In 2018, Carlos Ghosn was one of the most powerful automotive executives in the world.

As chief of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, the Brazilian-born and French-educated businessman oversaw vehicle sales totaling more than $243 billion in revenues worldwide by 2018. Along the way, he earned nicknames like "Le Cost Killer" and "The Ice Breaker" for helping to turn around failing automotive businesses.

But by Tuesday, the 65-year-old was no longer a cosmopolitan boss but an international fugitive, having somehow slipped out of house arrest in Japan while awaiting trial on charges of financial misconduct and personal use of company assets. He has categorically denied all allegations since his first arrest in November 2018.

Theories about how Ghosn apparently hoodwinked authorities swirled after he confirmed he had arrived safely in Lebanon, which has no extradition treaty with Japan, making the continuation of his trial difficult, if not impossible. MTV, a Lebanese television channel, reported that Ghosn may have hidden inside a musical-instrument carrying case brought by a band playing at his Tokyo home for a holiday party. The station did not cite any sources for the instrument-case escape theory.

Other accounts said Ghosn, who held multiple international passports, may have evaded authorities by using forged papers and a false identity at a smaller under-the-radar airport. One Beirut official said Ghosn entered the country with a French passport, The New York Times reported.

Regardless of his methods, Ghosn's international escapade is yet another wrinkle in a saga likely to define three decades of intense competition and dealmaking in the auto industry — a trend that began when electric vehicles were still largely a pipe dream and scandals like Dieselgate would be hard to imagine.

The turnaround artist earns his chops

In the past month, major tech companies have scrambled to overhaul their privacy policies in time for 2020 — you have seen a notification or gotten an email about it from sites including Facebook.

The reason is a sweeping California law passed by the California state legislature earlier this year that sets a January 1 deadline for companies to comply with new privacy standards.

The law, called the California Consumer Privacy Act, is meant to give people more information and control when it comes to how tech companies use their personal data. It only applies to California residents, but most major tech companies will ultimately overhaul their entire platforms to get into compliance, affecting all users.

Among the most prominent changes you may notice will be a new button or link on the websites you visit reading "Do Not Sell My Personal Information."

Here's everything you need to know about how the new law will reshape the internet.

Real estate agents have, so far, largely avoided being replaced by technology, unlike many human brokers in businesses like travel and stock trading.

Venture money has been pouring into iBuyers that make automated cash offers on homes, and startups looking to put a new twist on old brokerage models. But iBuyers made up only 0.2% of the US real estate market in 2019. 

Real estate agents are still here, even if their jobs have changed with the advent of social media marketing and online listing platforms. Clelia Warburg Peters, president of Warburg Realty and a co-founder of pioneering proptech VC MetaProp, thinks that change has been slow in real estate brokerage because of the high stakes that come with selling or buying a home. 

"People have been less willing to experiment with new models here than in many other areas of their lives," Peters told Business Insider. 

But that will change by 2030, experts say, whether by the force of venture money or consumer demand as more of life becomes entirely digital. Peters has a three-tiered vision of what the future of brokerage will look like, with those tiers differentiated by the wealth of a potential home seller or buyer.

A three-tiered brokerage market

The lowest tier will be the most disintermediated by tech. iBuyers are the most obvious example of this now, but experts imagine that other tech-disintermediated options could exist in 10 years. 

The middle tier, comprising the largest portion of the market, will be brokerages that continue to use agents, but will use specialized labor and more technology to lower commissions and sell many more homes per agent.

The final tier, serving the most expensive homes in every market and most of the most expensive markets, will be closer to the more traditional brokerage model, though new models and technology will impact this space too. 

These tiers will cause some large changes to real estate brokerage. The experts who spoke to Business Insider largely predicted that there will be fewer agents, lower commissions, and more services like title and mortgage brought directly to the transaction by brokerages. 

Replacing agents with technology

While many of the experts we spoke to were skeptical about iBuyers when they first hit the market, most agree that the technology is here to stay. Peters predicts that between 10% and 15 % of home sales will be made by iBuyer and other tech platforms by 2030. 

These platforms, which trade convenience and a guaranteed sale for high fees and a potentially lower sale price have had success in Sunbelt cities in the US. Experts expect them to expand, though to remain most successful in the Sunbelt. 

Other platforms, which may not even exist yet, could create more accurate underwriting models and renovation plans that could potentially lower their cost to the consumer or increase their geographical reach. They could also partner directly with institutional investors in single-family rentals, like Invitation Homes, which would bring more of the nation's homes onto the rental market. 

Steve Murray, president and owner of Real Trends, a real estate research and consulting company, said that advocates of the iBuyer think that by making the transaction faster and simpler, they could lead to a higher volume of sales. 

"It could influence the number of people who are buying and selling," Murray said.

While some experts think the future is bright for iBuyers, others point out that the model hasn't weathered an economic downturn. 

"The companies are taking a massive amount of balance sheet risks with these assets of single family homes," Ryan Freedman, general partner at Corigin Ventures, said. "When the value of those homes change, I'm not sure how that plays out for these companies." Corigin is an early-stage venture firm that invests in real estate tech startups. 

Kurt Ramirez, general partner at real estate and built world tech VC Nine Four Ventures, has seen iBuyers start to bundle other services, like title, escrow, and mortgage into the transaction. This will become more prevalent, and will allow iBuyers to increase their margins. 

While this tier seems to promise an agent-free future, Dror Poleg, author of Rethinking Real Estate and the co-chair of the Urban Land Institute's Technology and Innovation Council, has seen iBuyers start to employ brokers, especially for the selling side. 

"They're finding that they can't do it all on the computer," Poleg said. 

The assembly line comes to real estate

SigFig, the financial-technology firm and robo-adviser that's partnered with some of the largest US wealth managers, has lost another key senior leader.

Tung-Huy La, who was the firm's director of quality assurance, left SigFig this month, La confirmed to Business Insider.

SigFig last raised $50 million in a June 2018 funding round led by General Atlantic. The Series E round included participation from returning investors including Bain Capital Ventures, DCM Ventures, Eaton Vance, New York Life, Nyca Partners, UBS, and Union Square Ventures.

We first reported in October that the San Francisco-based firm had recently cut some 10% of its workforce — around 20 people — and had separately seen departures in top roles that helped sign up and take care of clients.

Martin Attiq exited in August as the firm's head of strategic partnerships, and Randy Bullard left in September as general manager of wealth management. Attiq moved into a role as an adviser to the firm; Bullard is now the global head of wealth at the investment-management-software provider Charles River, which is owned by State Street. 

SigFig did not respond to a request for comment. La said he was leaving for personal reasons.

"It was a hard decision for me, as I really loved working at SigFig and it was like a family to me," he said.

Robo-advisers like SigFig, Wealthfront, and Betterment have sought to disrupt the wealth business by offering automated financial advice to investors at a lower cost than traditional human advisers.

SigFig's recent departures signal holes in the leadership around its main line of business: white-labeling technology for its partner firms such as UBS, Wells Fargo, and Citizens Financial, as well as the financial-data provider Refinitiv.

SigFig's business largely differs from that of more traditional robo-advisers, which cater services directly to investors more than to firms and their advisers. Robo heavyweights Wealthfront and Betterment directly handle some $21.5 billion and more than $20 billion in client assets, respectively. 

The firm, founded in 2007, directly oversaw some $485 million in assets under management as of March, according to its latest regulatory filing. That excludes assets held at other firms that use SigFig's technology on a white-label basis.

Before joining SigFig in 2014, La built up the quality-assurance team at the news-aggregation website Flipboard and served as its head of quality assurance, according to his SigFig bio. La previously led a similar team at Amazon.  

Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or on the secure app Signal — number available upon request — using a nonwork phone.

A new month, and new year, means anticipated new shows. 

In January, CBS All Access will debut "Star Trek: Picard," in which the actor Patrick Stewart will return to his "Star Trek: The Next Generation" role of Jean-Luc Picard. A new Stephen King adaptation, "The Outsider," will also premiere on HBO.

Every month, Business Insider runs down the five most anticipated new shows using data from television-tracking app TV Time, derived from its millions of users around the world who use the app to track and react to what they're watching.

Below are the five most anticipated new shows of January: 

Burnout is a term regularly bandied around in an age where emphasis on work-life balance is higher than ever, but difficult to achieve.

Finding purpose in life can extend to work and sometimes it is not the expected path that has the most reward. That was the experience of Hanna Madrigan, now COO at buzzy wellness startup Wellset, who quit roles in private equity and subsequently Pinterest to find a better calling. 

As a 22-year-old Madrigan was an investment associate at Boston-based private equity firm Liberty Mutual Investments, but despite initially enjoying people's surprised reactions when learning of her high-achieving role, it began to take its toll. 

"It was a cut-throat culture, with little room for stepping outside the box," she told Business Insider in an interview. "I had never liked the taste of coffee, but then once I realized it was an acceptable break from the office I quickly became a coffee aficionado. I'll never forget those walks to the coffee shop — my head fuzzy, my body moving but it was like I wasn't there."

Madrigan's mental health began to suffer as a result. One in five adults in the US suffer from some form of mental health issue which can cause difficulties at work. She opted to leave finance for tech and found herself at Pinterest, working in the company's founding partnerships team.  

"I spent nearly three amazing years at Pinterest. But over time, I found myself starting to struggle, I was exhausted and running on fumes," Madrigan added. "So I began to double down on my wellness practices: I was practicing yoga like religion, cooking my meals, and meditating. It moved the needle, but not enough."

The next step was more drastic yet. Wary of burnout and feeling confused she opted to take a brave step, selling her possessions, quitting a dream job and leaving LA on a one-way ticket to travel solo aged 28. 

"I realized that life is not linear, and creating the space to re-center and experience life in different ways was exactly what I needed. I studied Buddhist practices at Thích Nhất Hạnh's monastery, worked on organic farms, and practiced yoga and meditation across the world."

Wellness is already a $4.2 trillion market worldwide and is growing each year. But Madrigan still took over 130 meetings before settling on Wellset to ensure that she made the best decision for her health and wellbeing. 

She hopes that her own journey through the up and down world of employment can help allow others to find time to put themselves first in an attempt to find balance.

"My hope was to find work with kind and smart people whose north star was to create a positive social impact," she said. "So instead of going through the traditional job hunting process of submitting my resume to different postings, I decided to meet with inspired people who then introduced me to other like-minded people within their networks, which quickly began a ripple effect."

Through that process she met WellSet founder and CEO Tegan Bukowski and executive chairman Sky Meltzer. Not only did WellSet tick Madrigan's boxes but it's a growing market, according to the Global Wellness Institute.

"Similar to platforms like Airbnb, we've created the first centralized marketplace to seamlessly find, book, and recommend wellness practitioners," said Madrigan. "We want to make wellness easier and accessible for everyone by putting credible brands, leaders, and recommended practitioners in one online community."

WellSet is in the process of closing a pre-seed round with investors including Kleiner Perkins and other backers.

The company claims to have some 6,000 wellness practitioners signed up to the platform, which is slated to launch in Los Angeles in early 2020. 

Nearly a year after federal regulators first outlined a sweeping proposal to ban the sale of sweet and fruity flavored e-cigarettes, the Trump Administration will put a ban on certain flavored vaping cartridges.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the FDA plans to prohibit the sale of all flavored vaping pods except tobacco and menthol varieties as part of an attempt to curb the rise of youth vaping. The Journal, citing officials, said the official announcement is expected on Friday, 

The ban would exclude open-tank vaping devices, a compromise made for small businesses. The Journal reported that those devices are often found at vape shops and "allow users to mix their own nicotine liquids." Open-tank vaping devices are not as popular with young people.

The move also comes at the height of a public safety scare related to a growing cluster of serious lung diseases tied to vaping. At last count, 55 people have died and nearly 2,561 have been hospitalized as a result of the mysterious condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The flavors that will be prohibited are those that are believed to be most popular with young people. Many manufacturers of vape devices and refillable vaping liquids offer options ranging from spicy watermelon to bubble gum, and health experts have said that those offerings are a clear and obvious danger to kids. Young people are highly vulnerable to nicotine, the addictive drug in many e-cigarettes.

Facebook gives you so many options to customize your profile, in fact there are so many that it can feel a bit overwhelming at times, especially if you're starting from scratch.

Regardless of how long you've had your profile, one of the updates you'll want to change right away is your relationship status. 

Here's how to navigate through your profile and make that change.

How to change your relationship status on Facebook

1. Go to facebook.com and log into your account, if needed.

2. Click your name in the top toolbar to get to your profile.

3. Click the "Edit Profile" button at the top of your profile.

If you use a personal Cash App account linked to your bank account or debit card and aren't in a rush to transfer payments, then you might never have to pay a single cent for your transactions. However, if you opt to use a credit card to send money or need an instant transfer, Cash App charges minimal fees.

There are a few cases in which you might incur Cash App charges, but with the included convenience of sending, receiving, and transferring money, you probably won't even mind paying up.

Here's when your Cash App will charge you a fee

If you are sending money via a credit card linked to your Cash App, a 3% fee will be added to the total. So sending someone $100 will actually cost you $103. This is a rather standard fee with other payment apps as well, like PayPal, and is about the same rate businesses usually absorb with credit card transactions.

The other common charge Cash App users will see is a 1.5% commission added when they opt for instant transfers from the app to a bank account. However, this fee can easily be avoided by simply opting for a standard transfer, which takes two to three days.

The race at the top of London's fintech banking scene looks set to heat up once again.

Digital challenger bank Monzo is reportedly in talks for up to £100 million ($131 million) in new funding, hot on the heels of a potential new fundraise from competitor Revolut, the Mail on Sunday first reported. 

Monzo is in talks to raise between £50 million and £100 million from a number of large institutions, according to the report. It follows a $113 million raise from VC investors, including Y Combinator Continuity, earlier this year and could be one of two major rounds for Monzo in 2020.

Neo-bank Monzo secured $113 million in Series F funding from a series of existing and new investors including Y Combinator Continuity to jump to a valuation of $2.6 billion in June. The challenger bank, founded in 2015, gained its unicorn valuation last October in its previous funding round, and has since added more than a million customers. Monzo claimed it had around 3.5 million customers and over 1,500 staff. 

The Financial Times also reported on the fundraising, citing people familiar with the matter who said that Monzo had been in talks with investors about an extension to its $113 million round ahead of a bumper "Series G" funding in 2020. Monzo offers users a bright coral coloured card alongside a bevy of digital banking services via an app and competes with fellow challengers, Revolut, Starling Bank, and Germany's N26. 

Y Combinator Continuity backs the subsequent funding rounds of alumni companies of the seed accelerator Y Combinator. Other investors in the Monzo round included General Catalyst, Stripe, Passion Capital, Thrive, Goodwater, Accel and Orange Digital Ventures. Monzo has now secured a total of $414.5 million in funding. 

The company made a pre-tax loss of £50.7 million in the 12 months to February 2019, according to its annual report. Fellow fintech startup Revolut is also said to be in talks for a new equity fundraising and could be looking to bring in as much as $1.5 billion. 

Monzo did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Business Insider. 

It's never fun when technology just isn't working the way it's supposed to. 

If you're having trouble accessing Google Maps features, there could be a few issues occuring. 

Here's a breakdown of what those might be and tips for troubleshooting to get your navigation app back in working order.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)

Instagram stories allow users to share what they're doing in real time. A story remains up for 24 hours, and users can upload multiple frames, adding music, text, artwork and emojis to enhance the narrative. Once a story frame is uploaded, it can't be edited. But, it can be deleted. 

Note that if you delete a photo that's a part of a longer story, you won't be able to insert a new frame in its previous location – any new frames will be added to the end of the story. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)

How to delete an Instagram story on a mobile device

1. Open up the Instagram app on your iPhone or Android phone and post the story. Once it's posted, a circle will appear around your profile picture.

2. To delete a frame of the story, first tap on your profile picture to view your story. Then, tap on the screen to move through the various frames of the story until you get to the one that you want to delete.

3. Select the "More" tab in the bottom right corner. 

4. A menu will pop up. Select "Delete."

5. Instagram will ask if you're sure you want to delete the frame of your story. Select "Delete" to permanently remove it from your story. Deleting a frame removes only that one specific frame – all subsequent photos will remain in the story.

6. To delete your entire story, repeat the above process to delete each individual frame in your story.

 

Instagram stories are a great way to keep up with your followers. Stories allow users to share photos temporarily with all of their friends, or only close friends, as opposed to posting a photo on their account. Also, instead of appearing in your feed, other people's stories are found at the top of the homepage. 

You can customize your story in a number of ways, one of which is done via the iPhone's 3D or Haptic Touch. Other options include putting music in your story or adding a link.

Since the iPhone 6S was released in 2015, 3D Touch was introduced allowing users to accomplish a variety of commands by pressing down on their iPhone screen. Since its introduction, 3D Touch has become integrated into many apps, including Instagram, and its essential features have since been replaced on newer iPhones by what Apple now calls Haptic Touch. 

To change your Instagram story background, use the 3D or Haptic Touch feature to change the default color to your new selected hue. 

Here's how to do it.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

How to change the background color on your Instagram story

1. Select the photo on Instagram that you'd like to add to your story.

2. Click the paper airplane icon underneath the photo to share it on your story. A pop-up will appear.

3. Click "Add post to your story."

4. This will automatically create a story for you. The default background will be a gradient of the main color in the image. 

5. To change the color, click the pen icon at the top-right of the screen.

6. Choose your desired color from the palette at the bottom, swiping to scroll through more. 

7. You can also choose a color from the photo to match the hue exactly. To do so, click the color dropper symbol and then drag your finger over the photo until you find the color that you like.

8. Release your finger when you've found the right color.

9. Use 3D Touch by pressing down on the gradient background (anywhere outside of the photo). This will change the background to your pre-selected color.

10. Once you are satisfied with your new background, tap "Done." You can continue customizing your story to your liking with text or gifs before you add the completed story to your profile.

 

Everyone has seen Bluetooth in action when it comes to music players and headphones, but its capabilities extend far beyond just that. 

By taking advantage of the Bluetooth features on your Android phone or tablet, you can use your Xbox One wireless controller to play games, use apps, and even browse the web on your Android.

Want to get in on the action? Here's how to learn how to pair your Xbox One controller to your Android device using Bluetooth.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Xbox One S All-Digital (From $249.99 at Best Buy)

Xbox One Wireless Controller (From $59.99 at Best Buy)

Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)

First, make sure that your Xbox One controller has Bluetooth capabilities.

A Xbox One controller with Bluetooth has plastic around the Xbox button that matches the rest of the controller's color. A non-Bluetooth controller has differently-colored plastic. You'll need one with Bluetooth to pair it with your Android device.

Next, let's make sure that Bluetooth is on.

1. On your Android mobile device, open the Settings app. If you're having trouble finding it, swipe up from the homescreen and browse the Apps menu until you find "Settings," represented by an icon resembling a gear.

2. Tap "Connections."

3. Make sure your Android device has Bluetooth enabled. If Bluetooth isn't already turned on, tap the white slider next to "Bluetooth" so that it turns white and blue.

Now, we'll need to get the controller ready.

4. Press and hold the Xbox button on your Xbox One controller to turn the controller on.

5. Locate the sync button on the Xbox One controller. The button is on the top of the controller, between the L1 and R1 buttons, and is recognizable by the three curved lines next to it.

Google Drive allows you to not only upload files for easy access from wherever you're signed into your Google account, but you can also upload and share photos, documents, and videos in a few simple steps. 

Once you upload files to Google Drive you can also share them with others so that they can view, edit, or download them at anytime. 

It only takes a few moments to share a video file on Google Drive, and as long as the correct permissions are in place, the recipient can easily access the file. 

Here's how to do it. 

1. Open Google Drive and ensure you're logged into your Google account.  

2. Click the "+New" button on the left hand side and upload your video from your computer. If your video file is already uploaded to Google Drive, locate it in your Drive's file list. 

3. Click on the video file once to highlight it. 

4. Right-click on the file name to open a menu of options. 

5. Click "Share." 

The Financial Times reports that WeWork would pay out nearly $17 million to its new cochief executives should they be fired or leave under circumstances including diminution of their duties, cuts to their pay, or involuntary relocation.

Documents reviewed by the Financial Times and sources familiar with the matter also said the company's chief legal officer, Jennifer Berrent, would receive $1.5 million if ousted under the same circumstances. The exit packages were said to be negotiated under SoftBank's acquisition of the venture real-estate company, which has laid off thousands of employees and scaled back its global expansion following a disastrous attempt at an initial public offering.

Co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham took over WeWork after its cofounder and CEO, Adam Neumann, stepped down, receiving a $1.6 billion exit package. 

The Financial Times reported last week that Neumann could earn hundreds of millions of dollars more under a revised agreement that altered the terms of his remaining financial interests in the company. Berrent's revised contract also reportedly means she would not have to repay $12 million worth of retention bonuses after leaving, something she could have had to do previously.

Details of the revised exit packages were sent to shareholders and employees, the Financial Times said. The documents also reportedly said WeWork "may continue to experience [a] significant amount of turnover of senior management."

Minson and Gunningham initially took $1.5 million salaries in September, and they now report to Marcelo Claure, the SoftBank executive who was appointed executive chairman of WeWork. Berrent saw her salary fall to $600,000 from $871,000 the previous year.

Something strange has been happening in Eastern Colorado at night.

Since the week of Christmas, giant drones measuring up to 6 feet across have been spotted in the sky at night, sometimes in swarms as large as 30. The Denver Post first reported these mysterious drone sightings in northeastern Colorado on December 23. Since then, sightings have spanned six counties across Colorado and Nebraska.

Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott had no answer for where the drones came from or whom they belonged to but did have a rough grasp on their flying habits. "They've been doing a grid search, a grid pattern," he told The Denver Post. "They fly one square and then they fly another square."

The drones, estimated to have 6-foot wingspans, have been flying over Phillips and Yuma counties every night for about the past week, Elliott said Monday. Each night, at least 17 drones appear at about 7 o'clock and disappear at about 10 o'clock, staying 200 to 300 feet in the air.

The Federal Aviation Administration told The Post it had no idea where the drones came from. Representatives for the Air Force, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the US Army Forces Command all said the drones did not belong to their organizations.

As the airspace where the drones are flying is relatively ungoverned, there are no regulations requiring the drone operators to identify themselves. Elliott, however, said the drones did not appear to be malicious.

The Post spoke with the commercial photographer and drone pilot Vic Moss, who said the drones appeared to be searching or mapping out the area. Moss said drones often flew at night for crop-examination purposes. The drones might also belong to a local Colorado drone company, which could be testing new technologies.

In the meantime, Moss urges residents not to shoot down the drones, as they are highly flammable.

"It becomes a self-generating fire that burns until it burns itself out," he told The Post. "If you shoot a drone down over your house and it lands on your house, you might not have a house in 45 minutes."

It's become an annual tradition for former US President Barack Obama to release a list of his favorite books of the year.

He posted his top reads from 2019 to Twitter on Saturday, listing a diverse range of 19 titles such as Hilary Mantel's novel about Thomas Cromwell, "Wolf Hall," and Sally Rooney's popular novel "Normal People." The titles also include biographies, histories, and essays.

One book that perhaps surprisingly made Obama's list was the nonfiction title "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by the Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff.

Zuboff's work was published in 2018 but is a timely exploration of the way companies increasingly rely on the surveillance of users' behavior to inform and enhance their business models.

Obama's promotion of the book is interesting because, as the journalist Avi Asher-Schapiro noted, the book is critical of the Obama administration's embrace of the very companies that benefit from this new way of making money, specifically Google.

Zuboff argued that Google had evolved from a simple search engine into a sprawling behemoth whose core mission had become to make a grab for all data.

Zuboff wrote in one section of the book that "a revolving door of personnel who migrated between Google and the Obama administration" helped the search giant deflect political scrutiny. The company was, she argued, able to help shape US policy in a way that allowed it to continue hoovering up people's data.

Zuboff wasn't the first to observe the possible negative consequences of Google's proximity to the Obama White House.

The Intercept reported in 2016 that Google representatives attended meetings at the White House more than once a week and that some 250 people had passed through the revolving door between the administration and the company. The former Google chairman Eric Schmidt was a substantial donor to Obama's campaign, while the Obama-era US chief technology officer Megan Smith was a former Googler, as was her deputy, Andrew McLaughlin.

Zuboff acknowledged the inclusion of her book on Obama's list, writing on Twitter: "Thank you, @BarackObama. I am honored to see #TheAgeofSurveillanceCapitalism on your 2019 list. We need your support in this new fight for a human future. This is our big work now."

This year saw the humbling of some of the best-known unicorns — startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Uber, Lyft, and Slack all saw their valuations fall after they went public, and Uber debuted at a far lower price than expected. Meanwhile, things were so bad for WeWork, it couldn't even go public, despite repeatedly slashing its valuation, and ended up needing a $9.5 billion bailout from SoftBank just to stay in business.

Morgan Flager thinks such companies won't be the last unicorns to be disgraced. Over the next three years, 30% of the more than 400 companies in the $1 billion valuation club will see their worth officially challenged as they raise new funding, predicted Flager, a general partner with Austin, Texas-based venture capital firm Silverton Partners. They'll either have to raise funds at the same valuation they were assigned perhaps years before, or they'll have to swallow being tagged with a slashed value, he said.

"You have a lot of these companies that have raised on very high multiple valuation metrics and now have to go to market with a slightly more skeptical group of investors," Flager told Business Insider. "In a lot of cases when that happens, it's a win to get back to the valuation or metric you had before."

Flager declined to name any particular unicorns that he thinks are heading for a fall. But in general, the startups that are at the biggest risk of being humbled are those like WeWork that may employ software or other technology in their businesses but fundamentally operate in other industries, like consumer packaged goods or real estate, he said.

Even though those industries are typically less profitable than the software business and investors generally haven't paid the same kind of premium for them as software firms, such "companies are getting [similar] kinds of valuations," Flager said.

WeWork opened investors' eyes

The dramatic decline of WeWork in particular has likely awakened investors to the folly of that notion, he said. In a funding round in January, SoftBank valued the real-estate giant at $47 billion. As it prepared for an initial public offering this summer, WeWork's bankers were pitching it on the idea that the public investors could value it even higher.

Instead, investors pushed back against the offering, alarmed by the company's huge and ballooning losses and by some questionable transactions involving its CEO, Adam Neumann, and his family members. The company eventually cancelled its offering, missing out on a much-needed chance to replenish its coffers. Weeks away from bankruptcy, it got a bailout from SoftBank that valued the company at less than $9 billion.

That "kind of opened some people's eyes, in terms of the potential peril of applying those valuation metrics to businesses that, some would argue, historically have not seen that level of valuation and whose business models don't necessarily justify it," said Flager, whose firm focuses on investing in early-stage startups that are based in Texas.

The unsustainably high valuations of some unicorns have been driven in part by that mistake that some investors have made of confusing those companies that don't really deserve to be considered tech companies with bona fide tech firms, he said. But there are other factors at play.

A flood of money has raised valuations

Much of the rise in the value of startups has come from the flood of capital into the private markets, he said. With a surplus of capital, investors are bidding higher to be a part of deals, especially for companies that seem to have the potential to be worth tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars.

The inflation of valuation also stems from a mismatch between the perspectives of private and public investors, he said. Private investors tend to have longer time horizons and are often more willing to tolerate losses and investment for longer periods of time than public shareholders. Those private investors have been much more willing to buy into the vision presented by such companies that they'll be able to post healthy profits once they get bigger and have a more dominant position in the market, he said.

"That vision of when that's going to happen tends to be a little bit far out in the future for a lot of public market investors," Flager said.

While the overvaluation of companies such as WeWork and Uber has gotten the most attention, the trend has affected the whole venture industry, including the Texas startup scene and the early-stage market on which Silverton concentrates, he said. Valuations in Austin have risen about 60% to 70% in the last eight years, he said. And Silverton has had to be more selective about its investments.

In some cases, it's been outbid on particular deals because the price got too high, Flager said. Earlier this year, Literati, one of its portfolio companies, was seeking to raise a Series A round. Silverton intended to lead the deal, but the round became too pricey. Shasta Ventures ended up leading the round in the book-club service provider, and Silverton just invested enough to maintain its percentage stake in the company, Flager said.

Silverton is "selectively walking away from investments where we think they're on the higher end of...this valuation change that's happened," he said. "But we're still paying higher prices on average than were, even 4-5 years ago, and, I would say, significantly higher."

Got a tip about venture capital or startups? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

In the hit-driven video game industry, few franchises grow large enough to become household names, and even fewer can remain popular enough to survive more than a few years. "Fortnite," however, has already surpassed both milestones to become one of the most influential video games in recent history.

The sandbox shooter created by North Carolina-based Epic Games has brought in more than 250 million registered players and reportedly generated no less than $2.4 billion in 2018. "Fortnite" is totally free to play, but players spend billions on in-game microtransactions and other rewards — a testament to "Fortnite's" ever-engaging weekly updates.

Outside of perhaps "Pokémon Go" or "Minecraft," few recent games have managed to reach the level of pop-culture ubiquity that "Fortnite" has enjoyed for the past two years. A star "Fortnite" player made the cover of ESPN The Magazine, and "Time's" list of 100 most influential people. Musicians and actors have been filming themselves playing "Fortnite," and the game even had a cameo in "Avengers: Endgame," the biggest movie of all time.

"Fortnite" itself is a living entity that changes at the whims of its creators and is built to suit the tastes of its incredibly broad audience. Epic Games' ability to understand and adapt with that huge audience is nothing short of impressive and "Fortnite" has provided a new model to which ongoing games can aspire. Epic works with an ecosystem of professionals gamers to keep the game at the forefront of the online conversation.

Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney said the success of "Fortnite" has helped the company gain "great economies of scale," which it has used to challenge the gaming business as a whole. The company has pressed industry giants like Sony into changing their tactics, and even launched its own digital storefront to redefine how video game publishers negotiate fees with online marketplaces.

Here's why "Fortnite" is the most influential game of the past decade, and the most important game to watch in the next one: