Wall Street is paying close attention to WeWork, as the global coworking-space giant is preparing to go public. One investor, Masayoshi Son of the powerful Japanese holding company SoftBank, has bet more than $10 billion that it will succeed.

Business Insider had an extensive interview with WeWork's cofounder and CEO, Adam Neumann, at its Manhattan headquarters last week, and he argued that his company is in better shape than critics think. He explained that his close relationship with Son — he calls him by his nickname, "Masa" — is one of the intangible assets he has on his side.

"I'm usually the person who thinks very large in the room," Neumann told us. "But with Masa, it doesn't matter how big you're thinking — he's going to out think you. He'll go bigger. I learned a lot from that. I still learn every time I interact with him." He noted that in his best relationships with investors, like the one with Son, he is especially receptive to their advice and criticism.

"In Masa's case, he does very well face-to-face," he said. "I'll get on the plane and go to Tokyo, even if it's not always easy, and develop a personal relationship." He mentioned in our interview that in a few days he and his wife Rebekah, WeWork's chief brand officer, were headed to Tokyo to have dinner with Son.

"Masa and Rebekah get along very well, which is fascinating, because she's very picky. She likes him a lot. She calls him Yoda," Neumann said, referring to the "Star Wars" character. "He is Yoda. He has the Force with him." Son invites the nickname — regularly quoting the little green guru in meetings and presentations.

Neumann said that an unexpected challenge last December proved to him the strength of his relationship with Son.

SoftBank was planning on investing $20 billion in WeWork by the end of the year, and Neumann was weighing his options. WeWork confidentially filed for an IPO.

Neumann explained why:

"I filed because I wanted optionality. A: The fact that we agreed on a deal doesn't mean the deal is done — which ended up being the case, because it wasn't signed yet. B: Until that moment of signature, I would still have to impose such a big move not just for myself but for the employees, for the investors, for our members. I would've really taken that last look once it was all said and done. What's better for all of our employees and members?"

Son called Neumann on December 24 (Japan's stock markets are open on Christmas Eve) to tell him the investment was going to be significantly smaller. The investment would be coming from SoftBank, whose stock was struggling, not its $100 billion Vision Fund, and would only be $4 billion, at $110 a share. Neumann pushed back with an offer for $5 billion, to which Son agreed, adding that he also wanted $1 billion in secondary, which is to say he also wanted to invest a total of $6 billion, with $1 billion of that toward existing shares. They had a deal. (Neumann noted that reports of this transaction inaccurately stated the investment was supposed to be $16 billion and ended up $2 billion.)

The news was initially difficult for Neumann to accept, and he kept it a secret from his investors until Christmas ended, and even from his wife until later that night. But, he said, he was able to recover from it without damaging his relationship with Son because of the way Son handled it, and he even said that he and his investors are happy they did not sell as much as they originally planned.

"Relationships get measured when a challenge comes, not when everything is perfect," Neumann said. "He called me personally, and he was very straightforward. He told me exactly why."

In his blistering New York Times op-ed last week, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes recalled Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to sell an embryonic Facebook to Yahoo for $1 billion in 2006.

Not all of Facebook's staff agreed with Zuckerberg. Yet - whatever you think about Facebook's rise - he saw its potential for growth where his colleagues got dazzled by dollar signs.

There is an art to knowing when to sell, something which few people in Silicon Valley have more experience of than Peter Yared. He might not be a household name like Zuckerberg, but the 48-year-old has founded and sold no fewer than six enterprise software companies, raising $500 million for investors in the process.

Here's Yared's sale CV:

Prograph CSX, a client/server development environment Founded: 1993 Sold: 1995, to Prograph International (fee undisclosed)

JRad, an enterprise Java tools service Founded: 1995 Sold: 1997, to NetDynamics (fee undisclosed)

WaveMaker, commercial open source platform-as-a-service Founded: 2003 Sold: 2011, to VMware (fee undisclosed)

Transpond, social marketing apps and social engagement service Founded: 2007 Sold: 2011, to Oracle (fee undisclosed)

Postano, social post aggregator for websites and sports stadiums Founded: 2010 Sold: 2016, to Sprinklr (fee undisclosed)

Sapho, an employee portal for new and old applications Founded: 2014 Sold: 2018, to Citrix (for $225 million)

Yared says he has become addicted to the whole process of growing and selling companies. "Becoming a team, building a product, being part of a new market, the ups and downs — there's nothing like it," he says.

But this certainly isn't to say he sells recklessly, or for the thrill alone. Rather, for Yared, there are a set of specific circumstances in which selling your company becomes the obvious choice.

Yared's three "inflection points" for selling

"There are certain inflection points where it is natural to sell a company," he explains.

"One is when you have a product in an interesting space and only a handful of customers, and an acquirer wants to move in the space quickly.

"A second is when you have built out the product and the initial customer base, and now need to scale up sales and marketing.

"A third is when you have a product and customers, and now need to add ancillary products and additional [sales] channels."

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. In 2011, Oracle bought Yared's third enterprise software startup, Transpond. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

At each of these steps it is rational to evaluate the sale of a company, he says. Yared reflected on his sale of Sapho to Citrix in 2014 for $225 million as being a good example of his second inflection point.

"Building technology and building a sales and marketing channel are two equally hard tasks," he continues. "A lot of the time, even with large public companies, when they get acquired it's by a better sales and marketing channel.

"If you look at my last company, Sapho, we had built some tech that took years to build; it was a really complicated app virtualization service. We had a list of Fortune 100 customers. But the next step was, 'How do we get this service to be used by all of the Global 2000?'

"So we ended up selling Sapho to Citrix because Citrix was already selling app virtualisation to the Global 2000. They already had a relationship with those companies, and they wanted something new and interesting that would accelerate their growth."

Read more: 11 enterprise rock stars that have quietly been responsible for some of the most successful cloud services in the world

Finding the right cultural fit is also important, Yared says. "Usually an acquirer is looking to buy a product and then mix it in with other products in their portfolio and sell it through existing channels," he explains.

"If they do not have an existing channel it can get tough, as they are not accustomed to your space. It is rare for a large company to have the same culture as a startup. You do have to look for an ethical fit and directional fit."

Yared's seventh and latest startup is InCountry, a data platform helping businesses comply with national data regulations. Among those laws is the European General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force last year. Incorporated in January 2019, Yared's intention is to take InCountry "all the way" to a sale.

Yared's latest startup helps multinational businesses keep on top of data regulation such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. Christopher Furlong / Getty

Yared says, though, that selling comes with compromises. He thinks the idea that companies can continue to operate as they did pre-acquisition is a myth.

"You sold the company," he says. "You are now employees of the acquiring company. Ignore what the corporate development people said. Learn the culture, help your team transition to the new way of doing things, and do whatever it takes so that your team and product are integrated into the mothership."

The one that went wrong...

Yared says the process of founding, building and selling "gets easier the more you do it." He declines to name names, but there is one sale he wishes had panned out differently.

"We were forced to sell by our investors, and it was a rushed sale," he explains. "The lead investor whom I had known for years was shoved out of the fund, and I inherited an older partner who would literally send me memos via email and did not get our space at all.

"Six months after we sold, the market got super hot, and 18-24 months later, all of the companies in the segment sold for hundreds of millions of dollars each."

And although Yared gets a thrill from selling, he's not always completely prepared to let go of the companies he has created. And, right now, running InCountry appears to be supplying him with just as big a buzz as signing off on a deal worth millions.

"I'm sad to sell companies, usually. I'm not motivated by money, necessarily. With InCountry, there's so many upsides: A lot of growth, basically no competition, amazing teams in 50 countries. I just don't see us saying 'oh, okay, we're going to sell it,' when we have such a complete diversity of people and talent."

Anyone could have come up with the concept. An app that brings you food whenever and wherever you want? It's the kind of thing any irate worker eating a squashed sandwich at their desk could dream up.

Will Shu, the American cofounder and CEO of Deliveroo, knows this. He told the "i" newspaper in 2017 that the idea was "not complicated ... anyone can have it."

But it was Shu and his cofounder Greg Orlowski who turned the desk dream into a reality in 2013, thanks to a ruthless focus on making food delivery as seamless as possible. Today, his simple idea has been rewarded with a $575 million investment from Amazon.

The Deliveroo app offers takeaway food from thousands of restaurants, many of which never offered delivery services before the startup came along. The eventual goal isn't just to make takeaway easier, but to kill off home cooking for most people altogether.

The startup has revolutionised food delivery. It was worth $2 billion prior to the Amazon deal, and is was once in talks to sell to Uber for billions of dollars. The Amazon deal probably puts its valuation north of $2 billion.

The road hasn't been easy, and Shu & Co. have had to contend with thorny issues such as workers' rights for the thousands of freelance drivers who deliver food and don't have access to benefits.

Here is the story of Deliveroo's story of success.

Amazon has taken a stake in British food delivery startup Deliveroo, acting as the main investor in a major $575 million round of financing.

The new funding takes the total raised by Deliveroo to $1.35 billion to date, making it one of the best-funded startups in Europe.

Deliveroo has not confirmed its current valuation. The company was last valued at $2 billion in a previous funding round, and Business Insider understands the company has been targeting a new valuation of at least $4 billion.

It isn't clear how much Amazon paid for its share of Deliveroo, nor how big that stake is. Other investors in the round include T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and Research Company, and Greenoaks.

Deliveroo CEO Will Shu said in a statement: "This new investment will help Deliveroo to grow and to offer customers even more choice, tailored to their personal tastes, offer restaurants greater opportunities to grow and expand their businesses, and to create more flexible, well-paid work for riders.

"Amazon has been an inspiration to me personally and to the company, and we look forward to working with such a customer-obsessed organisation. This is great news for the tech and restaurant sectors, and it will help to create jobs in all of the countries in which we operate."

Read more: How Deliveroo went from being the idea of a hungry banker to a $2 billion food delivery giant with backing from Amazon

The deal gives one of the world's most valuable companies a stake in one of the hottest European startups, and also in the fast-growing food-delivery space. Deliveroo is one of the biggest rivals to Uber Eats outside the US, operating across 14 markets including the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, and the UAE.

The company offers a slick app through which customers can order food for delivery from local restaurants. A Deliveroo "rider" on a bicycle or motorbike will deliver the food, saving restaurants from having to employ their own delivery drivers. The firm has been criticised for employing its riders on a casual basis, meaning they are not legally entitled to minimum pay or other benefits, but does offer free rider insurance and online learning courses.

The round also shores Deliveroo up against its main rival Uber Eats, Uber's food delivery arm. Bloomberg last year reported that Uber was considering buying Deliveroo. A deal never materialized, and Uber floated on the New York Stock Exchange days ago.

Doug Gurr, Amazon's country manager in the UK, said: "We're impressed with Deliveroo's approach, and their dedication to providing customers with an ever increasing selection of great restaurants along with convenient delivery options."

On Thursday, Microsoft and Sony shocked the world with a joint statement that they would be teaming up — and on video gaming, no less, where the two have been fierce rivals ever since the original Microsoft Xbox picked a fight with the Sony PlayStation 2, way back in 2001.

In their own words, "the two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services," with the promise of more specifics to come in the future. They'll also work together to integrate Microsoft's Azure AI technology with Sony's ubiquitous image sensor business.

It's exciting times, right at a pivotal moment in the gaming industry.

The imminent launch of cloud gaming services like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia promise to stream even the most graphically intensive video games to any device, anywhere — from a game console down to the humblest of smartphones — by leveraging the computer processing brawn of the tech titans' massive data centers. Now, it seems, Sony is turning to Microsoft and its Azure cloud to get in on the action.

The two platforms have been rivals for going on two decades. Christian Petersen/Getty Images

It's really tempting to read a lot into this announcement: Have the two arch-rivals really put their beef behind them? Will you be able to play Xbox games on a PlayStation, or vice versa?

Let's not jump to conclusions. Over at Ars Technica, Kyle Orland has a convincing breakdown of why that's unlikely, mostly because the next Xbox and PlayStation are both already preparing for a not-so-distant launch, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense for either company to invest so heavily in rival hardware if they were planning on laying down their arms and embracing a joint cloud service.

Read more: The creator of 'Fortnite' is leading a battle that could throw the entire video game industry into disarray, and it's likely to be terrible for Google and Apple

Instead, here's my reading of this announcement: Sony needs Microsoft's help, because there's a lot keeping it from competing toe-to-toe with Microsoft xCloud, Google Stadia, or, eventually, Amazon's own planned game streaming service. And so, it had to turn to Microsoft, a competitor, to help it keep pace with the rest of the industry.

A little background

It's worth noting here that Sony has offered PlayStation Now, a game-streaming service, since 2014 — well before current Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer had his current job. To build PlayStation Now, Sony shelled out $380 million for startup Gaikai in 2012, and then opened its checkbook again for OnLive in 2015. However, PlayStation Now has never been a huge hit, despite Sony's investment. In February, Engadget said it " still isn't good enough."

It's also worth noting that around the same time that Sony launched PlayStation Now, it was reported that the company was "urgently seeking ways to build an infrastructure" to support its cloud ambitions. To make it happen, it was reported, Sony had sought contracts with data center facility providers to boost its capacity.

This gives a hint as to what might be driving Sony towards this Microsoft partnership.

It ain't easy bein' cloud

One of the big reasons why Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are able to succeed in this cloud market — where companies like Dell, VMware, and Cisco have all backed down — is that they invested heavily in building their own data centers, and then further invested in making them as efficient and powerful as humanly possible.

Indeed, at Microsoft, former chief software architect Ray Ozzie gets the credit for convincing then-CEO Steve Ballmer that the company would never get anywhere in the internet age without owning its own data centers, despite the massive expense involved.

Now, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella and cloud boss Scott Guthrie that investment is paying off: Microsoft has data centers all over the world, all running applications large and small, both for the company itself, and on behalf of the customers of Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft's Project xCloud promises to let you play even the biggest blockbusters from your smartphone or just about any other internet-connected screen. Microsoft

At the same time, Microsoft has tasked its leading researchers and engineers with finding new, innovative, bleeding-edge ways to improve efficiency, get more power, and even run the cloud in more eco-friendly ways. More recently, the company has launched Azure Game Stack, a package of services to help game developers capitalize on everything Microsoft has learned from operating Azure for about a decade now.

We haven't heard anything new about Sony's cloud infrastructure in a while. But it's hard to imagine that Sony's infrastructure is at the same scale as Microsoft's, let alone as efficient or as powerful. We don't know if Sony will use Microsoft to beef up PlayStation Now, or to build an entirely new gaming service, but it's not strange at all to think that the company might want Microsoft to at least partially power that future.

Strange bedfellows

A weird effect of all of this is that the cloud has made for some strange partnerships, and some even stranger counter-partnerships.

Apple, for example, has been reported to use both Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud to power its iCloud service. Sony, too, could choose to use multiple clouds, if it isn't already.

On the flip side, Walmart famously asked its partners to stop using Amazon Web Services, as a line in the sand in the online retail wars. Target made its own move away from AWS at around the same time.

In gaming, though, there aren't many places for Sony to turn if it wants a cloud partner who won't also be a competitor. Google has its Stadia service, while Amazon is rumored to be working on its own game streaming service. DigitalOcean, probably the largest independent cloud platform, doesn't have the same scale as its competitors.

Since Sony can't avoid the reality of competition, its best bet is probably to embrace it — by choosing a company that it at least understands and respects, thanks to their years of long competition.

After Nvidia shares rallied Wednesday on the company's upbeat first-quarter results, the chip giant followed rival Intel's lead by painting a hazy picture of the data center market.

The fuzziness apparently was so bad, the company opted not to offer a full-year guidance, even as CEO Jensen Huang declared that the spending "pause" that has hit other chip-makers "will pass."

Nvidia's stock, which jumped after the report, slid as Huang and CFO Colette Kress offered more color on the quarter. The stock was still up about 1% after-hours, after popping more than 5% in the immediate aftermath of the report.

"We're still experiencing uncertainty as a result of the pause" in data centers," Kress told analysts. "The data center spending pause will likely persist and visibility remains low."

"Things are worse so they're pulling the full-year guide," Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon told Business Insider. "It's not complicated."

Nvidia painted the same picture Intel presented last month when the chip giant disappointed investors with a downbeat report that also pointed to a weak data center demand. Intel CEO Bob Swan pointed to "a more cautious IT spending environment."

On the call with analysts, Huang said corporate customers need more time to "digest the capacity they have."

In other words, corporate customers simply bought too many chips. Nvidia sells processors that power data center and cloud computing platforms used by big corporations and organizations. But the expected buildout of cloud platforms stalled, causing a sharp dip in demand for datacenter chips.

"They took on too much capacity," he said.

But that digestion problem will continue to hang over Nvidia's head, Rasgon said.

"I don't know if I'd call it 'bleak,' but certainly uncertain," he said. The other gains Nvidia highlighted on the call, he added, were "not enough to make up for the digestion [problem] in the rest of the business."

Huang said Nvidia was on a roll on other fronts. He highlighted Nvidia's gains in gaming and AI, where the company has emerged as a leading player.

Analyst Patrick Moorhed of Moor Insights and Strategy said noted Huang's comments on gains in key segments of the AI chip market. "He expected data centers to kick back into buying more in the back of the fiscal year," he told Business Insider. "Intel told a very similar story and I think that makes sense."

And amid speculation that the widening trade war between the US and China could hit major US tech companies, Huang says the company is actually seeing growth in a key market, gaming.

"The gaming market in China is vibrant and continues to be vibrant," he said.

Marty Wolf, president of Martinwolf, told Business Insider Huang has done a good job "repositioning company under very cloudy skies," highlighted by the data center weakness. "The market has confidence in him."

Got a tip about Nvidia, Intel another tech 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 @benpimentel, or send him a secure message through Signal at 510.731.8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky

The Trump administration's new ban against the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei could have dire implications for US technology investors, but one analyst said there's no need to panic just yet.

The US Commerce Department said on Wednesday it added Huawei to its "Entity List" that prevents the company from purchasing American parts and components without the government's approval first.

Of course, that could hurt the US suppliers that sell their parts to the telecom giant. The ban could also make international technology companies such as Apple particularly vulnerable to retaliatory measures from China.

"A tit-for-tat fight that could be disastrous for any company that sells a lot of goods into China, especially technology-based goods, if they get banned for any reason as part of a Chinese retaliatory move," the analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc. told Business Insider's Benjamin Pimentel on Wednesday.

Still, Apple shareholders shouldn't dump their shares because of the ban, the Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said. He sees the announcement as just "noise" for now.

Read more coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:

The top false claims Trump makes about trade

Huawei slams Trump's 'unreasonable' ban, saying that the move will only harm US interests in its own 5G rollout

The Trump administration is warning allies to stay away from a powerful Chinese company — but not everyone's listening

Apple's big, flashy event underwhelmed investors. Here's why.

Markets Insider

As more millennials have kids and try to balance work and parenting, they're facing a challenge that hasn't been solved by Silicon Valley's tech giants: how to find safe and affordable childcare.

When Sara Mauskopf and Anne Halsall — two ex-Googlers who met while working on the product team at Postmates — exchanged stories of their difficulties finding reliable childcare as new moms, they knew it was a problem they had to solve.

Their solution was Winnie, an online, centralized marketplace that connects parents with certified childcare providers. The pair told Business Insider in a recent interview that although some companies have made childcare listings a part of their offering, Winnie was the first when it started back in 2016 to entirely focus on helping parents find licensed daycare and preschool providers near them.

The childcare market, they said, was fragmented and the best option available for parents was often a simple Google search.

"Parents were left feeling like they don't have as many options as they do because over half of the providers are not listed online. Parents think that there's just not childcare for them," Mauskopf said. "We see moms especially dropping out of the workforce at very high numbers because of this and people paying a lot more than they have to to get into a big, popular center that they found on Google."

To date, Winnie has 150,000 childcare providers listed on its site and hopes, over time, to have every licensed provider in the country. Right now the founders say they're focused on user growth over profits, but they say they've seen success charging parents for early access to new openings, as well as offering the childcare providers preferred placement on its site for a fee.

Read more: Here are the pitch decks that helped hot startups raise millions

In April 2018, Winnie raised a $4 million seed round led by Reach Capital to help fund its ambitious vision for the future of childcare. In total, the San Francisco-based team of 10 has raised $6.5 million.

Mauskopf and Halsall say their fundraising secret is in their storytelling.

"We're both very data-oriented people, and our initial deck was very focused on graphs and numbers and traction. And that actually made the conversations a lot harder," Halsall said.

"After our first few pitches, we restructured the deck to be more aspirational about where we were going. Anyone who wants to talk about data, it's in the appendix. But what mattered was that we were in alignment [with investors] — this is a big problem, this is a big market, there's no good solution today, and this is a really big opportunity for the first company that gets there."

Here's the pitch deck that helped Winnie raise its latest $4 million seed round:

It sounds like Facebook might be having a tough time recruiting after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its two years of crises.

On Thursday, CNBC reported that the Silicon Valley giant was running into difficulties in hiring new employees. Would-be workers are turning down job offers at significantly higher rates than those seen before the news broke in March 2018 that political research firm Cambridge Analytica misappropriated tens of millions of Facebook users' data, according to the report.

Facebook is disputing the report, and the spokesperson Anthony Harrison told Business Insider in an email that "these numbers are totally wrong." He did not immediately specify what was wrong about CNBC's figures. It's not clear whether Facebook is alleging that these figures are wildly inaccurate or that they are only slightly off. The CNBC reporter Sal Rodriguez told Business Insider that he stood by his reporting.

CNBC, citing unnamed sources, reported that software-engineer acceptance rates for the product team have dropped from around 90% to 50% between late 2016 and early 2019. Meanwhile, the acceptance rate from top universities "has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December," the report said.

These figures would indicate that the historically prestigious tech giant is finding it significantly harder to hire fresh talent, which would likely increase the cost of recruiting and reflect the significant hit to Facebook's reputation that it has been taking over the past two years.

In addition to saddling the company with extra costs, trouble attracting top talent could have a damaging effect on morale internally — demotivating employees already with the company and potentially sparking other unpredictable consequences.

In an additional statement, Harrison said:

The assumption by unnamed sources that we are having challenges recruiting talent is completely inaccurate. The numbers speak for themselves. As a company, we grew 36% year over year from Q1-2018 to Q1-2019 ... Facebook regularly ranks high on industry lists of most attractive employers. For example, in the last year we were rated as #1 on Indeed's Top Rated Workplaces, #2 on LinkedIn's Top Companies, and #7 on Glassdoor's Best Places to Work. Our annual intern survey showed exceptionally strong sentiment and intent to return and we continue to see strong acceptance rates across University Recruiting.

He did not immediately answer a question on how the sentiment regarding Facebook's annual intern salary has changed over the past few years.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Read more:

Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman runs her business according to a simple rule.

"I haven't been given the permission or privilege to lose a billion every quarter," she told CNBC in an interview on Thursday.

Although Hyman's comments sound like a sensible enough business guideline, it can also be read as a not-so-subtle swipe at some of the other tech startups that have been in the headlines recently. Uber and Lyft, for example, were some of the most highly anticipated tech IPOs of 2019 even though both had operating losses of $1 billion or more in the past year.

Since going public, Uber and Lyft have both seen shares of their stock tank amid withering criticism that they were substantially overvalued on the private market.

Despite Hyman's quip about not having permission to lose $1 billion, it's not clear what Rent the Runway's financial statement looks like, including whether the 10-year old startup is profitable itself.

The company turned a profit on an adjusted basis in 2016, according to a Recode article at the time. But representatives from Rent The Runway refused to comment on the company's current financial condition when contacted by Business Insider.

Rent the Runway, which allows customers to rent designer clothing, recently raised $125 million in funding at a $1 valuation, according to the New York Times.

Hyman told CNBC that she hopes the new funding, led by Franklin Templeton Investments and Bain Capital Ventures, will give the company the flexibility to go public when the time is right instead of bending to investor pressure.

Read the full interview with CNBC here.

SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, is trying to launch an internet revolution.

On Thursday between 10:30 p.m. and midnight ET (weather permitting), SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Crammed inside the nosecone will be 60 tabletop-size satellites designed to test an internet network called Starlink.

Starlink, once complete, would consist of nearly 12,000 satellites — more than six times the number of all operational spacecraft now in orbit. The goal is to finish the project in 2027, thereby blanketing the Earth with high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet access.

Even partial deployment of Starlink would benefit the financial sector and bring pervasive broadband internet to rural and remote areas. Completing the project may cost $10 billion or more, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX. But Musk said during a call with reporters on Wednesday that it could net the company perhaps $30 to $50 billion per year.

It's not going to be easy to pull off, though, as Musk acknowledged.

"There is a lot of new technology here. So it's possible that some of these satellites may not work," he said. In fact, Musk added that there's a "small possibility that all of the satellites will not work."

During Wednesday's call, Musk also provided new information about Starlink. Industry experts have also used public Federal Communications Commission filings from SpaceX to make educated guesses about Starlink's workings and scope.

"This is the most exciting new network we've seen in a long time," Mark Handley, a computer-networking researcher at University College London who's studied Starlink, told Business Insider. He added that the project could affect the lives of "potentially everybody."

Here's how Starlink might work and how it could change the internet as we know it.

As a game designed for smartphones, "Call of Duty: Mobile" relies on touch screen controls. Players will be able to adjust how sensitive their controls are, their overall field of vision, and choose how their phone's gyroscope is used for aiming.

When set to Simple Mode, the game will unleash a barrage of automatic gunfire whenever an enemy enters your crosshairs, no extra touch required. While this might sound a bit too easy, it will use a ton of ammo and make your shots less accurate due to recoil.

Advanced mode has many more options, including choosing whether you aim down the sights of your weapon or fire from the hip with specific weapons, like a shotgun or assault rifle. Activision says there are 17 sliders for adjusting your aim settings, and even more for other options.

Players will also be able to adjust the position of different on-screen overlays. For example, if you can't see your ammo count in the corner of the screen, you can move it to the top for easy viewing.

OpenFin, which calls itself the operating system of finance, said Thursday that it had raised $17 million in its Series C fundraising round that was led by Wells Fargo, with participation from Barclays.

Designed to sit one layer above a computer's native OS, OpenFin is a platform where software applications can be deployed safely, seamlessly, and quickly. It's used by banks and asset managers to allow traders and portfolio managers to begin using a collection of apps in a way that begins to look and feel like the experience consumers have come to expect from their mobile devices.

"OpenFin is building the roads, bridges and communications infrastructure for financial apps that will allow capital markets to innovate like Silicon Valley," Matt Harris at VC firm Bain Capital Ventures and an OpenFin board member said in a statement.

OpenFin plans to use its new money to hire more people and expand into new products and geographies. The round brings the total funds raised by OpenFin to $40 million. The company declined to disclose its valuation.

The software already powers 1,000 applications on 200,000 computer workstations across more than 1500 banks and investment managers.

Here's the pitch deck that CEO and founder Mazy Dar used to raise his latest round of funding.

Facebook is a one-stop shop when it comes to networking online. Not only can we connect with colleagues, classmates, friends, and family, we can also play games, cross-post to Instagram, join community groups with people who share similar interests, and more.

But how much of what you do on Facebook are you handling with appropriate discretion? You may not be doing anything embarrassing or illegal, but not everyone wants their every move tracked online.

While you can't control the advertisers and other outside companies Facebook choses to sell your information to, there are ways to ensure that your activity and profile information on Facebook is limited when it comes to the general public and even those on your friends list.

It only takes a few minutes to secure your account and may be worthwhile to do. Here's what you need to know.

How to make your Facebook private on desktop

1. Go to Facebook.com and log into your account using the email address and password associated with your account.

2. Once on your news feed, which acts as your home screen, navigate to the arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and click on it to reveal a drop down menu of options.

3. Scroll down until you locate the "Settings" tab and click.

4. On the left-hand side of your screen, you'll see a long list of menu options. Locate "Privacy," which should appear as the fourth item down from the top, and click on it to launch your privacy settings on the right-hand side of the screen.

Navigate to the Privacy section of your Facebook settings. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

5. Note that Facebook allows you to change your privacy settings for individual website features. This means you can adjust the level of privacy for specific elements of the site such as how you're found and contacted on the site, who can see your posts, and even retroactively limit the audience of your past posts.

6. To change a particular privacy element, click the "Edit" option to the far right of each section. This will expand the section and allow you to choose who, if anyone, sees the relevant information. To keep anyone from seeing it, click on "Only me" under "Who should see this?"

"Only me" is the most secure privacy setting available. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

7. You can make your Facebook even more private by changing who can tag you in posts, who can post on your Timeline, and who can share the posts you make to their own profiles. The options for these can be changed as above, though they're found under the "Timeline and Tagging" section on the left-hand side of the screen, just below the "Security" option.

You can open the "Timeline and Tagging" section for even more privacy options. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

How to make your Facebook private on mobile

1. Locate and tap the Facebook app icon on your phone's home screen.

2. Tap on the three stacked horizontal lines in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to launch a menu of options, scrolling until you reach the "Settings and Privacy" section.

3. Tap on "Settings and Privacy" and then "Privacy shortcuts," which will appear beneath it, to customize your privacy options.

Tap on "Privacy shortcuts." Jennifer Still/Business Insider

4. On the "Privacy shortcuts" screen, you'll see a list of options underneath the "Privacy" header. Tap the bottom option, "See more privacy settings." This will launch the screen in which you can review and change your current settings.

5. To change who can see your activity including future posts, past posts, as well as people, pages, and lists you follow, tap on the relevant option under "Your activity." In the dropdown menu that appears, change your option to "Only me" so that it is completely private.

For the most privacy, change your visibility options to "Only me." Jennifer Still/Business Insider

6. Repeat step 5 for each of the options under "How people can find and contact you" to complete the privatization of your Facebook information.

7. Note that you can also manage your profile to make your birthday, relationships, and other profile information private as well under the "Manage your profile" section on the "Privacy settings" screen.

You don't end up in charge of a multi-billion-dollar venture fund filled with some of the world's hottest young companies without thinking multiple steps ahead.

Just ask Rajeev Misra, the CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers. He's modeled out his version of the future and deployed his firm's capital accordingly. It currently comprises the $100 billion Vision Fund— the single biggest venture fund in existence.

A quick peak inside Misra's Vision Fund portfolio is a veritable who's who of startup royalty. It includes WeWork, Uber, DoorDash, and Slack among the crown jewels. Once a company is brought into the fold at SoftBank, the mandate is straightforward enough: if you grow enough, you'll get more money.

At the recent Milken Institute Global Conference, Misra spoke about what he looks for in the roughly 80 companies featured in the Vision Fund at a given time.

Read more: The CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers, who runs the world's biggest venture fund, offers an inside look at how he picks which companies to lavish with billions of capital

At the core of it, Misra likes so-called platform businesses that can use money to invest in technology and achieve greater scale. There's also the added element of how potential target companies will work in tandem with existing portfolio holdings. Those types of synergies can make individual firms even stronger.

But that was just part of Misra's interview at Milken. As a final question, the interviewer — none other than Michael Milken himself — asked the Vision Fund CEO where he sees the world in 10 years.

The ensuing response offered an incredible look into how Misra sees the world morphing over the coming decade. It also provides crucial context around some of the investments already present in the portfolio — ones that were clearly made with these paradigm-altering forecasts in mind.

"The disruptors will be disrupted in the next 5 or 10 years," Misra said. "I believe that a lot of what we take for granted today — like the smartphone, which didn't exist 12 years ago — will change dramatically."

He continued: "That relates to retail outlets, hotels, mobility, the way we consume food at restaurants."

Read more: Buy Amazon and Google, sell Apple and Exxon: Here's an in-depth look at Goldman Sachs' newly unveiled strategy for fighting the trade war

Here are the major themes he's watching (all quotes attributable to Misra):

Mobility

"I believe mobility will change dramatically," Misra said. "By 2022 or 2023 I believe there will be thousands of autonomous vehicles in the streets of major cities in the West. We are investors in GM Cruise."

And self-driving cars are just part of the equation for the Vision Fund. It's also invested in companies that use artificial intelligence and other technology to make driving safer (Nauto, Cambridge Mobile Telematics.) Not to mention a smattering of global car-rental and auto-retail firms.

Ownership

Speaking of car-rental companies, Misra also delivered the following prediction relating to overall ownership of goods and products.

"I believe ownership of products will be very different," he said. "Co-living is going to go up. Cities will change. You won't need as much real estate for parking or retail shops. People won't buy a second or third car. The entire auto industry will change."

New synergies between existing businesses

As mentioned previously, Misra is interested not only in great standalone businesses, but also those that can unlock new value when viewed in tandem with existing portfolio companies.

He provided a prime example of in the form of two current holdings: ParkJockey and DoorDash. When viewed alongside SoftBank's efforts in the electric-car space, it all suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.

"ParkJockey owns 6,000 parking lots," Misra said. "We converted about 20% of those lots to electric-car-charging docks."

He continued: "They each have heat maps from DoorDash with demand from every zip code, so we know what people want to eat in that neighborhood."

Increased power to consumers and suppliers

"Power is being democratized, and it's heading toward the consumer," Misra said. "The consumer will get cheaper goods and services with better quality. All the inefficiencies that they wipe out will keep inflation at bay, as we've seen the last couple years."

He added: "It will also give some power to the suppliers, and take away inefficiencies between suppliers and consumers. It will take out some of the middle men."

WhatsApp was hacked and attackers installed sophisticated spyware on an unknown number of people's smartphones.

The Facebook subsidiary, which has 1.5 billion users, said an advanced cyber actor infected an unknown number of people's devices with the malware, which it said it discovered in early May.

The Financial Times first reported the vulnerability. It said the bad actors were able to install the surveillance technology by phoning the target through WhatsApp's call functionality, giving them access to information including location data and private messages.

The FT reported that the spyware was developed by Israel's NSO Group, whose Pegasus software is known to have been used against human rights activists. The firm denied any involvement in a statement to the FT.

Read more: A Facebook cofounder has written a blistering New York Times op-ed arguing that Mark Zuckerberg's social network should be torn apart

"This attack has all the hallmarks of a private company known to work with governments to deliver spyware that reportedly takes over the functions of mobile phone operating systems," WhatsApp said in a statement to the FT.

"We have briefed a number of human rights organisations to share the information we can, and to work with them to notify civil society."

In a statement sent to Business Insider, a spokesman added: "WhatsApp encourages people to upgrade to the latest version of our app, as well as keep their mobile operating system up to date, to protect against potential targeted exploits designed to compromise information stored on mobile devices. We are constantly working alongside industry partners to provide the latest security enhancements to help protect our users."

A notice on Facebook said the issue impacted both Android, iPhones, and Windows phones. An update was released on Monday that should resolve the issue and users are being urged to update, regardless of whether they have had any suspicious call activity.

Citing a source, the FT reported that the US Department of Justice was notified about the hack last month.

Investors who bought Beyond Meat stock during its public offering in early May saw a 163% pop on the first day, setting a new record and a celebratory tone for a busy IPO season which has seen half a dozen high-value companies enter the public markets.

While new heights may indicate that things can only go downhill from there, UBS analyst Jason Draho thinks it's too early to call the IPO market a bubble, Draho wrote in a note published Monday.

"Triple-digit returns beg the question of whether another IPO bubble is forming. It's fair to say that the IPO market is getting warmer just based on the returns," Draho said. "These returns suggest a hot, not bubbly, IPO market, but there has been an inflection around the Lyft IPO, as the market has gotten hotter since then."

Instead, the longterm momentum of the market will reveal itself in midsummer or fall, once the first of the big IPOs of the year report their second and third quarter earnings and investors get a sense of whether the companies are actually worth what they trade at, Draho reckons.

Read more: These are the slides about Slack's spending, sales and customer growth that the CFO is betting its IPO on

"That's also when six-month lock-up agreements begin to expire, enabling pre-IPO shareholders to start selling in large scale, potentially putting downward pressure on stock prices," Draho said. "All this suggests a runway of about six more months for this hot IPO market, after which it could continue or sputter out, depending on how the current IPOs perform."

In addition to the performance of companies like Zoom and Uber, Draho thinks the market could eventually cool off simply because there aren't enough unicorn companies going public.

"There needs to be an actual supply of IPOs, ideally by unicorns, for a hot market to even exist," he wrote. "Unlike the dotcom era when companies went public after only a few years of operations in order to raise capital, startups today have greater access to private capital and are staying private much longer. Consequently, we should expect far fewer IPOs in this hot market, barring a shift toward much earlier public listings."