Elon Musk has published a photo of an experimental rocket that will help him achieve his mission of conquering Mars.

After teasing the spaceship earlier this month, Musk posted a picture of the vehicle — dubbed the "test hopper" — in real life on Friday from SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

As Business Insider's Dave Mosher noted earlier this month, the rocket carries the test hopper moniker because it is not designed to orbit the earth. Instead, the windowless ship will rocket on "hops" that go no more than about 16,400 feet in the air.

In simple terms, it's an experimental vehicle whose successes (or failures) will inform how SpaceX works toward a full-scale, orbit-ready prototype of Starship, which could one day ferry up to 100 people and 150 tons of cargo to Mars.

Read more: Elon Musk said SpaceX is on track to launch people to Mars within 6 years — here's the full timeline of his plans to colonize the red planet

In a tweet explaining the rocket, Musk made clear it is for "suborbital" tests. The orbital version will be "taller, has thicker skins (won't wrinkle) & a smoothly curving nose section," Musk added. The operational ship will also have windows once it is complete. In a tweet earlier this month, Musk said the rocket would run its first test in between four to eight weeks, nearly a year ahead of schedule.

Musk has said the final Starship rocket will look like "liquid silver" during the blazing-hot reentry into Earth's or Mars' atmosphere. But because of test hopper's imperfections, like the ridges between the steel panels, it already has a liquid silver shine.

SpaceX fans have also been posting images of the ship:

A full-scale Starship is scheduled to launch people for the first time in 2023. Musk has said he hopes to launch the first crews to Mars in the mid-2020s, perhaps as early as 2024, to arrive at the red planet in 2025.

He has described Starship as a "Tintin" rocket, referring to the famous 20th-century Belgian comics series. "I love the 'Tintin' rocket design, so I kind of wanted to bias it towards that," he said during a press conference in September.

Police showed up at a Facebook executive's house in California after receiving a hoax call from someone impersonating the executive, saying he had shot his wife and taken his children hostage.

In a press release, Palo Alto police said an as yet unidentified male rang 911 at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night, purporting to be the executive, who has not been named. He claimed to have shot his wife, tied up his children, and planted pipe bombs in his house.

The police sent officers, including crisis negotiators, to the Facebook executive's house. He came out after police started talking to him via a public address system. Officers then searched the house and found no evidence of a crime, and that no children were present.

The Palo Alto Daily Post also reported that the executive was briefly handcuffed, and that he works in cybersecurity at Facebook. Facebook declined to confirm this when contacted by Business Insider.

Read more: Here are the Facebook execs who insiders think might leave next

"We thank the city of Palo Alto for their swift and thoughtful response. They quickly identified this as a prank, and we are glad that our colleague and his family are safe," a spokeswoman said.

Hoax callers sending emergency services to a scene with false claims of a violent crime is called "swatting," and can have fatal consequences.

One notorious "swatter" is Tyler Barriss, who is due to be sentenced at the end of this month for making dozens of fake 911 calls, one of which resulted in the fatal shooting of an innocent man. There is no suggestion he is connected to the Facebook hoax.

For the last 25 years, Jeff Bezos has been the steady hand on the tiller for Amazon, guiding the company through both rough patches and calm seas to ever-richer ports of call.

Now his personal life threatens to rock the company's boat.

Bezos announced Wednesday that he and his wife, MacKenzie, are getting a divorce. Investors will likely be watching closely to see how the dissolution of his marriage affects Bezos' running of the company and his stock holdings in it, said Mark Harrison, an advisor with consultancy Marcum, who has served as an expert witness in numerous financial disputes.

"Investors care mostly about uncertainty," he said. He continued: "The market will look for signs of emotional upheaval between the two of them."

For now, investors seem to be taking the news of the divorce in stride. Amazon's shares closed Thursday down well less than 1%, and the company retained its title as the world's most valuable corporation. But things could change if the proceedings become protracted or start to get ugly, Harrison said.

That may already be starting. In a statement on Twitter announcing their plans to divorce, Bezos and his wife portrayed it as a friendly parting. But subsequent reports in the National Enquirer and the New York Post that Bezos was carrying on an affair before he and his wife officially separated threatened to sully that narrative.

The Bezoses' divorce has two big risks for shareholders

The risk of the Bezoses' breakup to Amazon and its shareholders is two-fold.

As the company's founder and sole CEO since its launch, Bezos is widely seen as the driving force behind the tech giant, which dominates the e-commerce market, has become the leading player in the cloud-computing industry, and has become the number-3 player in digital advertising behind Google and Facebook. Many investors likely consider him to be critical to the company's continued success, and may rightly worry that Amazon's business could suffer if Bezos is distracted by the divorce.

Discussing the potential danger, Harrison paraphrased hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones' feelings on the topic.

Since the Bezoses announced their divorce, the National Enquirer has reported Bezos has been carrying on an affair with former television anchor Lauren Sanchez. Stefanie Keenan/WireImage A person going through a divorce is "worthless to him, because they're completely unfocused," Harrison said.

But the other danger comes from Bezos' vast holdings of Amazon stock. He owns about 79 million shares, or about 16% of the company. That stake, worth about $131 billion, represents about 95% of his total wealth.

Washington state, where Amazon is headquartered and the Bezoses have long made their primary residence, will likely be where they end up filing for divorce. The state's community property laws don't mandate that MacKenzie will get a 50% cut of his Amazon stake in the divorce, but they likely will result in her getting ownership of a sizable portion of it, potentially up to half, legal experts said.

Read more:Jeff Bezos' divorce could soon make MacKenzie Bezos one of Amazon's biggest shareholders

The concern for investors is what kind of control she will have over the shares she gets, how they get transferred to her, and what she does with them.

"Investors are going to be spooked if any member of the family starts selling significant amounts of stock," Harrison said.

The divorce won't cause a change of control at Amazon

Amazon representatives did not respond to emails seeking comment about the Bezoses' divorce. Representatives for Vanguard and BlackRock, the two largest Amazon shareholders after Bezos, declined to comment on the divorce proceedings or their impact on shareholders.

Unlike Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Bezos does not have a controlling stake in his company. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo One thing that's not a concern in the Bezos divorce is how it will affect control of the company. Other tech CEOs, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet's Larry Page, hold shares that give them or a small cohort of insiders control over their companies because they come with super-sized voting rights.

But Bezos holds the same kind of shares as everyday Amazon investors. Although he's Amazon's largest shareholder, its CEO, and its chairman, he doesn't have unchecked sway over it. So, no matter how many shares MacKenzie ends up with, or how her holdings are structured, it won't affect the balance of power at the company.

"I am very happy that Amazon has a one share, one vote structure," said Rosemary Lally, an editor at the Council of Institutional Investors, which advocates for stronger corporate governance and shareholder rights, in an email. "If McKenzie [sic] Bezos does become a major shareholder and tries to do something that other Amazon shareholders oppose, they can [hold] her accountable."

Legal experts expect them to keep shareholders in mind

To be sure, Harrison, who has worked on divorce cases among other affluent couples, and other legal experts expect the Bezoses to be very aware of investors' potential worries and to do whatever they can to alleviate them. Because so much of their wealth is tied up in Amazon's stock, it's in the best interests of both of them to do so.

"I think you're going to find that both parties here want to get the investor world comfortable that nothing's going on," Harrison said.

Indeed, he and some other legal experts expect the divorce process to go relatively smoothly, not just because it's in both sides' interest, but because the amount of wealth they have is so immense. In some divorces, even among wealthy individuals, one side or the other stands to be materially hurt by the division of their assets, particularly if most of their wealth is in their homes, said Ira Garr, a family-law attorney in New York who represented Rupert Murdoch and Ivana Trump in their respective divorce cases. Such cases can be particularly rancorous, just because of that.

But that's just not applicable with the Bezoses.

"When you're talking about numbers this vast, no matter what you get, you're set for the rest of your life," Garr said. In that respect, he continued, "cases like that are easier to settle."

The two will likely structure their divorce settlement so that they don't have to sell shares all at once and depress the market, legal experts said. Instead, they're likely to put provisions in place that limit MacKenzie's ability to sell stock — and perhaps even allow Jeff Bezos to retain control over the voting rights of her shares, Harrison said.

Indeed, Brian Weiser, a financial analyst who covers Amazon for Pivotal Research Group, doesn't think investors have anything to worry about when it concerns Bezos' divorce.

"I'm not aware of any reason why anyone should assume there's any meaningful risk of any meaningful problem," he said.

But emotions can sometimes get in the way

Much of this assumes that the Bezoses will act rationally and will be able to set their emotions aside. But many divorces don't work out that way. And if Bezos or MacKenzie starts acting out of emotion rather than rationality, all bets may be off in terms of the ease of the divorce, his state of mind in running Amazon, and what happens to his shares.

"When [a divorce] gets salacious and a little crazy ... all kinds of bad things can happen," Harrison said.

MongoDB's stock was down 13% at the close of the first day of trading after Amazon Web Services launched DocumentDB, a direct competitor to its own database business. The company, which went public in 2017, is now valued at just over $4 billion.

On Wednesday, Eliot Horowitz, CTO and co-founder of MongoDB, told Business Insider that he's not worried about Amazon DocumentDB — rather, he said, it was a sign of "how desperate Amazon was" to do what MongoDB does. Wall Street, however, does not seem to agree, evidenced by the dropping share price.

Read more: The CTO of $4.4 billion MongoDB explains why he's 'not terribly worried' that Amazon's cloud is encroaching on its turf with a new database

"Amazon released a product that is not only competitive and directly targeted at MongoDB," Edward Parker, director and data and cloud infrastructure analyst at analyst firm BTIG, told Business Insider. "Given Amazon's cloud size and technical confidence, we have to take this very seriously. It has competitive implications for MongoDB."

Notably, DocumentDB is compatible with certain older versions of MongoDB, potentially making it easier for customers to move from one to the other. For its part, DocumentDB is tightly integrated with the rest of the Amazon Web Services empire, and customers pay only for what they use.

Not all hope is lost for MongoDB, though, says Parker. What makes MongoDB stand out is its enthusiastic developer following. That enthusiasm might mean that AWS has trouble swiping these customers away from MongoDB, no matter how easy Amazon makes it. Besides, MongoDB has been around longer, and is more fully-featured.

"MongoDB has a very capable document database with a very passionate and large developer base," Parker said. "Amazon has advantages over MongoDB in terms of scale and overall resource preponderance. The question is the extent to which Amazon can attract MongoDB developers."

MongoDB CEO and president Dev Ittycheria MongoDB

In an interview with TechCrunch, MongoDB CEO and president Dev Ittycheria was more confident, saying that "imitation was the sincerest form of flattery" and that "developers are technically savvy enough to distinguish between the real thing and a poor imitation."

"MongoDB will continue to outperform any impersonations in the market," Ittycheria told TechCrunch.

In a note to clients, BTIG analysts pointed out that MongoDB has weathered similar storms before — a competing database from Microsoft Azure, called CosmosDB, failed to make a significant dent on MongoDB's momentum.

"CosmosDB is a document database from Microsoft which is the de facto number 2 hyperscale cloud provider," Parker said. "In theory, you would have expected that to be viable competition, but it hasn't really been able to slow down MongoDB. Microsoft has likely not been able to capture the same kind of developer mindshare that MongoDB has."

Instead, MongoDB says, it's common for customers to install MongoDB itself on their Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. MongoDB's Horowitz expects that there will be a similar dynamic at play with Amazon DocumentDB.

"We have had zero problems with MongoDB adoption on Azure," Horowitz told Business Insider. "I don't think [Amazon DocumentDB] going to have a terribly large effect on our business. It will bring MongoDB to the forefront to people's minds. It shows people who haven't used MongoDB before just how powerful the MongoDB API is."

Ultimately, BTIG believes that while the introduction of Amazon DocumentDB may not hurt MongoDB in the short run, it remains to be seen if it'll have long-term effects on the business. At the same time, MongoDB's killer advantage is really that developer enthusiasm, giving Amazon a high bar to clear, say the analysts.

"Time will tell the extent to which [Amazon] is able to successfully emulate [MongoDB]'s virtues while overcoming some of its shortcomings, but it's hard to conclude that this development doesn't have negative competitive implications," BTIG analysts wrote.

Also of note is that MongoDB was one of the companies that went on the defensive against cloud providers, like Amazon or Baidu, that take open source software like its own and package it up as a service for profit. To do so, MongoDB changed its software licensing agreements — a a controversial move with ripple effects still playing out.

N26, a German digital banking company backed by venture capitalist Peter Thiel, is now the most valuable fintech in Europe.

The company on Thursday said it had raised $300 million in a series D funding round that values it $2.7 billion. That's more than red hot $1.7 billion UK-based fintech Revolut.

Venture firm Insight Venture Partner is leading the latest funding round alongside Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC.

The financing comes just 10 months after N26's last funding round, in which the company raised $160 million from Tencent and Allianz.

Nicolas Kopp, the US chief executive officer of N26, said the fundraising is to facilitate the company's global expansion, including into the US.

Read more: A Peter Thiel-backed fintech that aims to be 'a mixture of Venmo, Zelle, Mint and Chase' is launching next year in the US

Business Insider previously reported that N26 is building a banking product for US customers in the first half of 2019 and is partnering with an unnamed American bank for its offering. The company is aiming to launch a banking app that offers an aggregation of services provided by popular financial apps, like Venmo, Zelle, Mint, and a bank account.

N26 is also looking to launch in other markets after the US, Kopp said. The company has a long-term goal of becoming a global bank and aims to serve 100 million users over the coming years, he said.

Launched in January 2015, N26 currently operates in 24 European markets and has tripled its active users to 2.3 million over last year. The company has over 700 employees and has opened a New York office that houses 25 to 30 employees, Kopp said.

N26 is just the latest fintech to raise funding at a hefty valuation. Fintech Plaid just raised funding at a $2.65 valuation.

DoorDash raises another $250M, nearly triples valuation to $4B

Forget market volatility — companies continue to grow their IT budget and their allocations for buying new software, according to Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley talked to 100 chief information officers in the US and Europe for its quarterly survey and found that CIOs expect their IT budgets to grow 4.7% in 2019. That growth is slightly down from 2018, when CIOs expected their budgets to grow 4.9%. The 2019 decline stems primarily from European CIOs, according to the report.

Morgan Stanley

CIOs in the US actually expect to see 2019 budgets grow by 5.5%, which is up from 5.3% in 2018.

The big winner, according to the survey, is software, which CIOs said will grow 5.2% in 2019. Amazon and Microsoft are the biggest gainers of "IT wallet share," according to the survey, since so many companies will spend money on public cloud services, the market where those two companies lead.

Salesforce is also well-positioned to benefit from public cloud adoption, according to the report.

CIOs expect to increase their spending on IT services by 4% in 2019, up from 3.7% in 2018. In addition, 28% of the CIOs surveyed expect to over-spend their budgets when it comes to IT services.

Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss wrote that companies like HCL, CTSH, Deloitte, and CAP are well-positioned to win from this spending. ACN was one of the top five companies most likely to benefit from spending on cloud migration, according to the report.

Spending in hardware, however, is not seeing the same growth. CIOs expect their hardware budgets to grow by just 2.2% in 2019. When these CIOs were surveyed last quarter in October 2018, they predicted 2.5% growth. US respondents in particular expect their hardware spending to grow by just 2%, according to the survey.

"The downtick is a signal that US-based tax reform and cash repatriation were meaningful positive catalysts last year with growth slowing on the more difficult comps," wrote Morgan Stanley's Keith Weiss.

Morgan Stanley

Red Dead Online, the online multiplayer mode in "Red Dead Redemption 2," is getting some major updates to mark the start of 2019 — including Gun Rush, a new game mode that's similar to "Fortnite: Battle Royale."

Gun Rush was added an update landing on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One today, and lets up to 32 players play at once. Like "Fortnite," Gun Rush tosses players into a shrinking battle zone and forces them to search for weapons to survive. Players can ride solo or join up with a team, and the last squad standing wins the game.

"Red Dead Online"/Rockstar Games

Rockstar is planning more quality of life improvements for Red Dead Online, too, like daily challenges, a revised bounty system for aggressive players, and other changes that will help organize player interactions on the online frontier. Future updates will include new story missions, dynamic events, collectible items, and different competitive modes like races.

Though Red Dead Online is included with every purchase of "Red Dead Redemption 2," Rockstar says the online mode is still in a beta phase and will remain so for a few more months.. Prior to the launch of Red Dead Online, Rockstar said it planned to work alongside the community to build an ideal online experience.

"We look forward to working with our amazing and dedicated community to share ideas, help us fix teething problems and work with us to develop 'Red Dead Online' into something really fun and innovative," the company said in a statement.

In the past, Rockstar developers have said they consider Red Dead Online and "Red Dead Redemption 2" to be two different games. Rockstar still provides regular updates to Grand Theft Auto Online, even though "Grand Theft Auto V" launched more than five years ago in 2013. Rockstar's ongoing support has helped that game sell more than 100 copies worldwide.

"Red Dead Redemption 2" was one of the most celebrated games of 2018, and with ongoing support for Red Dead Online, the game won't soon be forgotten.

The board members of Google-parent company Alphabet are being sued over allegations that the company routinely covered up claims of sexual harassment by executives, including Android creator Andy Rubin who received a $90 million exit package and a "hero's farewell" following an internal investigation about his behavior.

The lawsuit, filed in California state court on Thursday by an Alphabet shareholder, alleges that the board of directors and top executives, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, failed in their responsibility to investors by letting the harassment carry on.

"Alphabet's Board knew about allegations of sexual harassment by numerous high‐level executives at Google, which the Company found to be 'credible' after performing internal investigations and review, and yet failed to disclose the finding that the allegations were credible, and instead allowed the high ‐level executives to resign with lavish pay packages," the complaint says.

In October, The New York Times published details about the allegation that led to Rubin's dismissal — including his pressuring a woman with whom he had an extramarital relationship into performing oral sex. The Times report also exposed that Rubin was given a $90 million exit package by the company even after an internal investigation found the woman's complaint to be credible.

Read more: Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, reportedly had bondage sex videos on his work computer, paid women for 'ownership relationships,' and allegedly pressured an employee into oral sex

News of how Alphabet handled the allegations led to thousands of employees staging a walkout in protest last November.

"Because of Rubin's importance to Google's financial results, he was treated differently than other employees by Google's Board and senior management," the suit says. "He was given more deference and was lavished with compensation."

The lawsuit is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, as well as remedies such as eliminating the dual class stock structure that gives Alphabet founders Page and Brin control of the company. The suit is the first brought against Alphabet's board, according to Bloomberg, which first reported news of the lawsuit.

Louise Renne, a former San Francisco City Attorney who is representing the plaintiff, did not answer questions about the lawsuit. Alphabet was did not immediately return a request for comment.

The reign of television is coming to an end.

The medium, once considered all-important, has now been almost completely superseded by Instagram as the key way for advertisers to reach young people, according to new study by financial-service firm Cowen.

The findings underscore the extent to which media consumption habits have changed because of the internet — and serve as a reminder that for all the scandals and controversies surrounding Facebook, which owns Instagram, its core advertising business remains wildly profitable and successful.

Cowen surveyed 50 US ad buyers, who together represent about $14 billion in ad spend. They were asked "to identify the primary platform they would use for a new branding campaign" for two different age groups: 13 to 34, and 35-plus. The differences were stark.

For the 35-plus target market, television dominated, with 64% of respondents (on a spend-weighted basis) saying they "would start a new branding campaign on TV." Next was Facebook, with 32%, then Instagram (2%), YouTube and Google Video (2%), and other (1%). Snapchat, notably, got 0%.

Cowen

But for branding campaigns targeting the younger 13 to 34 demographic, it was all about Instagram.

In the study, 61% of respondents (on a spend-weighted basis) picked the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app, followed by 21% for YouTube and Google Video, and 11% for Snapchat. TV comes in fourth place, with just 3% — incidentally, the same amount as the core Facebook service itself. "Other" squeaked in at 1%.

Cowen

The data demonstrates just how crucial Instagram now is to the Facebook mothership, as the company attempts to reach young people, and it shows television, while still supreme for older people, has now completely lost its luster for the younger generation.

It also further underscores the wisdom of Facebook's decision to buy Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 — analysts estimated that Instagram alone would be valued at $100 billion as a standalone company. The app is now helping the Silicon Valley tech giant remain strong, even as opinions on its core app sour following years of scandals.

Ad buyers surveyed by Cowen said they expected the Facebook empire of apps to show a roughly steady share of digital-ad budgets over the next few years. Facebook itself will likely drop, but this will be offset by Instagram's continued growth, Cowen projected.

Cowen

In fact, Instagram seems almost uniquely insulated from the woes facing Facebook and the broader tech industry. Cowen analysts wrote: "Instagram and Pinterest were the only 2 major social networks not impacted by privacy issues, with Instagram likely to benefit the most, as 42% of respondents expect to increase spend on Instagram amidst the current environment."

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If there's one thing that the Age of Trump seems to have taught everybody in politics and business, it's that transactionalism is in. If longstanding rules are being reworked, ignored, or outright broken every day, then you need to make your own luck.

This might have been the secret mission of Tesla CEO Elon Musk during a recent no-so-secret visit to China, where he broke ground on a new Tesla factory in Shanghai and also met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. The factory will take years to complete — but what is Tesla getting out of the deal right now?

Read more: I've driven every Tesla model you can buy. Here are my favorite features.

In a research note published Thursday, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas offered an intriguing take on Elon in China.

"Tesla has proprietary EV and battery technology and is willing to transfer its valuable physical production assets to assemble its vehicles in a wholly owned plant in Shanghai," he wrote.

"In our opinion, Tesla may have some negotiating power to secure more favorable (or less unfavorable) trading parameters for the import and sale of its EVs in China while the plant is being ramped up."

The site of the new Tesla factory. Reuters

In the midst of a US-China trade war that compelled Tesla to lower prices on vehicles it makes in the US and sells in the Middle Kingdom, Musk could stand to cut some deals — especially, as Jonas noted, if Musk wants to sell a lot of Model 3 vehicles in the country.

In fact, he already has cut one good deal. The Shanghai Gigafactory will be the first Western plant in China that isn't the product of a joint venture with a Chinese manufacturer. So if Musk is angling for an open-ended tariff break, regardless of what the Trump administration does, then he might have realized that Tesla is better off going it alone.

Tesla shares were trading up by 2% on Thursday, to $345.

On Wednesday, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars reported annual sales of 4,107 vehicles in 2018. It's the most in the ultra-luxury brand's 115-year history.

BMW Group's Goodwood, England-based subsidiary beat out the previous record of 4,063 cars set back in 2014.

This marks a 22% increase over the 3,362 cars "commissioned" by the company's clients in 2017.

Much of the growth was driven by the debut and production ramp-up of the eighth generation of the company's flagship Phantom sedan, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös told Business Insider in an interview on Wednesday.

(Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is not affiliated with Rolls-Royce Holdings plc, which is an aviation engine maker and defense contractor.)

Read more:We drove the all-new $644,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom and were blown away by its opulence. Take a look inside.

North America remains Rolls-Royce's largest market and accounts for roughly one-third of the company's total sales, Müller-Ötvös said.

The new Rolls-Royce Phantom. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Europe and Asia each accounted for 20% of worldwide sales. China proved to be a particularly bright spot with a 40% surge in sales in 2018 on the back of strong Phantom and Ghost sedan sales, the CEO explained.

The UK also saw sales jump 10% in spite of economic and political instability.

As for 2019, Müller-Ötvös expects Rolls-Royce to have another banner year with full-scale production of the new Cullinan SUV coming online.

According to the company's longtime CEO, the order backlog of the Cullinan has reached the third quarter of 2019 and will be the brand's best selling model.

I used to be chronically late to everything, both personal and professional. In my twenties, before cell phones, I was one of those people that others referred to as having “Brad time” which did not correlate with the actual time in the world. My calendar and schedule was a rough sketch, not even a guide.

My lack of attention to time finally imploded on me around age 35 when Amy said she’d had enough on multiple dimensions of our life. The foundational issue for us was that my actions didn’t match my words, and by being late all the time, I wasn’t honoring my priorities (which I would regularly say was Amy over everything else …) If you ever get us together at a meal and want to hear some epic “Brad was late” stories, ask her about the Postrio dinner of 2000.

Since then, I’ve gotten a lot better at being on-time. I’m not a “five minutes early to everything” person, but I’m rarely more than a few minutes late to anything. I’m very scheduled throughout the week, so it’s often hard to transition between the thing that ends at 2:30 and then be on time to the thing that starts at 2:30 and get it exactly right each time. And, throughout the day, when I end up going until 2:35 for whatever reason, the 2:30 call then goes a little long, and everything backs up a little so that I’m 15 minutes late for the last meeting of the day. And now I know to always say “I’m sorry for being late” whenever I’m late.

Over the years I’ve tried many different approaches to managing the clock. For a while, I tried using Google’s “speedy meeting” option which defaults to 25 minute meetings (instead of 30) and 50 minute meetings (instead of an hour), but no one ever paid any attention to it and it just seemed to create weird openings in my calendar for anyone who had access to it.

Today, I use a different approach. I try manage the clock better during a meeting when I’m in charge, and prompt others when I’m not. That works a little, but it’s annoying.

I find this particularly challenging on calls that are an hour long with multiple people. Or, in three hour-ish board meetings with a lot of people. I don’t control the agenda in those meetings, so clock management is up to someone else. And, most people are painfully bad at it.

There are a few tips for anyone who wants to do this well.

The first is to publish an agenda with times allocated to each section. Then, have an enforcer (not the person running the meeting) who gives a five minute warning on each section. Then, end each section on time. Basically, break up the meeting into smaller chunks (15 – 30 minutes) and adhere to the schedule.

Next, front end load the meetings. Do the stuff you need everyone on the call or at the meeting for up front. Some things need you to build into them, but don’t leave them “for the end” – build deliberately to each deeper discussion or decision you want to have. Leaving the critical discussions and decisions for the end of the meeting is a guaranteed way not to get to them.

Send out materials well in advance (at least 48 hours) and assume everyone can read. If they don’t, that’s their problem, not yours, and they’ll get the hint pretty quickly. Instead of going page by page through your materials, or using the materials as a crutch to “review” things, summarize they key points and focus on discussion and debate, rather than review.

Finally, build in buffer. Almost everyone needs to go to the bathroom during a three hour meeting. At the minimum, it’s good to stand up and stretch your body. All video conferencing systems, no matter how good, continue to have weird friction at the beginning of the meeting, so have a front-end start buffer, rather than anxiety around the inevitable five minute delay. And, when the meeting goes off the rails and you get ten minutes behind because someone (e.g. me) can’t shut up about something and your time enforcer was daydreaming about Dali paintings, use the buffer to catch back up.

This is a problem that has been persistent in my life for over 30 years. If you have magic tricks that have worked for you, I’m all ears.

Also published on Medium.