Sometimes, being "Instagram famous" isn't much fun. Sure, you might have millions of adoring fans. And yes, brands might give you sponsorship money for exposure on your account. But the dark side of social media stardom is the harassment and stalking you get from obsessive fans. Many users say Instagram has a harassment problem that the company has failed to deal with.

On the 20,000-seat centre stage at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon this year, I participated in a panel about social media with UFC fighter Paige VanZandt and model/actress Charlotte McKinney, who have 1.9 million and 1.4 million Instagram fans, respectively.

While most fans only want the best for the celebrities they follow, some of them can be creepy and dangerous, McKinney told me.

Paige VanZant backstage at Web Summit Web Summit

"I recently had an incident with a fan who had been following me for years and was trying to find me, and he found my parents. They went to my parents work," she said. "So that stood out to me and really frightened me and makes you realise not only are you putting yourself out there but it's your family and friends. I have a niece, I don't like to share her relationship, because it can be really scary. They can really obsess and try and find you."

"Thank god I wasn't there," she said.

McKinney has developed an interesting strategy that makes life more difficult for her stalkers: She posts pictures on a time delay, so people can't rush to where she is whenever a new photo appears.

Charlotte McKinney waits to go on stage in Lisbon. Web Summit

"It's really important to geotag where you're at once you leave," she said. "Sometimes whether it's a hotel stay, or a vacation, or an event you're working at, you're still giving your location. So for me, if I need to shout-out a hotel or a place I make sure [to do it] when I'm gone."

"It's hard because they're fans, these are the people who adore you, so you don't want to be mean to them. But there's definitely a barrier," she said.

Her tactic is wildly different to that used by Alfie Deyes, the Brighton, UK-based YouTube star whose social media life often occurs in real time. He told Business Insider that he cannot go to the supermarket or Starbucks without building in a three-hour block of time because his fans will figure out where he is, based on his Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram, and show up for selfies, which he indulges.

Paige VanZant and her husband, MMA fighter Austin Vanderford. Web Summit

People ought to think twice about harassing VanZant online. She punches people for a living. Her UFC record is 7 wins, 4 losses and zero draws. But people still make insulting comments about her on her Instagram page. "I definitely found it hard at first to have that thick skin and know that there will be those negative comments. I don't need to change myself to fit this image to make everybody happy as long as you're being true to yourself and being true to your brand and your image then you're going to have posiitve feedback. But anytime you have a significant following there are going to be those people."

"When I have almost 'stalker-type' fans I'm usually with a bunch of professional fighters, and I know I could beat them up so it makes it a little bit easier," she said. "But at the same time it is scary. There is someone following your every move, when there is someone showing up at the hotel to take pictures with me, you just have to, you have to put safety first and there are those people who will follow you everywhere."

VanZant also has an interesting personal motto for those days when the insults and barbs get to be too much" "They're still paying attention, and you still matter."

Watch the whole video of our conversation here:

Microsoft has been slowly but surely building itself up as a serious competitor in the PC hardware business, and so far, it's been doing a pretty great job. Recent products include the likes of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 2, which we recently reviewed, as well as the Microsoft Surface Go, which we recently tested as well.

It all started, however, with the original Microsoft Surface Pro, which was arguably the first product that showed the world Microsoft could truly compete in hardware. These days, Microsoft is up to the Surface Pro 6, the latest and greatest in the Surface Pro line. But does the new Surface Pro 6 live up to the Surface Pro name? We put it to the test to find out.

As with any new product, the first thing you'll notice about the new Surface Pro is its design, and it's a great-looking device — but not all that different-looking compared to previous iterations of the Surface Pro. In fact, if you put the Surface Pro 6 next to the Surface Pro 5, or even the Surface Pro 4, you'd be hard-pressed telling them apart — save for the fact that this time around there's a Matte Black color option.

On the front of the device, you'll find the 12.3-inch touchscreen, along with a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with support for Windows Hello. On the left side, there's a headphone jack, while the right side is where you'll find the full-sized USB port, mini DisplayPort, and Surface Connect charging port. On the top, there's the power button and volume rocker. Then, on the back, there's the kickstand. Despite what it may look like in photos, the kickstand is very sturdy and infinitely adjustable — so you don't have to live with using the device in one of two positions, like when you use the iPad with Apple's keyboard covers. Like other tablet kickstand-style devices, the Surface Pro 6 isn't overly comfortable to use like a laptop with the Type Cover on your lap — so if you intend on buying the Type Cover, we recommend sticking with a table of some kind.

The Surface Pro 6 in studio mode. Microsoft

The only thing we might have changed about the Surface Pro 6 design is that it would have been nice to include a USB-C port or two.

Apple has run full-force into adopting USB-C— causing some outrage. We get that Microsoft is positioning itself as a kind of anti-Apple by not forcing users to adopt dongles for older accessories, but USB-C is still the future, and not adding a USB-C port immediately dates the Surface Pro 6.

As mentioned, the display on the Surface Pro 6 comes in at 12.3-inches, and it has a resolution of 2,736 x 1,824 — and it's beautiful. Sure, it's pretty much the same as the display on last year's Surface Pro 5, but that doesn't take away from the fact that colors were vibrant and bright, making the Surface Pro 6 a great choice for those who appreciate a great display. The display is excellent when it comes to touch features too. We found it to be accurate and responsive to touch, and while you might want to use the Surface Pro Type Cover for some situations — like writing tech reviews — many will find using the on-screen keyboard and touch controls perfectly adequate for what they need this device for.

Under the hood, the Surface Pro 6 is an impressive beast for the form factor that it takes.

The base model includes an 8th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, coupled with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. From there, options range up to an Intel Core i7 with 16GB of RAM and a full 1TB of storage. Of course, with those specs you'll have to pay $2,299, but it's an option if you want it.

We found that our model, which was the base model with a 256GB hard drive, was more than capable enough of handling any day-to-day tasks and could get us through a full day of work, plus some video-watching and other entertainment, perfectly fine. Of course, if you expect to use the Surface Pro 6 for more intensive tasks, like any video or audio editing, then it's worth upgrading.

Beyond shelling out the cash for the tablet itself, there's some extra money you might want to spend — on the Microsoft Type Cover, which comes at $130, and the Microsoft Surface Pen, which costs $100. Those are expensive accessories. Sure, they're not quite as pricey as Apple's options, but they're expensive nonetheless.

The Surface Pro 6 in tablet mode. Microsoft

Now, this isn't a review of the Surface Pro's accessories, but we can offer a few details.

In general, we found the Surface Pro 6's Type Cover to offer a nice, tactile typing experience — which was perfect for longer typing sessions. The touchpad was also nice, and while it could have been a bit larger, it worked perfectly fine. The Type Cover is only available in black if you want to pay the $130, though if you're willing to shell out $160 you can get a Platinum, Cobalt Blue, or Burgundy model too.

The Surface Pro Pen is pretty nice too. Now, take this with a grain of salt considering the fact that this tech reviewer isn't much of an artist, but the Surface Pro Pen generally felt nice and reacted well to our strokes. It has 4,096 levels of pressure, which is nice, though it would have been nice if it had a little more gesture control, like the new second-generation Apple Pencil.

Ultimately, the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is an excellent device and a great option for Windows fans who want to continue their experience in a more portable and tactile format. We do recommend the Type Cover to those who type a lot, but if you don't then you may not need to factor it into the cost.

But the question remains — is there a better option in this price range?

Well, that depends.

For Windows 10 fans, the Surface Pro line is still the best way to experience the hybrid tablet design that has taken off over the past few years, but we still wish Microsoft would update the design a little, even if just to include more modern ports.

For those not married to Windows 10 and who don't mind using a mobile operating system, the new iPad Pro range is definitely something to consider, especially given the fact that it has a USB-C port and arguably better stylus. iPad aside, however, there's still nothing that can truly challenge the Surface Pro 6 in this segment — so if you like Windows 10, and want a hybrid, this is the way to go.

Buy the Microsoft Surface Pro 6, starting at $899, available at Microsoft and Best Buy

Buy the Microsoft Surface Pen, $99.99, available Microsoft and Best Buy

Buy the Microsoft Surface Pro Type Cover, $129.99, available at Microsoft and Best Buy

Not too long ago, if your friend had a smart speaker like Amazon's Alexa or Google's Assistant in their living room, it seemed like a rare novelty. Within a matter of months, however, smart speakers have started becoming household staples — and they're still only at a fraction of their growth potential.

Business Insider Intelligence

One of the biggest drivers of adoption has been increased functionality. Smart speakers aren't just changing the music and turning on the lights; they're helping consumers find new products and make purchases — and they're quickly becoming a preferred method of shopping.

In fact, nearly a quarter of consumers globally already prefer using a voice assistant over going to a company website or mobile app to shop. This share will jump to 40% by 2021, according to Capgemini.

Consumers are on board with the prompt, convenient nature of shopping with smart speakers — and brands who join them stand to reap massive rewards. The Voice in Retail Report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, highlights the value voice brings to the shopping funnel and how retailers can implement it throughout the customer journey.

Here are three ways brands can capture consumers with voice technology:

Want to Learn More?

Shoppers are interested in using voice assistants for every stage of the customer journey, from initial product search and discovery to post-purchase customer service and delivery status. And retailers that take advantage of consumers' desire to leverage voice will be in a stronger position to heighten customer engagement, increase conversion times, drive sales, and boost operational efficiency.

The Voice in Retail Report from Business Insider Intelligence examines the trends driving the adoption of voice commerce, details the role of voice throughout the customer shopping journey, outlines how brands can benefit from implementing voice in their strategies, and explores what's ahead for the technology in retail.

Black Friday sales hit record highs this year. But, that doesn't mean it was the biggest online shopping day in the world this November.

Shoppers spent $2.4 billion online on Wednesday, a whopping 31.8% increase from 2017, according to Adobe Analytics data. Thanksgiving Day online sales hit $3.7 billion, 28% growth year over year. Black Friday was similarly impressive, with $4.1 billion in online sales as of 8 p.m. ET, an increase of 23.3%.

However, there was another major shopping day earlier in November. On Singles Day — November 11 — Alibaba sales reached $30.8 billion online globally, far exceeding Black Friday figures.

Most of those sales were in China. However, US shopping on Singles Day grew 29.1% compared to 2017, according to Adobe data.

"If you look at the average Ali Express consumer in the US, they're middle class folks just like in China," Alibaba president Michael Evans told Business Insider on Singles Day in Shanghai.

American shoppers spent $1.82 billion online on Singles Day — less, even, than on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. However, the impact of Singles Day in the US is quietly and swiftly growing.

Alibaba's Singles Day gala. Alibaba

Perhaps the biggest effect Singles Day in having on the US is American companies learning to take a page out of Alibaba's handbook. While the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the closest thing to Alibaba's 11/11 kickoff gala, companies across the board are imitating Alibaba in stretching Black Friday to be longer and start earlier.

"US retailers are looking closely at the success of Alibaba's 'Singles' Day' shopping extravaganza to inform next year's Holiday shopping season, particularly the concept of its 'pre-sale' period," Accenture Strategy's Frank Layo said in a comment on Friday morning.

"It allows shoppers to preview merchandise and deals in the run up to the main event and secure goods in their shopping carts, usually for a small deposit," Layo continued. "This helps to improve conversion rates and gives retailers granular visibility into inventory requirements."

Next year, Alibaba may poach shoppers more directly. While the trade war has helped dump some cold water on Alibaba's move into the US, executives have hinted that they want Singles Day to become more of a global event.

Read more: Alibaba's straining to continue its era of record-breaking Singles' Day sales — here's how executives plan to keep growing

"Everywhere I go, which is pretty much everywhere in the world, there are not very many people who do not know about 11/11," Evans told Business Insider.

"Many people ask the question — how can we participate next year? People are very interested, I think partly because they've heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and they think that's quite big."

He continued: "They've heard of Amazon Prime Day. But, we sold as much in five minutes as Amazon sold in an entire Prime Day."

Former Google and Facebook executive Mary Lou Jepsen was in her 20s when she went home to die. What began with terrible headaches developed into fatigue so severe she had to use a wheelchair. She'd lost control of movement in half of her face.

It took several months and a handful of doctors before someone recommended that Jepsen get an MRI — a procedure that that lets clinicians peek inside the brain, but that can cost thousands of dollars and is performed exclusively on a two-ton machine in a special room, often at a hospital. The pricey devices use radio waves and strong magnets to create pictures of organs and structures inside the body.

Thanks to Jepsen's MRI, she was diagnosed with a deadly brain tumor just in time to save her life.

Jepsen's brush with death drove her to create a startup called Openwater.

Come see Mary Lou Jepsen speak at Business Insider's Ignition conference, December 3 & 4 in New York.

Its mission is to make portable, miniature imaging machines that everyone can afford — machines that she dreams will one day harbor the power to do everything from detect tumors in any organ to allow for brain-to-brain communication. If it works, her technology could disrupt the MRI market, where patients spend roughly $24 billion a year on scans, according to an estimate from healthcare research firm The Advisory Board Company.

Brain activity measured with an MRI. shutterstock/MriMan Openwater's existing technology uses a combination of infrared, cell-penetrating laser beams plus two chips — one a camera and one ultrasonic — to look inside the brain and body, Jepsen explained to Business Insider in an interview on the sidelines of a conference held by media group Techonomy in Half Moon Bay, California.

The company is currently performing experiments on rats with prototype versions of its technology at a lab space in the Bay Area, said Jepsen. Already, the images they are able to create are more accurate and better defined than what you'd see with an MRI, she claimed.

Although she has not yet offered a public demonstration of the technology, the company's investors and board of directors suggest strong scientific potential.

Jeff Huber, the vice chairman and founding CEO of $1.6 billion cancer-detecting Silicon Valley startup Grail, serves on Openwater's board of directors; Brook Byers, a founding partner of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins (which has funded Genentech) is an Openwater investor, along with Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the MIT Media Lab and Michael McCullough, who directs the evolution and human behavior lab at the University of Miami.

Jepsen's ultimate goal is to get her product in people's homes, where they could be used to observe the effects of a medication in real time or help monitor the progression of a disease like cancer.

"I want everyone to be able to buy these machines in the drug store next to the blood pressure cuff," Jepsen said.

From a storied career at Facebook and Google to her own startup

Jepsen spoke about her device at the 2017 Rock Health Summit, but remained vague on details. Rock Health Jepsen pitched her project to tech giants Google and Facebook before deciding to strike out on her own. She said the CEOs of each company expressed an interest in the idea at first but ultimately had her focus on other projects in virtual reality and augmented reality.

Her roles at both companies were high-level positions that were heavy on engineering: at Google, Jepsen worked as the head of the company's display division within its secretive "X" division and reported directly to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. At Facebook, Jepsen served as the company's executive director of engineering and the head of display technologies at its virtual reality arm Oculus.

But Jepsen, an engineer with a PhD in optical sciences from Brown University, wanted to do more.

"I like video games just as much as the next person," Jepsen told Business Insider, but their capacity to help people and make a difference is limited, she said.

So last summer, Jepsen announced she was leaving Facebook to create her own company, called Openwater.

'You don't have to biopsy if you can monitor'

Last year, Jepsen described Openwater's device as a new imaging technology that could help "cure diseases" and could even be worn like a hat to see inside the brain. Such a device could help researchers better understand complex organs like the brain, where some aspects of mental illnesses like depression can currently be observed using an MRI.

For the process to work, timing is everything, Jepsen explained: the ultrasonic pings are emitted first so that they arrive at the same time as the infrared light, which is turned on shortly after. The light changes color as it moves past various structures in the brain or body — kind of like how the police siren on a cop car changes pitch as it drives past you.

And the resulting image, which is produced through a combination of the light and the ultrasonic pings, will be able to detect the presence of a tumor, Jepsen said.

Jepsen's company is also working with a nonprofit organization called the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, based in Charlottesville, Virginia. to explore the possibility of someday using the technology for non-invasive surgery using sound waves, she added.

On Monday, Jepsen described one potential scenario for someone with breast cancer. First, her mini-MRI could likely diagnose the disease earlier because MRIs have 10 times the resolution of mammograms, she said. Currently, MRIs are recommended in addition to mammograms only for women with a high risk of breast cancer.

But in addition, if the device could be worn (for example, as part of a bra) it could be used to monitor the disease and any tumors, allowing the patient and her clinician to decide on surgery only when it was medically necessary, such as if the tumor began to grow.

"You don't have to biopsy if you can monitor," Jepsen said.

This story was updated with a new estimate of the MRI market based on estimates from healthcare research firm The Advisory Board.

Of all the issues afflicting America's current medical system, there's one that Adrian Aoun, founder of healthcare company Forward, sees as the most troubling:

As a whole, the current healthcare system doesn't focus on preventative care. There's often little reason to visit your doctor beyond an annual check-up, unless you're dealing with a pressing medical issue.

To that end, Aoun launched Forward in 2017, as a sleek, futuristic doctor's office with a business model that has more in common with your local gym than that of a typical healthcare facility. The company recently opened its first east coast location in New York City, to complement the three it operates in Los Angeles, and its one location in San Francisco. A second New York City location will be opening soon, says Forward.

Aoun, a former Google executive who oversaw the launch of Alphabet's urban innovation program Sidewalk Labs, hopes to give Forward members a hands-on approach to their health, using the company's AI-equipped technology and a health-focused app.

Forward founder Adrian Aoun Forward

The new approach begins with the pricing model. Forward offers memberships starting at $150 a month, which means that you can drop in to visit your doctor as often as you please. Rather than focusing on treating you while you're already sick, Forward is primarily concerned with helping its members proactively manage their health over time.

"Why would you want the healthcare system to work like a gym?" asked Aoun. "You go to the gym with the goal of changing your body. It's about continual engagement. We're here to work on things that will effect you in 10 or 20 years. It's not about just visiting the doctor's office to address an issue and then coming in and being done. The health issues that affect us in 10 or 20 years from now are what's ultimately killing us."

Forward

The future of Forward

Along with two new locations in New York opening this winter, the company recently debuted a series of new medical devices, like a cardiac ultrasound and DNA sequencing tools, that it's already put to use to help monitor its patients' health.

This, says Aoun, is only the beginning of what Forward plans to offer. For now, if you're addressing a healthcare issue that needs a specialist's attention, Forward will help you set up an appointment with an out-of-house physician. But, in general, you should expect to see more of those kinds of specialists in-house at Forward in the upcoming year, said Aoun.

"We want to build the world's biggest health care system," said Aoun. "We're planning on launching more and more services until one day we're able to perform open heart surgery."

Aoun says that even with an ever-expanding roster of services at Forward, he plans to maintain the same price for its monthly membership program.

"The plan is to make healthcare more accessible and efficient," said Aoun. "We want to rebuild every part of the healthcare system."

Designing the future of healthcare

To do so, Forward is building out tech-heavy doctor's offices outfitted with lustrous wall-to-wall flat screens and blonde wood paneling — all without a clipboard in sight. Technology, says Aoun, is the cornerstone of healthcare's future, as a way to treat more patients with lower overhead from human capital.

"You have to ask yourself what went wrong with today's healthcare system," said Aoun. "The problem is that our current healthcare system is based on labor. Paying doctors $200,000 a year is a system that doesn't scale well. If you build a healthcare system on the foundation of technology, you can scale it to billions of people."

Aoun has no intention of Forward remaining a boutique healthcare provider; instead, the company plans to rebuild nearly every conceivable field of medicine with technology as its core backbone. And while Forward employs its own doctors, much of the company's healthcare programming takes place over its mobile app.

"It's like having a doctor in your pocket that's in your phone at all times," said Aoun.

A modern Marvel titan shared a farewell to Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee this week.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who oversees the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), wrote a tribute to Lee for Entertainment Weekly, which can be found in the latest issue or online now. Lee, the former president of Marvel Comics who co-created Spider-Man, Black Panther, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and dozens of more characters, died earlier this month at 95.

Feige described his final meeting with Lee in his tribute, in which the two reminisced about Lee's cameos in Marvel movies.

"Did he know that his time was running out? I don't know," Feige wrote. "In hindsight, he was slightly more wistful than I'd seen him before. He talked about the past more than I had ever heard him talk about the past. So maybe on some level, he knew."

Lee has appeared in every MCU movie in a brief cameo, and nearly all other Marvel movies, as well. He'll appear in two more movies before 2018 is over: Sony's "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" next month, and Disney's "Ralph Breaks the Internet," which is in theaters now. He had also already filmed his "Avengers 4" cameo for next year.

Feige also said that Lee would always joke that he needed more lines for a cameo whenever he was on the set of a movie.

"He always would joke — but not really joke — about wanting more lines, although he understood why we couldn't," Feige wrote.

He concluded, "God forbid he would start to overshadow the hero. That was something a character like Stan Lee could easily do."

Retailers are hoping there's still enough online shopping to go around by the time Monday comes.

Amazon and Walmart, the two largest online sellers in the United States, are both planning on beefing up their online offerings for Cyber Monday.

Walmart announced on Friday that it will be offering more deals than ever on the Monday after Thanksgiving this year. Scott Hilton, chief revenue officer for Walmart US e-commerce, promised "thousands" more deals on Cyber Monday this year when compared with Walmart's deals last year.

Hilton also said that Walmart has prepared more inventory this year on some of the deals it's offering in toys, home, and electronics.

Amazon announced Friday it will start its Cyber Monday Deals Week on Saturday, November 24, lasting through next week. It promised "deeper discounts and even more selection" this year.

Last year, Amazon said Cyber Monday 2017 was its largest single sales day ever. Prime Day in 2018 surpassed it as an event, though that lasted 36 hours, so it's likely Cyber Monday still holds the crown for a single-day event.

Read more: Thanksgiving is killing Black Friday by replacing it

Some experts have questioned how long Cyber Monday can go on as its own event. This Black Friday, online sales came in just shy of last year's Cyber Monday total of $6.6 billion with $6.2 billion for the day, according to Adobe Analytics.

The latest shopping trends, such as the growth of e-commerce, challenge the idea of Black Friday as the day for in-store shopping and Cyber Monday as the time for online shopping. Customers don't look at it that way anymore.

"Significantly early reports of buyer intent shows that 33 percent of US shoppers will mostly or only shop Black Friday online, taking away from some of the Cyber Monday uniqueness," Ray Wimer, an assistant professor of retail practice at Syracuse University, said in an email.

"Furthermore, 54 percent of US shoppers say they are more likely to shop online during Black Friday with the biggest reasons being convenience and simplicity. Again, this would detract from the Cyber Monday event."

Adobe predicts Cyber Monday will pull in $7.8 billion in sales online when all is said and done.

"You'd think we would've been celebrating," said Marc Lore. "Like, 'Wow, we just made enough money that we never have to work again.'"

Lore is the CEO and president of Walmart eCommerce in the US. In an interview with Business Insider's Alyson Shontell, he remembered the moment he sold his first big startup, Quidsi, which sold diapers, to Amazon for $550 million in 2011.

But "it wasn't a celebration," Lore said. "It was sort of like mourning."

In retrospect, Lore said, he realized that the money he and his team made from the sale wasn't enough to compensate for the seeming loss of purpose. He told Shontell:

"I think a lot of entrepreneurship is about … having fun building something, being empowered to make decisions and run, build your own unique culture, hire the people you want to hire, watch them grow and develop, and go on to bigger and better things, and learn while they're there."

After the sale to Amazon, he said, it occurred to the Quidsi team that, "Hey, in this new structure, this new world, a lot of the things that made us happy are not going to exist anymore."

For many CEOs, especially founding CEOs, selling their company can bring up ambivalent feelings — not solely about whether it was the right move financially or logistically, but also about what it means for their personal careers. Others see the decision as tough, even if it was the right call.

The best — and least common — outcome for a CEO may be to take on a new role within the combined organization

The fate of a CEO post-acquisition depends not only on what they want, but also on how the acquiring firm sees them.

If the acquiring firm perceives the CEO as critical to their success, they might try to lock them down with "golden handcuffs," Noam Wasserman, founding director of the University of Southern California's Founder Central Initiative, told me. For example, the CEO and the acquiring firm might negotiate an earn-out agreement, meaning that the CEO would be compensated for hitting certain performance targets.

In other cases, Wasserman said, the acquiring firm might ask the CEO to sign a non-compete agreement, preventing them from starting a similar business, at least for a few years.

It's hard to find exact statistics on what happens to CEOs once they sell their companies. But Donald Hambrick, a professor of management and organization at Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business, estimated that 40% stay on as the head of the acquired unit; 40% agree to leave within the first six months of the acquisition; and 20% take on another executive position in the acquiring firm.

While that third option is the least common, research suggests it can be the most productive.

Melissa Graebner, an associate professor of management at the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business, pointed me to a 2004 paper she published in the Strategic Management Journal, for which she interviewed the CEOs of multiple IT businesses that had been acquired.

Graebner found that "serendipitous value" — positive developments that the buyer didn't anticipate before the deal, such as new product development techniques — happened most often when the CEO took a cross-organizational role (i.e. a role in the new, combined company).

Graebner said that, although there are exceptions, when a CEO doesn't take on that cross-organizational role, "it's usually a missed opportunity."

Lore took that opportunity when he sold his second startup, Jet.com, to Walmart in 2016 for $3 billion and stock: He became the CEO of Walmart eCommerce in the US.

Lore told Business Insider's Shontell that when he and Doug McMillion, the CEO of Walmart, started talking about working together, "The one piece was I didn't want to go down this path that we did last time, which was, 'Hey, we're going to let you do your thing.' Because I learned that lesson before. And Doug said, 'No, we actually want to give you the keys, and have you, your team, take the best of both worlds and drive this thing forward.'"

Some founding CEOs are just itching to start another company after they sell one

Jyoti Bansal. Bateman Group Many founder CEOs who sell their company are serial entrepreneurs, and wind up launching another successful business shortly after the acquisition.

Read more: 'Entrepreneurship porn' lures young people with a pretty picture of startup life, but it glosses over the most dangerous parts

In 2013, Bryan Goldberg sold Bleacher Report to Turner Media (owner of CNN) for roughly $200 million. "When the money hit the bank account, I was just relieved that this grueling eight-month process was over," Goldberg previously told Business Insider's Shontell. "Then you realize, I don't own this [startup] anymore, which is a very powerful feeling."

Goldberg went on to launch Bustle in 2013, which has raised $12 million, according to Crunchbase.

Ben Horowitz, meanwhile, told The New York Times that he had "total seller's remorse" after selling Opsware to Hewlett-Packard in 2007, for $1.6 billion. "I spent eight years, all day every day, trying to build this thing, and all of a sudden it's gone, it's just over," he said. "It's a little bit like something dies," he told The Times.

Horowitz subsequently cofounded Andreeseen-Horowitz with Marc Andreesen; it's now one of the most influential venture-capital firms in Silicon Valley.

And Jyoti Bansal sold his startup AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion in 2017. He made the decision just days before the company had planned to IPO, Business Insider's Zoë Bernard reported.

In the months following the sale, Bansal pondered what to do with himself. (He'd stepped down as AppDynamics CEO several years earlier, though at the time he was still chairman.) "I started with trying to retire," he told me, but "that didn't work for me. I got bored after a few months."

Since selling AppDynamics, Bansal has gone on to launch several other businesses, including a venture-capital firm. He realized that, like many entrepreneurs, he liked "the thrill of building companies" and "going through that hustle and struggle." Plus, he wanted to help newer entrepreneurs bring their ideas to fruition.

Bansal said that, at this point, he's not really involved in decision-making at AppDynamics.

Other founding CEOs can't imagine leaving their baby in someone else's hands

Marla Beck had a starkly different acquisition experience. In 2015, Beck sold Bluemercury, the company she'd cofounded with her husband, to Macy's for $210 million.

Bluemercury and Macy's agreed that Beck would stay on as CEO. Beck said that was a no-brainer for her, describing BlueMercury as her "first child." (She now has three human children.)

The decision to sell wasn't so difficult either, Beck said. She and her husband, Barry Beck, had been entertaining the idea and looking for a potential partner to help them scale the business.

When she finally signed her company over to Macy's, Beck said, "it was pretty much validation that our idea was right," after hearing over and over again that it wouldn't work. (Bluemercury started as an e-commerce beauty company.) It showed her "after all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the 19 years along with our team, that we had the right vision and we were being recognized for it."

It's crucial for founding CEOs and leaders at the acquiring firm to set expectations in advance

Kevin Systrom.OFFICIAL LEWEB PHOTOS/FlickrNew entrepreneurs often call Beck for advice, especially around acquisitions. She always gives them the same piece of wisdom: Make sure to set expectations together with your new parent company.

Read more:The best advice for entrepreneurs, from 16 real people who started their own companies

Beck recommends getting into the nitty-gritty as much as possible. For example, she said, you should decide how often you're going to meet with leadership at your parent company: Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly?

If you meet once a month, for example, you'll spend several days preparing for the meeting, Beck said, "which takes your focus off the business."

Beck wanted to stay focused on growth, and didn't want to be distracted by having to prepare for a weekly or monthly meeting with Macy's. "It was really important for me to have the mind space to continue to be a creator as well as a CEO scaling a company," she said.

Recent examples of startup founders leaving their parent companies after high-profile acquisitions may serve as a warning for entrepreneurs considering selling.

In September, six years after selling to Facebook, the founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, left Facebook. As Business Insider's Sean Wolfe reported, it was rumored that their departure resulted from conflict with Facebook executive over what Instagram should be — and whether Instagram was competing with Facebook's user base.

Brian Acton, a cofounder of WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014, also left the company recently. As Business Insider's Shona Ghosh reported, there was tension over Facebook's desire to place ads on WhatsApp, and whether that meant Acton could leave and take his full allocation of stock.

When deciding whether to sell, entrepreneurs should consider how they'd handle the worst-case scenario

Oftentimes, there's no easy way to decide whether to sell your company. Wasserman suggested that, in order to minimize regret, founding CEOs should consider how they would handle the worst-case scenario in addition to the best-case — for example, if they no longer had any substantive say about the company's major decisions.

Wasserman also recommended considering the "competitive landscape," as in whether remaining small and independent will help or hurt them in the long run.

As for Bansal, he remembers when he realized that he'd do well either way (selling or going public), but his employees would fare better financially if he sold AppDynamics to Cisco. That was what ultimately pushed him to sell the company, and Bansal said that more than 400 people made more than $1 million.

Recently, one of Bansal's former AppDynamics employees texted him to say "thanks." He'd just bought a new house using the money he made from the AppDynamics acquisition.

Bansal said, "It's life-changing for a lot of people."

At most companies, the chief technology officer is tasked with overseeing the engineering teams and basically making sure the company is staking its technological bets in an intelligent way.

At a company like Microsoft, where there are tens of thousands of engineers all over the world testing and building and prodding in an unknowable number of directions at any given time, the CTO's role can be a little bit broader, said Kevin Scott, who's held the role since he came over from LinkedIn — a Microsoft subsidiary — in 2017.

Scott told Business Insider in an interview last week that he tries to help CEO Satya Nadella "make sure we are doing what Satya calls the 'left-to-right scan.'" In other words, it's in Scott's purview to make sure Microsoft is "not failing to do things that we're going to regret not doing three to five years down the line."

While he may not lead research and development, Scott is in charge of the company's engineering culture. Scott not only helps scout future engineering leadership from across the company, but holds regular events like AI 365, a forum where Microsofties — including Nadella — come together to talk about the latest developments in artificial intelligence and how they can refine their approach to it.

Indeed, those two aspects are closely linked, Scott said, as AI is "perhaps the second-most important thing we're doing at Microsoft right now," behind only marquee businesses like Windows, Office, and the Azure cloud but just as vital to the future of the company.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Getty

And in his capacity as a futurist, Scott foresees two big trends, closely intertwined, that are less than a decade away from changing the world, he said.

"I am fully expecting there to be an explosion of cheap compute silicon over the next five to eight years," Scott said. Furthermore, Scott expects that so-called reinforcement learning, a popular method of "teaching" machines how to do tasks, will be matched by equally powerful software.

"People haven't wrapped their heads around this yet," he said.

An explosion of silicon

In Scott's estimation, we're right on the verge of a new era of small, cheap processors that are powerful enough to run advanced AI.

That change will be driven by simple need, he said. As self-driving cars, cashierless retail stores, and automated manufacturing become increasingly common, existing processor architectures are struggling to keep up with the raw amounts of data generated and analyzed by these types of systems.

Microsoft has made some strides in this area. Its Project Brainwave, for example, is an AI-optimized system designed for the Microsoft Azure cloud using a novel architecture called FPGA, while its Azure Sphere initiative is a design for small, cheap, highly secure processors for internet-connected gadgets and toys.

Read more: For the first time ever, Microsoft will distribute its own version of Linux

But Scott doesn't expect that Microsoft will get into the processor business in a meaningful way — indeed, Azure Sphere is something Microsoft has welcomed the rest of the industry to license for their own products and designs.

That is to say: Don't expect Microsoft to go after the likes of Nvidia, Intel, or Qualcomm anytime soon.

"I don't think Microsoft has any inherent desire to be a microcontroller vendor," Scott said.

Microsoft's Project Brainwave is an initiative to build better systems for running complex artificial-intelligence algorithms. Microsoft

Instead, Scott expects it'll be the current class of startups who will come up with the next big thing in processors. Scott didn't name names, but at least five processor startups have raised over $100 million each to tackle the problem.

Once those cheap, powerful chips start hitting the market, Scott said, you can expect that everything will get a lot smarter, from cameras to appliances to industrial robots and children's toys. When it's affordable to put AI-powered software anywhere, it'll start popping up everywhere, he said.

As for quantum computing, an extremely promising form of supercomputing relying on a kind of math that even Bill Gates doesn't fully grasp, Scott expects it's coming — and said Microsoft is investing heavily to bring about this quantum revolution.

Still, he's less comfortable guaranteeing exactly when that revolution will begin, given that Microsoft, IBM, Google, and others are searching for the kind of scientific breakthrough that would take quantum computing beyond the research lab and into real-world usage, he said. But the possibility is "exhilarating."

Read more: Bill Gates says even he doesn't understand the math behind quantum computing, the next big thing in tech

Reinforcement

Scott's second big prediction is related to the first: As the processing power available to software developers expands, so too will the capabilities of AI-powered software.

One of the hottest trends in the AI field is a model called reinforcement learning, where you "reward" a system for producing a desirable outcome. AlphaGo Zero, the latest version of the Google DeepMind system that beat a world champion at the ancient game of Go, is the poster child for reinforcement learning — the software essentially taught itself to play by facing itself over and over again.

At the speed with which the field of reinforcement learning is progressing, Scott said, the biggest constraint for what AI can do right now is processing power. He said that with sufficient processing muscle, even those problems that computer scientists have dubbed "NP-hard" — that is, problems so complicated that they can't be efficiently solved by a computer in a reasonable timeframe — could be tackled with reinforcement-learning models.

TV screens show the live broadcast of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match between Google's AI program, AlphaGo, and the South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol in 2016. Associated Press/Ahn Young-joon

His example is the problem of arranging shipping containers for transport: Given the varying sizes of the containers, their weights, where they've been loaded, and where they'll ultimately be taken off the boat, there are just too many variables for a computer system to give one definitive, best answer in a timeframe that humans would find practical. The best that most systems do is approximate, using algorithms designed by humans to get a useful, if not perfect, answer.

But the combination of hardware and software will make those problems trivial, or at least easier to solve. That in turn will bring an explosion of new and interesting places for AI to pop up, as computing tasks once thought improbable or impossible suddenly become easy.

Where Microsoft comes in

This, finally, is where Microsoft comes in.

While Scott and the rest of the world wait for that silicon revolution, Microsoft is trying to make AI accessible to more people.

Part of that comes from good old-fashioned research and development, as Microsoft offers a widening set of AI capabilities to users and developers. PowerPoint users can take advantage of AI with its automatic slide-design tool, while developers using Microsoft Azure get access to AI-powered tools for image and audio recognition.

What Scott is particularly excited about is the prospect of making AI easier for developers to use, he said. He spotlighted Lobe, a company Microsoft bought in September, as the perfect example of this: Lobe lets developers drag and drop AI technology into their code. By investing in ways for developers to more efficiently and easily use AI, Microsoft is helping the software industry get ready for the world that's coming, Scott said.

And in a way, Scott said, this push for developer productivity is bringing Microsoft full circle. Microsoft's first product was designed to make the then-cutting-edge Basic language easier for programmers to use. Now it's making AI easier for developers to use.

Still, he says, the rise of AI will bring some interesting new risks. As every device, everywhere, starts to get powerful processors and connected to the internet, it will be an "interesting attack surface for hackers" to try to exploit, he said. That's why Microsoft has invested in technologies like Azure Sphere that help to secure connected gadgetry. But it's just one more thing to worry about as we face an AI boom.

"I'm an engineer," Scott said. "There are lots of things that keep me up at night."

In Netflix's letter to shareholders in October about its third-quarter earnings, the streamer dedicated an entire paragraph to its continued mission of doing "day and date" releases for its original movies, meaning simultaneously showing them in theaters and on its streaming service.

"We believe in our member-centric simultaneous release model for our original films and welcome additional theatre chains that are open to carry our films to provide the shared-viewing, big screen experience to their customers who enjoy that option," Netflix said.

But about a week later, the company did an unprecedented 180-degree turn.

Trade publications like Deadline and Variety reported that the streaming giant would for the first time do an exclusive theatrical release for three of its movies before their streaming dates: "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," "Roma," and "Bird Box."

Why would a company that has thrived on being the disrupter of the industry suddenly toe the line? Simple: Oscars.

Though the news was about three titles, one was clearly the motivating force for all of this: "Roma," Alfonso Cuarón's critically acclaimed semiautobiographical family drama and a bona fide Oscar frontrunner for the streaming giant.

Netflix changed course to make its talent happy

Like most Oscar campaigns, the one for "Roma" kicked off at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Following the movie's premiere at the festival, Cuarón could be found holding court at the after-party by a small table of hors d'oeuvres. He gave strong handshakes and said he was appreciative of the kind words about his movie.

One person went up to the Oscar-winning director and told him that everyone needed to see his movie on the big screen. Cuarón looked the person directly in the eyes and said, "Keep talking about that!"

There was never doubt that Netflix would show the movie in theaters. But at that point, Netflix had never given any of its movies an exclusive theatrical run. So the main topic that evening — after people recovered from the emotional roller coaster the movie puts you through — was whether the industry would recognize a movie that didn't play by the normal theatrical rules.

Alfonso Cuarón at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of "Roma." Getty

Though Netflix had just come off an Oscar win at the beginning of the year, it was in the documentary category ("Icarus," about the Olympics doping scandal linked to Russia). Meanwhile, its rival Amazon, which releases its original movies with traditional theatrical runs before streaming them, took home the best actor and screenplay Oscars for "Manchester by the Sea." It was also nominated for best picture.

Netflix has never been nominated in a major Oscars category.

But it has had chances. Its first original movie, 2015's "Beasts of No Nation," was an odds-on favorite to score a best supporting actor nomination for Idris Elba. It didn't happen. And many were shocked that "Mudbound" wasn't nominated for best picture earlier this year.

These snubs were certainly a factor in why Netflix suddenly changed course and decided to give "Buster Scruggs," "Roma," and "Bird Box" exclusive theatrical runs. But never underestimate the power of the talent. Cuarón didn't make it a secret that he wanted his movie to have a life in theaters, and it seems he finally convinced Netflix that if it played by the rules, "Roma" might bring home an Oscar for best picture — something that would give the company huge bragging rights in the business.

While "Buster Scruggs" had a very quiet theatrical release in early November, "Roma" follows with a select run in theaters that started Thanksgiving eve. And Cuarón couldn't be happier.

"Seeing 'Roma' on the big screen is just as important as ensuring people all over the world have the chance to experience it in their homes," the director said in a statement. "'Roma' was photographed in expansive 65mm, complemented by a very complex Atmos sound mix. While a movie theatre offers the best possible experience for 'Roma,' it was designed to be equally meaningful when experienced in the intimacy of one's home."

But selling theaters on making room in their schedules to show "Roma" in all its glory was not an easy task for Netflix.

Trying to get movie theaters to change their ways

The movie-theater business has always been stuck in its old ways, and with other options (streaming, video games) gaining more popularity than ever before, movie houses fight for every dollar — and that includes the biggest chains in the world.

AMC, Regal, and Cinemark all operate with studios and distributors with the understanding that the titles they are showing are exclusively theirs for a time. The standard is 90 days before movies can be available on video on demand, streaming, or home video.

So when Netflix came on the scene touting a "day and date" model a few years ago, there was an immediate hard pass by the big three. That left Netflix working with the smaller chains.

Over the years, the company has been welcomed by the likes of Landmark, Alamo Drafthouse, and iPic Theaters, the latter of which for the first year or two was the only theater to play Netflix movies. Netflix has also booked its titles in smaller art houses with one location. But Netflix's ask of bookers to show "Roma" tested many of the relationships the streaming giant had built.

Numerous art houses, including Alamo Drafthouse, one of the most popular, told Business Insider they passed on showing "Roma" because of the streaming giant's demands, which in some cases included playing the movie in 70mm and in theaters with Dolby Atmos sound — elements most theaters outside of the big three chains don't have.

"Roma." Netflix

In the case of Alamo Drafthouse's location in Brooklyn, New York, one of the few in the city that can play movies at 70mm, Netflix wanted to run the movie for three to four weeks before its streaming date. But that would have meant that for up to four weeks, the movie would fill the theater's biggest auditorium.

With Netflix not budging, Alamo Drafthouse passed, a source close to the negotiations between the chain and Netflix told Business Insider. ("Roma" is playing at a Landmark theater in New York and the IFC Center, as well as a Landmark in Los Angeles. It's set to expand to other theaters in the following weeks.)

Read more: Low morale, staff firings, and new pricing plans coming: Inside the wall of MoviePass

And then there were some theaters that just couldn't place "Roma" or the two other Netflix titles because they were booked up with other movies.

The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year for movie theaters. Because of this, the big studios lock down releases years in advance. The smaller indie distributors like Sony Pictures Classics and A24 announce their dates in some cases a year in advance. And now Netflix was suddenly going to theater bookers to run its titles within a month?

According to one source, independent distributors were also turning up the heat on theater owners, saying if they made accommodations for Netflix, which could cause other distributors' titles to get fewer screens, those companies may be less accommodating with their titles in the future.

Another hard ask Netflix was pushing on some theaters was a one- to three-week run with all three movies. For numerous theater owners Business Insider spoke to, that wasn't a precedent they were OK with. Generally, theaters want to play popular movies for months. With Netflix asking that its movies play for a few weeks and then disappear, theaters would be taking a major risk, since it would open the door for Netflix to dictate the terms of the release window moving forward.

"I won't be playing it," one theater owner in the Northeast told Business Insider when asked about showing "Roma." "They offered us 12 to 14 day-and-date, I can't live with that. My booker has a client or two that wish to play it, and he's been trying to convince them that it's very short-sighted."

Business Insider also spoke to numerous theater owners and programmers who were ecstatic that they were getting "Roma."

A source at one theater in the Midwest said it had been trying to get Netflix titles shown since it played "Beasts of No Nation." Netflix had passed until "Roma." The theater will show "Roma" in December, once the movie is already available to stream on Netflix, for one week.

iPic Theaters is one of the chains that will be showing "Roma" in December. iPic Theaters

iPic Theaters will show the movie at its locations in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and Fort Lee, New Jersey, for one week in December. Its CEO, Hamid Hashemi, said his company continued to have a great relationship with Netflix but acknowledged that scheduling "Roma" was a challenge.

Of the time of year Netflix decided for the exclusive theatrical run, Hashemi said, "It really gets tricky and much, much harder."

"I'm a little surprised that they did this, because they have been sticking to their guns that their philosophy is you should be able to see a movie whenever and however you want to," Hashemi said. "This is a departure, and it's pretty obvious that they are doing it because they are trying to appease the talent. They are going after the big names."

It's clear Netflix is not going through all of this because of the added revenue it can take in at the box office — it's for Oscar gold and keeping the big-name talent happy. And this is just the beginning.

Netflix has more big releases with huge talent on the horizon, like "The Irishman," directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, set to come out sometime next year. Like Cuarón, Scorsese has always championed the theatrical experience. So expect the streaming giant to continue to tweak its approach to working with theaters to satisfy its talent.

It seems the theater business is open to this — if Netflix plays by the rules.

"The movie theater door is open to Netflix — to grow their revenues and improve their awards chances — if only they will give their best movies the time and attention they deserve, in cinemas," John Fithian, the CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners, wrote in a column in November. "Filmmakers and movie lovers will appreciate Netflix so much more."

Netflix declined to comment for this story.

Every morning throughout New York City, Chicago, and Washington, DC, a fleet of black vans emblazoned with bright blue logos take to the streets. If it weren't for the Via logo, they'd blend right in to the fabric of other ride-hail vehicles, personal cars, and taxis.

But under the surface, Via is hoping it can increase its market share above the tiny fraction it currently holds by convincing people that a shared ride is better for everyone.

The company, which draws inspiration from shared taxis in Israel called sheruts, has raised $387 million in four rounds of venture-capital funding and is active in three US cities as well as several others in Europe through a partnership with Mercedes-Benz.

CEO Daniel Ramot has plans well beyond passengers ordering cars to get from one place to another: He wants to invent what he describes as an "operating system" for public transportation, one that would radically change our notion of a public bus and — eventually — eliminate the need for personal vehicles.

Today, Via operates the entire public bus network in Arlington, Texas — replacing the traditional vehicles with on-demand shared vans. Its software enables other cities to do much the same with their public transit agencies.

Business Insider caught up with Ramot to talk about what got the company to this point, how he views its mammoth competitors like Uber and Lyft, and what's next for Via:

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Graham Rapier: Obviously Uber and Lyft are two of your largest competitors. What differentiates Via from other companies in the ride-hailing space?

Daniel Ramot: We see ourselves as being in a different category from Uber and Lyft, and I don't just say this as a way to address the question of competition. It's been the way that we've thought about Via from the very beginning.

We were really focused from the very beginning on creating technology and a service that is all about better public transportation. Essentially, we think of Via as a dynamic, on-demand bus solution, and that's really the way that we started to think about the company from day one.

Uber and Lyft, at least in my sense, have come at it from "how do we make a better taxi?" Now they're adding other types of mobility, but the focus for them has not been around creating better public transportation or bus experience.

I think that that sort of then translates into maybe at least a couple of different elements:

Daimler One is that the technology we've developed is really geared towards creating a mass-transit solution where we're trying to optimize the utilization of every seat. It's really about thinking about things in that way, to reduce by using larger vehicles and driving the efficiency of the system as sort of the core goal.

The other is the way that we've historically approached working with cities and public transportation agencies; our goal has always been to be closely aligned with them and much more collaborative. The DNA of the company is very, very different.

Rapier: A lot of your focus seems to be on improving public transportation — why that and not just another ride-hailing service?

Ramot: When we founded the company six years ago, we were thinking about "How do you make public transit better?" and looking around it was clear that public transportation was a space that just had very little technology in it — we used to call it insulated from technology.

We were inspired by this van-based system in Israel called sheruts, where taxi vans simply run fixed routes like buses, but smaller and faster, and you can flag them down anywhere along the route. We had the idea of taking that system and, through technology, allowing those vehicles to be routed dynamically in response to demand.

As we started to think about that solution, Oren, my cofounder, and I had this sense that this was going to be the future of public transportation. We really believed that, at some point down the road, there will certainly still be buses for high-capacity routes, and maybe only during peak hours, but not all times. It was clear to us that many of the areas that we currently serve with buses could be far better served with these more agile, dynamic, data-driven, on-demand solutions.

Over time, we've come to think that it's actually potentially much bigger than that. Not only can this help us replace underperforming bus routes or complement bus systems, but eventually, if you get the system to be good enough, you hit a certain combination of convenience and cost that could start to replace the private car — which is, in that sense, the holy grail.

How do we get people out of their cars? It's very hard to do with a bus — it hasn't worked for dozens of years. Subways work very well, but they're extremely expensive to dig, and most cities don't have the density or size to really support them.

Rapier: But isn't the beauty of a (well-planned) bus system that you know when and where it will show up, with at least some regularity, and where it's going to go?

Ramot: I think the psychology of it is probably complex. I don't mean to oversimplify it, but I'm not convinced that what you just described isn't just what we've gotten used to. If you actually take a step back, it isn't that normal to show up at a bus stop and just wait there, not knowing where the bus is, when it will come, and whether it will be too full or you can find a seat. I think it's just something that, due to lack of information and technology, we've become accustomed to. It makes a lot more sense if you can open your phone and say "I want to get from point A to point B" and within seconds the app says "OK, walk 100 meters to this corner, and your vehicle is three minutes away" — makes a lot more sense.

Rapier: What about people without phones, like kids, the elderly, or those who can't afford it?

Ramot: Usually the cities we work with, whether it's directly with the municipality like in Arlington or a public transit agency, they are definitely concerned about that. When we're running a consumer service, our customers are people who have phones — we would love to get the people who don't have phones too, but it's OK, from our perspective, that we don't provide service if you don't have a phone with an app on it. But for a city like Arlington that would not be OK.

Via We have a call center that you can call in, as well as several other ideas that we haven't necessarily implemented. For example, you have at the bus stations or strategic locations a tablet that you can walk up to and simply order your ride from there. We could also have a web interface so you can go online and book a ride there.

Rapier: How did the arrangement with Arlington, Texas, come about? How did you convince an entire city — the seventh largest in the state — to let you run the entire public transit system?

Ramot: We basically spent the first years the company building the technology. Once we became convinced the technology was really working, we starting going to transit conferences, speaking about what we're doing and getting to know folks in the business — especially on the municipal and transit agency side. We ended up getting connected with the folks at Arlington and talking to them about what a solution could be for their city and how we would envision it.

Those talks led to an RFP (request for proposal) for an innovative on-demand public transportation service. There were actually quite a few companies that responded and we ended up being selected through that procurement process.

Rapier: What's the breakdown of your public transit versus consumer businesses? Are they equal, or is one much bigger than the other? Which is your biggest focus right now?

Ramot: Our consumer offerings in New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and some European cities through a partnership with Mercedes-Benz is still the biggest part of our business today and continued to grow very quickly.

The part of the business where we are partnering with cities — either like the one in Arlington or simply providing the software to a transit agency — is rapidly growing. I suspect that within not too long will become an equally large and important part of the business.

But if we take a step back, the way that we see what we're doing is not as two separate businesses but one solution. We like to think of this as an operating system for on-demand shuttles. It's an extremely efficient format that we'd like to deploy all over the world. The question then becomes what is the best way for us to enter all of these cities. Sometimes we decide that it makes sense to launch our own service as we did in New York and London. Other times it may be better for us to partner with a city or agency.

Rapier: Let's talk about the directly operated services. Subscription plans are hot right now, with Uber and Lyft both announcing them in the same week, but you've had Via Pass for years. How's the response been to that?

Ramot: Our subscription service is quite unique in that we're the only one where you simply pay up front and then get unlimited (up to four) rides per day, much like a MetroCard in New York. (Editor's note: A 30-day pass for New York's subway and buses is $121; a Via pass is $255 a month.)

The service doesn't have dramatic price fluctuations that you might see on other platforms. To us, if you're going to take one, two, or four rides today, we know about how much they're going to cost.

Via Additionally, a lot of our businesses is commuters — they were the foundation of the service and a big part of what we've always done.

Rapier: What about the algorithm — how is the routing different than that of say Lyft Line or Uber Pool?

Ramot: The system we've developed is all about getting as many people as possible in the vehicle while guaranteeing a route that makes sense and not being taken out of your way. Still, hopefully, we're able to find a number of other passengers whose routes overlap and can all ride together with minimal disruption.

This has always been key, but we realized early on that for this to even have a remote chance of working we're going to have to ask people to walk a little bit. If we try to pick you up exactly where you are and drop you off exactly where you need to go, that imposes pretty strong constraints on the route of the vehicle and can force large detours.

We very quickly realized this and then developed sophisticated technology around figuring out what we call "virtual bus stops" and the best way to route vehicles. These really complicate the computations — it's no longer just the shortest route between your origin and destination but a cloud of possible pickup points.

Shared rides have always been our focus, and we didn't offer private rides until about a year ago. Still, about 95% of our requests are for shared rides. The vast majority of people obviously think about it as a shared service. I can talk a lot and tell you why it's different, but I think that number speaks for itself.

Rapier: What about for drivers? Is your pay scale or driver app any different?

Ramot: There are a few key differences around the driving experiences and pay. Drivers on the Via platform are very used to following the Via app. They're provided with a route at all times, including when they're empty. A big part of the efficiency is that we know exactly where they are and where they're going to be, so we can balance out where all the empty seats are throughout the city.

If you imagine having all the vehicle take the fastest route, which might be Park Avenue for example. It's very beneficial for us to have some vehicles go down Lexington, some go down 2nd, and so forth so that we're always matching available seats and where they will be 10 minutes from now.

This driver guidance helps contribute to our significantly higher utilization rate than other platforms, which then also translates into higher earnings per hour. If you look at the most recent TLC report, the median Via drivers were making 50% more than drivers on Uber and Lyft.

It's not necessarily that Via drivers when they have a passenger in the car are making more money than Uber drivers that have a passenger in the car — I think it really is about utilization. When you think about your experience on these other platforms, their focus is on providing you a ride that's within three to four minutes away. That's it. It's a great experience, no question, on the consumer side. But it means there have to be a lot of empty vehicles driving around waiting for you to open the app and book a ride.

Our wait times are a bit longer, six minutes on average, but that all comes with trying to not have too many drivers on the road and having the efficiency as high as possible.

Rapier: Will you be IPO-ing soon like Uber and Lyft?

Ramot: It's definitely a direction we're thinking about. We're trying to build a company that has a product that's deployed in every city throughout the world. If we're able to achieve that, then that's certainly a company worthy of an IPO.

Rapier: What about scooters? They seem to be all the rage now — are you planning to go beyond cars?

Ramot: Over the last 10 years, we've seen technology come into the transportation space — with the introduction of ride-hailing and shared rides — that has been super interesting. Now, what we pioneered in New York is being adopted by other ride-hailing companies around the world like Uber Pool and even Didi Chuxing and Grab have shared services now.

Technology can increasingly create new modes of transportation that didn't exist, and I think in the case of scooters — their combination of hardware, software, and batteries — has enabled this new mode of micro-mobility. Just like ride-sharing, this will change the urban mobility landscape in a really positive way. People have different needs, and having a diversity of modes to choose from is very important. We're pretty excited about the space.

We're definitely looking to add scooters to our repertoire, specifically with what we're offering to cities. A lot of our partner cities have expressed interest.

"Brothers and sisters, if you think a sports car might be for you, just get one of these." That's what I wrote when I drove the 2015-edition Mustang GT.

The song remains the same for the updated ride, even though I've also driven the GT's big brother, the GT350, which is a lot of car.

The regular 5.0 GT is plenty, however. I used it as a passable imitation of the daily driver in LA, and though the six-speed was no party, it was fine. Once I got to cut loose in the canyons, you couldn't have given me an automatic.

That said, because the redline is now 7,500 rpm (up 500 from the previous model), it's possible to park the GT in third gear, or even second, and just rip around and relish the sharp steering and marvelous brakes: point and shoot driving, with the V8 making its music in the background.

Obviously, this is a Mustang, so it can haul in a straight line. Onramp runs and passing on the freeway are tons of fun. When the back end hunkers down and the tires grab, the joy is palpable (the GT is outfitted with a Drag Strip mode, by the way, and joined with the automatic option, that gets you a sub-four-second 0-60 mph time).

The real trick with the V8-motored Stangs these days is to deliver German-sports-car-level performance without grinding the backwoods American edge off. This is harder than it sounds. But Ford has done it, and even sneakily altered the Stang's looks by streamlining the exterior. But that engine continues to rock 'n' roll.

Yeah, let's face it, I loved the car. The gas bill might take some getting used to, but the 2018 Mustang GT is an excellent plaything. You'd want to drive it every single weekend.

Amazon warehouse workers are going to voice their anger at working conditions in coordinated protests across Europe on Black Friday.

British trade union GMB is working with hundreds of staff to stage demonstrations outside five fulfilment centres on Friday, while workers in Spain and Italy are planning a 24-hour strike.

In the UK, a mixture of off-shift Amazon workers and GMB members will demonstrate outside Amazon warehouses waving banners and handing out leaflets, a GMB spokesman told Business Insider.

Read more: "They treat us like disposable parts": An Amazon warehouse worker is waging war on working conditions in a new anonymous newspaper column

The biggest protest will take place at Rugeley, near Birmingham, with upwards of 100 people expected to attend. After demonstrating at the warehouse, they will march to a rally at the Lea Hall Miners' Club, where shadow work and pensions minister, Jack Dromey, will speak.

The GMB spokesman said protestors are looking to raise awareness rather than disrupt Black Friday sales. "All we want is to get Amazon around the table," he said.

GMB General Secretary Tim Roache said in a statement that working conditions at Amazon are "frankly inhuman." He added: "They are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in ambulances."

Using a series of Freedom of Information requests, the GMB discovered in June that ambulances were called out 600 times to 14 Amazon warehouses over the past three years.

An Amazon protest in Germany earlier this year. Sean Gallup/Getty

At the Rugeley site, ambulances were called out 115 times over that period for electric shocks, bleeding, chest pains, and major trauma. Three times the ambulances were called out for "pregnancy/maternity."

"At a similar sized supermarket distribution warehouse a few miles away, there were just eight call outs during the same period," the GMB found.

Ahead of the protest on Friday, the GMB collected statements from members who work at the warehouses.

"I am pregnant and they put me to stand 10 hours without a chair … They are telling me to work hard even [sic] they know I am pregnant. I am feeling depressed when I am at work," said one.

Another added: "It is an awful place to work, can't breath or voice an opinion, [sic] feel like a trapped animal with lack of support and respect."

Amazon's working conditions have come under fire before, notably from US Senator Bernie Sanders who campaigned to make CEO Jeff Bezos raise Amazon's minimum wage and said he would launch an investigation into "unsafe working conditions."

Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour in October, but it has refuted horror stories from its warehouses as a "myth."

Business Insider contacted Amazon for comment.

Apple has considered the release a lower-priced Apple TV dongle similar to the Roku Streaming Stick or Amazon Fire TV Stick, according to a report by The Information on Wednesday.

It's not clear if Apple ultimately decided whether or not to move forward with plans to release such a device. For Apple, though, a lower-price TV dongle could make sense, given that the company's upcoming streaming service is set to launch as early as March 2019.

The streaming service will only be available on the iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV. Given that the Apple TV costs at least $149, a cheaper device for accessing the company's content could help broaden Apple's audience.

Today, Amazon and Roku dongles — which plug into the back of televisions and allow users to stream content— cost as little as $25 and $30 respectively.

Apple's streaming service will include a combination of original content and licensing deals with production companies. The company has already announced 19 original series, including a biographical drama about Kevin Durant and an untitled series starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

Read more: The 19 original shows Apple is producing in its push into TV as an 'expensive NBC'

Apple has already spent more than $1 billion producing its original content. In October, CNBC reported that Apple's original TV and movie content might be free for anyone accessing it through an iPhone or iPad.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.