Amazon's famous two-day shipping guarantee for all of its Prime members is in the process of becoming a one day guarantee, prompting the company to spend billions on the goal. It has taken Amazon more than 20 years to get to that point.

But Material Bank, a marketplace for design and construction materials that launched in 2019, is able to promise deliveries for packages ordered as late as midnight by 10:30 am the next day. 

While Amazon's delivery empire has grown out of the company's extensive investments in industrial real estate and army of logistics and warehouse workers, Material Bank instead partnered with FedEx and planted its warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee right next to FedEx's global sorting hub to provide speedy delivery. 

The company, founded by design media magnate Adam Sandow, secured $28 million Series B funding in April in a round led by Bain Capital Venture's Merritt Hummer, and includes previous investors Raine Ventures and Starwood Capital CEO and cofounder Barry Sternlicht. Material Bank has raised a total of $55 million in funding to date. 

These investors are betting that the design and construction material industry is waiting for the sort of e-commerce revolution that has changed the face of consumer retail. According to Material Bank, the bet is paying off, Sandow said that the company already has customers at almost 20% of Fortune 1000 companies, from cruise lines to tech companies to fast-food chains. 

Business Insider spoke with Sandow about why he switched from media to logistics, how the company is able to deliver so quickly, and why the pandemic has been good for business, even as some construction projects have stalled. 

" I want to set the bar for our industry in the same way that Amazon set the bar for e-commerce," Sandow told Business Insider. "Amazon forced the entire world to either adopt it or be roadkill."

Read more: A Bain Capital Ventures partner says construction tech is hot and short-term-rental startups are overhyped

The move from media to logistics

Sandow founded his parent company SANDOW in 2003. The company has now grown to include a design consulting firm, the NYCxDESIGN conference and multiple magazines, like Interior Design.

Sandow, always looking to expand, said that Material Bank was formed out of a range of conversations with both design firms and the manufacturers of design materials. His animating question was simple.

"How do we build next generation services, tools, and services that the industry will live on, and how do we leverage our media to grow that?" Sandow told Business Insider.

Sandow decided to focus on the design materials industry. Designers searching for materials for samples to show their clients, and then order in bulk, would either need to reach out directly to multiple manufacturers or go to a physical location to see samples. Materials could take weeks to arrive, substantially lengthening the design and building process.

Sandow's idea was to create a marketplace that could bring together all of these disparate manufacturers and send materials directly to designers much more quickly than the status quo. Sandow told Business Insider that this would have been almost impossible to pull off if it wasn't for the connections his media company had made. 

"Anytime you start a marketplace, you have a chicken or the egg problem," Sandow said. 

The manufacturers will only join a marketplace if they know that there are potential customers already using the site, while potential customers will only use the site if there is a wide range of materials to purchase. 

Sandow said that the company's contacts helped convince manufacturers to join the marketplace before it even launched. 

How to ship tile overnight

While the company has attracted clients with an unprecedented aggregation of design materials, it is making its biggest bounds in logistics. 

The company's operations are based out of a warehouse that borders FedEx's central sorting hub at the Memphis International Airport. FedEx flies almost all of its planes through the hub, sending packages around the country.

For a company looking for next-level shipping speeds without an Amazon-sized shipping empire, there's no better spot. Sandow said that the company formed a partnership with FedEx early on by explaining that it was working to "build a game-changing business on your logistics backbone." 

Read more: Bond, which has raised $15 million from investors including Lightspeed, wants to become the Shopify of logistics by turning vacant retail space into warehouses

The factory itself is largely operated by robots, from Boston-based Locus Robotics, who do the majority of sorting and packing, which Sandow said has prevented the errors that can plague a logistics operation and made its super-fast delivery possible. Sandow said this has allowed the company to pay its warehouse staff $17.50 an hour in a state where the minimum wage is a mere $7.25.

The company ships samples in proprietary packaging that designers can use to return any unused samples for free.

The company receives orders up until midnight for delivery at 10:30 am the next day. Once the last order comes in at midnight, the company has 2 hours to fully pack up all orders and load them into a truck. Around 2:00 am, the truck drives a few minutes directly to the FedEx hub, where the packages are then loaded onto planes making overnight deliveries. FedEx then delivers the product later that morning.

Funding during a pandemic

Sandow said that the company began to search for more funding in January, when the full reality of the pandemic's impact was not yet realized. At the time, Sandow said that the company received a lot of inbound interest from VC firms who wanted a piece, but they chose Bain because of their clarity of vision for the product. 

Part of that clarity was seeing how Material Bank could "carry the industry through the pandemic and beyond." 

Material Bank was useful for both manufacturers and designers affected by the pandemic. For manufacturers, they could cut back on their fixed logistics and shipping costs by working with Material Bank, who instead makes money per each item sold. It also prevented them from having to deal with the headache of shipping materials during a global pandemic. 

For designers working from home, the company made it possible to continue designing and sampling materials from the kitchen table, instead of their corporate office. These designers could access Material Bank's full catalogue remotely, and by the next day, they could hold the tile or carpet in their hands, while retail showrooms remained closed. 

Sandow said that as a result, the company has seen record revenues each month since February. 

Read more: 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has once again denied knowing Ghislaine Maxwell, saying that a photo of them together in 2014 was a result of her photobombing him.

Maxwell, who allegedly groomed young girls for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested by the FBI at her home in New Hampshire on Thursday.

"Don't know Ghislaine at all. She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago," Musk tweeted early Friday. "Real question is why VF invited her in the first place."

The tweet echoed remarks made by a spokesperson for Musk in August 2019.

"Ghislaine simply inserted herself behind him in a photo he was posing for without his knowledge," they told Business Insider.

The photo — taken at an Oscars afterparty hosted by then-Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014, in West Hollywood — caused many to question Musk's link to the British socialite.

Epstein — who killed himself in jail in August 2019 — claimed in 2018 to a New York Times reporter that he had given advice to Musk while he debated taking Tesla provider.

Musk's spokesperson denied the claim.

Colin Huang isn't a household name outside of China, but he's a serious challenger to Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma for the title of China's richest man.

Huang has just stepped down as the chief executive of Pinduoduo, a gamified online marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. It's popular in China and has a market cap of more than $100 billion, giving it a higher valuation than Uber or Sony.

People buy items on Pinduoduo such as iPhones at sale price while playing games, and rope in friends to "group-buy" groceries at huge discounts. Pinduoduo takes a small commission and charges sellers to promote their products on its app, but doesn't hold any stock.

Huang, 40, founded the company in 2015. It's grown rapidly ever since, and listed in July 2018.

Huang's fortune has exploded since. His net worth is up by $25 billion in 2020, and shares in Pinduoduo climbed to an all-time high of $87.58 on the Nasdaq on June 19.

On June 21, Forbes' Real-Time Billionaire Index showed Huang, worth $45.4 billion, briefly surpassing Alibaba's Jack Ma, worth $43.9 billion, to become China's second-richest man after Tencent's Pony Ma. Huang soon slipped back into third place and currently he is 23rd on the global Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Keep reading to learn more about the life of Pinduoduo billionaire Colin Huang.

NOW WATCH:

OneNote is a popular note-taking app that's available on both the Mac and Windows as a free download or as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription. 

If you install OneNote on your computer and later decide you no longer want to use it – perhaps you intend to switch to the web-based Evernote instead – you can uninstall it to free up room on your computer's hard drive. 

Here's how to do it on a Mac and Windows PC. 

How to uninstall OneNote from a Windows computer

1. Click Start. 

2. Pick the Settings icon, which is shaped like a small gear. 

3. When the Settings window appears, locate the "Find a setting" search box at the top and type "add or remove." 

4. Click "Add or remove programs." 

Quibi is the latest video streaming service to arrive on your phone, alongside established players like Netflix and Hulu. 

And like other streaming services, Quibi has multiple payment tiers. This means that you choose how much you want to pay for it, based on what sort of features you want.

Quibi only has two payment levels, and the only difference between them is that one tier shows you ads for $4.99 a month, while the other has no ads for $7.99 a month.

Here's how to upgrade to Quibi's ad-free service, using the Quibi app on your iPhone or Android device.

How to watch Quibi without ads by upgrading your subscription

You need to already have a Quibi subscription, which you can sign up for on Quibi's home screen after installing Quibi for iOS or Quibi for Android. 

1. In the Quibi app, tap the account settings icon at the top-right of the screen. 

2. Tap "My Account."

3. Tap "Change Subscription Plan."

4. Tap "Quibi (Ad Free)."

5. Confirm you want to change your subscription by tapping "Change to Ad Free" in the pop-up window. 

When your next bill comes, you'll be charged $7.99.

If you need to communicate with a large number of people at once, group emails are a must. Luckily, Yahoo Mail makes setting up group emails incredibly easy. 

The quick way to create a single group email is to enter multiple email addresses in the "To" field when you send an email. Every address will receive the email, and they can all respond back.

But Yahoo Mail also gives you the option to make group mailing lists, which will let you send off group emails with even greater ease.

Here's how to create group email lists in Yahoo Mail, using any browser on your Mac or PC.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $179.99 at Walmart)

 How to create a group email list in Yahoo Mail

1. Sign into Yahoo mail, and then click on the "Contacts" icon in the top-right corner of your inbox.

2. Click "Lists," then hit "Create list."

Because OneNote allows you to create a different notebook for each major project, you might end up creating a lot of them to keep your information organized. If you complete a project and no longer need the notebook anymore, you can delete it from OneNote. 

If you don't need to see a notebook in OneNote, you can remove it from the app without permanently deleting it. This lets you add it back later if you ever need to see it again. But if you want to delete a notebook permanently, it's important to note that there's no tool in OneNote to do this, so you'll need to do it using Windows. 

If you're unsure where to find the notebook you want to delete, you can locate it by clicking your current notebook to display the drop-down list of all your notebooks. Select "More Notebooks…" before pointing your mouse over the notebook you want to delete, and waiting for the hover text to appear. 

Audacity is a popular audio-editing program that's free, powerful, and easy to use. 

Using Audacity, you can produce music, podcasts, and other audio projects without needing to buy an expensive commercial audio program. 

When your audio project is completed, though, you typically need to save it as an MP3 so it can be published and shared.

Luckily, exporting Audacity files as MP3s only takes a moment. Here's how to do it using Audacity on your Mac or PC.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $179.99 at Walmart)

How to export Audacity files as MP3s

1. In Audacity, click "File" at the top of the screen.

2. In the drop-down menu, click "Export" and then choose "Export as MP3."

When you're watching video on your phone in an app like Quibi, subtitles — sometimes called "Closed Captioning" — is not merely a convenient tool to make the audio more accessible. It also allows you to play video silently and still follow the action. 

There are two ways to use subtitles in Quibi. You can either enable them while watching a video ordinarily or simultaneously mute audio and turn on captions with a single swipe.

When you enable subtitles and captions, you'll be offered the chance to choose between English and English (CC). The close captions feature both dialogue and various descriptions, such as sound effects and musical cues, while the English option contains only the dialogue. 

Here is how to do both. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $699.99 at Walmart)

How to turn on subtitles on Quibi

1. Start watching a video on the Quibi app.

2. If you don't see the player controls, tap the screen.

3. At the bottom of the screen, tap "CC."

4. Tap the language you want. 

5. Turn off Closed Captioning the same way.

How to mute the audio and turn on subtitles on Quibi

1. Start watching a video in the Quibi app.

2. Tap the video and, without lifting your finger, swipe upwards. 

3. When an icon appears that looks like a muted speaker, move your finger over it and release your finger. The audio should immediately mute, and captions should appear. 

 

OneNote is a convenient tool for doing research, taking notes, and organizing information. Occasionally, you might want to share these notes with someone else, but you don't want the recipient to make changes to your content. 

Instead of using OneNote's Share feature, you can save a notebook as a PDF instead. OneNote lets you share the entire notebook as a PDF, just a section, or even a single page.

Keep in mind that if you update a notebook, the changes will not be reflected in the PDF. You should also be careful to select just the part of the notebook you want to save as a PDF – if you only intend to save a page as a PDF but save an entire section, for example, you might share information you didn't mean to with someone.

If you're ready to share your OneNote notebook as a PDF, here's how to do it. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Microsoft Office (From $149.99 at Microsoft)

How to save a OneNote as a PDF

1. Launch OneNote. 

2. Open the notebook you want to share by clicking the currently selected notebook and choosing the correct notebook from the drop-down menu. 

If the ability to forward emails suddenly disappeared, sending emails would become much more annoying.

Forwarding allows you to share emails and attachments you've received with anyone else, without having to type the entire email out again.

Yahoo Mail makes it particularly easy to forward emails, and that's true whether you're using it on your Mac, PC, iPhone, or Android device.

Here's what you should know.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $699.99 at Walmart)

Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $179.99 at Walmart)

How to forward an email in Yahoo Mail on your Mac or PC

1. In your inbox, click on the email you want to forward to open it.

2. With the email open, click the arrow pointing to the right — there's one above the email subject line and one below the text.

Quibi's subscription-based video streaming service already has a significant amount of content – over 100 shows. That's a lot of content vying for your attention as a new subscriber. 

To help you parse out what to watch, Quibi uses its "For You" feed to promote certain shows on its home screen, which is the default view when you start the app. 

If you have no interest in a particular show, you can hide it from your feed so you won't need to see it over and over when you load or navigate the app.

Keep in mind the show is not permanently removed from your app. If you later decide you want to see the show, you can find it by tapping "Browse" at the bottom of the screen and browsing or searching for it. 

Here's how to hide shows on the mobile streaming platform. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $699.99 at Walmart)

How to hide a show on Quibi from your "For You" screen

1. Launch the Quibi app. 

2. On the For You screen tap "For You" at the bottom of the screen.

3. When you see a show you want to hide, tap the three dots in the show's window. 

4. In the pop-up menu, tap "Not Interested."

5. A message will appear confirming that the show is hidden from your Quibi feed. 

6. If you selected it by mistake, you can temporarily tap "Undo." 

 

OneNote, Microsoft's note-taking app that's a part of the Microsoft Office suite, is available for Windows and the Mac, as well as for iOS and Android devices. 

OneNote is similar to note-taking apps like Evernote and uses a notebook-like structure to help you keep your information organized. You can establish multiple notebooks, and each one can have various sections with unlimited pages. You can type free-form notes, insert photos and video clips, add links, embed audio clips, and more. 

If you want to change the language in PowerPoint, the presentation program offers you three different options depending on what you need. 

You can change the editing language, which tells PowerPoint how to edit text as you type in your preferred language. This may prove particularly helpful if you've been sent a slideshow to edit that's written in another language. 

You can also select "Translate…" to use the Translator tool on text in real-time, though Microsoft Office notes that this feature is only available for users with an Office 365 subscription, Office 2019 for Mac or Windows. This feature allows you to highlight entire text boxes or individual words and transform your presentation text any of the languages PowerPoint offers. 

Lastly, you change the display language on PowerPoint by altering your operating system's language setting. On a Mac, depending on the language, you may be asked to add input sources.  

None of these options affects the others, so you can have different languages for edits, slide text, and display. Here's how to change all three language settings in PowerPoint.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Microsoft Office (From $149.99 at Best Buy)

Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $179.99 at Walmart)

How to change the PowerPoint editing language

1. Open PowerPoint on your Mac or PC. 

2. Click the "Tools" tab on the top menu.

3. Select "Language…" from the dropdown menu.

4. In the pop-up window that appears, scroll and select a language from the list. 

5. Check the box for "Do not check spelling or grammar" if you don't want PowerPoint to use the language for proofreading. 

6. Click the "Set As Default" button if applicable.

7. Click the "Yes" button to proceed.

You have to be 13 or older to join Instagram. However, there are some things posted on Instagram that might not be appropriate for even teenagers.

This is where age limits come in. If you have an Instagram Business or Creator account, there's a feature in your settings menu that allows you to set the minimum age for people to see your account.

This feature is perfect for businesses like nightclubs, or artists who want to make sure nobody under 21 can see their content. You can even age restrict by country — for example, you could set the limit to 21 in the US, but 18 in places like Canada or the UK.

Here's how to set an age limit on your account using the Instagram app for iPhone and Android devices.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $699.99 at Walmart)

How to set an age limit on your Instagram account

If you have a Business account, here's how to set an age limit for it.

1. In the Instagram app, go to your profile.

2. Tap the three lines in the top-right corner to open the menu, and select "Settings."

3. In the settings menu, tap "Business" or "Creator."

If you don't see these options, it means you don't have a Business or Creator account. You can change this in your Account menu.

4. From the Business or Creator menu, select the option labeled "Minimum Age."

5. From here, you have two options: Simply add one overarching default minimum age, or set restrictions selectively by country. 

To add a single default age, simply tap the "Add" button to the right of the "Default" option and enter the desired minimum age.

To specify the age limit by country, tap the "Add" button next to "By Country" instead, and follow the on-screen instructions to select a country.

When you're finished, tap "Done" in the top-right corner of the screen.

There's nothing worse than the realization that your MacBook Pro hasn't charged overnight and you're now starting the work day with a dead battery. 

Here's everything you need to know about charging your MacBook Pro, no matter how old it is.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

How to optimally charge your MacBook Pro

Depending upon the age of your MacBook Pro, there are two ways to charge it:

For best results, you should try to use the official Apple-made charging cable that comes packaged with your laptop.

Your MacBook will charge more slowly if it's turned on, or you're actively using it while it charges. For the fastest charge, turn the laptop off or put it to sleep.

And once your MacBook is charged, unplug it. Keeping a device plugged in while it's already at maximum charge can wear out the battery.

How to tell if your MacBook Pro is charging

If you have an older MacBook Pro with a magnetic charging cable, the square piece that plugs into your computer will have a light on it. While the computer is charging, this light will be orange. When the battery is completely charged, this light will turn green. 

If there's no light at all, check to make sure the power adapter is plugged in.

If your phone seems to be charging slowly, it might not be your imagination — topping off the battery might really be taking longer than it used to. 

Twitch's acquisition by Amazon opened the door to some cool features, like Twitch Prime.

However, the acquisition also means that now there's no way to watch Twitch on a Roku device — after all, Roku is one of Amazon's competitors.

Twitch used to offer a fully featured app for Roku devices. If you try to download that app now, however, you'll be shown a message saying that the app has been shut down. 

If you already had the app downloaded when it was shut down, it's likely that you can't use it anymore. And even if you can, there's going to be a lot of bugs and broken features.

If you want to watch Twitch on your TV, you're better off using another device. Here's what you should know.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Amazon Fire Stick 4K (From $49.99 at Amazon)

Roku Streaming Stick (From $49.99 at Best Buy)

Google Chromecast (From $29.99 at Best Buy)

How to watch Twitch on your TV, without a Roku device

First of all, even though the Twitch app can't be downloaded anymore, it hasn't been removed from Roku devices that already had it. This means that if you already have the app, there's a chance it'll still work, albeit with glitches and missing features.

However, this is unlikely. Our own testing seems to show that even if you have the channel downloaded, opening it will just give you a message saying that the channel doesn't work anymore.

In a series of tweets, Twitter joked that the platform would implement an edit button once everyone started wearing masks. 

"Everyone means EVERYONE," @TwitterComms posted. 

Twitter users have repeatedly asked for an edit feature to be added. 

"The reason there's no edit button [and] there hasn't been an edit button traditionally is we started as an SMS text messaging service," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Wired in January. "So as you all know, when you send a text, you can't really take it back. We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling in the early days."

Public health experts have strongly encouraged people to wear masks while out in public to reduce the spread of the coronavirus especially as cases across the US continue to surge. According to a Washington Post tally, the US recorded more than 50,000 cases on Wednesday. In total the country has over 2.7 million and more than 128,000 deaths. 

Many users replied feeling pessimistic that the platform's conditions could ever be met. 

"So never?" one user replied. 

Another user asked if the request included President Donald Trump.

 

Trump has repeatedly refused to wear a mask, and some experts have said it sends the wrong message to the public on the necessity of masks to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus. 

On Wednesday, the president said he supported wearing masks during an interview with Fox Business.

"I'm all for masks, I think masks are good," Trump said. 

Business Insider's Eliza Relman reported that Trump added that he thinks mandatory mask-wearing orders are unnecessary. 

In May, Trump visited an indoor Ford plant in Michigan and did not wear a face-covering because he "didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it."