For the first 10 years, Uber was more or less useless to those without a phone. But that's finally starting to change.

Uber

Earlier this month, the ride-hailing giant rolled out a kiosk at Toronto's Pearson International Airport that allows passengers to to book a ride without a smartphone. The company says it's designed to create greater access for travelers who might have a difficult time using the app because of language or tech issues.

Much of the technology in the kiosk is similar to what's used in "green light" hubs, where the company on-boards drivers, one of the designers of the Toronto kiosk said on Twitter. Those same kiosks have also been used in malls in the San Francisco area.

"One influence for the Uber kiosk came from arcade games, which, compared to a PC at home, creates a social environment inviting others to help the primary user," Anurag Agarwalla, head of Uber's innovation team for its technology services group, said in a blog post. "That attribute, along with a live support representative, brings in a human element we wanted to highlight."

There's no word yet on what locations might be next, but the company says it hopes to use them to increase access at high-volume venues.

Google contract workers in Pittsburgh are unionizing, according to a statement released by the Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals (PATP) on Thursday.

More than 66% of employees with HCL, a tech contractor at Google's Pittsburgh offices, signed their support for union representation that could bring the often-neglected sector of Google's contract workforce fairer wages and more benefits.

Google's temporary workers outnumber its force of full-time employees, according to a New York Times report, and the tech giant relies heavily upon them. But members of what is known as the "shadow workforce" hasn't always received the same pay and benefits as full-time workers.

"HCL's 90 employees work side-by-side with those of the giant corporation for far less compensation and few, if any, of the perks," the union said in the statement released Thursday.

As Business Insider's Nick Bastone previously reported, some temp workers are even barred from all-hands meetings and certain internal resources that could improve their job performance. They're also required to wear red badges, which the company says is for security purposes, leading to a "sense of shame," as one employee described it to Business Insider.

Read more: Google barred contractors from communicating with full-time Googlers on some internal Groups forums, and makes temps wear red badges that add to a 'sense of shame'

Protests among Google contract workers in April led to the company granting them better pay and more benefits, like parental leave and better healthcare.

As The Verge reports, it's uncommon for tech contractors to unionize, and if it proves to be successful, could have a ripple effect.

In an interview with CBS on Thursday, the CEO of the $38 billion e-cigarette company Juul warned against using his products.

Specifically, Juul CEO Kevin Burns said anyone who isn't already using nicotine, the addictive drug in Juul, should not start.

"Don't vape. Don't use Juul," Juul CEO Kevin Burns told Tony Dokoupil in an interview that aired on "CBS This Morning."

"Don't start using nicotine if you don't have a preexisting relationship with nicotine," he said. "Don't use the product."

Burns' remarks are the clearest sign yet of how Juul is being forced to shift its marketing as the sleek devices face increasing scrutiny over their role in sparking a teen vaping epidemic and potentially being tied to seizures.

Products like Juul cannot be explicitly marketed as tools for quitting smoking, according to federal law. But that doesn't mean companies who make them can't suggestively advertise them as such.

And on Thursday, shortly after warning people not to Juul, CEO Burns said the company was helping American smokers quit.

Juul declined to comment for this story beyond Burns' recent remarks. The company pointed to a recent opinion piece in which Burns says that the "1 billion adult smokers worldwide who should have the opportunity to switch to vapor products if they so desire."

Juul is part-owned by tobacco giant Altria

A woman uses a Juul. AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer

Juul has walked a fine line between portraying its products as a trendy gadget and a healthcare tool.

The company launched its devices in 2015 with a series of promotional events that included parties, free giveaways of its devices, and posters that featured young-looking models. At the time, the e-cigarettes were sold in flavors that included dessert with labels that included the word "cool."

Juul has now risen to prominence as the most popular e-cigarette in America. It is also now partially owned by Altria, the tobacco giant behind Marlboro.

In recent months, Juul has been edging into the healthcare space: first by pitching its e-cigarette as an anti-smoking tool to employers and insurers, then by outlining plans for a mobile app geared at turning smokers into Juulers.

Read more: E-cig company Juul is diving further into health with an app geared toward turning smokers into Juulers

But while Juul aims to show customers that it can improve their health, regulators are increasingly pointing to the potential health risks of its products.

Two federal agencies are now investigating whether Juul engaged in deceptive marketing. The FDA is also looking into reports of seizures linked with the Juul, Bloomberg reported. And US health agencies are investigating a spate of lung illnesses tied to vaping.

Read more: Here are all the health risks of vaping

Addictive gadget or anti-smoking tool?

Federal regulations prohibit companies like Juul from stating outright that their devices can help people quit smoking, in part because it's still unclear whether or not they can.

Meanwhile, vaping appears to have helped hook young people on nicotine. Experts have suggested that Juul has played an outsize role in this phenomenon. Teens who vape are also more likely to go on to smoke, according to two large studies.

"The dramatic spike of youth [vaping] — that was driven in part at the very least if not largely by Juul," former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb told Vox.

Burns previously apologized to parents of kids addicted to Juul's products.

In March, Juul put out a study suggesting that some adult smokers may be using Juuls to wean themselves off regular cigarettes. The study, published four years after Juul's products had been on the market, was paid for by Juul.

During Thursday's interview, Burns, Juul's CEO, said Juul was "absolutely contributing to the decline of the smoking rate." Smoking rates in the US have been steadily declining since the 1960s, reaching the lowest level ever recorded in 2017, according to the CDC.

German car manufacturer Opel has made what it claims is the world's first all-electric rally car, which is based on the carmaker's first electric vehicle.

The Corsa-e is the first time the automaker is offering a battery-electric version of the Corsa, one of its most popular models.

Read more: Toyota reveals the bizarre autonomous and electric vehicles that will whisk athletes and visitors around for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

"It is no coincidence that our first pure electric model of the new generation is a Corsa, our most popular nameplate and one of the best-selling cars in Europe", Michael Lohscheller told journalists at a press conference earlier this year in Rüsselsheim, Germany announcing the company's electrification strategy.

"The Corsa-e not only makes electric mobility more practical and convenient but also more accessible."

The rally car version features a lightweight body, integrated roll-cage, and underbody protection for the engine and transmission. There's also an electric fire extinguisher, quick releases for the hood and hatchback, and regenerative braking capabilities to increase safety.

Opel plans on making 15 of the rally cars, specifically for the 2020 to 2021 ADAC Opel e-Rally Cup, according to Roadshow. The electric vehicle rally cup, which is the first of its kind, brings together around 100 young drivers from 18 countries to race with electric drives, according to President ADAC Sport Hermann Tomczyk in a prepared statement.

Opel already has plans to electrify more models, including what is set to be the company's first plug-in hybrid all-wheel drive, the Grandland X Hybrid4. The automaker plans to have an electrified version of all of their car models by 2024, according to Opel CEO Michael Lohscheller in a prepared statement.

Take a look at the world's first all-electric rally car:

Peloton wants potential investors to know its customers love its fitness service so much, that few of them ever give it up.

But experts in customer retention think there's more to the story than the company is saying.

The debate centers on something called churn, which is a term for the portion of a company's subscriber base that cancels service during a given period. Although Peloton is known for its fitness equipment, it also offers a subscription service that streams live and recorded workout videos to screens on those devices. The subscription service allows it to stay connected with its customers — and provides it with an ongoing revenue stream — after they purchase its equipment.

According to data in the paperwork Peloton's filed this week for its planned initial public offering, it has remarkably low churn, which could bode well for the long-term prospects of its business.

"Our compelling financial profile is characterized by high growth, strong retention, recurring revenue, margin expansion, and efficient customer acquisition," the company said in its IPO paperwork. "Our low Average Net Monthly Connected Fitness Churn, together with our high Subscription Contribution Margin, generates attractive Connected Fitness Subscriber Lifetime Value."

Read this: Peloton, the fitness startup with a cultlike following, could go public at an $8 billion valuation. Insiders reveal why its business seems set to explode.

But customer retention experts think Peloton's churn rate is understated in multiple ways and in the future will likely be significantly higher than it is now. Churn rates are commonly reported in the fitness industry, but they're not a particularly meaningful measure of customer value, said Paul Bedford, a principal at Retention Guru, a consulting firm that helps health clubs improve customer retention.

"I wouldn't invest any money based on that [churn] number," Bedford said. He continued: "When I see that number, I just disregard it ... It's a vanity metric."

Peloton's churn rate is far lower than Netflix's

Peloton offers two different subscription services: one that's targeted at people who own one of its fitness bikes or treadmills, for which it charges $39 a month, and one that designed for folks who don't own any of its equipment, for which it charges $19.49. The churn rates it discloses are for the former — for people who own its equipment, which it calls its "connected fitness subscribers."

In its IPO filing, Peloton reported that it had a churn rate of just 0.65% per month in its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June. That rate was up slightly from fiscal 2018, when its churn was 0.64%, but down from fiscal 2017, when its rate was 0.7%.

Peloton offers both fitness equipment, like its stationary bike, and a subscription video service that streams live and recorded workouts. Peloton

The churn rate Peloton posted in its most recent year works out to be a little less than 7% on annual basis. That's an extraordinarily low figure. Planet Fitness, which operates a chain of gyms, has an annualized churn rate of 18% to 30% — and far higher than that in the first few months after people sign up for a membership, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Netflix, long the paragon of a successful digital subscription business, has a churn rate of around 9% a quarter — or about 36% a year — the Financial Times estimated last year, citing several different studies.

Peloton thinks the churn figures are so important that it touts them on the second official page of its filing and talks about its low churn rate some 27 other times.

"Usage drives value and loyalty, which is evidenced by our consistently low Average Net Monthly Connected Fitness Churn," it says in one section of the document. "Our unit economic model benefits from low Average Net Monthly Connected Fitness Churn and high Subscription Contribution Margin," it continues in another section.

But Peloton's churn rate shouldn't be taken at face value, retention experts said.

Its churn rate "doesn't pass the smell test"

By dividing 1 by the churn rate, you can get a rough estimate of how long the average customer sticks with the service before cancelling, said Daniel McCarthy, an associate professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. Doing that calculation with Peloton's customer churn rate implies that the average customer would stay with its service for about 154 months or nearly 13 years, he said.

That's almost twice as long as Pelton has been in existence. It's also far longer than its equipment is likely to last, McCarthy said. And when their bikes or treadmills breakdown, some customers may replace them, but others won't and will likely cancel their service.

The churn rate Peloton gave "doesn't pass the smell test," McCarthy said.

Reed Hastings has built one of the leading digital subscription businesses as the CEO of Netflix, but his company's estimated churn rate is far greater than Peloton's. Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images for Netflix

Indeed, Peloton's filing makes clear that the churn rate is almost certainly understated.

For example, the company allows customers to pause the subscription service for as long as three months. But it continues to count those customers as active subscribers even while their subscriptions are paused. Such customers may not have churned yet, but they aren't paying company any money either.

Peloton didn't disclose what portion of its connected fitness subscriber base — which hit 511,202 at the end of June — had paused its subscriptions. Nor did it reveal what portion of those that paused their subscriptions cancelled them right after that interruption of service.

But there's likely a bigger factor at play with Peloton's churn rates. Up until July of last year, the company offered customers the chance to sign up for extended subscription agreements. Customers could sign up for one or two years of service and get anywhere from one to three months for free. Alternatively, customers who used Peloton's financing service to purchase their equipment could include with their purchase a prepaid subscription lasting anywhere from one year to 39 months.

The company didn't disclose how many of its customers are still on those extended subscription plans. But it did say it will still have some customers on them into its 2022 fiscal year. Peloton includes those customers when calculating its churn rate. That's a bit misleading, because it means the churn figure includes people who haven't really had the opportunity to leave yet, Bedford said.

"Why would you leave after you prepaid [for the service] with a great deal?" said Joel Shapiro, an associate professor of data analytics at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. "When you talk about churn rate being low," he continued, "you sort of assume that the people in the calculation should be those that actually, arguably, could churn. And when you have somebody who's under contract for two more years, it arguably doesn't make any sense to include them in the calculation."

It's quite likely that as those long-term deals expire, Peloton will see a spike in its churn rates, retention experts said. The company might well be seeing an uptick in subscription cancellations now, one year after it stopped selling its one-year plans, Bedford said.

"There's a whole bunch of people who are coming to the end of the subscription period who may not renew," he said.

New subscribers are likely distorting the picture

Another factor that's likely helping Peloton minimize its churn rate is just the sheer number of new subscribers it has been adding. The number of people subscribing to its connected fitness service more than doubled in each of its last two fiscal years, going from 107,708 in June 2017 to 245,667 in June 2018 to more than 500,000 this past June.

Because the churn rate is derived in part from the number of overall subscribers a company has, even if it's losing a large number of subscribers, the rate can look low if it's consistently adding many more.

"Their [churn] numbers in the early years you would expect to be low," said Dave Rochlin, the executive director of the Innovation, Creativity, and Design Practice at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

What's more, new subscribers are often less likely to cancel a service, because they tend to be the most enthusiastic customers, Rochlin That's particularly true with Peloton, because it's new subscribers have just spent — or are in the process of spending — thousands of dollars on its equipment, he said.

"If you think about the size of investment you're making on that piece of equipment, it's pretty likely you're not going to turn around and cancel service right away," Rochlin said.

That doesn't mean that Peloton has a bad business or that it's done anything wrong in calculating or presenting its churn rate, the retention experts said. But it does mean that investors shouldn't be surprised if that rate starts to tick upward in the near future.

Because of the factors that seem to be playing a role in keeping Peloton's churn rate low, "this all feels a little bit like a game that's being played," Shapiro, of the Kellogg School, said.

Got a tip about Peloton or another company? 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.

While Apple has certainly improved the Apple Watch's health functionality in recent years, company cofounder Steve Wozniak says he loves his smartwatch for a very different reason: it prevents him from being addicted to his phone.

"It's about my favorite piece of technology in the world right now," Wozniak recently said when speaking to Bloomberg Television.

Wozniak says he typically uses his computer when he's checking email or keeping up with the news and uses the watch when he's on the go. "And then I move to the watch and pretty much skip the phone," he said. "I'm not one of these people that wants to be like an addict."

The Apple Watch has slowly become an increasingly important product for Apple in recent years. Sales of products in Apple's wearables, home, and accessories division, which includes the Apple Watch, have surpassed that of the iPad and are closing in on the Mac, according to the company's most recent earnings report.

Read more: Fitbit's new smartwatch can do 3 important things the Apple Watch can't

Technology addiction has become a prominent subject of interest for companies like Apple and Google, which in recent years have added tools to their smartphones to help users better monitor how they're using their devices.

Apple brought a feature called Screen Time to the iPhone last year, which provides reports showing how much time users spent in specific apps. The company is adding more features to it this fall with iOS 13 that let parents control who children can communicate with and set screen-time limits across different app categories, apps, and websites. Google has a similar feature for its Android devices called Digital Wellbeing.

Apple is also launching a new software update for the Apple Watch this fall, which will bring the ability to track activity trends over time and a standalone App Store to the watch. Apple could also launch a new Apple Watch model this fall, according to Bloomberg.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has also spoken about the importance of managing the amount of time we spend on our smartphones in the past. "I think they ought to put their phone down and look at who they're talking to or having dinner with," Cook said when ABC's Diane Sawyer asked him what he thinks when he sees people in a restaurant staring at their phones. "But I totally recognize that it is their decision."

What do you do with all your leftover cardboard boxes from Amazon?

Like most people, you probably break down the boxes and toss 'em in the recycling. Fair enough!

But one man in Japan is putting all that extra cardboard to work producing glorious, massive re-creations of famous fictional weapons from major games and anime.

Here are some of his most impressive creations from the last few years:

Nearly 80,000 people have swarmed to a temporary city set up in the middle of the Nevada desert for a 30-year-old annual tradition known as Burning Man.

Burning Man welcomed attendees to its site — dubbed Black Rock City— starting this past weekend for the nine-day festival. Thousands set up campers and tents as they prepared for a week of partying and enjoying art. The celebration culminates with the burning of an effigy, known as "the Man."

Read more: A man was found dead at Burning Man, and police are investigating after his death was deemed 'suspicious'

The Black Rock City "playa" is enormous. So big, in fact, that it can be seen from space. A satellite, belonging to space technology company Maxar Technologies, captured images of the Burning Man site on the day it welcomed attendees, and the photos show just how much of a production the festival is each year.

Take a look at some of the images taken from space of Burning Man 2019:

WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has set up a "hardship" fund through his family office for former employees at Faraday Grid, the UK energy startup which fell into administration this month.

Administration is the UK's approximate equivalent to bankruptcy.

Two sources told Business Insider that Neumann's family office, 166 2nd, had written to offer assistance to employees who might be financially struggling after Faraday's collapse. Neumann had invested $30 million in the energy technology startup in January through the 166 2nd entity.

Read more: A buzzy energy startup raised $30 million from WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, then collapsed the day WeWork filed to go public

Faraday Grid attracted considerable attention both for Neumann's investment and its promise of new, innovative infrastructure to modernize the UK's power grid and boost the use of renewable energy. When he invested in January, Neumann said: "Faraday Grid will fundamentally change the way we access and use energy in the future."

But only five months later, Faraday Grid's board would oust CEO Andrew Scobie and install new leadership. And two months after that, the firm would run out of money and announce its administration the same day that WeWork would file for an expected multibillion-dollar IPO. A third source with knowledge of the matter recentlytold Business Insider that Faraday Grid had been burning through $2.4 million a month.

Faraday Grid's former CEO Andrew Scobie. Facebook/Faraday Grid

The startup could still live on if administrators Grant Thornton successfully restructure the company or find a buyer. Earlier this month, the firm said 45 employees had lost their jobs.

According to one former employee, 166 2nd wrote to the pool of employees to offer financial help through a dedicated "relief" fund. 166 2nd did not specify the size of the fund but, according to the source, some employees are who have applied for help are already receiving checks. The source said 166 2nd had also offered help to overseas employees whose visas are sponsored by Faraday Grid.

"166 have been really decent," one former employee said. "They've taken responsibility for the remaining staff and that's admirable."

The source added that Neumann's sister, Adi Neumann, had also visited Faraday Grid's head offices in Edinburgh, Scotland in March and met former CEO Scobie and other senior staff.

The source and another former employee described how the firm had spent lavishly in the runup to its collapse, both to impress Adi Neumann and to fuel a rapid expansion. Between January and June, Faraday Grid announced its expansion to the US, a new chief systems architect, comms chief, two regulatory bosses, a CFO, general counsel, COO, VP of engineering, and a new innovation centre in the Czech Republic.

A spokeswoman for WeWork declined to comment.

Taking risks is an inherent part of the world of investing and founding a company. The role of an investor is to help guide a company through the riskier moves.

Paul Murphy, a partner at VC fund Northzone, has learned that risky tactics are often the best way to get a startup out of first gear. He worked on Microsoft's acquisition of Skype.

For example, one of Murphy's investments, Giphy, had a forked path in terms of strategy. It could opt to develop its own GIF content or it could take on the much harder task of indexing the world's best GIFs. The latter was certainly the riskier approach as the GIF file format has virtually no meta-data attached to it, making it so hard to categorize that even Microsoft's Bing and Google's image search engines had, at that time, failed to do it well.

"Giphy was founded as a company after its founders made a product in three weeks and said to people, 'Do you want this?' It turned out they did," Murphy told Business Insider in an interview. "Their site crashed from all the traffic almost immediately, but they had spades of ambition, so we encouraged them and said, 'We will back you.'"

So, at a bar in New York on a Friday night in 2013, Murphy, then at Betaworks, alongside Giphy's founders made a handshake agreement to fund the business based on a mutual belief and confidence in the company's plans. By Monday morning they had a team of five and the paperwork was signed in the following days.

Murphy was an investor at Betaworks who led Giphy's Series A funding round and participated in the company's B and C rounds taking its total funding to $150 million. He says the decision to take the less conservative growth option paid off and has emboldened him to continue down this path.

Giphy now has around 300 million people using its services daily and has raised $151 million to date.

Read more: A VC who worked on Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype says it provided a valuable lesson about why the best startups are 'bought not sold'

"You're always taking a leap of faith with an investment and most investors are more wrong than right," Murphy told Business Insider in an interview. "The important thing is to be able to articulate that leap of faith in a company as an investor, it can't be blind faith."

He joined Northzone in 2018, a few months before the fund took Swedish music giant Spotify public. The company's bold streaming model has completely changed the industry and has taken massive risks to push for growth.

One of Murphy's investments at Northzone has proven to one such company that's benefitted from massive growth. Berlin-based electric scooter firm Tier is a good example of a business which takes the right kind of risk, according to Murphy.

"They have everything they need to succeed," Murphy said. "Instead of trying to make just a few cities profitable, they are taking the riskier approach, competing with incumbents and beating them by focussing on unit economics and execution, aiming for a global leadership position."

Before claiming ownership over Dorsey's account hack, the "Chuckling Squad," as it identifies itself, hacked famous YouTubers. James Charles, Shane Dawson, King Bach, Etika, and Amanda Cerny were all hacked in the past two weeks.

Charles, the most recent hack, alleged in a tweet threatening legal action that AT&T was to blame for the "Chuckling Squad" gaining access to his account.

Twitter has yet to confirm who hacked Dorsey's account or how, but while it was hacked, Dorsey's account tweeted the link to the same Discord server whose admin posted screenshots from inside deceased YouTuber Etika's Google Mail account.

Read more: James Charles is the latest YouTuber to get hacked on Twitter by the same group or person that goes by 'chuckling'

President Donald Trump on Friday mused about the possibility of his infamous Twitter account being hacked, but dismissed the scenario and said it "shouldn't be too bad" if it happened.

The topic came up shortly after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's account was hacked on Friday, and began tweeting out a barrage of racist and offensive messages.

The incident left Twitter users shocked and wondering what would happen if the president's account met a similar fate — and what sort of damage hackers could do.

Trump's account boasts 63.7 million followers, and he frequently tweets policy updates and announcements from his account. Some wondered what would happen if a hacker took control and began tweeting false information about security threats, political alliances, or even war.

Read more: It took Twitter longer to secure Jack Dorsey's account from hackers than it would for a nuclear missile to travel around the world — and that should terrify you

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

White House reporters asked Trump about the possibility as he boarded Marine One, but Trump appeared unconcerned.

"Well, I hope they're not hacking my account," he said, according to a pool report. "But, actually, if they do, they're not going to learn too much more than what I put out, right? Shouldn't be too bad."

Trump's account has previously been compromised — a rogue Twitter employee deactivated Trump's account for roughly 11 minutes in 2017.

As has the case at many startups that have gone public lately, insiders at Peloton will have shares that give them extra votes after its initial public offering.

But Peloton's insiders will get more votes than most — 20 for each of their shares. And, at least as things stand now, its CEO, John Foley, wouldn't be the number-one vote holder once Peloton is public.

Holders of the super-voting shares "will continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore be able to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval" after the IPO, Peloton advised potential shareholders in the offering paperwork it made public this week. It continued: "This concentrated control will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future."

A growing number of startups that have gone publicly lately or are about to have multi-class stock structures that provide disproportionate numbers of votes to certain insiders, typically founders, CEOs, and early investors. The structures help those insiders to retain control over the companies even after selling shares to public investors.

In general, though, the super-voting stock held by insiders usually comes with 10 votes per share. The stock held by Foley and other Peloton insiders will come with twice as many votes per share. That would allow the holders of those shares to continue to control the company with as little as a 5% combined economic stake in the company — half that needed to retain control at a firm that had shares with 10 votes per share.

Dual-class structures in general are bad for investors, because they insulate corporate managers from accountability to the people who actually own the company, said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

"Whether it's 10 [votes] or 20, it's still a structure where your control is complete over the company without the same level of economic interest," Elson said. "Twenty is simply adding insult to injury."

'Twenty is the new 10'

Although Peloton's 20-vote-per-share arrangement for insiders is unusual, it's not unprecedented. WeWork also plans to assign insiders, particularly CEO Adam Neumann, stock with 20 votes per share. Lyft and Pinterest also give certain insiders 20 votes per share.

"Twenty is the new 10," said Glenn Davis, director of research at the Council of Institutional Investors. "We're very discouraged by that."

In the tech world, dual-class structures usually are designed to empower founders and CEOs. The companies and their early backers typically argue that they allow such leaders to focus on realizing their long-term visions for their companies rather than having to be distracted by the concerns of short-term investors.

But at least as things stand now, Foley, who cofounded Peloton in addition to serving as its head, wouldn't be the primary beneficiary of its dual-class stock structure. Foley owns 15 million shares of Peloton's Class B stock, which will come with 20 votes per share. That's about 6% of the outstanding Class B shares.

Peloton director Jon Callaghan controls a larger amount as the representative of True Ventures' stake in the company. Callaghan and True Ventures own 28 million Class B shares, or about 12% of the total. Meanwhile, Tiger Global Management, whose own representative on Peloton's board resigned earlier this month after he left Tiger, owns 47 million Class B shares, or about 20% of the outstanding number.

Peloton didn't disclose in its paperwork how many shares its insiders and early investors plan to sell in its IPO. Callaghan and True Ventures did not respond to a request for comment about the venture firm's stake in the company. Scott Shleifer, a partner at Tiger Global Management, did not respond to an emailed interview request.

However, it's possible — maybe even likely — that Foley will emerge from the offering as Peloton's largest Class B shareholder and its dominant stakeholder overall. Venture capital firms frequently sell a sizeable portion of their stakes in startups in public offerings, and often continue to sell after.

"That's their mantra, they won't stay," Elson said. "And when they exit, management takes control."

Peloton's structure has a sunset provision

Peloton did throw one bone to potential investors, with regards to its dual-class structure — a sunset provision. The arrangement will go away in 10 years, when two-thirds of Class B shareholders vote to get rid of it, or when Class B shares only account for 1% of the total outstanding shares of company stock, whichever comes first.

In contrast, most of the companies that have gone public in recent years with multi-class stock structures do not have any kind of time-based sunset provision, according to data from the CII. Companies such as WeWork don't have a such a path to getting to one vote per share for all stockholders, noted CII's Davis.

"Peloton has a path," he said. "It's not as aggressive as we'd like to see, but at least it's a path."

But Peloton could renege on that sunset provision, Elson said. And even if it doesn't, things could happen at the company well before then that would make investors want to wrest control from Foley and other insiders.

"What happens if in five years you have a managerial disaster?" Elson said. "Ten years is a long time. It's very investor unfriendly no matter how you look at it."

Indeed, even before going public, Peloton acknowledged in its filing that it has flaws in its internal controls, processes companies put in place to ensure the accuracy of their financial reports and prevent fraud. There's no suggestion than anything nefarious has happened at the company, but the shortcomings raise the risk that something could have or might in the future, accounting experts have said.

Read this: In its IPO documents, Peloton warned it's got some particular shortcomings as a business that could lead to fraud or financial restatement

While many public investors frown on multi-class structures, they've become more common. According to recent data from CII, at the end of June, there were 255 US public companies with a market capitalization of at least $200 million that had dual- or multi-class stock structures that gave certain shares disproportionate voting rights. Of those, more than a third went public after 2013, and more than half went public after 2005.

Got a tip about Peloton or another company? 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.

Jeffrey Epstein may have been involved in the epicenter of yet another financial powerhouse: Silicon Valley venture capital.

After revelations that Epstein helped fund an investment firm led by MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito, speculation has grown about whether Epstein — the now-deceased financier charged with sex trafficking — may have had more extensive ties to the VC industry at the heart of Silicon Valley's booming tech economy.

The possibility that Epstein invested his money as a so-called Limited Partner in the gilded venture capital firms that fund and advise tech startups would represent an embarrassing, and potentially problematic development, for any firms involved.

Business Insider contacted 34 of the top venture capital firms in the tech industry to ask whether or not Epstein had ever been a limited partner, or investor, in any of the firms or whether he had worked with the firms in a personal or professional capacity at any point.

Of the 34 VC firms, 27 confirmed that Epstein had no direct involvement.

These are the firms, representing some of the most prominent names in venture capital, that said they have no direct involvement with Epstein: Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Baseline Ventures, Battery Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV, DFJ Growth, Day One Ventures, FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, Forerunner Ventures, GGV Capital, Greylock, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, L Catterton, Lightspeed Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Menlo Ventures, NEA, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, TCV, True Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, and Union Square Ventures.

Read More:'I've suffered and he has won': More than 20 of Jeffrey Epstein's accusers gave emotional testimonies in court as prosecutors moved to shut down his case

Several firms, however, did not respond to Business Insider's multiple requests for comment or confirmation. The VC firms that would not respond to requests for information about Epstein are: Felicis Ventures, Floodgate, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, IVP, Softbank, and Venrock.

Not a single VC firms that Business Insider reached out to has said that Epstein was a limited partner.

However, even for those VC firms that disavowed any direct involvement with Epstein, it's not yet possible to rule out the possibility that he was invested in the firms. That's because many of the limited partners in VC firms are not specific named individuals, but rather a family office, a "fund of funds," and other types of wealth funds not legally required to disclose whose money they manage.

So, unless someone working at a VC firm had reason to be cautious of one of those investors and had asked for more details, it is unlikely they would know if any of the money in their funds came from Epstein.

Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy. He was found dead by apparent suicide on August 10 in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan after being refused bail.

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Tesla vehicles are, in some cases, more expensive to insure than competing vehicles, a problem the electric-car maker has tried to address by introducing an insurance product, Tesla Insurance, for California customers on Wednesday.

Tesla said the program is designed to give its customers a discount of up to 30% due to the company's more sophisticated understanding of its vehicles' technology, safety features, and repair costs.

Consumers often buy multiple kinds of insurance or insurance for multiple vehicles at once to get a bulk discount, said Maryann Keller, the principal at the automotive consulting firm MK&A. "A very high percentage of Tesla owners have another car, and this insurance will not cover the other car if it's a brand other than Tesla," Keller said, asking: "In the grand scheme of their overall insurance planning, is this going to be worthwhile?

While it is not possible to insure a Tesla vehicle and a non-Tesla vehicle together on the same Tesla insurance policy. The company says it can help customers place their non-Tesla vehicles with another provider.

It remains to be seen whether many customers who choose to insure two or more Tesla vehicles will see savings that are comparable to a similar multi-vehicle discount with another insurance carrier.

Read more: Elon Musk says humans communicate so slowly with computers that it will sound like whale speech to future AI

The information Tesla initially offered about its insurance product left some questions unanswered, like whether Tesla would underwrite the product itself or serve as a broker for an insurance company that would collect premiums and pay out benefits.

A Tesla spokesperson told Business Insider on Thursday night that the automaker is working with other companies in the insurance industry, and plans to become a full-fledged insurance carrier in the future.

Publicly available documents from the California Department of Insurance show Tesla is working with at least two insurance providers: State National Insurance Company, headquartered in Bedford, Texas, and Liberty Mutual, which is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Tesla's state of California insurance license lists the automaker as a property-broker agent and a casualty-broker agent. The documents show the license has been active since August 2017.

Like the auto industry, insurance is a low-margin business, as increased competition has made the costs of acquiring customers more expensive, Krzysztof Kujawa, the chief product officer at the insurance-shopping website Gabi, said. That means Tesla Insurance may not be a profit-generator for a company that has posted losses in all but four quarters since going public in 2010.

But earning a profit on a standalone basis may not be the objective of Tesla Insurance, Kujawa said. Tesla may instead see the product as a marketing tool designed to boost vehicle sales by addressing the perception that Tesla vehicles require higher-than-normal insurance costs.

"I think that issue is more important than ever," Kujawa said.

While customers of Tesla's high-end Model S and Model X SUV — which start at around $80,000 — may not be worried about higher insurance costs, that isn't necessarily the case for customers of the Model 3 sedan, which starts at around $39,000. And affordability could become an even bigger concern in the future, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk's intention is for the company to become a mass-market automaker that sells millions of vehicles each year.

Tesla briefly removed the option to get a policy quote from its website hours after the product was announced on Wednesday. The company said internal errors were impacting rates quoted to some customers. That functionality came back online as of Thursday night.

This story has been updated.

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The Lambda School, an online coding bootcamp with an unusual business model, has been fined $75,000 by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education for not complying with state regulations.

In short: It didn't register with the bureau, which is under the Department of Consumer Affairs and oversees the private higher education market in the state of California. Its mandate is to guard against so-called diploma mills — fradulent colleges and universities that award degrees to paying students, with little or no academic effort on their part.

"We're in close contact with BPPE and it should all be resolved pretty soon," Lambda School CEO and co-founder Austen Allred told Business Insider. He said that it's in the process of getting its registration in order and that it's agreed to pay the fine after recieving the citation in July,

"Because we're talking with BPPE, it doesn't affect students at all," he said.

The Lambda School, which launched out of the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator and has raised over $48 million from investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Ashton Kutcher, has won attention for how it charges students - or, more properly, for how it doesn't.

It's free for students, but after they find a tech job, Lambda takes a cut of their salary for two years. This income share agreement model that it pioneered has proven popular in Silicon Valley, with several new startups adapting it for their own businesses.

However, according to the citation, the issue is that Lambda School also offers the option for students to pay $20,000 for tuition, which, in the bureau's view, means that it should have registered with the BPPE.

The citation requires that Lambda School stop recruiting or enrolling students, disconnect its phone numbers, and cease instructional services and advertising. Allred says that since the school is now working with the BPPE, the order has been stayed while its application is pending.

"We're happy to be regulated," Allred said. "We're happy to work with regulators. We're not trying to be one of those companies that avoids regulation. It makes a lot of sense when schools are regulated when they charge tuition so we're happy to comply."

Allred says that Lambda School's previous counsel told him that it did not need to register with the BPPE, but this was a mistake. The Lambda School has recently hired a new general counsel.

"We were told it doesn't apply to us because we didn't have physical classrooms, and if we don't have physical classrooms, we don't need to register in California," Allred said.

Matt Woodcheke, public information officer with California's Department of Consumer Affairs, confirmed that Lambda School's application is now under review, and he said that the review process involves looking at the quality of education being provided, as well as the finances of the school to make sure it's in a "stable operating position."

Now that Lambda School is undergoing the registration process, Allred says he expects that the entire process will take about six months before it's all sorted. He says, again, that the company isn't eager to pick a fight with educational authorities over this matter, and that he respects the bureau's position.

Read more: This online coding school started in Silicon Valley's hottest startup incubator is completely free for students until they find a job

"I want to reiterate that as frustrating it can be for a young school to have to be registered in the state, I totally understand why it exists," Allred said. "Nobody at Lambda School is like, we should be able to run free and do what we want. It's difficult to comply with, but we're happy to do so."

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OtterBox, a brand most associated with rugged cases for phones and other personal technology, has just reimagined wireless charging, and it's going to make my life, for one, much more seamless.

The OtterSpot Wireless Charging System comes with one main charger meant to be plugged in — be careful not to take this one out with you as it needs to be wired to work — and one Wireless Charging Pad, which you can grab and take off with like any power bank, sans wires. As always, the fewer wires you need in your life, the better.

Specs

The 36 watt power base charges up to three Wireless Charging Pads and one Qi-wireless-enabled device all at once, and the pads themselves, which pack 5,000 mAh (milliampere hours) batteries can fast-charge phones at 10 watts. An iPhone, for reference, has a 1,900 mAh battery, and accounting for omnipresent inefficiencies, can be charged almost twice on one fully charged OtterBox pad. For the record, I found this to be about right in my experience, but do yourself a favor and let Sciencing explain milliampere hours over me, which would be a headache for you and me both.

At 2/3 inch thick and 4 1/2 inches in diameter, the Wireless Charging Pads are pretty slimline and packable. An anti-slip synthetic rubber surface keeps your device in place while charging (yes, even when it vibrates), and the polycarbonate body is good and sturdy (read more about that below).

And when your device is done charging, the whole charging pad shuts off rather than overcharge (and burn up) both its battery and your phone's.

First impressions

iPhones, Apple Watches, and wireless headphones all work with the Qi Wireless Charging Pads. Owen Burke/Business Insider

Anything you might charge wirelessly should do so flawlessly with the Wireless Charging Pads. Even with a thick waterproof case like my LifeProof, I've had no trouble.

These Wireless Charging Pads which you can purchase separately ($49.95 for one, $89.95 for two) stack neatly like coasters, and if you happen to stray too far from your charger with one, you can simply plug it in using the USB-C-to-USB cable that comes along with it. You'll just need to find a USB charging port or brick.

OtterBox claims these puppies are durable, and they're not wrong. I repeatedly dropped them onto a poured cement floor up to shoulder height (about 5 feet) and produced not so much as a scratch. Yes, it still works: I'm charging my iPhone on the very device I just repeatedly flung at the office floor.

Otherwise, there's not much to these things, which is precisely the idea. They're easy to use — just make sure to align the brass pins to the respective connections on the underside of each charging pad, and the four LED lights on the front let you know when they're fully charged.

Final thoughts

If you still really want to live in a tangled-up world, you can still do that with the OtterSpot, too. Owen Burke/Business Insider

If you're someone who's constantly misplacing or destroying cables, the OtterSpot Wireless Charging System is for you. If you're just plain sick of the clutter of cables, be it the unsightliness or the frustrations in their constant tangling, this thing is for you, too.

Pros: declutters your house (and life), durable and portable charging pads, simultaneous charging of three pads and one device

Cons: not cheap (but neither is replacing cables, or buying enough of them in the first place)

Buy the OtterSpot Wireless Charging System from OtterBox for $129.95

Buy multiple OtterBox Wireless Charging Pads from OtterBox for $49.95 for one or $89.95 for two

Buy the OtterSpot Wireless Charging Base alone from OtterBox for $69.95

The vibrate feature on the iPhone is one of the best ways to receive notifications when your device is on silent or simply to add an extra element to get your attention when you have an incoming call, message, or email.

Luckily, it's also possible to utilize this feature on your Apple Watch with a few quick tweaks to the settings.

While Apple Watch does offer a small amount of haptic feedback by default, it's possible to increase the intensity of those vibrations via the device's Settings app.

Doing so is quick and easy and will ensure you never miss an important notification even when you're not looking at your phone.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone Xs (From $999.99 at Best Buy)

Apple Watch Series 4 (From $399 at Best Buy)

How to make your Apple Watch vibrate

1. On your Apple Watch, press the digital crown on the right-hand side of the device to access the home screen.

2. Tap the Settings app icon, which appears as a small silver cog.

3. Scroll down until you find the Sounds & Haptics menu and tap to open.

Press Sounds & Haptics on your Apple Watch. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

4. Under the Haptics header, make sure the slider next to Haptic Alerts is green, indicating the feature is active.

5. Select the Prominent option just beneath it to increase the haptic feedback on your Apple Watch. The watch will then give you an example of the increased settings by vibrating as you change the option.

Make sure Haptic Alerts is green and Prominent is checked. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

How to make your Apple Watch vibrate from your iPhone

You can also change the haptics on your Apple Watch via your iPhone.

1. On your iPhone's home screen, tap the Watch app icon to open it.

2. Tap the My Watch option on the menu bar that runs along the bottom of the screen.

3. Tap the Sounds & Haptics option. Then, under the Haptics header, ensure the alerts are set to Prominent. You will know this is active because a check mark will appear to the right of the option.

Tap Prominent so it is checked. Jennifer Still/Business Insider