Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana_Mitra

March 12, 2018

Last summer, when we made a statement about Our Zero Tolerance Policy On Sexual Harassment, a number of people asked us to publicly release our formal policy. We wanted to take our time and make sure we covered as many different elements of the issue as we could. We’ve done that, and as part of #MovingForward we’ve made the Foundry Group Sexual Harassment Policy public.

Among other things, we’ve tried to address the issue of non-disparagement clauses. We’ve come to the conclusion that they should be excluded from agreements, and are encouraging our portfolio companies and the funds we invest in to do so as well. Following is the specific section about non-disparagement clauses from our Sexual Harassment Policy.

NON-DISPARAGEMENT CLAUSES. With respect to all agreements between the Company and any employee or contractor, the Company will exclude reports of sexual harassment or assault from any non-disparagement clause. In addition, the Company will encourage portfolio companies and funds to adopt a similar practice.

Please view this policy as open source. Feel free to download it and modify it for your own purposes. If you have any suggestions or feedback on ways to improve it, please email me.

Recognize that this is not legal advice from us, but merely a starting point for anything you’d like to incorporate into your policy.

Also published on Medium.

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Original author: Brad Feld

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: jyotsna popuri

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Second Home founders Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton. Second Home

Workspace company Second Home is expanding its office empire to include a new space for corporates in Clerkenwell, London. Second Home launched its first office space in east London in 2014 and made its name with colourful offices that feature glass walls and plants. The company has faced planning issues that have caused one set of plans to be voluntarily withdrawn, and another to be delayed by 18 months. Second Home is planning a US expansion with two offices in Los Angeles. Cofounder Rohan Silva, formerly an advisor to ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, said he's "much more optimistic" about Brexit now compared to one year ago.

Take a walk around the new floor that opened recently in trendy office space company Second Home's Spitalfields location and you'll see 11,000 coloured hats suspended from the ceiling. They are there to muffle sound, apparently. Step outside, and there's a body of water, complete with aquatic plants, which works its way around the balcony and the startups working inside the building.

Across the street, Second Home runs the Libreria book shop which features a mirrored wall and books organised by theme rather than whether they're fiction or non-fiction. The company also has an office in Holland Park in West London, a site in Lisbon, an inflatable building it calls "Second Dome," and it purchased the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, which it plans to ship to Los Angeles to hold events in.

Second Home is an unusual place to work. According to its founders, its unconventional design attracted visits from architect Bjarke Ingels and designer Thomas Heatherwick before they began drawing up ideas for Google's new London office. 

Second Home has ambitious plans to expand to two sites in Los Angeles, a new space for corporates in Clerkenwell, and a family-focused office in London Fields. The company has attracted investment from investors including Index Ventures, Bebo founder Michael Birch, LocalGlobe, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

Some of the 11,000 coloured hats in Second Home Spitalfields. Second Home

Founders Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton have enviable career experience for establishing the business. Silva was a senior policy advisor working under then-Prime Minister David Cameron. And Aldenton helped to start a series of creative businesses including the Dalston Roof Park, the Rooftop Café, and Feast.

Yet the pair said they have faced "incredibly frustrating" planning delays, and also increasing competition from rival office company WeWork, which is expanding aggressively in London.

Second Home's new London office will be designed for corporates

Second Home has long been associated with startups. Sure, large corporates like Ernst & Young and Volkswagen have rented desk space, but the colourful office spaces always seemed better-suited to smaller companies.

That's all going to change with Second Home's new office space in Clerkenwell, which cofounders Silva and Aldenton announced in an interview with Business Insider.

The new top floor at Second Home's Spitalfields site. Second Home

"What excites us about Clerkenwell is it's the place in London where corporates are most comfortable working alongside startups," Silva said. "It's really one of those spaces in London for hundreds of years where, because it's outside of the City of London [and] the Square Mile, people who think differently have been able to live there and work there."

Second Home's planned Clerkenwell office space. Second Home

The new office, which is scheduled to open in the autumn, will have space for startups on the ground floor, Silva said, but the other six floors will be occupied by teams from corporates. Second Home plans to include features like biometric locks, a podcast studio, desks that can rise and fall as needed, and a series of talks designed to appeal to corporate customers.

Aldenton said that Second Home also plans to install "a mirror on a ceiling and a mirror on a floor and create an optical illusion that will give you an incredible sense of energy when you arrive" on the ground floor of the building.

But does expanding to a new building focused on corporates risk selling out, in a way? Silva disagreed: "The day we opened we had Cushman & Wakefield and Santander here."

Another render of Second Home's planned Clerkenwell office. Second Home

"And we've always been banging on about this point that we want to try to bring together as many industries and organisations of different stages and sizes. The reason being that actually it's really hard to do business with people if you're all at the same stage."

Silva criticised competing office space companies like WeWork for focusing on startups and early stage companies. "Lots of workspaces are just full of startups," he said. "And that's fine and everything, and broadly a good thing, but it also just means that those startups can't really do business with each other."

A breakdown of the kinds of companies who work from Second Home's offices. Second Home

Rohan Silva still wants to build homes — but the planning system 'makes it almost impossible'

Back in November 2016, Silva told Business Insider that he planned to look at ways to build affordable housing in London in 2018. But since then, he's found that London's planning systems have made it difficult to get the permission he needs to build living spaces.

"It just became clearer and clearer as we got through the planning system that actually the planning system makes it almost impossible to build [and] to really innovate when it comes to housing," Silva said.

"These rules are put in place for well-meaning reasons and they do stop bad things happening, but they can also stop good things happening. So the more we've looked at it, the more it's clear that's a real challenge."

Second Home member Sharmadean Reid, founder of WAH Nails Second Home

That became more clear when Second Home had to back out of a plan to build a living space next to its office in Spitalfields. It changed its plans for the building from housing to office space, and eventually ended up dropping the proposal, as The Financial Times reported in February.

Silva complained that The Financial Times' reporting on Second Home was "deeply unbalanced," and he emphasised that Second Home voluntarily removed its application. "We didn't have to do it and we had seven successful planning applications and this will be the eighth," he said. "We'll probably have some other successful ones in between. But we chose to do it in order to work with the council, not against them."

Silva said that Second Home would resubmit its planning application "shortly." And as for his plan to build affordable homes, he said that the company now plans to build housing in a separate project in central London which he said would open "in a couple of years time."

Second Home has faced 'incredibly frustrating' delays in building another new office space in London Fields

Another Second Home project that has faced issues is the company's plan to build a family-focused office space and creche in London Fields. Aldenton said that Second Home has faced "incredibly frustrating" issues in getting planning permission for the project.

"The sad thing is actually that the local authority are supportive of Second Home," Aldenton said. "But because of the bureaucracy involved in this process, it's taken us introducing people in the same organisation to each other, which makes no sense when the will is there to do it but they get tangled in their own red tape."

Silva was also unhappy with the delays. "We've waited 18 months for council approval for that site," he said. "It's really frustrating because we get stuff built really fast. Second Home here, when we opened, that was 16 weeks of construction and we found the site in January, we signed the lease in March, we got planning permission in June, and we opened on the start of November. We work that fast, all of our projects have been that quick. Clerkenwell will be that fast, et cetera."

Silva said that construction work had just started on the future London Fields office space after 18 months of delays, and Second Home plans to open the office in September.

The company is preparing to open 2 new office spaces in Los Angeles

In contrast to the delays faced in London, Second Home's expansion in Los Angeles is on track, Aldenton said. "We've been working with some very experienced partners out there who are leading the construction work on our behalf. We're actually 90% permitted."

Construction on the Los Angeles office will start in several weeks, Aldenton said, and the company plans to open its first US location in either Spring or early Summer 2019. Silva also said that "we're actually working already on a second location in LA."

Architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano in front of the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion. Getty Images Europe

Second Home plans to ship the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, which the company purchased for "big six figures" in 2015, out to Los Angeles. "That'll be up in LA at the end of this year ... beginning of next year," Silva said, "and we're going to be hosting a great programme of art and film and music and everything."

Rohan Silva is 'much more optimistic' about Brexit

Second Home founder Rohan Silva. Second Home

Silva's background in government means he's well-placed to look at the potential impact of Brexit on businesses in the UK.

"I think the thing that will screw London and the UK is if we make it much harder for talented people to come here," Silva said. "I think the good news is that politicians seem to be pretty united right now in saying we don't want that to happen."

"I think entrepreneur visas, which I was responsible for getting set up, could be broadened out massively. I think we can make it much, much easier for small businesses to become sponsors."

"There is still a lot to do but I am actually much more optimistic than I was a year ago that things are heading in the right direction on that so I think, all being well, we'll be in good shape."

Original author: James Cook

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

In the past week, there has been a flurry of analysis from Wall Street on how Amazon could affect various industries, including banking, healthcare, logistics, and online travel.All the analyses are at least partly based on Amazon's flywheel model built on offering "Earth's biggest selection," using scale to lower the cost of goods and delivery, and providing a great customer experience.Through this lens, it appears there are few businesses Amazon couldn't upend.

It seems Wall Street has a new obsession: What's Amazon going to Amazon next?

In the past week, there has been a flurry of analysis from Wall Street on how Amazon could affect various industries, including banking, healthcare, logistics, and online travel.

Banking

Amazon is reportedly in talks with several large US banks to launch a "checking-account-like product," and it's hiring for its global Consumer Payments team to expand its payment products internationally.

That has some on Wall Street fearing the effect Amazon could have on consumer banking.

The Bain & Co. partners Gerard du Toit and Aaron Cheris said in a post:

"We could imagine Amazon's banking services growing to more than 70 million US consumer relationships over the next five years or so — the same as Wells Fargo, the third-largest bank in the US.

"The estimate assumes that slightly more than half of Amazon's estimated US customer base chooses a financial relationship with the firm — the same share of people who said in our new global survey that they expect to buy a financial product from a major technology firm over the next five years."

Investing

Amazon's potential in checking accounts — as well as the threat of platform companies to big finance more generally — has some wondering whether the tech giant could go head-to-head with Wall Street in investments.

For example, what would happen if Amazon decided to launch a roboadviser, a blanket term used to describe automated financial advisers, in a red-hot market?

It's a question Cynthia Loh — a vice president at Charles Schwab, which manages more than $20 billion in assets through its roboadviser Schwab Intelligent Advisory — has on her mind.

She told Business Insider she saw Amazon as a bigger threat to existing roboadvisers than to the big banks.

"A Google or Amazon robo would keep me up at night more than Morgan Stanley's new robo," Loh said.

Logistics

UBS analysts led by Thomas Wadewitz and Eric Sheridan said in a note to investors on Friday that Amazon would continue to put pressure on the likes of UPS and FedEx.

First, by investing in its own logistics networks, Amazon saves about $1 billion a year, the analysts said — money that could have gone to rival logistics providers.

And the rollout of Shipping with Amazon in Los Angeles hints at longer-term competition with these providers.

"With their 'Shipping with Amazon' offering for 3P sellers, the company appears to be planting the seed for offering logistics capabilities to unrelated third parties (experts believed ~8-10 years out before scaled)," the analysts said.

In a separate note, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Adam Jonas described the effect Amazon could have on Tesla's aspirations in trucking:

"AMZN has a vested interest in taking the marginal cost of transportation to its lowest possible level. Look no further than AMZN's 'fulfillment' and 'shipping' expense line items in its income statement.

"In aggregate, fulfillment and shipping was $46bn in 2017, and Morgan Stanley Internet Analyst Brian Nowak expects it to reach $64bn in 2018 and $291bn by 2027.

"We're in no position to say whether AMZN would be a partner or a potential competitor to Tesla in the area of transport, trucking, and logistics, but we point out the scale that large e-commerce players can bring, which could lead to surprisingly deflationary long-termtrends in some of Tesla's core initiatives."

Online travel

Amazon has tried to enter the online travel market a couple of times without success. And according to Morgan Stanley analysts led by Nowak, while there's no obvious sign that it will try again, the size of the opportunity is significant.

Nowak said:

"The online travel industry is built on ad spend efficiency and conversion ... and AMZN's platform of 300mn+ estimated buyers and its entrenched position in consumers' lives lay a foundation to compete in online travel.

"Further, AMZN's focus on selection/service, pricing, and frictionless payment that drive conversion and stronger user economics also translate directly to travel. Our rough ad efficiency analysis (ad spend/transaction) speaks to AMZN's ability to drive repeat/direct traffic ... as its estimated $0.75 ad spend/transaction is a fraction of what BKNG/EXPE spend."

Nowak and team think an Amazon entry into online travel booking could generate $600 million in annual operating profit in a conservative scenario and $1.5 billion in a more bullish scenario.

"We argue that a robust hotel selection combined with AMZN's ability to use data/machine learning/personalization would change travel consumer behavior and drive adoption," the note said. "The integration of the Amazon Prime Rewards credit card and 5% cash back would likely accelerate it."

Healthcare

Amazon's ambitions in healthcare have become more apparent over the past year, leading to speculation about what the company might do if it got into the prescription-drug business.

One potential victim of such a move, according to the Bernstein analyst Lance Wilkes, is Express Scripts, set to be acquired by Cigna in a $67 billion deal.

And now there's a chance Amazon could partner with UnitedHealth Group, Wilkes said.

Of the Cigna-Express Scripts deal, he said:

"We would view this as increasing the likelihood of UNH and Amazon partnering with Amazon entering retail pharmacy. We had been increasingly focused on Amazon forcing its way in network, potentially aided by the coalition with JPM and Berkshire. While we continue to see that as a focus, consolidation activity may make UNH a more willing partner as they seek to differentiate themselves."

The home

Amazon is acquiring Ring, a startup that specializes in smart doorbells with video cameras.

That could help give Amazon another connection to consumers' homes, with Ring meeting arrivals at the door, Prime beaming movies and shows to the TV in the living room, an Echo speaker playing music in the kitchen, and Alexa acting as an audio assistant.

It could also be part of a high-tech pipeline to deliver retail goods and groceries straight to consumers.

"The trifecta of Alexa, Echo, and Prime should enable Amazon to further penetrate the consumer, expand Prime membership and retail spending patterns, while widening the company's consumer competitive moat with the Ring acquisition putting further fuel in this smart home engine for Amazon," Daniel Ives, an analyst at GBH Insights, wrote in a note to investors.

Original author: Matt Turner

Our 2017 Bentley Continental SuperSports. Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

Bentley's long-serving Continental GT is heading for retirement after 15 wildly successful years in service.The Continental GT is going out in style with the 700 horsepower, 209 mph Supersports.Bentley's all-new second-generation Continental GT will arrive for the 2019 model year.We loved the Supersports' power, performance, comfort, and style.

All good things must come to an end. After 15 years of unprecedented success, it was time for the Bentley Continental GT to say goodbye.

Launched in 2003, the Continental GT proved to be an immediate success. In fact, the 12-cylinder grand tourer was so much of a success that it increased Bentley's global sales five-fold by 2005. That year, it was also revealed that demand for the Continental GT was so massive that there was a one-year waiting list for the car.

In 2010, Bentley updated the Continental GT with fresh styling and a added a new V8 engine option. Over the years, Bentley has worked hard to tweak and improve the Continental.

After a decade and a half, Bentley and parent company VW Group decided it was time to bid farewell to the best selling model.

Last August, Bentley unveiled the new second-generation Continental GT. It'll arrive later this year as a 2019 model.

But before sailing off into the sunset, Bentley decided to do its trusty workhorse a solid with the introduction of the Continental Supersports. It's the fastest and powerful Bentley ever built. It's the Bentley Continental in its ultimate form.

Recently, Business Insider had the chance to spend a few days with the stylish English brute on the roads in and around San Francisco.

The 2017 Bentley Continental Supersports starts at $293,300, but $35,065 in options and fees pushed the as-tested price up to $328,365.

Unfortunately, the Continental Supersports Coupe is no longer on sale. However, the slightly pricier, Supersports Convertible is still available as a 2018 model.

Here's a closer look at the Bentley Continental Supersports.

Original author: Benjamin Zhang

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LMAX

Cryptocurrency-exchanges are growing fast thanks to the booming market for digital coins.  That has David Mercer, the CEO of LMAX Exchange, a foreign exchange trading firm, warning Wall Street that crypto-exchanges might soon come after their respective businesses.

Some of most powerful people on Wall Street have derided cryptocurrencies as a "fraud," "bleeding edge," and as a "bubble."

But it might be cryptocurrency-companies that have the last laugh, according to David Mercer, the chief executive of LMAX Exchange, a UK-based forex trading technology company. 

During an interview with Business Insider, Mercer said he wouldn't be surprised if crypto-companies, specifically crypto-exchanges, start snapping up traditional financial-services companies and break into new markets. 

"We all better listen up," Mercer said. 

"GDAX, Kraken, and Bitfinex, all these guys could get big enough to the point where they don't even need to stay in crypto."

Crypto-exchanges, which helped shepherd the nascent digital coin market into the mainstream during 2017's crypto boom, facilitate approximately $20 billion worth of trading on a given day, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

That's tiny compared to the $5 trillion forex market, Mercer says, but it's still a 4,000% increase from where the market was in the Spring of 2017.

Exchanges have made a killing from that boom, raking in as much as $3 million from fees a day, Bloomberg estimates. Coinbase, which is valued at over $1.6 billion, crossed $1 billion in revenues in 2017. 2017 net revenues for Nasdaq, one of the largest exchange operators in the world, were $2.4 billion, by way of comparison. 

Crypto-exchanges are sitting on a lot of cash. And some appear to be flexing their muscles. Coinbase recently hired an executive from LinkedIn to lead an acquisition spree as its merger and acquisition boss. The company also snagged an executive from the New York Stock Exchange. Kraken, another exchange, is prepared to hire at least 800 people in 2018. 

"They can move into the mainstream and guess what banks and brokers, the guys that you are kind of looking at like they're fly by night, they've got 25 million of your customers," Mercer said. "How long before they start offering, equities, FX, wealth management? It's not impossible. These guys need to take note."

Richard Johnson of consultancy Greenwich Associates recently published an op-ed on Business Insider in which he made the case for why it would make sense for a crypto company to buy the Chicago Stock Exchange. Coinbase, Kraken, and Circle, which recently bought crypto exchange Poloniex for $400 million, are among the companies Johnson thinks could acquire CHX. 

"Future token issuances will need to be compliant with securities regulations, some existing tokens may be restructured for regulatory purposes, and marketplaces for these tokens may need to become compliant under the Exchange Act of '34," Johnson wrote. 

"Thus the exchange license that the CHX owns is now a potentially valuable asset for a crypto exchange."

And according to Bloomberg, crypto-companies have expressed an interest in acquiring the exchange. 

Mercer said one exchange, which he declined to name, offered to buy his company after it helped the exchange with trading issues. The exchange told Mercer they were set to make $200 million for the year. 

"This is where they are going," he said. 

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.>>

Original author: Frank Chaparro

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Getty

Facebook removed Bolt Lock App, an app made by its Israeli security subsidiary Onavo, from the Google Play app store, amid concerns that it unfairly collected user data.Both Onavo and Facebook came under fire in February because Onavo's VPN service also sends mobile browsing and app usage data back to Facebook.Critics say that Facebook doesn't do enough to disclose its ownership of Onavo, potentially fooling consumers who don't realize where their data goes.A Facebook spokesperson tells Gizmodo that Bolt Lock App was only a "small, brief test."

Facebook removed a new Android app from the Google Play store on Friday, after critics say that it unfairly collected app usage data from users and sent it back to the social network.

Earlier in the day, Gizmodo itself had called the app 'deceptive', with some cybersecurity experts urging users not to install the app.

The app in question is Bolt Lock App, a security app made by Facebook's Onavo subsidiary, that billed itself as a way to protect third-party apps containing sensitive information. The app was discreetly released on the Google Play store Monday, and was first reported by TechCrunch on Friday.

The app was then removed from the Google Play app store later on Friday. A spokesperson for Facebook told Gizmodo that it was "a small, brief test."

With Bolt Lock App, users can lock other apps on their phones, like a payments or budgeting app, by requiring a fingerprint or passcode to open them. But buried in the app's description is a disclaimer — which can only been seen you tap the "read more" button — that says Bolt Lock App collects how and when users open those apps and sends that data to Facebook.

Both Facebook and Onavo were criticized last month after it started telling users to download Onavo Protect, the company's VPN service. Onavo Protect helps users protect the privacy of their web browsing, but it also collects data on which apps you use and when, and sends that information back to Facebook. Bolt Lock App contained a similar disclaimer in the fine print, before it was removed.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Facebook used Onavo's VPN data to gain a competitive edge. For example, The Journal reported that Facebook used Onavo to see that Snapchat usage declined after Facebook introduced the competing Instagram Stories feature. It was also data from Onavo that reportedly inspired Facebook to launch a group video chat feature to its Messenger app— stymying a smaller app called Houseparty, which provided a very similar feature.

According to app analytics company SensorTower, Bolt Lock App had under 5,000 downloads before removal. Neither Facebook nor its Onavo subsidiary responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Original author: Rachel Sandler

Original author: Zoë Bernard