads shouldn’t mention what they’ve been doing for the past four years, but even there, “the emphasis should be on the impact you’ve made from things like academic research, tutoring, and recent student group or class projects.”
Already been in the workforce for a while? “We still want to know about any degrees you received but, if you have three or more years of experience, we no longer ask for a GPA,” says Ewing. “We see great candidates who are self-taught programmers, competition junkies, and veterans of start-ups, so we know that valuable experience comes in many different shapes beyond formal schooling. We really want to hear from everyone.”
(Incidentally, a note to the Class of 2020, and anyone else who’s been turned down for a Google internship: Don’t feel bad. Undergrads send in more than 125,000 applications annually—for a mere few hundred openings. No matter how wonderful you are, those odds are awful.)
3. Quantify your accomplishments
This is a good idea on any resume, but especially important at Google. “As a data company, we want to know how you apply key metrics when speaking about your experience,” says Ewing. “List examples concisely and use data, comparisons, or averages to provide context.”
Let’s say you’re applying for a sales role. Ewing suggests you “convey your account experience by sharing what you achieved [X] as measured by [Y] and [Z]—for example, ‘Grew revenue from 15 small-business clients by by 10% quarter-over-quarter by mapping new software solutions to their business goals’.” Those last eight words are essential, Ewing adds: “Instead of just stating that 10% increase, give us an idea, briefly, of how you did that.”
4. Don’t worry about length
Lots of people still have the old shibboleth lodged in their minds: An effective resume should take up no more than one page. “The number of pages doesn’t matter anymore,” Ewing points out, “because now your resume is most often seen online, where all the reader has to do is scroll down.”
That said, try not to ramble, either. “The length of your paragraph about each job can vary, but just make sure the person reading it can easily see both the impact you had, and anything specific you learned from the experience,” she suggests. “Distill it down to the main points with no fluff. The same applies to the overall length. Be clear, without including every single detail.”
One final test for your resume: Is it interesting? Try asking someone whose judgement you trust to take a look before you submit it. Ewing points out that a great resume includes a whiff of the ineffable. Call it marketing, or showmanship. The best ones are intriguing enough, she says, “to leave the reader wanting more.” And that, of course, is when you get called in for an interview.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—The top 5 tech skills companies want in new hires right now
—3 strategies women can use to make sure their ideas are heard at work
—How to (finally) ask for a raise at work this year
—How middle managers can manage up, down, and still get things done
—WATCH: Can you be a leader and an introvert?


fortune--2020-02-14--DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on why profitability is his top priority

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu visited Fortune’s offices this week, and he had a lot to say about the basics of good business.
Xu is the chief of a tech juggernaut valued at approximately $13 billion that’s still fighting to win in an ultra-competitive market. His rivals—UberEats, Postmates, and Grubhub—are looking to grab a slice of the food-delivery pie, but DoorDash is reportedly in the lead when it comes to growth. Now Xu says his company is big on profit, too.
“We’ve had to dial in the unit economics since day one, and make sure the business had a path to profitability long, long, long before all the headlines started popularizing this theme,” he told Fortune. “I don’t understand why everyone’s talking about [profits] now, because candidly, for us, we had no choice but to focus on a path to profitability from the beginning.”
I was skeptical of this comment because many founders—including Xu—have openly spoken about prioritizing growth over profitability. Last February, Xu told CNBC, “Right now we’re choosing to invest in growth and delay profitability for the entire company. But we have the means in which to do that and we know how to get there. But right now we want to accelerate to the number-one position sooner.”
The company had then just raised $400 million in venture funding from Temasek Holdings and Dragoneer Investment Group. The funding came a year after DoorDash raised a monster round of $535 million from backers including SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, GIC and Wellcome Trust.
This week, though, Xu heavily emphasized the importance of capital efficiency and turning a profit in spite of its war chest of capital. When I made a comment that DoorDash is not yet profitable, Xu said, “No, but we’re working our way there.”
“What I know is, delivery is not profitable,” Chris Webb, CEO of ChowNow, recently told Fortune. “It’s been the same way since these companies started.”
Xu hopes to be the first in his industry to change that trend. “As a founder, you can’t be confused. You have to know how to grow efficiently,” emphasizing that DoorDash is hyper-focused on its unit economics.
Profitability is a hot topic these days. I recently wrote about scooter startup Lime’s plans to lay off 14% of its staff—approximately 100 people—as it pulled out of a dozen markets in the U.S. and abroad. At the time, co-founder and CEO Brad Bao said, “Part of realizing our vision to transform urban mobility is achieving financial independence; that is why we have shifted our primary focus to profitability.” So has Bird. So has WeWork. So has Fair.
In the past, venture capital firms that fund unicorns (or decacorns) like DoorDash have had a much higher tolerance for forgoing profitability for growth, but as more and more of these unicorns trot–and stumble—to the public markets, the sentiment has begun to change.
Xu declined to comment, but there’s been talk that DoorDash will go public in 2020. We might have much more insight into its business fundamentals sooner rather than later.
HOUSEKEEPING: Term Sheet won’t be in your inbox on Monday for the Presidents’ Day holiday. Additionally,I’ll be out of the office on Tuesday and Wednesday, so please send deals for inclusion to my colleague Lucinda Shen at lucinda.shen@fortune.com.
VENTURE DEALS
- Flywire, a Boston-based vertical payments company, raised $120 million in funding. Investors include Goldman Sachs, Tiger Management and Adage Capital Management.
- Astranis, a San Francisco-based satellite Internet startup focused on bringing overlooked parts of the world online, raised $90 million in funding ($40 million in equity and $50 million in debt). Venrock led the round, and was joined by investors including Andreessen Horowitz. Read more at Fortune.
- GumGum, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based provider of in-image advertising and visual intelligence solutions, raised $22 million in funding. Investors include Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, NewView Capital and Upfront Ventures.
- Datometry, a San Francisco-based developer and operator of a database virtualization platform, raised $17 million in Series B funding. Investors include WRVI Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, Redline Capital, and Acorn Pacific Ventures.
- UrbanFootprint, a Berkeley-based intelligence and urban planning software, raised $11.5 million in Series A funding. Investors include Valo Ventures, Social Capital, and Radicle Impact.
- Reggora, a Boston-based residential appraisal software, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Spark Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Boston Seed Capital.
- Esper.io, a Bellevue, Wash.-based company providing a devops platform for dedicated edge Android devices, raised $7.6 million in Series A funding. Madrona Venture Group led the round, and was joined by investors including Root Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, Haystack Ventures, and Pathbreaker Ventures.
- Lover, a personalized sexual health app, raised $5 million in seed funding. Lerer Hippeau led the round.
- n2uitive, a Seattle-based claims interview and recorded statement management platform for auto, home, and workers compensation insurers, raised $1.3 million in funding. Cascade Seed Fund led the round.
OTHER DEALS
- Citizens Financial Group, a Providence, R.I.-based agreed to acquire assets of Trinity Capital, a Los Angeles-based advisory firm.
IPOs
- TFI International, a Canadian transportation and logistics company in North America, raised $200 million U.S. IPO. It offered 6 million shares priced at $33.35 apiece, based on its last closing price trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The firm posted revenue of CAD$5.2 billion ($3.9 billion) and income of CAD$310.3 million ($232.9 million) in 2019. It plans to list on the NYSE as “TFII.” Read more.
- MyTheresa, an online luxury fashion retailer, is preparing for an IPO on the NYSE, Reuters reports citing sources. Neiman Marcus, backed by Ares, is behind the firm. Read more.
- Vivendi, the French media conglomerate, said an IPO of its Universal Music Group subsidiary is planned for early 2023 at latest. Read more.
- Eccellenze Italiane Holding, Italian holding company behind Blumarine and Liu Jo, is aiming for an IPO within two years. Read more.
- CVC Capital Partners is weighing options to sell or list Douglas, its German perfume and cosmetics retailer, Reuters reports citing sources. Read more.
EXITS
- Flywire acquired Simplee, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based healthcare payments technology platform. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Simplee had raised approximately $37.8 million in venture funding from investors including Social Capital and Heritage Group.
- TA Associates acquired Auction Technology Group, a London-based online platform for auctions in Europe and the United States, from ECI Partners. It also acquired Proxibid, an Omaha, Neb.-based online marketplace, from Primus Capital. The companies will be brought under the ATG umbrella. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
FIRMS + FUNDS
- Odyssey Investment Partners, a New York-based private equity firm, raised $3.25 billion for its private equity investment fund, Odyssey Investment Partners Fund VI, LP.
PEOPLE
- Odyssey Investment Partners promoted Jeffrey McKibben and Craig Staub to Senior Managing Principal. Jason Cowett, Jonathan Place and Jeff Moffett have been named Managing Principal.
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fortune--2020-02-14--The devastating impact of cancelling the Mobile World Congress

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up her
Just as computers and the Internet failed to create the paperless office, cheap and ubiquitous video-calling has made nary a dent in business travel. Dealmakers, teammates, customers, and, most importantly, salespeople all intuitively and measurably know the value of face-to-face communication.
This is why big business conferences, love them or hate them, remain so important—an assertion that will be tested with the global coronavirus pandemic. I love and loathe events, especially the tech kind. Davos is platform for preening and blowharding, but the opportunity for multinational companies to see scores of customers in one go is undeniable. CES in Las Vegas is even worse, a cesspool of tech humanity which nevertheless is a must-attend for everyone who is anyone in tech precisely because the gang is all there. I love TED, a few private events I can’t name, and, of course, Fortune Brainstorm Tech, which happens this year July 13-15 in Aspen, Colo.
Workers in Barcelona are dismantling the MWC show after its sponsors cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. David Zorrakino—Europa Press via Getty Images
It doesn’t matter, of course, what I like or don’t like. These meetings are crucial to business, which is why the cancellation of Mobile World Congress, to have happened later this month in Barcelona, is so important. It’s a 33-year-old cell-phone industry institution, and more than 100,000 people show up. (I went in 2004, when it was called 3GSM—compare the “3” to today’s 5G—and held in Cannes, France. My mission was strictly to secure an interview with the CEO of Motorola. It worked. We sent Aaron the past few years.)
The cancellation of MWC will have a devastating economic impact. It will hurt Barcelona, the companies that sunk capital into their exhibitions, and the association that puts on the show. The group is rightly concerned with the health and safety of its attendees, and feels for the victims of the virus. But its hand was forced by the cancellation of its exhibiting companies.
The question now is what happens next. Will sales of 5G phones falter because the companies that make them can’t sell them to partners at one giant conference? Or will they get innovative and find other ways? I suspect the latter—and also a brutal shakeout in these events, indispensable for global commerce as they are.
Happy Valentine’s Day. (I love your feedback, bad and good.) Data Sheet returns Tuesday, after the U.S. celebrates a day that used to honor only George Washington but now pays homage to all the country’s presidents, including the incumbent.
Adam Lashinsky
Twitter: @adamlashinsky
Email: adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Make it stop. You have to feel for those poor IT administrators in the Pentagon. They've probably got generals keeping top-secret plans on thumb drives and laptops all over the place and all they want is some secure cloud storage. Seems like it's gonna be a long wait. After years of battles over awarding the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract, the brass finally gave it to Microsoft, only to be sued by Amazon alleging presidential bias. On Thursday, a judge temporarily blocked the start of the contract while the court case goes on.
I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. The stock market's most valuable car company, Tesla, is going back to investors for more money with a $2 billion share offering. Wait, didn't Elon Musk just say he wasn't going to do that? I guess funding wasn't so secured. (Also, major pet peeve: Debt is also part of a company's value. Including debt, Tesla is still worth less than Ford, though it has just passed GM.)
Adding some pizzaz. Elsewhere on Wall Street, Nvidia's sales to data centers helped the company beat expectations for the fourth quarter. Its share price, already up 15% this year, jumped 7% in pre-market trading on Friday.
Walking the beat. The war on Huawei continues apace. The Justice Department expanded on last year's criminal indictment against the Chinese telecom giant on Thursday, adding charges including racketeering and conspiracy to steal trade secrets. The DOJ also filed charges against bitcoin anonymizing transfer service Helix, alleging it assisted in money laundering. "Seeking to obscure virtual currency transactions in this way is a crime,” says assistant attorney general Brian Benczkowski.
Time's up. Workers at Apple retail stores will have to be paid for the time taken to search their bags at the end of their shifts, a court in California ruled. Employees said the searches and waits could take anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes.
Moving too fast and breaking things. Fast-growing e-commerce site Wayfair said on Thursday it would cut 550 jobs, or about 3% of its workforce. In a nice use of the royal "we," CEO Niraj Shah explained to the Boston Globe: “Through two years of aggressive expansion, we no doubt built some excess, inefficiency, and even waste at times, in almost every area.”
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
With the rise of social media, fewer people maintain their own kind of curated presence online anymore. Who needs a website showing off work when you can make a LinkedIn profile? Who needs a family photo site when you can post on Facebook, Insta, or Google Photos? Well, British designer Laura Kalbag thinks we're all making a mistake by ceding control over our Internet identities to big tech. In an essay, she argues for bringing back the personal touch. And without the creepy factor:
It does rather defeat the point of having a personal website, if you then hook it up to all the tracking mechanisms of Big Tech. Google Analytics? No thanks. Twitter follow button? I’d rather not. Facebook Like button? You must be joking. One of the benefits of having your own personal site is that you can make your personal site a tracking-free haven for your site’s visitors. All the personal websites I’ve shared here are tracking-free. Trust me, it’s not easy to find websites that value their visitors like this!
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few long reads that I came across this week:
This Internet Millionaire Has a New Deal For You (D Magazine)
Matt Rutledge, the man who invented the deal-a-day concept with Woot.com, launches his next venture: A Mediocre Corporation.
From first kiss to unfollowing – culture that sums up love in 2020
(The Guardian)
A book redefining marriage, a riotous show about dating, the secret meanings of breakup songs and a sex show to put your back out … ahead of Valentine’s Day, our critics pick works that sum up passion in our turbulent times.
YouTube’s Secretive Top Kids Channel Expands Into Merchandise (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Cocomelon videos get 2.5 billion views a month, and toddler superfans will soon have toys and albums they can buy.
Jackpot (Marker)
How two lottery-crazed bank clerks cooked up China’s biggest bank robbery of all time.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Putting politics aside to close the skills gap By Alan Murray
Facebook says its dating service is hot—but experts say it’s probably not By Danielle Abril
Telehealth startup Ro launches a ‘digital health clinic for men’ By Sy Mukherjee
Verizon to double the number of cities with its 5G mobile service this year By Aaron Pressman
The latest company to show big losses is — surprise — Airbnb By Polina Marinova
How to approach difficult conversations when your coworkers drive you nuts By Jennifer Mizgata
BEFORE YOU GO
All hail the fans of London's Natural History Museum. The museum held its annual photography awards and let the public vote on its favorite. And now it's going to be your favorite, too, I predict. Click through and check out "Station Squabble." It's a subterranean rodent battle of epic proportions.
Have a happy Valentine's Day and a great weekend.
Aaron Pressman
On Twitter: @ampressman
Email: aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-02-14--Goldman Sachs’ treasurer could—finally—shake up the male-dominated bank

This is the web version of the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Hope Hicks returns to the White House, Fed nominee Judy Shelton is grilled by senators, and we wonder if Goldman Sachs is practicing what it preaches. The Broadsheet is off on Monday for Presidents Day—we’ll see you here on Tuesday. Happy Valentine’s Day and have a wonderful weekend.
– A golden Goldman opportunity. Goldman Sachs has gotten plenty of attention lately—including from The Broadsheet—for its new initiative to require the companies it takes public to have at least one director who is female and/or a person of color. CEO David Solomon said last month that the mandate was aimed at “accelerating” a trend toward more diverse boards that is developing too slowly on its own. Yet a new Bloomberg story highlights that Goldman’s efforts to diversify itself are also moving at a glacial pace.
The article profiles Goldman global treasurer Beth Hammack, who’s tasked with reworking how Goldman funds itself and who’s seen as a candidate for higher office at the bank.
Her further ascent—she’s considered a potential CFO or trading division head—would shake up the upper echelon of the 151-year-old firm, which has been nearly all male. Bloomberg reports:
Even in an industry where men dominate every major firm, the dearth of women atop Goldman is stark. None has ever served as its chair, chief executive officer, president, chief operating officer or CFO. Not a single division boasts a female leader. Only two women have been so-called named executive officers—but none since 2005.
Hammack featured in my story last year about the dearth of female CEOs at major U.S. banks. She told me that Goldman has a “long history of women pulling up other women,” but the reality of the firm’s makeup means she’s had to have men—like Solomon and CFO Stephen Scherr—“looking out” for her.
The Bloomberg story describes Hammack as humble and brilliant—she once explained liquidity coverage ratios in Haiku; it paints a less rosy picture of her employer.
One point in particular jumped out at me; that Hammack’s promotion to treasurer in 2018 was controversial because top Goldman executives couldn’t agree whether its trading unit could part with one of its few senior women. That speaks to the pigeon-holing that we know some women face and to the perils of tokenization; if diversity is measured only in headcount—rather than being seen through a larger cultural lens—even a deserved promotion can be considered a loss.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Guess who's back? Almost two years after she left and went to Fox, Hope Hicks will return to the White House as an aide to Jared Kushner, with the title "counselor to the president." She won't be working on communications this time around, instead focusing on projects that Kushner oversees—which include the re-election campaign. New York Times
- Ivanka's bill. Ivanka Trump is working with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to introduce new legislation, the W-GDP Act. The bill would establish an office of women's empowerment led by an ambassador-at-large within the State Department. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who has fought the Trump Administration's expansion of the global gag rule limiting funding to aid groups that provide abortion services, is one of the lawmakers introducing the legislation. In other Ivanka news, Fortune's Alan Murray writes about the group of CEOs who are working with the First Daughter on reskilling the American workforce.
- Sayonara, shopping service. Walmart will shutter Jetblack, its personal shopping service launched by Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss; she left the startup last year. The retail giant had sought investors for the service, which allowed members who paid $600 a year to order almost anything by text message, but was unsuccessful. Almost 300 employees will be laid off. Wall Street Journal
- Teaming up. The U.S. men’s soccer team players association called on the U.S. Soccer Federation to pay the U.S. Women's National Team "significantly more" than the men earned under their recently expired contract. The men are negotiating for a new contract, and U.S. Soccer wants to keep their pay the same—which the men say is a "desperate attempt to cover up the fact that what they did to the women in 2017 [when the women signed their most recent contract] is indefensible." Wall Street Journal
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Senators grill Shelton. President Trump's nominee to the Federal Reserve Judy Shelton faced tough questioning from Republican and Democratic senators yesterday. Some Republicans, including Sens. Pat Toomey and Richard Shelby, are "concerned" about Shelton's candidacy; if she loses two GOP votes, Shelton's nomination would be in question. Her views and past statements of note include advocating for a gold standard and changing her opinion on deposit insurance. CNBC
- Past due. The House voted yesterday to extend the deadline to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The deadline was for 1982, and it's unlikely the GOP-controlled Senate will agree to do the same. It's the second piece of ERA news this week: On Monday, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she thought activists should abandon the fight to ratify the current ERA and instead start over. New York Times
- In and out. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson reshuffled his cabinet yesterday. Out of the cabinet are business secretary Andrea Leadsom, housing minister Esther McVey, secretary of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Theresa Villiers, and transport minister Nusrat Ghani. Anne-Marie Trevelyan got a promotion from defense minister to international development secretary; Brexit defender Suella Braverman is Johnson's new attorney general; and Amanda Milling is now Conservative party chair. Guardian
- Diversity legacy. Katherine W. Phillips was one of the leading academic voices on the importance and challenges of diversity. The Columbia Business School professor died at 47 last month. Her work studied everything from the effects of black women’s hairstyles on perceptions of their professionalism to how office holiday parties can cause friction between racial groups. She told companies and employers that "the value of diversity is there for you to capture." New York Times
ON MY RADAR
Greetings from the alternate universe where Oprah and Michelle Obama are running for president Washington Post
The IMF undergoes structural reform The Economist
How No Time to Die could evolve the concept of the 'Bond girl' Mashable
MP Tracy Brabin's off-the-shoulder dress raises £20,000 for Girlguiding Guardian
PARTING WORDS
"Not sure who was more excited. Glad she remembers me after a year!"
-Astronaut Christina Koch on reuniting with her dog, captured on video


fortune--2020-02-14--Oracle’s Larry Ellison makes friends with his enemy’s enemy, hosting a fundraiser for President Trum

Oracle’s Larry Ellison makes friends with his enemy’s enemy, hosting a fundraiser for President Trump

Larry Ellison, the co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp. is a fierce competitor, to put it mildly. This is a man who helped build a $177 billion company, and who likes to unwind by funding ludicrous hydrofoiling racing catamarans.
Increasingly, Ellison’s company is competing with the cloud computing wing of Amazon.com Inc., and he does it with zeal. Oracle funded an anti-Amazon group called the “Free and Fair Markets Initiative” to attack Amazon. Oracle also worked desperately to derail Amazon’s bid for JEDI, a lucrative Defense Department cloud contract, going for far as to sue the federal government for illegally favoring Amazon.
Now, Ellison is making friends with his enemy’s enemy, who happens to be the President of the United States. On Wednesday, Ellison will host a fundraiser for President Donald Trump at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. Top contributors are expected to shell out $250,000 for a photo, a golf outing and a round-table discussion.
Trump has his own issues with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive officer, who also owns the Washington Post. The paper’s coverage has consistently enraged the president, and Trump has made no secret of his dislike for Bezos, Amazon, or the Post. Perhaps most delightfully to Ellison, the president articulated his desire to “screw Amazon” and block it from the JEDI contract, according to a book written by a former speechwriter for the Secretary of Defense.
Late last year, Amazon lost JEDI to Microsoft, though a court on Thursday froze the contract as Amazon pursues a lawsuit against the government. Amazon is now the one accusing the government of political bias, citing the very public record on the matter.
Is Ellison’s interest in Trump inspired by their shared contempt for Bezos? Who knows. On the one hand, it’s not out of character for Ellison to raise money for Republicans. He backed Marco Rubio in 2016.
Then again, backing Trump is uniquely controversial. Recode called Ellison “one of Silicon Valley’s most eccentric and independent-minded leaders,” observing that those traits might make him immune to “the blowback.”
It will be interesting to see who else—if anyone—from the Silicon Valley elite follows Ellison. If Senator Bernie Sanders keeps racking up wins, will the capitalists in tech really support a self-proclaimed democratic socialist? Founders Fund partner Keith Rabois has said he’d vote for Trump over Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren. (Rank-and-file tech employees, meanwhile, seem happy to support Sanders, who received more money in political contributions from employees at big tech companies than any other presidential candidate in the last three months of 2019.)
In 2016, Rabois’s colleague Peter Thiel bet on Trump. He spoke in Trump’s support at the Republican National Convention. Thiel was basically alone in Silicon Valley in supporting the nominee that no one thought would win, but he continued to support the president in the face of near-universal disdain from the rest of the tech industry. That bet clearly brought Thiel closer to the president. In October, Thiel and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined at the White House.
Even when a president is unpopular with your employees, staying close to power has big benefits for business leaders. Apple CEO Tim Cook has quietly kept the lines open to the president. Earlier this year, a handful of tech industry bigwigs, including Marc Andreessen, the prominent venture capitalist, Sarah Friar, the CEO of Nextdoor.com Inc., and Gregory Becker, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, dined with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A person familiar with the dinner told Bloomberg at the time that it was an attempt to drum up support for the Trump administration.
If people in Silicon Valley are coming around on Trump, they’re keeping it quiet for now. There are clearly risks associated with aligning with the president. But the owners of multibillion-dollar companies are well aware of potential benefits. And if they think he’s going to win, they could see risks to staying away, too.
(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—These are the Democratic candidates who qualify for the next debate so far
—2020 candidates’ positions, and records, on economic issues that affect women
—The case for a national primary
—Fortune Explains: The debt ceiling
—Can Amazon convince a federal court to depose Trump over a $10 billion Pentagon contract?
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-02-14--Facebook says its dating service is hot—but experts say it’s probably not

It may be Valentine’s Day, but Facebook Dating isn’t getting much love.
About two and half years after it first debuted, the social network’s dating service has shown limited signs of progress. Instead, indicators suggest the service may be having difficulty challenging major dating rivals and rolling out in certain countries.
Facebook Dating, which the company first introduced in Colombia in 2018, debuted in the U.S. in September and is currently available in 20 countries. The social network aimed to capitalize on the growing use of online dating, hoping that some of its 2.5 billion users would tap on the match-making tab on its service. And while the company announced Facebook Dating with much fanfare at its F8 developer conference in 2018, it hasn’t provided many details about it since.
“I don’t think we have any specific stats to share on this, but it’s going well,” Mark Zuckerberg said during Facebook’s latest earnings call in January. “I think we’re already one of the top dating services, and we expect to continue growing.”
Facebook declined to make an executive available for an interview with Fortune about its dating service or to answer written questions about it.
Facebook’s entrance into the dating comes as regulators across the globe are cracking down on the company for its mismanagement of user data. Trust in the service has been on the decline after a series of embarrassing failures to protect user data from third parties.
Facebook Dating functions much like other big online dating sites. Users get can scroll through the dating profiles of potential suitors and “like” the ones they want to connect with. Facebook uses its social network to match users to friends of the people within their own networks. It also allows users to create a list of friends who they have secret crushes on. If the other person also adds the admirer to their secret crush, the two are notified.
Facebook Dating recently hit an unexpected roadblock when it tried to expand to Europe. The company had planned to introduce the service there on Feb. 13, according Ireland’s Data Protection Commission. But the commission, concerned about data collection practices for the service, “conducted an inspection” of Facebook’s offices in Dublin on Feb. 10 and “gathered documentation,” according to a statement from the commission on Wednesday. Following the inspection, Facebook postponed its European premiere.
“It’s really important that we get the launch of Facebook Dating right so we are taking a bit more time to make sure the product is ready for the European market,” the company said in a statement. “We worked carefully to create strong privacy safeguards, and complete the data processing impact assessment ahead of the proposed launch in Europe, which we shared with the IDPC when it was requested.”
Roadblocks aside, Facebook Dating, which caused the online dating market leader Match Group’s stock to drop more than 20% when it was first announced, has had little effect on the dating industry, says Benjamin Black, an analyst for Evercore ISI who covers Match Group. Black says Evercore ISI’s models show little to no change to Match’s numbers in the countries that Facebook Dating has entered.
“If you asked me two years ago, my fear would’ve been a large competitor moving into the space,” he says about the competition for Match. “Who’s larger than Facebook? But yet it hasn’t affected user or subscriber trends.”
And apparently Match Group agrees. Former CEO Mandy Ginsberg, who announced plans to step down last month, says the company hasn’t seen Facebook Dating impact any of its brands, which in 2019 collectively attracted an average 9.8 million subscribers across services including Tinder, Match.com, Hinge, and OkCupid. “We just haven’t seen it,” she says on a recent earnings call.
And Gary Swidler, Match Group’s chief financial officer who recently also took over the role as chief operating officer, reiterated that sentiment to Fortune at Goldman Sach’s Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco this week.
“You can’t underestimate them,” he says about Facebook. “But the reality is they’re in 20 countries, and when you look at our numbers, there’s no impact.”
Facebook has some built-in advantages—a large user base, brand familiarity, and a dating service the company said it plans to keep free of cost and ads, says Ali Mogharabi, analyst at Morningstar. And while he says it’s too early to judge the dating service’s traction, he says it’s not one of the businesses that poses a big threat to rivals.
“Facebook is basically trying to provide additional apps and features to maintain all of the users it has,” Mogharabi says. “For that reason, we don’t think it’s going to be aggressively marketing the dating app.”
Though Facebook has not released any numbers about use of its dating service—and third parties can’t track it because it’s an in-app feature—that doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t using it, Black says. But Mogharabi and Black point to several other challenges that Facebook has in the dating space.
First, many people are reluctant to trust Facebook with their data, Mogharabi says. And online dating, in particular, involves users revealing sensitive information about themselves. Second, users join Facebook, more often than not, to keep in touch with old friends rather than to find new ones, Black says. So even if Facebook improves the features and experience of its dating service—Black says it still lacks many capabilities that rivals have—users may not want to use the service for dating.
“Generally speaking, folks like to separate their dating life and their social life,” he says. “This is too close for comfort.”
But Black says the biggest giveaway that Facebook’s dating service may not be going as well as the company initially planned is simple: They never talk about it.
“They have endless amount of resources, so it’s not like they’re running out of cash” for the dating service, Black says. “It could be modestly successful with more product iteration, but I don’t think it’s one of the priorities for the company.”


fortune--2020-02-14--400 million social media users in India will lose anonymity under planned new government rules

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok will have to reveal users’ identities if Indian government agencies ask them to, according to the country’s controversial new rules for social media companies and messaging apps expected to be published later this month.
The requirement comes as governments around the world are trying to hold social media companies more accountable for the content that circulates on their platforms, whether it’s fake news, child porn, racist invective or terrorism-related content. India’s new guidelines go further than most other countries’ by requiring blanket cooperation with government inquiries, no warrant or judicial order required.
India proposed these guidelines in Dec. 2018 and asked for public comment. The Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade group that counts Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google among its members, responded that the requirements “would be a violation of the right to privacy recognized by the Supreme Court.”
But the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is expected to publish the new rules later this month without major changes, according to a government official familiar with the matter.
“The guidelines for intermediaries are under process,” said N.N. Kaul, the media adviser to the minister of electronics & information technology. “We cannot comment on the guidelines or changes till they are published.”
The provisions in the earlier draft had required platforms such as Google’s YouTube or ByteDance Inc.’s TikTok, Facebook or its Instagram and WhatsApp apps, to help the government trace the origins of a post within 72 hours of a request. The companies would also have to preserve their records for at least 180 days to aid government investigators, establish a brick-and-mortar operation within India and appoint both a grievance officer to deal with user complaints and a government liaison. The Ministry is still finalizing the language and content.
The rules cover all social media and messaging apps with more than 5 million users. India, with 1.3 billion people, has about 500 million internet users. It isn’t clear whether the identities of foreign users would be subject to the Indian government’s inquiries.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have been frustrated by tech companies that have refused to identify users, unlock devices or generally cooperate with government investigations, particularly in cases relating to terrorism.
In India, where the internet — and fake news — are still relatively new phenomenon, a false report of rampant child abduction and organ harvesting circulated widely via WhatsApp, leading to mob violence and over three dozen fatal lynchings in 2017 and 2018.
WhatsApp refused a request from the government to reveal the origins of the rumors, citing its promise of privacy and end-to-end encryption for its 400 million Indian users. It instead offered to fund research into preventing the spread of fake news and mounted a public education campaign in the country, its biggest global market.
WhatsApp will “not compromise on security because that would make people less safe,” it said in a statement Wednesday, adding its global user base had reached over 2 billion. “For even more protection, we work with top security experts, employ industry leading technology to stop misuse as well as provide controls and ways to report issues — without sacrificing privacy.”
At the same time, tech companies and civil rights groups say the new rules are an invitation to abuse and censorship, as well as a burdensome requirement on new and growing companies.
In an open letter to India’s IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, executives from Mozilla Corp., GitHub Inc. and Cloudflare Inc. said the guidelines could lead to “automated censorship” and “increase surveillance.“ In order to be able to trace the originator of content, platforms would basically be required to surveil their users, undermine encryption, and harm the fundamental right to privacy of Indian users, they said.
Companies such as Mozilla or Wikipedia wouldn’t fall under the new rules, the government official said. Browsers, operating systems, and online repositories of knowledge, software development platforms, are all exempt. Only social media platforms and messaging apps will be covered.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Business’s coronavirus conundrum: What’s the best alternative to a handshake?
—Bernard Arnault was briefly the world’s richest man. Then coronavirus struck
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fortune--2020-02-16--What’s open (and closed) on Presidents’ Day 2020?

If we want to keep eating chocolate , we have to end deforestation

Presidents’ Day is one of those holidays that falls into a gray area. Some businesses are closed, some are a bit more loose with the hours they expect workers to be at their desks, and others ignore it altogether.
Different states even call it by different names, often honoring different occupants of the Oval Office.
One thing is certain: It’s the first big shopping holiday of the year. Not sure which stores and offices will be open or closed on Presidents’ Day 2019? We’ve got the details and a few informational nuggets about the holiday.
What is Presidents’ Day?
Established in 1885 to honor George Washington, Presidents’ Day is a floating holiday that can take place anywhere from Feb. 15 to Feb. 21. It falls on the third Monday of February.
The day was originally referred to as Washington’s Birthday (a now-ironic name, since the first president was born on Feb. 22), and is still called that in Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Louisiana, and New York. Virginia calls it George Washington Day. Five other states call it some offshoot of Washington and Lincoln’s Birthday. And Alabama, for some reason, calls it George Washington/Thomas Jefferson Birthday, despite the fact that Jefferson wasn’t born until April 13.
Are banks open on Presidents’ Day?
Because Presidents’ Day is a federal holiday, most banks will be closed. A major exception to this is TD Bank, which will be open normal business hours.
ATM machines, of course, will still be available for you to get cash or make deposits into your accounts at other banks.
Will there be any mail delivery on Presidents’ Day?
Not from the U.S. Postal Service. That government division will be closed, but UPS and FedEx will both be open, meaning you can expect package delivery as usual for the most part. FedEx Express might have modified service. Check with the company before sending your packages.
Is the stock market open on Presidents’ Day?
The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and bond markets are all closed on Presidents’ Day and will reopen on Tuesday, Feb. 18.
Are government offices open on Presidents’ Day?
City, county, state, and federal offices are generally closed. Some states also have limited closings on Feb. 12, Lincoln’s birthday.
Which stores are closed on Presidents’ Day?
Presidents’ Day is one of the first big retail events of the year. DealNews says consumers can expect to see savings of up to 70% on computers and up to 60% off for mattresses. Home goods and appliances are also being offered at steep discounts and winter clothing will generally be on clearance.
Pretty much every retailer—from Target to Walmart to Home Depot—will be open on Presidents’ Day and actively trying to woo consumers into the store. Similarly, big grocery chains, such as Harris Teeter, Kroger and Whole Foods, as well as restaurants are largely open.
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fortune--2020-02-16--One of the world’s fastest men uses ‘Shark Tank’ as the starting block for business success

Jared Ward has a lot on his mind these days.
At the end of February the 31-year-old marathoner will be running in the trials for the U.S. Olympic team, for a chance to represent the nation at the Tokyo games this summer. As the top American finisher in the last two NYC Marathons, and the sixth-place finisher in the last Summer Olympics in Rio, the dad of four is well positioned for a run at the tape.
But Ward also has a side venture occupying his headspace: The Meteor.
It’s a heated, vibrating massage sphere, about the size and look of a rubberized softball. It’s made by the company MyoStorm, founded by former track teammate Shaquille Walker and mechanical engineer Jonothan DiPeri, who brought on Ward as an early investor, researcher and ambassador.
Since no one can afford to have a masseur hanging around 24/7—not even one of the world’s most elite marathoners—it’s a handy device to charge up and have in your workout bag, to soothe athletes’ sore muscles.
Galen Rupp (center) celebrates with teammates Jared Ward (L) and Mebrahtom Keflezighi during the Men’s Marathon at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Matthias Hangst—Getty Images
Having first launched on Kickstarter back in 2018, the product’s rollout has been, well, meteoric, with 16,000 units sold already (currently offered at $149 a pop). Since Ward is very familiar with extreme personal challenge, he has been able to apply the lessons of his running life to the business world.
“The marathon is a good analogy for a lot of big-picture goals,” says Ward, also an adjunct professor in statistics at Brigham Young University in Utah. “You’re trying to get out as quickly as possible, be strategic in how you’re spending your time and resources, and have a long-term view of your trajectory.
“The race isn’t just about the next mile, it’s also about how that mile sets up for the one after that. You have to manage things right in the present, to be prepared for the future.”
The product got wide visibility when its creators were invited on the popular ABC show Shark Tank in 2019. The pitch was almost too successful, with multiple sharks jostling to be a part of the venture, including Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary.
“Before we walked onto set to pitch to the sharks, it was oddly like the runner’s bullpen before being marched out onto the track for race,” says Ward. “You know what’s coming, and it’s minutes away, but by that point there’s nothing else you can do.” The team opted to partner with longtime QVC personality Lori Greiner, who is currently doing due diligence on the numbers before striking a final deal.
Meteor 2.0 Courtesy of MyoStorm
“Recovery products are one of the few bright spots in the world of health and fitness equipment,” says Matt Powell, senior industry advisor for sports at market research firm The NPD Group. “If this ball performs as stated, it could be a winner.” One challenge, he notes: The presence of competing products on the market. The Hypersphere from the company Hyperice, for instance, is selling at the same price point.
Just like any marathon, the road to business success has not always been a smooth one. While in a race you can control most factors—your preparation and fitness level, or your pace—in the corporate world, there are some variables you can’t always control.
To wit: Supply-chain issues. When their manufacturers in China weren’t able to deliver Meteors by early December, as promised, that meant some holiday chaos.
“We ended up being able to air-freight three-quarters of those presales and have them delivered by Christmas, but some people only got them a day or two afterwards,” says Ward. “Dealing with the customer-service aspect of 2,500 people disappointed that the Meteor didn’t come on time for Christmas, was very emotionally draining.”
Business-world challenges don’t seem to have taken away from Ward’s training focus, though. He just set a personal best for the half marathon in Houston, at a blistering 1:01:36, and says he can’t remember having a “more consistent build” for a big race—in this case, the coming Olympic trials in Atlanta.
But while marathoning may appear like a solitary venture—out there pushing the limits of human endurance, like Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge’s recent breaking of the two-hour marathon barrier for the first time in history—Ward is fascinated by team dynamics, inspired by the work of management consultant and author Jim Collins.
“It’s all about taking a team that’s good and making them great, like our BYU cross-country team that just won the national championship,” he says. “In running and in business, getting the right people on your team is huge.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Why China is still so susceptible to disease outbreaks
—The rich own stocks, the middle class own homes. How betting it all on real estate is a wealth gap problem
—14,000 recalled baby carriers could drop infants on ground
—Stock scammers are using the coronavirus outbreak to dupe investors, SEC warns
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