I landed an airplane recently.

I'm not a pilot. And I've never taken a flying lesson. In fact, I'd never before touched an active control on an airplane. But landing this particular plane was easy.

The Cirrus Vision Jet is already the most accessible private jet in the world. A new plane costs around $2 million, about half as much as its closest rivals, and it was the most delivered business jet of 2018. With a single engine, composite body, and just one pilot needed to fly it, it's a powerful aircraft with a 1,150-mile range

A new feature unveiled last week makes the plane even more appealing: an emergency automatic-landing system.

The Safe Return Emergency Autoland System, designed by Garmin, can land the plane with just the push of a big red button, reachable by any passenger.

When activated, the system automatically takes control of the plane, determines the nearest and best suitable airport, plots a flight path around weather, buildings, and terrain, notifies air-traffic control, flies the plane to the chosen runway while avoiding other aircraft, and gently brings the plane down to the ground, coming to a stop at the end of the runway, where emergency services will wait.

This isn't quite the first automatic landing feature, but what makes it revolutionary is that it can take complete and total control of the flight from the moment it's activated. Other systems on commercial planes rely on continuous input from pilots like a traditional autopilot system. But this is unique in that a passenger can activate it, and zero pilot input is needed.

Late this summer, I took a demonstration flight with Cirrus to test the new autoland system.

We pretended the pilot was incapacitated, I pushed the button, and that was the last time anyone touched the plane's controls until we had come to a stop on the runway.

It was an incredibly impressive thing to see in action. Keep reading to see how it went.

The Model 3 takes it!

But it was closer that you might think. The Model 3 has longer range, is faster from 0-60 mph, has a cooler infotainment system and more forward-thinking interior design, exudes exterior styling mojo, offers better recharging options, and is reasonably well put-together.

The Leaf Plus comes in second in all of those areas except build quality. BUT the Leaf Plus is certainly the nicest EV than Nissan has thus far created, and it's much easier to simply go down to your local Nissan dealership, pick one up, and drive it home.

In fact, the closeness of the Leaf to the Model 3 is a somewhat uncomfortable reminder than the Model 3, while impressive, is more of a high-mid-market to low-end-premium vehicle. The Leaf is electric motoring for the masses, more or less, and so is the Model 3. But the Model 3's current customer set is being asked to accept a more bare-bones car than they'd get from, say, Jaguar with the I-Pace or Audi with its e-Tron. 

If I had to choose, I'd buy the Tesla. But I could also easily be happy with the Leaf. And if I bought the Leaf, I would be eyeing allegedly nicer vehicles from luxury brands, whereas with the Model 3 I might not.

That all said, this comparison did make me recollect the Model 3's general brilliance. It genuinely is a staggering achievement. While the Leaf Plus definitely gets the job done, the Model 3 demonstrates why Tesla is investing in making electrified transportation more than an A-to-B proposition, powered by something that isn't a fossil fuel. As I've said before, the Model 3 appeals to the automotive philosopher in me: it's crammed with ideas.

And the Model 3 by its nature makes you feel better about yourself. It is intellectually stimulating, a mood-improvement machine. I perked up every time I slipped behind the wheel, and most days I had to deal with rainy Northeast gloom. Gray skies weren't going to clear up, but it didn't matter, because the Model 3 helped me put on a happy face.

It can blast to 60 mph in five seconds, it can drive itself with your supervision under some conditions, and it has a five-star safety rating from the government. What's more, it's a California-made, all-electric car from the first new American car company in decades.

But the truly astounding thing is that Tesla, in only about five years of seriously manufacturing automobiles, could build a car this good.

If you're debating between the roughly $40,000 Nissan Leaf SL Plus or a slightly cheaper Leaf trim level and the approximately $40,000 base Tesla Model 3, the decision isn't hard. You won't be unhappy with the Leaf, but with the Model 3, you will follow some serious bliss.

WeWork plans to outsource cleaning and facilities staff for US and Canada locations, according to emails sent to employees on Friday.

The staff shift, which will be announced this coming week, per a memo sent at 5:30 p.m. ET, comes as the office company looks to cut costs in a number of areas following a bailout from SoftBank. Major layoffs are coming, and executives are selling non-core businesses and winding down projects like elementary school WeGrow.

A spokeswoman for WeWork declined to comment. 

Arik Benzino, the US, Canada, and Israel "CWeO" – WeWork's title for country manager – told cleaning and facilities employees in a Friday email that WeWork has been looking at outsourcing for nearly a year. 

"We're undertaking it because we believe it will fundamentally improve the experience of our team and our members," he said in the email.

Benzino noted that every current cleaning and facilities employee will be offered a job with WeWork's new partners, with pay, building assignment, and shifts staying the same. He also said benefits will be comparable. 

One current employee who is not authorized to speak to media called the shift an "internal shitshow ... predictable yet still destabilizing," noting that there seemed to be no response plan. Another message was sent to US and Canada community teams to inform them of the original note, asking the teams to reiterate that everyone will be offered a job with the new partners. 

See more: Inside WeWork's all-hands meeting, where the new chairman from SoftBank addressed employee concerns about worthless stock options and Kanye West's 'Flashing Lights' played

Earlier on Friday, WeWork employees emailed new chairman Marcelo Claure, asking him to "prioritize the wellbeing" of  community service associates and building community associates, "clearly communicate whether [cleaners'] jobs at WeWork are at risk, and that you communicate a fair commitment to release layoff decisions by a reasonable date." 

The email also noted that cleaners "constitute one of WeWork's most vulnerable employee groups" and many "lack a safety net." 

'This company is going very far'

WeWork has a tumultuous history with cleaning staff. In 2015, cleaners tried to unionize, leading one outsourcing partner to cancel its contract. The office company hired most, but not all, of the outsourced employees to come in-house as part of a larger move to make cleaning staff employees.

The New York Times reported at the time that about 100 people lost their jobs. Cleaners protested outside of WeWork's New York headquarters, and cofounder Adam Neumann pleaded directly with them. 

"This company is going very far," Neumann said, per the Times. "The stock, God willing, is very valuable."

Then-chief operating officer Artie Minson, who's now co-CEO, made the decision to cut the outsourcing contract and bring cleaners in-house. 

"We were a five-star brand with one-star cleaning," Minson had told the Times, highlighting how the cleaners would play a role in extending WeWork's ethos to every part of the business.

That brand play cost WeWork significantly. Minson said employees made $15-18 per hour, plus "benefits, sick days, and a small amount of stock." In-house cleaners cost about twice as much as WeWork paid the outsourcing provider. 

Cleaners' roles sometimes went beyond tidying up after WeWork tenants and staff. Neumann liked to recount a story to employees when he and other executives stayed up all night drinking and breaking office windows, multiple people told Business Insider for a feature about what it was like to work at WeWork. 

It stuck one employee in the audience as juvenile: "You're not rock stars — you left that mess for people to clean up. They thought they were so cool and they were so badass. It was really unprofessional."

Neumann's representative had acknowledged the broken windows, describing it as an accident. "We wanted it cleaned up by morning so that nobody would get hurt by the broken glass," the spokeswoman said.

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The US population is aging rapidly and startups are looking to create new ways of helping to care for the elderly.

There were 48 million people in the US aged 65 and older in 2015 and that number is projected to almost double by 2060, according to the US Census Bureau.

With almost a third of the US population set to be 65 and older in a few decades, investment in senior care is becoming more of a focus in the healthcare industry. 

"There is a lack of capacity in our current senior housing situation. Between assisted living and skilled living there just aren't enough resources," said Joshua Mark, a healthcare intelligence analyst at CB Insights. "So we're seeing a shift in preference, where aging in the home and receiving care in the home will be the main focus for growth." 

With an aging population, the total cost of caring for seniors is projected to increase. The home care market alone is expected to grow from $100 billion in 2016 to $225 billion by 2024, according to Business Insider Intelligence. 

"We're seeing a growing number of family caregivers providing care," Mark said. "There is also a greater need for social engagement for seniors. There are higher rates of mental health issues that need to be addressed and more constant care or monitoring is needed for treatment." 

Technology can help monitor and assist patients in their homes and prevent adverse health events.

Because of this, remote care is becoming an area of keen interest for companies and investors. In 2018, Best Buy acquired GreatCall for $800 million. The company offers senior friendly devices and mobile medical alerts and is a key piece of Best Buy's new senior-focused healthcare strategy.

Optum, a division of the insurer UnitedHealth Group, bought the patient-monitoring startup Vivify Health, CNBC reported. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Technology plays a central role in providing care remotely, said Satish Movva, the CEO of CarePredict, a monitoring-device company for seniors. 

"To address the lack of caregivers you need to bring technology front and center," Movva told Business Insider. "If you look at the state of technology now in senior care  it's still pretty bad. It's the life alert method, which is 'I've fallen and can't get up'. The technology is still to detect and treat, not predict and prevent." 

Mark, the CB Insights analyst, said there are several companies in remote monitoring that he thinks are promising. They're creating remote medical diagnosis devices, smarter wearable devices, more effective home monitoring systems that track behavioral habits, and easier methods to have in-person at home care when needed. 

You may have heard that vinyl is back, but with the resurgence of records comes the return of a controversial practice in the music industry: bootlegging.

Bootlegging is the practice of taking an unauthorized recording, usually of a live performance, and duplicating it without permission from the studio or label that produced it. Although the terms can be subjective, bootleg records are not to be confused with counterfeit ones, which are exact duplicates of previously released recordings meant to trick people into paying more for unauthentic music. 

Bootlegging first boomed in the 1960s, specifically with Bob Dylan's "Great White Wonder" LP, according to several articles on the history of the practice. When CDs came around in the 80s, it seemed like vinyl of all kinds was dead for good.

But in the past decade or two, records started to make a comeback. 

Vinyl records are on track to surpass CD sales for the first time in 33 years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America's 2019 mid-year music revenue report, and certain rare records are selling for thousands of dollars. 

The audience for vinyl is expanding, too, said Tim Friedman, the owner of Culture Clash Records in Toledo.

"First we thought the vinyl resurgence was entirely based on old, white men and their nostalgia," Friedman said. "But our youngest generations know everything to be instantly accessible at the swipe of their thumb, so they are truly putting the highest value on ownership of something physical if it speaks to them."

Record collectors turn to bootlegs to complete their sets

With vinyl heating up once again, several industry experts said it's only natural to expect an increase in bootlegging. 

"There are more bootlegs around today than any other time in the last 20 years," said Ian Shirley, editor of the Rare Record Price Guide.

But that's not necessarily a national crisis, except maybe for the most die-hard record collectors, he said.

"It's not a mass market," Shirley said. "It's not like with every record there's going to be a bootleg."

Online shopping has made it harder for collectors to avoid being ripped off with a bootleg, but popular digital marketplaces have strict guidelines to ensure their sales are legal.

Discogs, a crowdsourced database of music info and a vinyl marketplace, cracked down on bootlegging in 2017, Gabriela Helfet reported for The Vinyl Factory. Discogs also has a strong community of collectors that want to keep their purchases legitimate. 

"We are so heavily policed, not only by what the laws are here [in the US, where Discogs is headquartered], but we also have users that are very, very rule-driven," said Aub Driver, the Discogs spokesperson. 

More often than not, though, people know when the record they're buying is bootlegged. So why would someone buy a record knowing it's not the real deal? Collectors of any kind are completists, and exploiting that need to finish a set is one way bootleggers take advantage of vinyl enthusiasts.

Completing a collection usually means finding a bootlegged recording of a live concert, even if that recording isn't sanctioned by the artist, Driver said. The demand for those recordings is so strong that some bands — like Phish, Metallica, and Dave Matthews Band — make official recordings of all of their concerts available on vinyl.

Bootlegging raises ethical questions, but it's not cut and dried

Not only do consumers willingly buy bootlegs, but some artists support the practice even when it comes to their own music. 

Music journalist Jay Balfour said that when he interviewed Schoolly D for Billboard, the Philadelphia rapper suggested that he bootlegged his 1986 single "P.S.K." by self-releasing instead of waiting for his pressing plant.

"I winded up using the mob to do the rest of the pressings," Schoolly D told Balfour. "Everybody wanted it out right then and there."

Artists like Chance the Rapper are picking up on the interest in records and pressing their albums onto vinyl to sell direct-to-consumer, although the demand has started to shift from unofficial concert recordings to studio work that can be played on a turntable, said Friedman, the Toledo record store owner.

"Not a week goes by where we're not asked about Frank Ocean's 'Blonde,' and that's almost never available in the official way it was released," Friedman said.

So record sellers face an ethical question: Do they ignore the requests of their customers or sanction certain unofficial recordings?

Friedman said if he's listened to a bootleg, confirmed that it's high quality, and the customer is aware it isn't an official release, he'll consider selling it.

"I feel sticky about making a dollar when I know the artist isn't getting anything, but I have to hope I'm doing what they want and spreading their music," Friedman said. 

Hyundai has revealed two concept vehicles at the North American Commercial Vehicle (NACV) Show as a part of its Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle 2030 Vision.

The automaker introduced the HDC-6 NEPTUNE Concept Class 8 heavy-duty truck, while Hyundai Translead, its trailer manufacturer, announced  HT Nitro ThermoTech that was developed with Air Liquide. Combined, they make an environmentally-friendly semi-trailer truck.

Fuel cells are the "perfect fit" for commercial heavy-duty trucks because of a higher drive range and payload and lessened refueling time and costs, according to the automaker.

"The tractor-trailer combination provides a window into the future of the transportation in the U.S. and around the world," the automaker said in a prepared statement.

The automaker's 2030 Vision includes the widespread use of hydrogen-powered fuel cell technology in order to its goal of producing zero-emission vehicles in a decarbonized world. The trailer was created specifically in response to the need to reduce greenhouse gases and fossil fuel dependency.

In December 2018, the automaker invested $6.4 billion into the development of hydrogen technology in different types of vehicles.

This is the first time the two concepts have been shown in the US commercial vehicle market, which the automaker says it will begin exploring. It's also opening its doors to potential partners who want to join them in creating a hydrogen "ecosystem" for commercial vehicles.

The automaker will be bringing 1,600 FCEV heavy-duty trucks to the Swiss commercial vehicle market from 2019 to 2023.

Keep scrolling to see Hyundai's concept commercial semi, which could rival that of Tesla's: 

Google is acquiring popular smartwatch maker Fitbit in a move that could potentially skyrocket the search giant to becoming one of the biggest players in the smartwatch industry.

There are still many questions about how the acquisition will play out that have yet to be answered — such as whether current Fitbit products will be impacted, and how future gadgets will be branded. But the move does provide several benefits for Fitbit, giving the smartwatch maker a significantly larger reach and vast resources for developing new products and services.

It also makes me hopeful that with Google's help, Fitbit will be able to address what has been one of the biggest drawbacks I've had with switching out my Apple Watch for one of its devices: software.

Fitbit lacks Apple's polish

The software on Fitbit's smartwatches like the Versa and Versa Light is easy to navigate and adequate enough for basic tasks, such as launching a workout or viewing texts and notifications. But it lacks the Apple Watch's polish and sophistication.

Apple has an inherent advantage in this space, being one of the world's biggest smartphone makers, with 900 million iPhones in pockets around the world as of the beginning of the year. And the company clearly modeled watchOS, the software that powers the Apple Watch, to look and feel similar to that of the iPhone.

Take notifications, for one example. The cards in the Apple Watch's notification tray, which are accessible by pulling down from the top of the screen, have a layered look that feels richer and more refined than Fitbit's plain-text notifications. It's flourishes like these — which are small, but certainly make a difference when taken together — that make the Apple Watch experience feel more premium than that of a Fitbit.

If Fitbit were to adopt Google's WearOS software in the future, it could potentially help Fitbit's watches do a better job at catching up to Apple in this regard. 

Developer relations are key

But more importantly, being part of Google could be huge for advancing Fitbit's relationship with developers.

Fitbit's app gallery merely has hundreds of apps, many of which are simple utilities made by small companies. The exception, there, are a certain handful from major brands like Starbucks, Uber, and Spotify.

But the Apple Watch has nearly 20,000 watchOS apps available in the App Store, putting it leagues ahead of Fitbit. Now that Fitbit is becoming part of Google, proprietors of the massive Google Play app store for Android, there might be a possibility that this could change.

Fitbit could catch up

Apple maintains a comfortable lead ahead of Fitbit when it comes to market share: it accounted for 46.4% of smartwatch shipments in the second quarter of 2019, compared to Fitbit's 9.8% market share, according to Strategy Analytics.

But if Fitbit's new position within Google does help it improve on its software shortcomings, Fitbit could become an even more formidable competitor to Apple. Fitbit's gadgets already offer several advantages over the Apple Watch, even if Apple is outpacing Fitbit when it comes to market share.

For one, Fitbit's devices are noticeably cheaper than Apple's; its new Versa 2 costs about $200, while the Apple Watch Series 5 costs twice as much starting at $400.

Fitbit's smartwatches can track your sleep right out of the box, unlike the Apple Watch, which requires you to download a third-party app to do so. And among the biggest benefits that Fitbit offers is significantly longer battery life; I've gotten around four or five days out of my Versa, whereas I usually have to charge my Apple Watch nightly.

If Google does help Fitbit solve some of the areas in which the fitness company's products have lagged behind Apple's — most notably when it comes to software and apps — it could have a real shot at catching up to the Apple Watch. 

And that could be worrisome for Apple, considering the acquisition is coming at a time when sales of the Apple Watch and other wearables like AirPods are more important than ever for the company.

Apple has turned to product lines like its wearables (read: Apple Watch) and services (read: iCloud, App Store, and the new Apple TV Plus) to offset declining iPhone sales — a strategy that's seemingly been working so far. The company's revenue for the fourth quarter of 2019 was the highest it has ever been for that period of the year, and Apple largely attributed that milestone to growth across its wearables and services businesses. 

It's unclear exactly what this acquisition means for the future of Fitbit and Google's ambitions in wearables. But it certainly seems like Fitbit is poised to grow, which could eventually pose a threat to the dominance of the Apple Watch.

Venture capitalists are the startup experts, the ones who have their finger on the pulse of which fledgling companies will boom and which will bust.

As part of Business Insider Prime’s comprehensive coverage of the startups that will strike gold in 2019, we asked VCs to name the startups they think are going to be hot this year. They told us about companies they currently have in their portfolios, as well as ones they haven't put any money into yet but are at the center of positive news.

And from those discussions, one particular group of startups came up repeatedly: those that specialize in artificial intelligence tech.

From AI robots to software that uses machine learning to automate tasks, Silicon Valley is chock full of AI-focused startups.

Take, for example, Transfix, a freight marketplace that companies use to hire trucks from carriers. The startup is trying to transform the $800 billion trucking industry by using AI to match loads with carriers. It’s raised $131 million so far.

There are hundreds of noteworthy startups focusing on AI today, so BI Prime has gone to the expert venture capitalists to select the cream of the crop and create a full list of 12 AI Startups to Watch that include:

BI Prime is publishing dozens of stories like this each and every day. Get started by reading the full list.

Gal Szekely started his career in the tech world, but he says he's always been interested in personal growth and asking "What makes life fulfilling?".

For years he was a product manager, but then he left the tech world for management consultant, a role he described as "half business, half psychology." From there, Szekely and his wife trained and became therapists. Now, they have more than thirty therapists in the practice and six offices, including San Francisco and Palo Alto. They focus on couples, offering therapy and weekend workshops.

Szekely says that many of the problems he sees are influenced by the tech world and culture, even if neither member of the couple is directly working in the industry. In a phone interview, he told Business Insider about five issues he comes across that are common in Silicon Valley. 

 

Maria Fagerström is a pilot and Instagram influencer from Sweden who shares her exciting life with her nearly 500,000 followers.

Her Instagram bio reads "Hi crew ?? I'm here to give YOU a bit of insight into the aviation world with a purpose to inspire & empower others. Welcome onboard!" She follows through on her promise, too, sharing travel tips, tough parts of the job, and other insider tidbits that the average passenger might not know.

Fagerström shows the glamorous side of her life, like trips to Tenerife and Greece, but she also shares challenges, like dealing with an irregular schedule and lack of sleep. 

Here's how Fagerström uses Instagram to share her life as a pilot.

Most people think of swag as junk — branded merchandise like pens and mugs that companies give to customers and employees, knowing they'll be forgotten or trashed almost immediately. But where most people see junk, Jeremy Parker saw a huge opportunity. 

Parker graduated from Boston University in 2007 with a degree in filmmaking, but quickly realized he wanted to learn about business, something he had no experience in. He thought starting a simple t-shirt company could help him learn the in and outs of running a business, so he started a company called Tees and Tats, selling high end t-shirts with designs by tattoo artists.

Surprisingly, it took off, and others started taking notice. The company was eventually featured in Mark Cuban's blog Blog Maverick. That was the start of an entrepreneurial journey that has turned Parker into a rising star in the traffic of tchotchkes.

Parker is now the CEO and cofounder of an e-commerce company for promotional items called Swag.com. 

As its name suggests, Swag sells things like water bottles, umbrellas, shirts, jackets, USB drives, bags and items from popular brands like Patagonia and Case Logic. Companies like Facebook, Google, Starbucks, WeWork and Amazon have all used the site to order branded products, Parke says.

In just three years Parker and his cofounder Josh Orbach, have built a company with almost 3,000 customers that is set to bring in between $6 million and $7 million in revenues this year. Its revenues have grown tremendously from the $365,000 the company generated in 2016 during its first year of business.

"What's something that we would actually want to keep?"

While the market for branded promotional goods is huge, Parker says he noticed that it was very fragmented and there wasn't a go-to player. There's thousands of mom-and-pop shops, as well as specialized ecommerce sites like 4imprints. But Parker reckoned he could stand out from the crowd by simplifying, with a selection of fewer, but higher-quality, offerings.

"For today's buyer...they don't want to be overwhelmed by choice," Parker said. "We're going to curate it down to be what's the best that's out there, what's something that we would actually want to keep," he says.

Swag.com works with 30 main vendors, including well known brands like Moleskine for notebooks and Under Armour for clothes.

Swag.com also gives its customers a cloud based tool called Swag Inventory to manage and track their inventory of promotional items. Parker describes it as an "online swag closet." The tool is aimed at automating the processes of ordering, checking inventory, and sending out items for customers.

The tool allows customers to see all their inventory on a dashboard and then ship to many different locations or one central location. They can also reorder items when stock is low and store excess items at the company's warehouse and ask for smaller batches to be shipped.

A $200,000 leap of faith

While the business has taken off, it required a big leap of faith. 

Parker says the idea for a promotional branding business had been floating around in his head for 10 years before he started the company. But it wasn't until he paired up with Orbach — a friend of his with a side hobby of buying and selling domain names — that it all came together.

"I thought what would be the ultimate name for an industry that has no brand? Swag.com! It's super memorable" Parker says. "And when I went to this site, it was for sale." 

So he called Orbach and asked him to buy Swag.com and be his business partner. And he says they went all in. "Before we started the business we paid $200,000 for the domain name," Parker said. "That's a big expense, everyone told us we were crazy."

The first few years were hard. Parker and Orbach worked out of apartment building meeting rooms, an art gallery, and a WeWork office, often running out of space for all the items they were ordering. 

David Honig, an investor at Uncommon Denominator who led Swag.com's last funding round, says the Swag name has been an important part of the company's success. But he also credits the duo's use of modern e-commerce technology in the business of swag.

"The product itself has all of the automation, functionality and user experience that the modern consumer has come to expect in every other vertical, that hasn't been well practiced in the sector of corporate promotional merchandise," Honig told Business Insider. 

Swag.com had raised $2.8 million in funding so far, including their last round of $940,000 led by Honig.

One of the most-discussed topics in the ad industry concerns "in-housing," or marketers taking control over more of their own work. Last year's Association of National Advertisers survey found that 78% of respondents had some form of internal agency. 

Two of the biggest global agency holding companies, WPP and Dentsu, recently responded to the trend by setting up branded divisions to help clients manage the in-housing process.

WPP's Wunderman Thompson created Wunderman Thompson Inside in early 2018 and Dentsu-owned Isobar announced the launch of Accelerate last month. Both aim to slow the drift of work away from traditional agencies and compete for business transformation services that are dominated by consulting firms like Deloitte and Accenture.

Executives at WPP and Dentsu told Business Insider that they've been performing such work for years but formalized it after seeing more CMOs request in-house capabilities in recent briefs.

Rivals like IPG, Omnicom, and Publicis provide similar services but don't actively promote them.

Holding companies say they're not worried about losing business, but onsite operations can help minimize the impact

In a harbinger of the in-housing trend, Best Buy dropped its agency of record in 2015 and hired Wunderman Thompson to build a division that now employs more than 100 agency staff working alongside the retailer's own team in its Minneapolis headquarters.

Agency leaders downplayed the much-hyped threat this sort of model poses to their business.

"We're not lying awake at night worrying about in-housing," said Wunderman Thompson Inside Managing Director James Sanderson.

About 300 of Wunderman Thompson's estimated 20,000 employees currently work at Inside, and Sanderson said the agency has avoided losing key clients' business by embedding itself within their offices. In addition to Best Buy, clients include Coca-Cola, Dell, and Samsung.

And Isobar Global Chief Client Officer Sue McCusker said she sees client in-housing as an evolution rather than a loss, even though one of the services its Accelerate division offers involves auditing a marketer's operations to help speed up the in-housing process.

Onsite operations are less profitable than standard agency services

Former agency executive David Jones told Business Insider that holding companies "need to latch onto to any glimmers of hope for their future" but that they need to bring their own unique platforms and operating systems instead of simply co-locating with clients.

"[This] fundamentally cannibalizes the existing business of the holding companies and reduces their revenue, so their starting point for doing it comes from a very negative and defensive place," Jones said.

While the biggest holding companies have lost billions in market capitalization in recent years, Oliver, an agency that specializes in helping brands like Unilever develop their own in-house teams, claims to have grown at an annual rate of more than 60% since its founding in 2004. Jones's conglomerate You and Mr. Jones acquired a majority stake in Oliver in January.

Greg Paull, founder of management consultancy R3, said the profit margins for onsite operations tend to be in the single digits, which is lower than standard services.

The agency executives who spoke to Business Insider agreed that such models cannot succeed if their main selling point is price. But savings are almost always a key factor.

StubHub recently stopped using nearly all its agencies in part to save money. Senior Director of Global Brand Marketing Meg Ciarallo said she assembled her own team with help of another in-housing firm called Undnyable rather than taking the embedded approach, arguing that her own creative staffers know the brand better. 

Most holding companies don't actively promote their in-housing divisions

Other agencies provide similar in-housing services, even if they don't discuss it publicly.

For example, MRM//McCann has a division called Inside through which about 10 percent of the agency's employees are embedded with clients, but parent IPG does not openly promote the division.

Omnicom Media Group COO John Swift told Business Insider his company deals with clients' needs on a case-by-case basis and does not see the need to roll out separate brands for such offerings. 

"They don't want to deal with a logo soup with all our capabilities packaged in different ways," Swift said.

McCusker of Isobar said that Accelerate is not a product she aims to sell, but a service woven into the entire organization.

Still, it's difficult not to see the public launches of these divisions as an attempt by the holding companies to resist the in-housing trend.

Uber Head of Payments Peter Hazlehurst addresses the audience during an Uber products launch event in San Francisco, California, on September 26, 2019. (Photo by Philip Pacheco / AFP) (Photo credit should read PHILIP PACHECO/AFP/Getty Images)

The 2010s were a decade of massive transformation for the tech industry. Advances in technology brought nearly every industry online, and the proliferation of mobile devices and social media fundamentally changed the way consumers and businesses interact.

The 2010s were also a bloodbath for companies that couldn't keep up with seismic technological changes.

Dozens of high-profile companies went under in the past decade. While some were doomed by their reliance on outdated tech, others were new startups that raised millions before burning out.

These tech and media companies are now synonymous with obsolescence, but their decline and failure can provide valuable lessons about how fast industries are changing and what happens to entities that can't keep up.

Here are 13 of the most notable tech companies to go under in the past decade.

Everyone has something they don't want on Google — especially if they're politicians.

Every year, the search engine receives hundreds of requests from governments around the world requesting that content hosted on Google's platforms — be it a blog post, YouTube video, or anything else — be removed. Those requests came in the form of court orders, written requests, and more.

Using Google data, UK internet-research site Comparitech logged all the 115,301 requests the search engine received between July 2009 and July 2018, and the reasons cited for the removal.

Most of the reasons these governments cited were related to national security and defamation, Google reported, adding that it assesses each request, but does not necessary comply with all of them.

Scroll down to see the 20 countries that made the most of these requests, and why they did it: