fortune--2020-11-13--Biden beat Trump but now faces the final boss: Mitch McConnell

It’s a tale as old as time: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell versus Barack Obama—or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or Hillary Clinton or Merrick Garland, or whoever the Democrat du jour is.
Now, with two tight races in Georgia set to control the fate of the Senate next year, President-elect Joe Biden may suffer the same fate.
McConnell doesn’t deny that one of the pillars of his reign in the Senate is to block any potential Democratic policy and thwart bipartisan bills in favor of partisan political maneuvering. He made it clear that his day one goal during the Obama presidency was to make him a one-termer at all costs. He gleefully refers to himself as the grim reaper; “gridlock” may as well be his middle name. Once, after hearing McConnell deliver a heartfelt speech about Senate spouses, then-Sen. Al Franken joked that he preferred his speeches when they weren’t evil. “I like the evil ones better,” McConnell retorted, smiling.
And while Wall Street argues that a Republican-held Senate and Democratic-held White House is an ideal situation for markets, Biden is likely looking at two years of a legislative stalemate unless Democrats pick up two runoff seats in Georgia this January. Early polling shows tight races, with each candidate within the margin of error of the other. It’s possible that both Democrats win their races, and the Senate ends up 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker, but it’s a toss-up right now. And even so, the very slim margins Democrats will have in Congress over Republicans won’t translate into heaps of leverage.
Albert Einstein is famously misattributed as saying that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We don’t actually know where the quote comes from, but it holds true: If you want to change the results, you probably need to shake up the process. Yet centrists appear to believe that Biden will be able to work hand in hand with McConnell, that because of his history as a beloved peacemaker in the Senate, he’ll be able to get a number of relatively progressive policy initiatives passed even if Republicans maintain control.
Washington Post columnist George F. Will has argued that Biden could actually benefit from a Republican majority Senate because he won’t have to bend to the progressive side of his own party. Politico has called the pair a “power couple” and argued that they could get along. South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn said that dealing with McConnell will “not be as hard as some people think. I don’t think Mitch will be as mean to Joe as he was to Obama.”
“An institutionalist like Joe Biden knows that’s all he can get,” said Scott Segal, an influential Washington lobbyist. “And I would stress here that Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell may have been gladiators against one another, both in the Senate and in this election season, but they know each other very well.”
It’s true that Biden and McConnell worked together during Biden’s 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years in the White House. In 2010, McConnell collaborated closely with the former vice president to broker a large tax deal. McConnell invited Biden to speak at an event at the University of Louisville afterward, as a sign of respect.
“You want to see whether a Republican and Democrat really like each other,’’ Biden said at the event as McConnell looked on. “Well, I’m here to tell you we do.’’
The pair also skirted their parties’ leadership by coming together to negotiate around the potential fiscal cliff in 2013, opting to leave then-Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid out of their talks.
Years later, as the Obama administration came to an end, and Biden said goodbye to the Senate, McConnell said that Biden was “a good friend” as well as a “trusted partner.”
It appears that Biden doesn’t want those warm feelings to end. The President-elect has indicated that one of his first actions in the Oval Office will be calling Republicans because “we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to move forward here. Because there are so many things we really do agree on.” He has floated the idea of including Republicans in his own cabinet.
“Refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another—it’s not some mysterious force beyond our control. It’s a decision, a choice we make,” Biden told supporters in Wilmington, Del., during his victory speech. “And if we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate. And I believe that this is part of the mandate given to us from the American people. They want us to cooperate in their interest.”
Words are one thing, but actions are another. In a preview of Barack Obama’s memoir, obtained by CNN, the 44th President described Biden’s relationship with McConnell as one based mainly on Republican prejudices and not a particularly special friendship.
Obama writes: “One of the reasons I’d chosen Joe to act as an intermediary—in addition to his Senate experience and legislative acumen—was my awareness that in McConnell’s mind, negotiations with the vice president didn’t inflame the Republican base in quite the same way that any appearance of cooperation with (Black, Muslim socialist) Obama was bound to do.”
The Republican Party has also changed since the Obama era, as demonstrated by McConnell’s unwillingness to publicly accept that Biden will replace President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, instead opting to side with Trump and his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
“President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” McConnell said following the election results. He has refused to say that Trump should concede the race.
Rumors that Trump is considering a 2024 presidential run means that his control over the party may remain strong over the next four years of the Biden administration, tying McConnell’s hands. McConnell was certainly an obstructionist well before Trump came into office, but during the Obama administration, he did sometimes negotiate with Democrats over dire matters like the fiscal cliff. With Trump’s eyes still on him and a Supreme Court shifted in Republican favor, McConnell may not be as amenable this time around.
Under Trump, American political behavior grew increasingly partisan. The Republican Party is far more conservative than it was 20 years ago—and less representative of the nation’s demographics. Even views on McConnell have shifted recently, emboldening the leader to stay the course. In 2017, the majority of Republicans and Democrats viewed the Senate leader unfavorably. But according to surveys conducted by research firm YouGov, between 2017 and 2020, his average rating among Republicans grew from 4.0 to 5.4 on a 10-point scale, while his rating among Democrats dropped from 2.6 to 1.8.
“McConnell may try to isolate Biden to cut deals, but I don’t believe the caucus will agree with it,” said Jim Manley, a top aide to Reid. “The Republican Party has changed.”


fortune--2020-11-13--DoorDash IPO filing shows it could turn a profit only at height of lockdowns

Will another $ 1,200 stimulus check ever come ?
Here ’ s what we know

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DoorDash, the largest U.S. food delivery startup, published its long-awaited initial public offering prospectus on Friday, showing that it continues to lose money even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages and has multiplied its sales threefold this year.
The company’s S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that in the first three quarters of 2020, DoorDash revenue more than tripled, to $1.92 billion, from the same period last year, yet the company reported a net loss of $149 million, admittedly much smaller than last year’s. On a quarterly basis, DoorDash eked out a $23 million profit in the three months ended in June, a period that saw U.S. lockdowns at their strictest and most widespread, before returning to losses.
And that has raised questions about whether DoorDash—a company that connects restaurants, drivers (or cyclists), and consumers—or its “gig economy peers” can be profitable, even with the unexpected help of a pandemic that has led large numbers of Americans to avoid eating in restaurants and shift spending to food delivery (rather than, say, travel).
DoorDash, valued at $16 billion in a funding round in June, itself raised the specter that the COVID-19 boom for sales will wane. “The circumstances that have accelerated the growth of our business stemming from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic may not continue in the future,” it wrote in the prospectus, noting that the pace of revenue and total order volume would likely decline.
Still, the company and its investors, which include SoftBank and Sequoia, were likely tempted by the red-hot stock market and by the surge in rival Grubhub’s shares (up 49% this year).
DoorDash also made clear in its prospectus that it sees restaurant delivery as only the foundation of its hoped-for empire. “We believe the network we have built ideally positions us to fulfill our vision of empowering all local businesses to compete in the convenience economy,” Tony Xu, CEO and cofounder, wrote in a letter to prospective investors that started on a personal note with a reference to his mother.
DoorDash had already signaled those intentions last month when it announced a plan to offer same-day delivery of medication to customers of Walmart Inc.’s Sam’s Club business and over the summer when it disclosed a delivery program with Walgreens.
Despite the ongoing financial losses, there were encouraging trends for DoorDash’s business. In its investor presentation, DoorDash said it commanded a 50% share of the food delivery market, besting rivals UberEats, Postmates, and Grubhub, among others.
What’s more, DoorDash is now generating more cash than it is using, taking in $315 million in the first nine months of 2020, while burning through $308 million in the same period last year. And the company has 18 million regular customers.
Earlier this month, voters in California approved a ballot initiative, financed by DoorDash and other gig economy giants like Lyft and Uber, that will shield those companies from a new law in the country’s largest state that would have treated their drivers as employees eligible for a slew of benefits rather than as independent contractors.
DoorDash plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker DASH.


fortune--2020-11-13--Hackers are trying to disrupt and steal COVID-19 vaccine research

Hackers in Russia and North Korea are attacking some of the key companies and research facilities trying to develop and test vaccines against COVID-19, Microsoft said on Friday. The attacks could result in delayed development of these desperately needed vaccines or in the theft of vaccine-related data.
One North Korean group has been sending emails to medical researchers and their colleagues, pretending to be from the World Health Organization and inquiring about COVID-19 progress, the software giant noted. Another North Korean effort involves their sending emails posing as recruiters with fake job offers. The Russian group simply tried to brute force its way into medical companies’ network by rapidly trying millions of combinations of log-ins and passwords.
The “majority” of the attacks have been blocked, but some have been successful, Microsoft said without providing further details.
“It’s disturbing that these challenges have now merged as cyberattacks being used to disrupt health care organizations fighting the pandemic,” Tom Burt, vice president for customer security at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We think these attacks are unconscionable and should be condemned by all civilized society. Today, we’re sharing more about the attacks we’ve seen most recently and are urging governments to act.”
The latest report of cyberattacks against the pandemic response follows earlier reports that health care and research facilities in the U.S., France, Spain, Thailand, and other countries have been victimized by hackers. Some facilities succumbed to ransomware that locked up data. Others had their networks crash or saw data stolen. Two months ago, a woman in Düsseldorf, Germany, died after delays in treatment owing in part to a cyberattack on the hospital where she was being taken. In May, the International Red Cross and representatives of other groups called for “the world’s governments to take immediate and decisive action to prevent and stop cyberattacks” against the health sector.
Microsoft wants governments to escalate their response to the attacks even when the hacker groups are not officially part of another government.
“We believe the law should be enforced not just when attacks originate from government agencies but also when they originate from criminal groups that governments enable to operate—or even facilitate—within their borders,” Burt said. “This is criminal activity that cannot be tolerated.”


fortune--2020-11-13--How this investor knew to bet early on Airbnb

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I’ve posed an open-ended question to many a startup founder and investor in the months since I’ve chatted with investors for Term Sheet’s periodic, open-ended, Friday Q&A: Who is an interesting investor you know?
Invariably, Elad Gil’s name popped up to the point I was conditioned to expect it.
While the name rings loud in venture circles, he has, in many ways, remained low-key—and his website looks straight out of the 2000s. But his tech investments have been remarkably prescient. Gil, who typically makes bets in seed-stage companies, has cut checks to some 25 startups that have since reached the vaunted unicorn status, including Instacart, Stripe, and Coinbase.
And there’s more: Other companies in his portfolio such as PagerDuty, Square, and Pinterest are already trading in public markets, and Airbnb and Wish are expected to IPO this year.
I caught up with Gil to ask what compels him to invest. Here’s part of our conversation, edited for clarity. You can read the full conversation here.
You generally invest at seed stage—when a company’s business plan may still be unclear. So what do you look for in founders?
I think the biggest determinant of success tends to be the market. I’ve seen really, really good teams in terrible markets get completely crushed. I’ve also seen really bad teams in good markets do really well. So first and foremost, I care about if you’re building something interesting in a market that is large enough.
It’s pretty rare for me to invest in a team without an idea—usually I wait until people are working on something specific so it’s easier to validate whether that market makes sense. Sometimes you see teams that have built the same thing over and over again in their career for different companies, and they decide to build it as a piece of infrastructure, like PagerDuty.
On whether you’re building something interesting in a market large enough, though—that’s really hard to tell a priori because, if a market is big and interesting and obvious, then everyone would already be doing it. So the startups that do best almost by definition have to be in non-obvious markets. People may think the idea is toyish, or dumb, or super low-end—so often things start off looking weird—and you [as an investor] may wonder, “Why would you really want to do that?” And you need a bit of convincing.
So was that the case for your investment in Airbnb? I remember that Andreessen Horowitz’s Managing Partner Jeff Jordan said he thought the idea was crazy when he first heard of it.
I invested in Airbnb, I think, when it was just eight people, and they were still working out of Brian Chesky’s apartment at the time. I knew them previously, and they pinged me while raising their Series A. It actually seemed like a really good concept and idea.
At the time, I think there were all sorts of signs that something like this should work. One: The product was beginning to work on their side. And before that, when I was in undergrad and grad school, I had travelled through a [travel] service called Servas, which was born out of the Esperanto community in World War II. Their basic belief was that if you could stay with people in a foreign country and learn about them directly and vice versa, we would be more likely to have world peace. So you’d sign up for the service and they’d interview you and make sure you weren’t crazy or anything. Then you’d visit a country and they’d give you a printed booklet with the names of all the people that would host you for free in that country—with rules, of course, around needing to contact them a week or a night ahead. So you could literally show up in Rome with this booklet and just call or email anyone in it to stay with them.
So when I saw Airbnb, I thought: Wow, this is Servas but you can monetize it.
Read the full Q&A here.
DOORDASH IPO: The food delivery service has filed for an IPO. Backed by the likes of Sequoia Capital and the SoftBank Vision Fund, the company posted revenue of $1.9 billion and a loss of $149 million in the past nine months ending September. But losses actually narrowed significantly since the same period a year earlier. While the company posted revenue of $587 million in the same period in 2019, lossed stood at $533 million. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Solv, a San Francisco-based healthcare platform connecting patients to healthcare providers, raised $27 Million in extended Series B funding. Acrew Capital led the round and was joined by investors including MultiCare Health System, Light Street Capital, Benchmark, and Greylock Partners.
- Springtide, a New York-based practice treating children with autism spectrum disorder, raised $18.1 million in Series A funding. Deerfield Management Company and Optum Ventures led the round.
- PassiveLogic, a Salt Lake City-based maker of creators of an automated building controls platform, raised $16 million in Series A funding. Keyframe Capital and Addition led the round.
- GuideCX, a Salt Lake City, Ut.-based platform for customer onboarding, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Sorenson Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Epic Ventures, Orchard Ventures, Album VC and Prelude.
- Nana Technologies, a San Francisco-based maker of an online vocational school and appliance repair marketplace, raised $6 million in seed funding. Shripriya Mahesh of Spero Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Next Play Ventures, Lachy Groom, Scott Belsky, Geoff Donaker (of Burst Capital), and Michael Staton (of Learn Capital).
- Didactic, an Austin-based e-learning company co-founded by Udemy co-founder Gagan Biyani and AltMBA co-founder Wes Kao, raised $4.3 million in seed funding. First Round led the round. Read more.
- Shred, a Los Angeles-based fitness platform, raised $4 million in seed funding. Investors include Eduardo Vivas.
- Reprise, a Boston-based demo creation platform company, raised $3.2 million in seed funding. Glasswing Ventures and Accomplice Ventures led the round.
- OthersideAI, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based tool for fleshing out emails, raised $2.6 million. Madrona Venture Group led the round and was joined by investors including Active Capital, Hustle Fund, and Chapter One.
- Adaptilens, a Boston-based maker of a lens for improving vision, raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Pillar VC led the round.
- Popshop, a Los Angeles-based live-shopping startup, has reportedly raised a Series A round that values it at about $100 million. Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures led the round. Read more.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- The Carlyle Group invested over $250 million in Pharmapacks, a New York-based ecommerce platform and retail seller, valuing the latter at about $1.1 billion.
- LINQ, backed by Banneker Partners, acquired TITAN School Solutions, an Irvine, Calif.-based provider of K-12 school nutrition management software. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- MBO Partners acquired MindSumo, a Durham, N.C.-based crowdsourcing platform for business ideas. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Newlight Partners invested in Sail Internet, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based internet provider using fiber and next-generation wireless infrastructure. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- New Capital Partners and OSF Ventures invested in DotCom Therapy, a Madison, Wis.-basd virtual behavioral health solution. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Utz Brands (NYSE: UTZ) agreed to acquire Truco Enterprises, a seller of tortilla chips, salsa and queso, from Insignia Capital Group for as much as $480 million.
- Republic acquired NextSeed, a Houston-based platform for investing in small businesses backed by investors including Rethink Capital Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHERS
- Visa invested in LISNR, a Cincinnati-based ultrasonic data transmission firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPO
- Instacart, a San Francisco-based grocery delivery company, is gearing up for an IPO next year that could value it at about $30 billion, per Reuters. Its investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and D1 Capital Partner. Read more.
- Airbnb, the home sharing firm preparing for a Nasdaq debut, is also considering a listing in 2021 on the Long-Term Stock Exchange, per Bloomberg. Read more.
SPAC
- Health Assurance Acquisition, formed by General Catalyst , raised $500 million.
- NSU Acquisition III, formed by Cohen & Company seeking investments in the insurance industry, filed to raise $200 million
F+FS
- Better Tomorrow Ventures, a fintech focused pre-seed and seed fund, raised $75 million in funding. Read more.
PEOPLE
- Index Ventures named Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas as a partner. Gonzalez-Cadenas was COO of GoCardless.
- M13 named Anna Barber as partner and head of Launchpad. She was previously managing director of Techstars LA.
- Qiming Venture Partners USA promoted Anna French and Colin Walsh to partner.


fortune--2020-11-13--Why so many valuable startups seem like the dumbest idea at first

Elad Gil didn’t grow up in Silicon Valley. The son of a nurse and an academic studying education psychology, he grew up akin to a military brat, moving between Michigan, San Diego, Israel, and Arizona in his early years.
But he seems to have a golden touch when picking startups that turn into unicorns or decacorns. Gil, who typically makes bets in seed-stage companies, has cut checks to some 25 startups that have since reached the vaunted unicorn status, including Instacart, Stripe, and Coinbase.
And there’s more: Other companies in his portfolio such as PagerDuty, Square, and Pinterest are already trading in public markets, while more, such as Airbnb and Wish, are expected to IPO this year.
Now billed as a “startup helper” who advises new companies as they seek to get off the ground or scale, Gil has worked to start Google’s mobile efforts and help Twitter scale from 90 employees to 1,500. He also co-founded a genetic testing startup, Color Genomics.
While many individual investors are considered angels that put in small amounts of capital early on, Gil is also often cited as a part of trend dubbed “solo capitalists”—a class of investors who are putting in large checks even in later stages and compete with traditional venture capital shops for highly desirable investments.
Fortune caught up with the investor to discuss how he finds and evaluates investments at a stage when many companies look very different from their final form—and why by definition, the largest and most successful startups seem dumb or low-end at first glance.
Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity:
Tell me about yourself—how did you end up in tech investing, of all things?
I was getting a Ph.D in biology—focused on human diseases-related areas, for example virology, cancer, aging—and I realized partway through that I didn’t want to become an academic, partly because you get thrown into a lab for a long time. I was thinking through what is the biggest way to have an impact and do something useful for people.
At the same time, I was interested in technology. I think we forget today how hard it was to do so many things: When I was in high school, I mailed random mathematicians because I was really interested what they were doing, and they would then send back those yellow envelopes with print outs of their papers. Now, oh my gosh, suddenly any kid can go online and read every single mathematics paper that is relevant in the world.
So I moved out to the San Francisco Bay area to join the startup world near the end of the dot-com boom. I still have an old Silicon Valley ethos of wanting to do useful things for people and to impact the world positively—unfortunately that’s become the type of thing that is made fun of in popular media, like Silicon Valley.
You generally invest at seed stage—when a company’s business plan may still be unclear. So what do you look for in founders?
I think the biggest determinant of success tends to be the market. I’ve seen really, really good teams in terrible markets get completely crushed. I’ve also seen really bad teams in good markets do really well. So first and foremost, I care about if you’re building something interesting in a market that is large enough.
It’s pretty rare for me to invest in a team without an idea—usually I wait until people are working on something specific so it’s easier to validate whether that market makes sense. Sometimes you see teams that have built the same thing over and over again in their career for different companies, and they decide to build it as a piece of infrastructure, like PagerDuty.
On whether you’re building something interesting in a market large enough, though—that’s really hard to tell a priori because, if a market is big and interesting and obvious, then everyone would already be doing it. So the startups that do best almost by definition have to be in non-obvious markets. People may think it’s toyish, or dumb, or super low-end—so often things start off looking weird, and you [as an investor], may wonder, “Why would you really want to do that?” And you need a bit of convincing.
So was that the case for your investment in Airbnb? I remember that Andreessen Horowitz’s Managing Partner Jeff Jordan said he thought the idea was crazy when he first heard of it.
I invested in Airbnb, I think, when it was just eight people, and they were still working out of Brian Chesky’s apartment at the time. I knew them previously, and they pinged me while raising their Series A. It actually seemed like a really good concept and idea.
At the time, I think there were all sorts of signs that something like this should work. One: The product was beginning to work on their side. And before that, when I was in undergrad and a little during grad school, I had travelled through a [travel] service called Servas, a service born out of the Esperanto community in World War II. Their basic belief was that if you could stay with people in a foreign country and learn about them directly and vice versa, we would be more likely to have world peace. So you’d sign up for the service and they’d interview you and make sure you weren’t crazy or anything. Then you’d visit a country and they’d give you a printed booklet with the names of all the people that would host you for free in that country—with rules, of course, around needing to contact them a week or a night ahead. So you could literally show up in Rome with this booklet and just call or email anyone in it to stay with them.
So when I saw Airbnb, I thought: Wow, this is Servas but you can monetize it.
But you do also think the founders and their characteristics are important.
Founders are really important. Beyond signals like perseverance, grit, and ethics, you ask: Are people learning rapidly? Are they good at sales? Not only can they sell to new customers, but also can they convince people to join them and can they raise money? You need at least one part of the founding team to be good at selling, and one part to be good at building, and later in life of the company, you need someone who is good at tight operations.
If I were to use Apple as an analogy: Steve Wozniak could build anything. Steve Jobs could sell anything. Tim Cook really ended up running the operations from the back end and scaling the supply chains.
There seems to be a new trend around “solo capitalists”—single-person “venture firms” that are able to write checks faster than their traditional counterparts. You are considered one of those solo capitalists. Why do you think it is happening?
What people now call “solo capitalists” actually has a pretty long history. Arthur Rock was the original investor in Apple and in a bunch of other great companies including Intel. Originally, he was part of a two-person outfit called Davis and Rock, but he eventually went out on his own in the ’80s and was just investing as what we would now call a solo capitalist.
But now there is a set of individuals who are investing and competing more aggressively for Series A, B, C, and beyond—competing later in the life of companies rather than just the seed or the A.
One shift is that companies have stayed private for much longer. Now companies take 8 to 12 years to go public, but founders could still use help from operator investors, which many solo capitalist are, as their companies are scaling and going into growth spurts—which is often when everything is starting to break at a company.
I also think this is a trend because there’s been a sudden shift in which networks are really important. I feel like this happens every five years or so. Some networks that were relevant before are still relevant today, like Y-Combinator or Google. But there are a bunch of companies that aren’t as relevant anymore and are being replaced by, say, Stripe—which is a really important founding network—or Opendoor, Coinbase, Uber, etc. There are more and more founders [and investors] emerging from these next waves of companies.
That said, I do think there are some traditional late-stage funds that are almost late-stage dressing for people acting as solo capitalists—I don’t want to out them (laughs)—but there really are some funds with just one main partner and a bunch of junior people.
What are the networks that are less relevant today for startup formation?
There are some companies that are less central now—and then there are some that have, oddly enough, never spawned anybody, or spawned very few companies.
There’s very few companies, for example, that have come out of Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple. It’s so weird, right? And it’s part of the reason why Seattle, while an interesting city with tons of great engineers, hasn’t created a whole lot of startups in the last twenty years. There are many interesting companies up there, but it’s not reflective of the fact that Amazon and Microsoft are anchor companies.
There are sometimes small companies that have spawned half a dozen interesting companies and other dynamics. Look at the PayPal network: Every single company founded by someone ex-PayPal that hit scale was founded by a former executive. For some reason, the executive team at PayPal was amazing at starting these massive, important companies, but the rank-and-file employees, with the big exception of YouTube, didn’t start much. Why is that? It could be the culture, the decision-making, the people they attract—I have no idea why. There are really strange dynamics that I don’t really understand but I think are fascinating to think about.
You are also an investor in Coinbase, the crypto exchange. Its CEO Brian Armstrong recently came out publicly with a divisive memo calling employees to refrain from politics. What is your view on how that could impact the company as it seeks to grow?
I think that question’s best directed at the Coinbase team. I wasn’t involved in the decisions around that post and I don’t have insights relevant to it.
So to you, it’s not a question of whether or not he should have posted it, but that he had the right to do so.
I think, fundamentally, it is up to the founder and/or CEO of the company to determine what they want the employees of their company to focus on from a mission-driven perspective. And it is really up to the founders, really early on in the life of the company, to define that mission, and to some extent you define that mission over time. Each CEO has it within their purview to define the focus and mission of the company. And if people want to have a broad mission for their company, they can define it that way. And if they want to have a very narrow mission for their company, they can define it that way too.
What are some of the areas you are interested in investing today? You’ve previously pointed to defense, but you also think there is space for new social media companies—for example, you invested in Clubhouse.
About a year ago, I read a blog post about interesting things that should happen in the social-media world. Number one, there was a technology shift—so WebRTC and WebGL were baked into the browser—and WebRTC allowed for really crisp audio and video that you can build really great video apps on.
Secondly, you have a generational shift. People don’t want to use their parents’ social network, and I think in five to eight years, there will be turnover on certain networks and I think we are ripe for one. And now with COVID, people crave social interactions so you have more room for experimentation and adoption.
I’m trying to keep an open mind on it—because something like Clubhouse I would’ve never predicted. I never a priori would have said an audio-only format [is the next big feature]. Some things aren’t that compelling until you try it. So I’ve been scouring obscure parts of the webs and playing with them. I think there are finally things happening with, say, in-browser VR—but again, it’s very early.
Any big misses in terms of picking out investments?
Oh, a bunch. I missed Lyft. I was a little worried about the valuation at the time and competition with Uber. At the time there was a really strong perception that every strong technology market would be winner-takes-all when in reality, many markets are oligopoly markets. I just misunderstood the market structure and the valuation.


fortune--2020-11-13--Meditation app Calm boosted after sponsoring CNN’s election night coverage

Hundreds of thousands of Americans were glued to their televisions last week as results from a particularly contentious election began rolling in. And while the nation waited with bated breath to find out who would become the 46th President of the U.S., a mental wellness app was capitalizing on an opportunity to relay a calming message to viewers.
Calm, the meditation and relaxation app, purchased a sponsorship with CNN, giving it prime placing on the screen throughout the network’s election coverage. The app’s logo appeared in the corner of CNN’s Key Race Alerts, which was basically any segment during which the network had updates on votes in a particular state. The juxtaposition couldn’t have been more jarring: Calm’s logo in the corner of the screen while CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and John King were anything but, well, calm.
Courtesy of Calm
“We understand the uncertainty of this election cycle can be a source of anxiety for many of us, especially as it coincides with an ongoing pandemic,” Calm said in an email. “Our goal during CNN’s Key Race Alerts was to provide viewers a moment of Calm and a reminder to take a deep breath during a stressful night.”
CNN said Calm also advertised during the network’s coronavirus town halls with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Calm’s election night sponsorship continued into CNN’s election coverage on Nov. 4.
Neither CNN nor Calm would disclose how much the app paid for the deal. However, recent data shows the sponsorship may have ultimately paid off.
Calm was downloaded about 35,000 times on Nov. 3 and again Nov. 4, up from its daily average of 26,000 downloads the week prior, according to data from mobile app data analytics firm Sensor Tower. At the peak of its popularity on Nov. 4, Calm was ranked as the 65th most popular app on the Apple app store, up 54 spots from the previous day. It ended the day at No. 83, marking its third best day ever. The two times Calm beat the ranking was in July after releasing a sleep story narrated by One Direction star Harry Styles and following an advertising campaign on AppLovin and YouTube in October.
The free version of Calm’s app provides timed meditation sessions, breathing exercises, and a sleep story. Users can also choose from a selection of nature sounds or music during Calm’s meditation sessions. For $69.99, the app offers original content, guided meditations catered to gratitude, stress, or anxiety, and more than 120 sleep stories.
The company said that over the past few months it has sent out Calming messages and breathing exercises at high-stress moments, including during the presidential debates. It’s also been updating its site to offer more free resources to potential users.
“In what’s been an extremely stressful year, our team is always looking for ways to give consumers a reminder to take a deep breath, and tune into themselves,” Erin Hassey, Calm’s senior director of growth marketing, said in an email.


fortune--2020-11-13--Is the fashion industry’s sustainability effort only skin-deep?

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 here.
You don’t have to spend much time on Instagram admiring all your friends’ pretty pictures to realize it’s also one of the greatest shopping suggestion engines ever invented. My colleague Kristen Bellstrom got to the bottom of what makes Instagram’s shopping experience so powerful in a great feature story a few months ago.
Lately, my feed has filled with ads for clothes that are organic, sustainably made, resulting from fair trade, or some combination of all three. That made me curious about what’s going on from a tech angle.
Sure enough, behind the environmental movement in the fashion industry, which is responsible for somewhere between 5% and 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, a bevy of startups is developing innovations to reduce that impact. The startups are attacking every link in the supply chain, from manufacturing clothes with recycled materials to making dyes without petroleum-derived chemicals to creating biodegradable packaging. Another segment of startups are selling these lines direct to consumers via, you guessed it, Instagram.
I didn’t get very far in my research before I came across Maxine Bedat and her New Standard Institute. Although a human rights lawyer by training, Bedat started an apparel selling company a few years ago called Zady. Coming a little ahead of today’s sustainability movement, its big idea was to tell the story of where the clothes came from and how they were made. Bedat soon started to see firsthand the fashion industry’s harmful environmental and social impacts. As she tried to use Zady to offer products with a more positive impact, she also became a source of knowledge for many other companies.
“I was really torn between the work of reforming the industry, getting people educated to be more engaged citizens, and the work of a fashion brand and selling more stuff,” she told me this week. “I decided to move on in my work and just focus on the educational side.”
That meant selling Zady and opening the institute. As more consumers have made sustainability and fair labor a priority in their buying decisions, the industry has woken up to some degree and pledged to make changes. With many partners, the institute’s goal is to make sure those changes are real. Bedat calls it a “think and do tank.” In the realm of startups, she’s concerned that companies are making claims not supported by rigorous science. And some green automation efforts may be taking away needed jobs.
The biggest elephant in the room, however, is overconsumption. Fast fashion seems to be on the decline, but people in the wealthiest parts of the world still buy and discard too many clothes. “If we don’t address that, incremental reductions of these other impacts are not going get us to where we need to be,” Bedat warns.
It’s yet another reason to stop scrolling through feeds and put your phone down. Have a restful weekend.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
***
In this week’s Brainstorm podcast episode, Fortune‘s Aric Jenkins offers his insight on who is benefiting from the pandemic in entertainment. We also speak with industry veteran Andy Forssell, who now heads HBO Max, and Rob Bredow, chief creative officer of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic. Bredow talks how the company is producing content under current restrictions (the answer is a newish technology called StageCraft, which was used to shoot much of The Mandalorian). And, of course, Baby Yoda. Listen to the episode here.
NEWSWORTHY
Give me that driving satisfaction. Elon Musk may have rolled out the most impressive sounding car-driving assistance program at Tesla, but Honda says it's about to debut the most capable. Next March, Honda's Acura RLX will include its "Traffic Jam Pilot," capable of Level 3 autonomous driving. Tesla's "Full Self-Driving Autopilot" is only Level 2. Elsewhere in the auto industry, Ford debuted an electric version of its popular Transit shuttle van with a range of 126 miles between charges. Coming a little further in the future, scientists are developing quantum gravity sensors that could allow self-driving systems to detect objects around a corner. And flying cars, yeah, just flying cars.
Wrong number. Security theater is the derisive term experts use to describe procedures that appear to improve security without really do so. It's maybe not quite at that level, but the latest security concern is two-factor authentication systems that rely on text messages. Microsoft warns it is too easy for text messages to be diverted or intercepted. App-based authenticators are much more secure. Microsoft is also grabbing a high-profile star in the world of software. Guido van Rossum, who created the Python programming language, is joining the company's developer division.
Be thankful I don't take it all. After some tech companies said they plan to cut the pay of remote workers who move to less expensive cities, now researchers at Deutsche Bank say remote workers should also be taxed 5% to help support low-income people who cannot work from home.
Me mad ab something. Some follow-up from Danielle's essay yesterday of the kind you only get with this administration: The Commerce Department announced it would comply with court orders not to ban the popular app TikTok while legal challenges are ongoing. China-based TikTok owner ByteDance originally had until Thursday to sell the app. At the same time, President Trump on Thursday issued a new executive order banning U.S. citizens from investing in 31 Chinese companies, including Huawei and China Mobile, said to have military ties.
Eternal sunshine of the stock-market kind. On Wall Street, things were less bad at Cisco Systems and Palantir's outlook is improving. Cisco said its quarterly revenue dropped 9% to $11.9 billion, better than analysts expected. Its stock, previously down 19% in 2020, jumped 7% in premarket trading on Friday. Palantir's revenue rose 52% to $289 million and raised its forecast for the year to almost $1.1 billion. Its shares, already up 46% from its market debut on Sept. 30, dropped 3% in premarket trading. We'll soon have even more tech companies to report. Startups DoorDash, Wish, and Affirm are all planning to go public by year end, Bloomberg reports.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Smart wearable devices like Fitbits and Apple Watches have given us a blizzard of statistics to track our health and fitness. But in an essay on Medium, writer Maya Kosoff isn't sure all these new metrics are really helping us.
I keep struggling with how to end this one neatly because it’s not like it’s over. I’m still held captive by numbers and I have been for as long as I can remember. My obsession with them has just taken a new form in recent months. Sometimes I wish I weren’t like this, but it’s inextricable from who I am, and I’m not even sure it’s always a bad thing: It’s part of what pushes me to succeed just as much as it’s part of what makes me feel like a failure sometimes. Realistically I’ll eventually get bored of the Peloton, or I’ll finally learn how to ride an actual, real bike on the streets of New York, or I’ll find something else to obsess over. Because it’s not really about the bike, or about my leaderboard ranking in a HIIT class or whatever—it’s about finding a crumb of control in a world that sometimes feels very much outside of my control.
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
Elon Musk’s Totally Awful, Batshit-Crazy, Completely Bonkers, Most Excellent Year (Vanity Fair)
In 2020, the COVID-doubting, media-hating Twitterholic CEO became the third-richest man alive, SpaceX launched two astronauts into orbit, and Tesla became the most valuable car company on the planet. Inside the mind of Silicon Valley’s most vainglorious villain.
Ink-Stained Wretches: The Battle for the Soul of Digital Freedom Taking Place Inside Your Printer (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Since its founding in the 1930s, Hewlett-Packard has been synonymous with innovation, and many's the engineer who had cause to praise its workhorse oscillators, minicomputers, servers, and PCs. But since the turn of this century, the company's changed its name to HP and its focus to sleazy ways to part unhappy printer owners from their money.
Fiona Shackleton: ‘Divorce is either quick torture or slow torture’ (Financial Times)
The lawyer for royals and the ultra-rich on the pandemic boom in break-ups — and why she still believes in marriage.
The Shadow of Humanity and the Spirit of Animals (Orion)
Krista Tippett and Jane Goodall are two pioneering women in their fields. Krista is perhaps best known for her work with On Being, a public radio show and podcast that explores the human experience through spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, community, poetry, and the arts. At twenty-six years old, Jane embarked on a revolutionary sixty-year study of the complex social and family life of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. When the two women agreed to let Orion record them in conversation, we were thrilled.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
What my day on conservative social network Parler was like By Danielle Abril
He’s worried A.I. may destroy humanity. Just don’t confuse him with Elon Musk By Jeremy Kahn
A 6-year-old Chinese electric vehicle startup is now more valuable than GM By Eamon Barrett
How the pandemic has expedited innovation within the film industry By Brett Haensel
In defense of pollsters By Baobao Zhang
The pandemic may be the greatest environment for business fraud in decades By Geoff Colvin
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Sometimes we'd love to be a fly on the wall listening to conversations of famous people. In the latest Rolling Stone, the magazine has fulfilled that wish for fans of Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney. Read their recent conversation about writing pop tunes, dealing with life under COVID, and everything else. And see you back here on Monday.


fortune--2020-11-13--We are slowly getting more statues to honor great women—but why are some of them naked?

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Goldman’s partners are more female than ever, Ronna McDaniel could stay atop the RNC, and should female statues cover up? Have a relaxing weekend!
– Statuesque. Have you been following the debate over the new public sculpture dedicated to feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft?
Located in London’s Stoke Newington neighborhood, the statue, created by British artist Maggi Hambling, was just installed on Tuesday and is already ruffling feathers. It’s intended to honor Wollstonecraft, a 17th century writer whom this New York Times story calls a “mother of modern feminism.” (She was also the literal mother of author Mary Shelley.) The problem—at least according to some: the statue features a naked woman (who may or may not be intended to be Wollstonecraft), complete with “idealized physique.”
Statue dedicated to the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft in London’s Newington Green on Nov. 11, 2020. Kristian Buus—In Pictures/Getty Images
To critics, the idea that a statue honoring a trailblazing feminist includes the body of a naked woman is, understandably, infuriating. A Guardian piece on the tribute cut right to the chase, asking, “would a man be ‘honoured’ with his schlong out?” In that piece, writer Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett lumps the Hambling statue in with a controversial new piece of New York City public art featuring a nude Medusa, asserting that both fall into “‘It’s a naked lady, so it must be art’ syndrome.'”
When NYT writer Eleanor Nairne arrived in Stoke Newington to view the work, a woman was attempting to cover the statue’s nudity with a t-shirt. But Nairne doesn’t share the impulse—she suggests that by avoiding a traditional representation, Hambling may have captured something essential about Wollstonecraft’s work. In one of the article’s many rhetorical questions, she wonders whether the woman’s nakedness might be “understood as a metaphor for Wollstonecraft’s vision of personal authenticity? A woman stripped of society’s trappings?”
I myself am not an art critic—though I hope I can visit London again some day soon so I can judge for myself. In the meantime, perhaps both sides can agree that just having some public art by and in tribute to women to argue about is a big step in the right direction.
Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee
Today’s Broadsheet was co-curated by Claire Zillman.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Howdy, partner. Goldman Sachs promoted 60 bankers to partner yesterday. Sixteen of the group are women—the bank's highest-ever percentage—but my favorite detail is that Anne-Victoire Auriault, who at 32 is likely the youngest woman to make partner at Goldman, got the call while on maternity leave. WSJ
- RNC repeat? Amid rumors that he's planning a 2024 run, President Donald Trump announced that he's endorsing RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to continue to lead the organization. Reuters
- Not a pretty picture. In the wake of Emily Ratajkowski's essay in The Cut accusing photographer Jonathan Leder of sexually assaulting her and then profiting from photos of her that were used without her permission, other women have come forward to with similar claims. (Leder has denied Ratajkowski's accusations, but didn't respond to the NYT's request for comment on the more recent charges.) New York Times
- Photo finish. One of the outstanding Congressional races is now over, according to the Associated Press. Lauren Underwood (D–Ill.) has won reelection in a closer-than-expected contest. She was the youngest Black woman to serve in Congress when she flipped a red district to win her seat in 2018. Her opponent, Jim Oberweis, had claimed victory the day after the election and said yesterday that he is not conceding. Chicago Tribune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Twitch hired Microsoft vet Angela Hession as global VP of trust and safety.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Will the real Iron Lady please stand up? Gillian Anderson's portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in the new season of The Crown is getting a ton of buzz—but she's not the first to try to inhabit the Iron Lady. Anderson and four other performers talk about their experiences stepping into the former Prime Minister's shoes. New York Times
- Capital casting. All three of Washington's D.C. presidential electors—the people who officially cast the District's vote for President—are women. This Wapo story profiles one of them: cardiac ICU nurse Meedie Bardonille. Washington Post
- Dressing the part. Last weekend's Saturday Night Live pulled off an incredible feat: assembling Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris costume just 85 minutes after the real Harris gave her victory speech. SNL costume designers say they pulled together the cream suit with pussy-bow silk blouse by repurposing an outfit originally purchased—but never used—for a Melania Trump skit. Vulture
ON MY RADAR
Women-only motor racing championship to join F1 schedule Financial Times
Gotham Awards nominations: female directors lead Best Feature category Variety
'I come up short every day': couples under strain as pandemic upends life at home NPR
Why writer Cazzie David steals clothes WSJ
PARTING WORDS
"I could not get over the difference in women skiing with only women."
- Windham Mountain ski instructor Mermer Blakeslee on the trend of women-only ski classes


fortune--2020-11-13--A six-year-old Chinese electric vehicle startup is now more valuable than GM

Chinese electric vehicle makers are on a tear.
On Thursday, after reporting a strong third quarter, the New York–listed shares of Guangzhou-based Xpeng jumped 33%. Nasdaq-listed Li Auto’s share price leaped 27% the same day, ahead of its own earnings report on Friday. Meanwhile, NYSE-listed Nio—the only one of the three carmakers with more than a year’s trading history—surged 12%.
That 12% jump is the latest in a yearlong rally that has boosted Nio’s share over 1,000% since January, when its shares traded at below $4. With a market cap now over $65 billion, loss-making Nio is close to $10 billion more valuable than U.S. auto industry stalwart General Motors.
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But it’s likely that investors are just hedging their bets on any Chinese automaker rather than backing Nio specifically. Beijing has set a target for EV sales to account for half the market in 2035, and China’s domestic manufacturers are all seeking to lead the pack.
U-turn
Nio’s soaring stock marks a significant change in investor appetite for the six-year-old automaker. Since going public in September 2018, the company had mostly traded below its debut price, and in 2019 it received what amounted to a $1 billion government bailout.
The company has made some changes to its business model that appear to have improved sales, but Nio’s runaway stock gains are more indicative of a broader trend, with U.S. investors casting a wide net to catch the next leader in electric vehicles.
“There is a spillover of investors searching for the next big thing,” Bill Russo, founder and CEO of Shanghai-based investment advisory Automobility, told Fortune in August, shortly after Nio rival Xpeng went public in New York and barely a month after another competitor Li Auto raised over $1 billion through its Nasdaq listing.
In the first half of the year, Tesla had emerged as China’s No. 1 EV seller, signifying a “turning point” in the market, Russo said. Prior to that, industrial or fleet buyers, such as public transport and taxi firms, were responsible for most of China’s EV sales. Tesla’s rise indicated an advancing market for consumer EVs.
Buoyed by Tesla’s strong performance, Xpeng’s shares rallied 40% on their first day of trading. Compare that with Nio’s debut in 2018, when shares fell immediately and were trading at 80% below their IPO value 12 months later.
Gear change
Investor confidence in China’s EV industry seemed to be flagging when Nio debuted two years ago. Government EV subsidies that had enabled EV startups like Nio to enter the market by bolstering demand were set to expire just two years later in 2020. Nio’s financials were bleak, too. At the time it filed its prospectus, the Shanghai-based company had only shipped 500 units and was $500 million in debt.
The automaker still isn’t profitable. Last year, as Nio’s cash flow entered dire straits, it signed a $1 billion joint venture agreement with a state-owned enterprise to produce down-market cars. The partnership provided Nio with a much-needed cash injection but broke the company’s premium-focused business model.
Recent changes to Beijing’s subsidy scheme might further benefit Nio. In April, Beijing decided to extend its subsidy program until 2022 for cheaper passenger vehicles, and the government said it would provide subsidy support for EV firms that manufacture cars with swappable batteries, regardless of price. That policy gives Nio, which is pioneering battery-swapping services, greater flexibility on how it prices its models.
The subsidy extension comes as Beijing sets a target for new energy vehicles (NEVs)—meaning electric, plug-in hybrids, and hydrogen-powered cars—to account for 20% of China’s auto sales by 2025.
By 2035, all new auto sales have to be “eco-friendly,” Beijing decreed, with 50% being NEVs and the remaining half filled by regular hybrids. NEVs currently occupy around 5% of China’s market, which still makes China the world’s No. 1 market for electric vehicles.


fortune--2020-11-13--‘We respect the choice of the American people’: Beijing finally congratulates Biden on beating Trump

China on Friday sent its congratulations to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden for his 2020 election victory over outgoing President Donald Trump.
“We respect the choice of the American people. We extend congratulations to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a press conference on Friday. “We understand the results of the U.S. election will be determined according to U.S. laws and procedures.”
With China’s well-wishes, there are just a few notable world leaders who have not yet acknowledged Biden’s victory as Trump continues to baselessly claim victory and dispute the results of the election. Russia, Brazil, and Mexico are now the biggest holdouts.
China had been reluctant to congratulate Biden after the first rash of foreign leaders recognized Biden’s victory after major U.S. media outlets declared him the winner based on vote count last Saturday. China’s hesitancy likely stemmed from not wanting to engage in American partisan politics at a time when U.S.-China relations are so fragile.
It’s unclear why China decided to embrace Biden on Friday, but Biden’s grip on the presidency has only tightened in recent days as vote tallies continue to roll in. Media outlets on Friday said Biden had won Arizona, a state the outlets had previously deemed too close to call. With Biden’s margin of victory growing, it’s possible Beijing didn’t want to delay its overtures to the incoming administration.
In a break from tradition, the Trump administration has not provided Biden’s team with a direct line to talk to foreign leaders. But in recent days Biden has begun fielding calls with leaders from countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and South Korea.
Beijing’s message to Biden also comes one day after Biden signaled his first major foreign policy measure regarding China. On Thursday, Biden spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and said that the U.S. would guarantee military support to Japan’s territorial claims over the Senkaku Islands in the South China Sea. China has competing claims over the uninhabited islands, which it calls the Diaoyu Islands, and the issue has been a flash point in Sino-Japanese relations.


fortune--2020-11-14--What you should consider before working remotely from a vacation destination

Charles Koch looks back on his political legacy : “ Boy , did we screw up !
”

Why work from home when you can do so from a resort? That’s what many managers of hotels, large and small, are hoping would-be travelers are thinking about these days as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to stall the travel industry worldwide. Over the past few months, many top hotel chains have started offering remote working packages, spurring another new pandemic trend: the “workcation.”
“The hotels and destinations that are offering ‘work from hotel’ packages are trying to attract all types of travelers. But I think these opportunities will definitely appeal to people traveling on their own or to families who have children who are attending school remotely,” says Brian Kelly, founder and CEO of The Points Guy.
Hotels have responded to the pent-up demand to travel and work elsewhere by introducing packages designed for anyone who’s looking to change up their quarantine routine. Most properties with a “work from hotel” package are offering special rates and discounts for longer stays, as well as additional benefits, such as dedicated workspaces, free breakfast, no resort fees, and more. Before booking a longer stay, customers should be sure to research and compare different properties to find the best one that suits their needs.
“These ‘work from hotel’ programs have already shown us that people are very interested in these experiences and that travelers are now booking trips much closer in to the time of travel,” Kelly says. “It stands to reason that workplaces all over the country will continue to allow workers to be flexible, location-wise. But many get tired of seeing the same four walls day in and day out, which puts hotels in a great position to offer the comforts of home and the conveniences of an office in a beautiful setting.”
“Travelers can experience more and save when they book an extended workcation,” says a representative for the Marriott Puerto Vallarta, pointing to “a tequila tasting lesson with a tequila sommelier; the opportunity to release baby turtles into the ocean for an after-work activity for the whole family; and more authentic experiences that can’t be found back home.” Courtesy of Marriott
Last month, Marriott International launched its new Work Anywhere With Marriott Bonvoy program, laying out three “work from hotel” packages available at more than 2,000 of the hotelier’s locations worldwide. According to an internal study, 42% of more than 400 business professionals—both members and nonmembers of Marriott’s Bonvoy loyalty program—in the U.S. said they would consider working from a hotel guest room for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, not having a boundary between one’s work and personal life; not having a dedicated workspace at home; experiencing claustrophobia in small apartments; the inability to focus any longer while working from home; insufficient home Wi-Fi; or just the sheer desire to break up the day-to-day monotony.
For locals looking for some extra space during the workday, à la WeWork but without any other people around, the entry-level Day Pass includes a quiet guest room with high-speed Wi-Fi and check-in as early as 6:00 a.m. local time and as late as 6:00 p.m. Additionally, guests will be able to access business facilities such as printing, fax, and scanning equipment. And Marriott Bonvoy members will receive complimentary snacks, gift shop discounts, and lounge access where available for those with Platinum, Titanium, or Ambassador Elite status—and they will earn points on eligible hotel charges.
The next tier is the Stay Pass, which includes everything in the Day Pass plus an overnight stay. The Play Pass resembles something closer to a work trip, with access to more hotel amenities, such as the guest pool and activities for families with kids should they be joining during the stay.
Nestled on a private beach with pristine views, the Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort and Spa in Mexico—which is open to Americans via air travel on nonstop flights from select U.S. airports—reopened to 50% capacity this summer, following a $20 million property-wide renovation that was completed just in time for 2020. The project’s newest introductions include an upgraded infinity pool (Puerto Vallarta’s largest) and a double-decker, open-air eatery with plenty of socially distanced seating options.
“More and more guests are likely to stay on property instead of venturing to the surrounding areas,” says Cristina Hernandez, marketing and communications manager for the Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort & Spa. “They’re finding that they have everything they need here and feel safe at the resort. They’re also booking longer stays, and the rates are better if they do, up to a 40% off discount.”
Nosh, a new and entirely open-air eatery at the Marriott Puerto Vallarta. Courtesy of Marriott
The expansive beachfront resort, equipped with complimentary Wi-Fi throughout, offers plenty of safe spaces to put in eight hours, including the resort’s Bali Beds, a private outdoor cabana space to work from with a beachfront or poolside view. The resort hosts a Kids Club for keeping younger family members entertained, and in lieu of the traditional afternoon coffee break, the hotel offers a guacamole and chips break for a 3 p.m. fix, not only for snacking but distanced socializing.
“Every morning, you can find children and moms having online school on the resort’s open air terrace by the deli,” Marriott’s Hernandez says. “It’s a convenient place to attend school and grab some breakfast or a snack, all while you have a great view of the ocean and mountains. I found some children go to the pool on their lunch break. I have talked to them, and they say it’s a very nice way to do homeschool.”
Extended stay
Some countries are now offering new visas for travelers willing to make the move from their home state and work remotely. These countries are mostly in the Caribbean and parts of Europe; the list includes Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bermuda, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Mexico, Portugal, and Spain. For example, Aruba launched its One Happy Workation program, where approved visitors with a valid U.S. passport can participate for up to 90 days and can work from anywhere on the island. Additionally, golden visas are a higher-end option for working abroad. “For example, I recently invested in real estate in Portugal so that I can get EU residency and the ability to get Portuguese citizenship after five years,” Kelly notes.
The Points Guy points to Hyatt’s Work From Hyatt program as a popular remote working package. Hyatt has expanded it to encompass more than 60 resorts across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Resort fees are waived when you book a Work From Hyatt package, and you’ll still receive the benefits you normally would, while also earning points and elite status, if applicable.
Additional U.S. hotels with alluring workcation packages include La Posada de Santa Fe, a Tribute Portfolio Resort in Santa Fe; Mission Point on Mackinac Island, Mich.; the Roundtree in Amagansett, N.Y.; Grande Lakes in Orlando; and the Commodore Perry Estate, Auberge Resorts Collection, in Austin. These destinations offer people an escape from cities and enclosed spaces.
“Remote work was on the rise before COVID, and I’m confident it will only continue to grow once the pandemic ends,” says Matthew Kepnes, a New York Times bestselling author and founder of the online travel site Nomadic Matt. “People have realized they can be just as effective from home, saving them a commute and giving them a little more flexibility and freedom. On top of that, businesses are realizing they can have effective employees without the overhead of office space, potentially saving them millions of dollars. While there are many pitfalls in working remotely when it comes to work/life balance, I think we will definitely see more and more people flock to remote positions.”
Inside the hotel lobby at the Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort and Spa. Courtesy of Marriott
A primary benefit (or motivator) for working remotely right now is personal health and safety. “You can skip the commute and avoid being stuck in an office with people, which is potentially lifesaving,” Kepnes says. “It’s become incredibly popular in European cities, where their response to COVID is a little more comprehensive than ours here in the U.S. However, we are also seeing it here in larger U.S cities as well. Most people who can work from home are doing so.”
Among the top perks that hotels and resorts must offer to make this situation not just possible but alluring: free Wi-Fi. Specifically, there must be free Wi-Fi in the room, not just in the lobby. Kepnes advises reading reviews before you book to ensure the Wi-Fi speeds are tolerable. Lots of places offer free Internet, however, their Internet speeds might make working online—especially if you have video calls—impossible.
Marriott Puerto Vallarta’s workcation package, for example, includes a stay for two with an upgraded ocean-view room; daily breakfast; unlimited Wi-Fi and local calls; two days’ use of a private Bali Bed; use of a private conference room for one hour per week; office assistance services for printing and IT; 20% off food and beverages; one tequila tasting for two adults; unlimited use of paddleboards and kayaks; daily happy hour at the beachside restaurant and bar; a discount on in-house car rentals; unlimited coffee or iced coffee; and one complimentary guacamole and chips break per stay. A representative for the hotel says guests can save up to 40% with a minimum 10-night reservation through December 2020.
“The hotels and destinations that are offering ‘work from hotel’ packages are trying to attract all types of travelers. But I think these opportunities will definitely appeal to people traveling on their own or to families who have children who are attending school remotely,” says The Points Guy’s Brian Kelly. Courtesy of Marriott
While those with families who work from home might have to deal with added distractions, the extra time spent with loved ones is also a huge perk in working from a remote location. More family time, more flexibility, and greater safety make remote work a no-brainer for many people. Kepnes posits that even after COVID, we will see a lot of people push for more expansive remote work schedules.
Most hotels have desks in the room you can work at, though they are usually not terribly comfortable if you have to get in a few hours of work. Kepnes suggests packing your own cushion if you struggle with lower back pain. Additionally, bring everything you need to work comfortably and efficiently—whether that be a wireless mouse, a laptop riser, or noise-canceling headphones.
Status points
There are multiple opportunities to both earn and use loyalty program points (or frequent-flier miles) to stay at some of these “work from hotel” properties. Hyatt, for example, allows guests to book a Work From Hyatt package stay with their World of Hyatt points, which would significantly offset out-of-pocket costs, especially if you plan to stay for an extended time. “However, it depends on the individual property,” Kelly warns. “Some are offering their own unique packages, and you may have to book with cash in order to take advantage of the discounted stay, free breakfast, or other perks they may be offering. It’s best to check with your chosen property before confirming a reservation.”
Additionally, programs such as Marriott Bonvoy, IHG Rewards Club, and Hilton Honors are offering points-based promotions right now. Marriott, for example, is currently offering 2,500 bonus points per stay, plus a 5,000-point bonus on the third stay. Similarly, IHG Rewards Club is currently offering double points between Oct. 1 and Dec. 15, 2020. And Hilton’s Double Rewards promotion earns you both double points and elite night credits on stays throughout the end of the year.
“Travel hacking” is another strategy to earn free flights and free hotel stays, Kepnes says, explaining that most travel credit cards allow you to shift points between affiliated companies, opening up a wider range of possibilities. “While hotel points are pretty specific, points from popular credit cards from Chase or American Express transfer to all kinds of partners,” Kepnes says. “Moreover, if you have points from a specific airline, you can likely transfer them to any of the airline’s partners if they are part of an airline alliance such as Oneworld, SkyTeam, or Star Alliance.”


fortune--2020-11-14--Want to bring back major sports events and concerts? The answer may lie in a mouthwash test for COVI

Want to bring back major sports events and concerts? The answer may lie in a mouthwash test for COVID

The test arrived in the mail in early November. I took it on a Wednesday, then mailed off my sample to Vienna for processing. On Friday, I received an email with a link to my results: negative.
I didn’t have the symptoms anyway, apart from fatigue—a common symptom of having an early rising toddler—but given the fact that many carriers remain asymptomatic, it was good to confirm I didn’t have COVID-19.
The test in question came from an Austrian startup called testFRWD, one of the many companies trying to solve the challenge of returning to a safe semblance of normality, through easier and more widespread coronavirus testing.
The company was cofounded by Hennes Weiss, an Austrian music promoter, who is desperate to revive the live-music scene that is currently locked down across much of Europe.
The solution he and his partners—entrepreneur Veit-Ander Aichbichler and virologist Christoph Steininger—are offering is, well, a solution. Specifically, a saline solution that comes as part of a single-use home-testing mouthwash kit from Lead Horizon, Steininger’s diagnostics firm.
Now spit
It’s basically a more comfortable alternative to the familiar method of gathering samples for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) coronavirus tests—though it does constitute something of a balancing act, given that you need to do the whole thing in front of a webcam or your phone’s camera.
Rather than sticking a swab up your nose or down your throat, you swish around a small amount of saline solution in your mouth for at least a minute, release it through a paper straw into a tube that already contains some liquid, hold up the tube so the unique number is visible to the camera, then seal it with one of the stickers in the pack. And into the mail it goes, for processing at one of the many labs that have been processing COVID-19 PCR tests for much of the year.
Lead Horizon COVID-19 test David Meyer
If the test comes back positive, the result is automatically entered into the national epidemic notification system (Austria’s system in this case—though once testFRWD expands into Germany, where I live, it would go into the German system).
If it comes back negative, you can download a certificate saying as much, for 1.90 euros ($2.22). If the test was ordered by an employer, entering a code will send the result directly to them. And that is really the point of the exercise—to prove you tested negative very recently, so you can get into a concert or a soccer match, board a flight, or go to school or a workplace.
“We thought about how to make an event possible—only if you can control the risk of infection at the event,” says Aichbichler. “But how can we test a lot of people at the same time? The first bottleneck is that we couldn’t easily collect the samples for 10,000 people in a day. If you have to have medically trained staff to collect the samples, it’s impossible.
“We know mouthwashing has at least the same accuracy as the nasal swab. If we can decentralize testing—get the sample collection away from a testing area—everyone can do it at home.”
TestFRWD’s mouthwash kit has been on sale for a couple of months in Austria and is already being used by police forces and schools. The startup is beginning a rollout in Spain and Portugal and is in negotiations with German labs and the large German drugstore chain DM about expansion there too.
At the moment, the test costs 190 euros ($225) in Austria, but Aichbichler expects that to fall as lab costs are negotiated down. “We think we’ll be able to offer the test in Germany for under 100 euros,” he says. Ultimately, the plan is for people to get a Lead Horizon test when they buy a ticket to a concert or game, with the cost being split among the promoter, the government, and the person taking the test.
But how accurate is this method of testing?
Beating PCR
In the case of Lead Horizon, it’s about as accurate as a swab-based PCR test—that is to say, extremely accurate, as long as the sample is fresh enough. All that differs is the sample-collection method.
PCR tests are the current gold standard when it comes to judging coronavirus infections, but some researchers and companies think they can do better. And again, noninvasive mouthwashes come into play.
Andrea Sinz, a pharmacy professor at the Martin-Luther University in Halle, Germany, points out that the PCR method—essentially, to amplify the genetic material in the sample, in order to spot the SARS-CoV-2 virus—can sometimes result in false-positives.
Sinz and her team have developed a different technique that involves a gargle solution and a technology known as mass spectrometry, which she says allows a lab to identify the coronavirus’s proteins with ultimate certainty.
“There is no mistake possible. We can even distinguish different strains,” she says.
The Halle team have been planning for months to develop the technique along with a startup in Frankfurt and have just received the go-ahead for government funding. They reckon they can get the testing time down from five minutes—which is how long it takes with their initial processing method—to mere seconds with the technique they are now developing.
“We need more testing capabilities with regards to [reestablishing] normal life—schools, concerts, sports games,” says Sinz. “That’s the way to live with it. We cannot shut down everything because of the virus. It will just not go away.”
One-second screening
Another outfit taking the spectrometry tack is Virusight, a joint venture between Newsight Imaging and the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv.
This time, the journey began in the semiconductor world—cofounders Eyal Yatskan (CTO) and Eli Assoolin (CEO)—pictured below—previously worked together at TransChip, the company that developed the first CMOS camera sensor for phones (Samsung bought it in 2007).
Newsight cofounders Eli Assoolin (left) and Eyal Yatskan (right), with professor Eli Schwartz from Sheba Medical Center. Virusight
A year ago, they developed a spectrometer on a chip, which they piloted with Israel’s national water company as a tool for water-monitoring systems; this type of spectrometry identifies substances by measuring light wavelengths.
“Once corona happened, we took everything we knew and tried to make it work for the diagnosis of corona,” says Assoolin. The result is SpectraLIT, a compact spectrometer that Virusight says could be used for screening liquid samples—either from mouthwashes or from swabs—in just one second.
SpectraLIT is currently going through certification processes in the U.S. and Europe, and there are 26 pilots ongoing in hospitals around the world. ICTS, the European airport security giant, is also trialing it, using the mouthwash technique.
“We are not trying to develop something instead of PCR in diagnostics,” says Assoolin. “We are planning a screening device. PCR is not a screening device. It was not meant to be a screening device—it became a screening device because other systems like [rapid antigen testing] do not work.” (The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned about false-positives from rapid tests earlier this month; some antigen tests reportedly have a sensitivity as low as 50%.)
So far, the screening device has been able to achieve high correlation with PCR tests, which suggests they are very accurate. In some cases it has only achieved correlation of around 85%, but Assoolin insists that the system will improve, thanks to the self-teaching of Virusight’s A.I. system.
“We will charge per check—a few dollars, maybe $1 in very big quantity,” says Assoolin. “The device itself is not going to cost a lot. We’re developing a robot to do mass screening in the interest of sports—we’ve been in touch with some leagues in the U.S.…You can also place a device like this at the entrance of a concert, and check the audience quite quickly.
“I really hope [the virus] is not going to stay with us for a long time,” he added. “But for the time being, I think we can play a role in bringing life back to normal.”


fortune--2020-11-14--Not everyone is feeling the recovery: The economy as told by 8 charts

What my day on conservative social network Parler was like

Even with positive developments on the vaccine front, the pandemic is far from over: On Thursday, new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States hit a daily record of over 150,000.
But on the economic front, we’re continuing to see improvement. As states eased lockdown restrictions in the spring and summer, the economy switched from the worst contraction in history to one of the fastest recoveries. Indeed, the unemployment rate that hit a peak of 14.7% in April has since come down to 6.9% as of October.
That said, we aren’t out of the woods yet. More business failures are on the way as companies hardest hit by the pandemic run out of cash. Not to mention the weak labor market makes it hard for the employed to get raises and the millions of unemployed Americans to find a paycheck. We’re in recovery, but not all of us are feeling it.
To give Fortune readers a better understanding of where the economy is and where it’s heading, here’s a look at eight economic measurements we’ve been tracking throughout the crisis:
The lockdowns took a massive toll on gross domestic product. In the first quarter, GDP declined 5% on an annualized basis, followed by a record 31.4% annualized GDP decline in the second quarter. During that period economists around the world were in a panic and questioning if the United States—as well as the rest of the world—was on the cusp of an economic depression.
Once states began to ease lockdown restrictions, the U.S. economy sprung from deep contraction to high growth. In the third quarter, from July to September, GDP climbed 33.1% on an annualized basis, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
But GDP is still down. Over the course of the first two quarters, annualized U.S. GDP fell from $21.8 trillion to $19.5 trillion. In the third quarter that swung back up to about $21.2 trillion. It’s expected to fully rebound sometime in 2021.
While GDP is seeing something closer to a V-shaped recovery—bouncing back nearly as fast as it fell—that isn’t the case for U.S. employment. The U.S. added 638,000 jobs in October. If that pace were to continue, it would take over 16 months—into 2022—to recover all the jobs lost during the COVID-19 recession. And that’s not even the bad news. Most economists actually expect that pace of hiring to slow further, meaning a full employment recovery could take until 2023 or longer.
The economic contraction following the March shutdowns was the sharpest in U.S. history: The jobless rate jumped from 3.5% in February—a 50-year low—to 14.7% in April——the highest level since 1940.
We’ve since shifted into a recovery that is moving faster than many economists expected. The unemployment rate stands at 6.9% as of October. That beats the timeline the Congressional Budget Office projected in May, when it forecasted a 9.5% unemployment rate at the end of 2021.
During the Great Recession era, the unemployment rate peaked at 10% in October 2009. And it didn’t make it back down to 6.9% until November 2013. So by recent historical standards, this recovery is moving at a swift pace.
But this economic recovery is anything but even. While the unemployment rate in September in Nebraska sits at 3.5%, Nevada has a jobless rate of 12.6%.
How did these economies get so divided? A lot of it boils down to what types of jobs make up each state’s economy. Look no further than tourism-heavy Nevada which saw its jobless rate soar from 3.8% in February to a staggering 30.1% in April. While Nevada has since improved to a 12.6% jobless rate, it will struggle to fully recover until the Las Vegas tourism business has returned to normal—something that is unlikely to happen until the pandemic is under control.
Meanwhile, rural agriculture-heavy economies like Iowa and Nebraska are recovering at a much faster clip.
While the sustained drop in the unemployment rate signals an economy moving from recession to growth, it’s also severely undercounting joblessness. It boils down to how the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the official unemployment rate: Only out-of-work Americans who are searching for new positions are categorized as unemployed. If the jobless aren’t searching, they get thrown out of the civilian labor force altogether. (The unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed Americans by the civilian labor force count).
That’s been the case during the pandemic, with millions of jobless Americans choosing to wait out the virus and stay-at-home order before starting their job search, or to stay home with their kids who have not resumed in-person learning. Overall the civilian labor force declined from 164.5 million in February to 156.5 million in April. It has since climbed up to 160.9 million—but it’s still down 3.6 million.
If the 3.6 million jobless Americans who’ve yet to return to the workforce were to be included in the unemployment rate—what Fortune considers the “real” unemployment rate—it would sit at 8.9% in October, Fortune calculates. That’s well above the 6.9% official unemployment rate calculated by the BLS.
While some Americans are struggling to make ends meet, others who have escaped layoffs are actually better off financially as they save money that would have been spent on commuting, eating out, or traveling. And that divide is happening along class lines: Among Americans with a postgraduate degree, 31% say their finances have improved, finds a Fortune–Researchscape International poll of 3,133 U.S. adults conducted between Oct. 3 and Oct. 19. While only 11% of U.S. adults with a high school degree or less—who are more likely to work in fields hardest hit by the pandemic—say they’re financially better off now.
While the Great Recession hammered manufacturing, this time around the sector is among our bright spots. The Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) came in at 59.3 in October, up from its 41.5 bottom in April. A PMI below 50 signals a contracting manufacturing sector, while a rate over 50 signals growth—something we’ve achieved for five consecutive months.
The spring lockdowns closed numerous factories, which led to widespread shortages. In the immediate future, manufacturers are busy making up for those shortfalls.
The last time homebuilders were this busy George W. Bush was in the White House. In total, construction crews started working on 1.4 million new homes in September, up 11% from a year prior. The rebound in homebuilding is so strong that it has worsened the national lumber shortage; for a period lumber prices spiked 130%.
How can housing be so robust? For starters the sector has been helped by falling interest rates, a record stock market, and wealthy city dwellers buying up second homes. But it’s also demographics. The biggest years for millennial births ranged from 1989 to 1993. And we’re currently amid the five-year period when all these young millennials will hit their thirties—the peak years for homebuying. That rush of millennials into the market is causing real estate to push upward.
Overall, economic data is most helpful to piece together a story about the economy. What’s this one telling us? It’s truly a tale of two recoveries whereby some people, professions, and geographic areas have recovered swiftly (or never felt too much pain in the first place), while others are mired in a long slog, trying to recapture the gains so swiftly lost to a deadly pandemic.


fortune--2020-11-14--How cities and states can work with the Biden administration to address America’s biggest challenges

Americans elected Joe Biden as the next President of the United States. We welcome the Biden-Harris presidency and stand ready to support the incoming administration’s mandate to heal the deep divides in our nation and face the intersectional problems harming Americans: from COVID-19 and the economic downturn to the deep wounds of racial injustice and the worsening climate crisis.
Our democratic process worked. Every vote counts, and we took the time to count them methodically, accurately, and by the book. While our democracy remains intact, America is suffering. The work of healing our nation must be guided by facts and science, as well as by compassion. It must also be guided by a renewed spirit of partnership between the White House and U.S. cities and states. Mayors and governors have rolled up our sleeves and led our constituents through the pandemic and the economic and social ills that have threatened to further divide us, as well as fending off climate-driven disasters. We stand ready to work with the federal government to keep Americans safe.
The communities we govern have been grappling with the multiple crises facing America. Michigan saw historic flooding in May that forced thousands of residents to evacuate, and Phoenix had the hottest summer on record, with more than 50 days over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The effects of these extreme weather events were exacerbated by COVID-19 and increasing inequality, both of which have disproportionately affected people of color and low-income communities who’ve often been left behind.
Cities and states have too often lacked the backing of the federal government, constraining our ability to solve these unprecedented and simultaneous crises. We look forward to having a governing partner in the Biden administration that believes in science and listens not only to the experts but also to the experiences of the cities and states on the front lines. Together we can simultaneously tackle the coronavirus and climate change.
As we step up our actions on both crises, we ask the incoming administration to acknowledge and support the central role mayors and governors have played and will continue to play in safeguarding the American public.
Climate action at the state and local levels has been immensely important over the last four years and must remain a mainstay of U.S. climate strategy for the next four and beyond. In our states we have been laying a strong foundation for the recovery and stimulus efforts that are needed to rebuild cleaner and stronger. We must continue to identify opportunities for Americans to have well-paying jobs and the security to ensure the health and safety of themselves and their families. Our efforts must be equitable and mindful of deep-rooted issues of racial, social, and economic injustice, because those issues will influence how any policy plays out. Above all, our greatest imperative is to protect the planet for future generations.
This election saw state and local climate leaders largely hold onto their seats and many climate-related ballot measures pass, in part because people care about addressing climate change. Here in Michigan and Arizona, we have strong policy frameworks in place to accelerate climate action, transition to a carbon-neutral economy, and, most importantly, create jobs.
Michigan’s new Office of Future Mobility and Electrification will work across state government, academia, and private industry to support our ability to develop and produce the next generation of transportation technologies. We are employing 2,200 workers by repurposing our old manufacturing facilities to build the electric cars of the future.
With 90% of Arizona’s solar energy jobs located in the Phoenix area, the city is well-positioned for growth in a state that ranked sixth nationally for solar jobs at the end of 2019. Phoenix has the most solar installed on municipal property of any American city and has innovative partnerships with local utilities to make clean energy more accessible, including an initiative to reduce costs for public housing residents.
Being on the front lines of climate change has shown us, time and again, that we must work together for solutions. A Biden administration committed to bold, comprehensive action will accelerate the work we’re doing on the ground, ensuring climate solutions fuel our country’s post-pandemic economic recovery and improve the well-being of our local communities.
In Arizona and Michigan, we know the work is hard and that governing across deep divides takes courage and conviction, and will require rebuilding trust. But healing is not weakness, and it is not capitulation. As President-elect Biden said in his speech on the day his victory was called, “We must be an America that never gives up and never gives in,” no matter the challenges we face.
Kate Gallego is the mayor of Phoenix.
Gretchen Whitmer is the governor of Michigan.