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Several high-profile conservatives including Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas shared Russian misinformation, the The New York Times reported Tuesday.

In Portland, Oregon, protests against police brutality have continued for more than 70 consecutive days. The protesters themselves have been largely peaceful, but have also on some occasions lit bonfires. 

In one of those instances, footage from Ruptly, the video arm of Russian state-backed media outlet Russia Today, showed some protesters using a Bible and American flag to start a fire, which others eventually put out, according to The New York Times.

Multiple local media outlets reported that the protests had been peaceful throughout the day and that the fire was started only at the end of the night as a dwindling crowd of somewhere between a few dozen and 100 people spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement, while only one mentioned a Bible being involved at all.

But Ruptly, which has livestreamed the protests and published highlight clips nightly, focused its summary video that night on the burning of what appeared to be a single Bible, The New York Times reported. Twice, it tweeted the video, noting the Bible being set ablaze both times.

A Twitter user with just a few followers also tweeted the video shortly before deleting their account, but not before  right-wing agitator Ian Miles Cheong retweeted them, adding his own false claim that the protesters burned "a stack of Bibles." 

Cheong's tweet then went viral, sparking coverage from prominent and conservative media outlets and blogs including the New York Post, The Federalist, Gateway Pundit, and The Blaze, as well as retweets from Trump Jr. and Sen. Cruz.

The success of Ruptly's misleading coverage of the Portland protests reveals how Russia's misinformation tactics have evolved since the 2016 presidential election, where American intelligence agencies have repeatedly concluded that Russia interfered with the aim of hurting Hillary Clinton's candidacy.

In 2016, Russia relied heavily on fake Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media accounts to artificially amplify fake news stories created by the Internet Research Agency, its in-house troll farm.

But Russia is deploying new, more sophisticated tactics this time around, and the Portland protest story shows how it has learned to leverage hot-button issues that are likely to resonate with highly partisan or ideological groups in order to sow dissent.

Cybersecurity experts have found that Russia is exploiting the coronavirus pandemic and racial tension in the US, and US intelligence agencies have warned that Russia is attempting to sway the election toward Trump again in 2020, though Trump has repeatedly downplayed the assessments of US intelligence agencies, instead giving deference to fringe agitators who support him.

Lyft on Wednesday revealed its lowest quarterly revenue since 2017, as the coronavirus pandemic wallops its business.

Here are the key numbers from the earnings report, covering April 1 through June 31:

"While rideshare rides in the quarter were down significantly year-over-year, we are encouraged by the recovery trends we are beginning to see, with monthly rideshare rides in July up 78% compared to April," CEO Logan Green said in a press release. "Lyft's second quarter results reflect an operating environment that was not only challenging for our core ridesharing business, but also for our valued riders and drivers and the communities we serve."

Despite the rebound from April lows, active riders declined by 60% from the same period in 2019 thanks to shelter-in-place orders and a near shutdown in business travel. The gains outpaced the rate at which Lyft could get drivers back on the platform, executives said. 

Unlike Uber, Lyft had no food-delivery business to lean on as the coronavirus pandemic hobbled rides requests. Moreover, Lyft only operates in North America, so the United States' failure to contain the spread of the virus has exacerbated its financial difficulties.

Shares of Lyft initially jumped as much as 4% in after-hours trading following the announcement, before sinking about 2% below Wednesday's close. The company's EBITDA loss was 20% better than it had forecast earlier this year, CFO Brian Robert said, but the bottom line beat was largely fueled by massive layoffs that helped to cut costs. 

"These steps position the Company to achieve adjusted EBITDA profitability with 20 - 25% fewer rides than originally contemplated in our fourth quarter 2021 target," Roberts said. 

On a conference call, executives said Lyft would also possibly shut down temporarily in California amid a long-running dispute with labor advocates over its classification of drivers as contractors instead of employees. The state makes up about 16% of total rides, Lyft said. 

The companies, along with other gig-economy startups, hope to fund a shared benefits pool that can follow workers between apps while allowing them the same flexibility. 

"Lyft cannot comply with the injunction at the flip of a switch," Green said. 

Photo credit: Labster.

Edtech startups flirt with unicorn-style growth

Uber and Lyft could temporarily shut down in California if a court ruling saying their workers must be classified as employees, not contractors, holds.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told MSNBC Wednesday morning that "it's hard to believe we'll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly" after a state judge ruled Monday that Uber, Lyft, and other gig-work companies must reclassify drivers and couriers as employees.

Lyft made its threat on a conference call Wednesday afternoon, based on the same ruling. Executives said the shutdown could occur as soon as August 20. The state makes up about 16% of Lyft's total rides, the company said. 

Uber's Khosrowshahi said the shutdown could last until the company's stay on the court ruling, which it requested in filings Tuesday night, is granted. Otherwise, it could continue until California voters decide on Proposition 22 in November, which would allow the company to classify drivers as contractors.

The reclassification as employees would give workers access to benefits and other perks of full-time employment that activist groups have been fighting for over the years. It would also create massive overhead expenses for the companies, whose business models largely rely on independent contractors and lower labor costs.

In fighting the new rules, which were made law by California legislators last year, Uber and others have said workers will lose the flexibility many love about working on the platforms. Instead, a consortium of firms has proposed a third way of classifying employees and wants to pay into a floating benefits fund that will follow workers across ride-hailing and delivery platforms to pay for healthcare and other expenses.

Uber previously accused labor groups of being driven by politics in their fight for driver rights.

"We've got terrific supporters [of Proposition 22] in the community as well who actually care about drivers, versus labor unions and politics. They actually are taking into account the wants and needs of drivers," Khosrowshahi told investors last week.

Advocacy groups say the pandemic makes clear the need for driver healthcare benefits. Monday's ruling "means Uber and Lyft must put an end to their lawless actions that deny benefits and protections to drivers who urgently need them," Uber driver Mekela Edwards, a member of driver advocacy group We Drive Progress, told Business Insider at the time.

A complete shutdown in California would be the first time Uber exited a US market over legal disputes but not the first time it's adapted to changing regulatory environments. Since 2019, the company has not allowed new drivers in New York to sign up on the app, citing new rules about minimum pay in the city.

California's attorney general likely won't be sad to see Uber leave, if it makes good on its threat.

"Any business model that relies on short-changing workers in order to make it probably shouldn't be anywhere, whether California or otherwise," California Attorney General Xavier Becerra told CNBC earlier this week.

Uber and Lyft have about a week to appeal, CNBC reported. If that doesn't work out, voters will decide on the consortium's proposal, which has more than $90 million in supportive funding from the companies, in November.

When he was pressed on if his threat was serious, Khosrowshahi said "hopefully, the courts will reconsider. By no means do we want this to happen."

This post has been updated to reflect Lyft's similar threat, Uber's requested stay on the ruling Tuesday night, and to clarify that the shutdown would only occur if the 10-day stay was not granted. 

When Sundar Pichai was appointed Google's CEO in 2015, one of his early ideas was an initiative to explore how emerging markets were coming online — and how Google's products might not be suitable for many of those users.

The division was named Next Billion Users (NBU) and set out to build products for countries where perhaps Wi-Fi is less available, mobile data costs are higher, or phones lack the mammoth amounts of storage that they often have in the US.

NBU started out looking at India, Indonesia and Brazil, but has since expanded its scope to include Mexico and Nigeria. Today, the division has around 300 central employees and "hundreds" of other members across teams including YouTube, Play, and Chrome, said Josh Woodward, NBU's director of product management, in an interview with Business Insider.

Projects have included Google Go, a stripped-down search app built for lightweight data use. Some of the products have even gone on to become surprise global hits, such as offline Google Maps directions, and Files Go (now named Files by Google) which was, funnily enough, originally built to seek and destroy unwanted memes.

 "One of the big problems we were seeing was people forwarding WhatsApp memes to each other, that was filling up a lot of storage [on their phones]," said Woodward.

"So, the team in Mountain View connected with the Google Photos team who had built a lot of interesting computer vision stuff and we were able to train that model to detect these memes."

But the app has boomed well outside of its target market. "The US today is the fourth most popular country for the files app, which is interesting because we never designed it for the US," said Woodward.

NBU's work is split between adapting existing Google products in ways that make sense for other markets, and building entirely new products that are more locally relevant. And as time has moved on and smartphone use has increased, says Woodward, the team has focused more on people who are coming online for the very first time.

"If you were to try to boil down the three big trends happening in NBU today, I would say it's voice, vernacular – which is how people who don't usually speak English are coming online in massive quantities – and then video," said Woodward.

The team has offices and conducts field research in the countries where it's focused, so the pandemic has posed an obvious obstacle to much of its work. "Our whole culture we had built around empathy, either building teams in a country or flying people in for two weeks into NBU studios, we've had to shift entirely," said Woodward.

To compensate for not being in the field, the team has been finding other ways of instilling some level of empathy in a Google engineer for a first-time internet user in Mumbai, said Woodward.

For example, there's a mind-boggling internal game called 'Gorm the Zop,' which NBU employees are made to play to try to understand how confusing smartphones and the internet can be for a first-time user. 

"We usually call people up in front of an all-hands meetings and have them play it in front of their peers." said Woodward.

But the new normal has also changed the way NBU is thinking about the future, especially on the themes of employment and digital payments, said Woodward.

"These both feel like areas where we've almost hit a fast-forward button to 2030 and we're seeing the pace of change in these areas really fast," he said.

"For most workers in a lot of countries where we're doing research with right now, they're printing out CVs and dropping them in wooden boxes to try to get jobs," he added. "That world is going to change and become digital." Video calling replacing face-to-face interviews are a big part of that shift that the pandemic is only accelerating.

Meanwhile, the team sees a lot more opportunities to build on its success in digital payments, particularly in India where Google Pay allows merchants to display digital storefronts in the app where users can even browse and order from menus. There's been speculation that Google will bring some of these features to the US, too, where Google Pay has been slower to grow but could be invigorated by a pandemic-driven push toward contactless payments.

Then there's Jio, India's telecom platform giant, into which Google just put a $4.5 billion (7.5%) stake. The two are now working together on a custom version of Android for entry-level phones – a way for Google to get its range of apps and services in the hands of even more people.

"We're still in the early stages of defining the exact specs and products and what not," said Woodward. "[Jio] of course understand India, they have distribution, they have key assets in the country."

NBU has had its failures along the way, too. In February, it shuttered Google Stations, a program which put free Wi-Fi in more than 400 railway stations in India and other parts of the world. It was a project that made much more sense in late 2014, and less so when India's Jio network arrived and data costs plummeted.

Then in May, Neighborly, an app launched in Mumbai for residents to connect with locals, was shuttered after it failed to gain traction.

"If people tended to have an important local question, they might ask it on Neighborly but they had that really important question maybe once a month.... so the frequency of use just wasn't there," said Woodward.

With Alphabet focusing on bringing the internet to other parts of the world via fiber networks or internet balloons, there also may be more opportunities for these teams to work with NBU. Woodward says NBU is less focused on the infrastructure side right now, but said the team worked with Alphabet's Loon for its rollout of internet service in Kenya.

Woodward says the "beating heart" of NBU right now is how Google learns from users who are mobile-only, but the finding could affect Google's broader, global product strategy ahead.

"We used to say in 2015 the future of the internet looks like the next billion users, which was kind of a rallying cry to come and join our team. But actually I would say that future is the present now. These are the users who are determining a lot of the trends we're going to see play out in the US and the rest of the world."

Brex, simply put, is a startup for startups.

A venture-backed company can have millions in the bank and not get approved for a credit card. That's because the traditional financial institutions want to see a credit history, which few new companies have, before issuing that precious piece of plastic. Brex solved for the problem by giving corporate credit cards to startups based on their available cash balance — including money raised through venture funding — and using data to predict a startup's future ability to pay.

In the past year, Brex grew beyond its roots as a "black card for startups" to include a bank-account product that gives customers the ability to send payments, new credit cards with rewards tailored for e-commerce and healthcare businesses, a members-only lounge, and a restaurant.

Each new product brings Brex closer to the financial-services leaders it wants to unseat. Henrique Dubugras, the company's 24-year-old cofounder and chief executive, told Business Insider that in the long run, the goal is not to become a bank — but to create a collection of products for saving and spending money, in the same way that Apple owns computing through its product suite.

With a private-market valuation of $2.6 billion, Brex has plans to double its staff to 800 employees this year, adding to a powerhouse team of financial-services veterans and tech-giant alumni.

This list of top employees is focused on staff who are helping the company take on legacy finance institutions, as opposed to the technical talent at the startup. They include the people tasked with raising funding, rolling out new products, keeping customers happy, and signing on rewards partners, as well as the people responsible for plastering San Francisco with Brex advertisements.  

Meet the 13 power players of Brex:

Microsoft just bolstered the organization responsible for Windows, Surface devices, and its Microsoft 365 bundle of business applications with some internal cloud talent.

The company recently relocated a team from its Azure cloud business to this organization, known as "experiences and devices," according to longtime Microsoft pundit Brad Sams, writing for Petri.com, "to help the Windows/Surface teams build more cohesive experiences that the company hopes customers will love and push the Surface team to create better products as well."

The experiences and devices team is responsible for a big part of Microsoft's business. Microsoft 365, for example, is the company's a bundle of business apps, introduced in 2017, that includes Office 365 – cloud-based versions of the company's flagship productivity applications such as Word and Excel – collaboration tools like OneDrive and SharePoint, the Microsoft Teams chat app, and even the Windows 10 operating system itself. The strategy, the company has said, is to make it easier for customers to adopt the best of Microsoft, all at once.

The latest changes come after the company earlier this year notified employees about a significant reorganization, which took effect Feb. 25, affecting the Windows experience and devices teams, according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider. 

That represents a big chunk of Microsoft's lineup of cloud software products, an area where it has a clear advantage in the cloud wars with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. AWS doesn't have a cloud software business to speak of, while Google's G Suite only accounts for a sliver of the market compared with the juggernaut that is Microsoft Office.

United under the banner of Microsoft 365, these power players are helping the company in "moving closer toward a comprehensive enterprise application ecosystem," Nucleus Research analyst Andrew MacMillen recently told Business Insider.

Here are the 21 power players behind Microsoft 365:

Healthcare providers have been turning to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to facilitate their digital transformation since before the coronavirus hit the US — but the pandemic has caused a sea change in providers' willingness to implement IoT solutions that augment efforts in preparing for, containing, and diagnosing the virus. 

Airbnb is feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — the short-term rental startup's revenue plunged 67% in the second quarter of 2020, according to Bloomberg.

Revenue reportedly fell to $335 million during the period ended June 30, down from more than $1 billion during the same period last year. By contrast, Airbnb reportedly saw $842 million in sales in the first quarter of 2020.

But the company is still planning an IPO this year — possibly as soon as August, sources told Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. Airbnb was reportedly planning to make its public offering earlier this year, but those plans were thrown off track by the unexpected impact of COVID-19 on its business.

An Airbnb spokesperson declined to comment.

CEO Brian Chesky warned in May that the company expected its 2020 revenue to be less than half what it was last year. In the months that followed, the company recently laid off 25% of its staff and hundreds of contract workers, froze its marketing, and borrowed $2 billion to help stay afloat through the pandemic.

According to Bloomberg, Airbnb recorded a loss of $400 million in the second quarter before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. That loss likely does not include restructuring charges related to the 1,900 job cuts or other items it could classify as one-time charges, meaning its net loss is almost certainly wider than that.

Airbnb hosts have felt the pain of COVID-19 related travel restrictions for months. As coronavirus lockdowns first began to set in, hosts protested the company for allowing guests to cancel bookings free of charge. Months later, hosts are still complaining of missing payments, CNBC reported this week.

Airbnb announced Wednesday that it will pursue legal claims and damages against a guest who threw a party that descended into mayhem at a Sacramento, California rental over the weekend.

Three people were injured Saturday night after someone opened fire at the party, which was attended by roughly 50 people despite ongoing state mandates preventing large indoor gatherings, according to local NBC affiliate KCRA3.

This marks the first time that Airbnb has taken legal action against a guest accused of violating its policies. The company first banned house parties in November 2019 after five people were killed in a shooting at a Halloween party hosted at an Airbnb rental in San Francisco. Before that, one person was killed and at least three were injured at Airbnb house parties across Northern California in 2019, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Airbnb spokesperson Ben Breit said in a statement to Business Insider that the guest who threw the Sacramento party this week booked the rental under false pretenses, acted with negligence, and violated public health orders.

"Airbnb has no tolerance for unauthorized parties, which are expressly banned in its Community Standards," Breit said.

The short-term rental startup has previously taken steps aiming to prevent parties at its listings. In February, the company encouraged hosts to install "party sensors" that detect high humidity and noise that may indicate a party. The company also altered its policies in July to ban guests under the age of 25 from booking rentals.

Airbnb is reportedly planning to file for an IPO later this month despite harsh conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. CEO Brian Chesky said the company expects its 2020 revenue to be less than half what it was last year, and the company recently laid off 25% of its staff and hundreds of contract workers, froze its marketing, and borrowed $2 billion.

Talk with Hyperion CEO Angelo Kafantaris for a few minutes and it rapidly becomes obvious that he isn't in the auto business, despite the fact that he just launched a wild-looking hypercar, the XP-1, that could notch 0-60 mph in under 2.2 seconds.

Hyperion Motors represents just one facet of an ambitious hydrogen-powered business strategy. Along with Hyperion Aerospace and Hyperion Energy, the auto arm and its debut product are designed to achieve Kafantaris' ultimate goal: to reinvent and revitalize hydrogen power.

Hydrogen fuel cells have been a viable form of energy generation — they've long been used by NASA — and automakers including Toyota, Honda, and GM have pushed them as a way to leave the internal combustion engine behind. But advances in battery-electrics and the ascent of Tesla over the past decade have put fuel cells in the rear view mirror, even if not everyone agrees with Elon Musk's dismissal of the tech as "fool cells."

Kafantaris is eyeing a comeback, and that starts with changing the narrative. 

"We needed to focus on a car, to tell the story in a compelling way to the consumer," Kafantaris said in an interview with Business Insider. Thus, the XP-1, a car that's quicker to 60 mph than any Tesla, with double the range to boot. 

Show them the hypercar, and they will come

The XP-1 is "designed to function as an educational tool for the masses," Kafantaris said. The overarching point is that hydrogen's combination of abundance and portability makes it an ideal fuel for all-electric vehicles. And, of course, the only by-product is water, which is synthesized by a fuel cell's power-generating process.

Kafantaris, who studied engineering at Ohio State before moving to Transportation Design at Detroit's College for Creative Studies, is quick to point out that hydrogen is actually a way to store useful energy, particularly if you want an efficient, zero-emissions way to go fast.

"You don't have the extra battery weight," he said, referring to the bulk of lithium-ion batteries, which are the main way that energy is currently banked for EVs. "So you can have better acceleration and handling — and the same amount of energy as a car that weighs twice as much. This is why NASA has been using hydrogen for 60 years. When you go to space, you want to be as light as possible."

The XP-1, at 2,275 pounds, is a potent featherweight. Made of composites, Kevlar, aluminum, and titanium, it has no hefty engine or battery pack to haul around, just electric motors serving up punishing torque, so using hydrogen to max out performance made sense.

True, hydrogen refueling infrastructure is in its infancy. But with just 300 vehicles slated for production, Hyperion doubtless expects to localize XP-1 sales in places like California, where a smattering of hydrogen stations serve those few buyers who drive one of the three fuel-cell cars on sale in the US today: the Toyota Mirai, Hyundai NEXO, and Honda Clarity. 

While those cars have their fans, Kafantaris bills the XP-1 as the far more compelling pitch for what the most abundant element in the universe can do.

Energy is the focus

"The XP-1 will be the least exciting vehicle from Hyperion," Kafantaris said, but he doesn't plan on becoming another Tesla rival. "I don't want our focus to be manufacturing," he said, echoing sentiments recently offered by Henrik Fisker, whose struck a deal with contract builder Magna to assemble his new Ocean EV.

"Our focus is on the energy side," Kafantaris said, adding that hydrogen has its most "impactful applications in aerospace and industrials." To support that vision and enhance the consumers' understanding of hydrogen as a medium of energy storage, he said Hyperion would undertake the assembly of a nationwide network of refueling stations. But he's also managing expectations. 

"To be an innovator, you have to set aside your biases," he said. "In five years, if hydrogen isn't the best solution, I'll know that." 

Still, he puts a lot of stock in atomic number one.

"Until we have cold fusion, hydrogen will be best."

On January 13, the marketing team at Sony Music Entertainment noticed that one of its artist's songs was surging on TikTok. 

Like most record labels, the company had been monitoring activity on TikTok for months as the short-form video app had emerged as a major driver of song streams on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.

Sony had seen Doja Cat, who signed with its RCA Records imprint in 2014, blow up on the app in December after 17-year-old TikTok star Haley Sharpe created a popular dance to her song "Say So" (a dance that Doja Cat ultimately ended up using in her music video).

But this time, it was one of the label's older catalog songs, a Matthew Wilder track from 1983 called "Break My Stride," that had caught the fancy of TikTok's largely Gen-Z user base.

"Our entire music catalog is effectively tracked on a daily basis," said Andy McGrath, the senior vice president of marketing at Legacy Recordings, the division within Sony that manages Wilder's song catalog. "We're constantly monitoring actions, reactions, and trends that happen on TikTok. We watch what's happening and how many people are creating their own challenges and sharing existing challenges, et cetera, and then we start to say, 'Okay something's happening here.'"

For large music conglomerates like Sony and independent labels alike, TikTok has become an essential marketing tool.

Songs can rise on TikTok by accident, as was the case with Wilder's "Break My Stride." In other instances, marketers or artists try to make songs take off by tapping into existing TikTok fads, creating original songs, or adapting tracks for TikTok's short-video format and hiring influencers to promote them.

"Every music label, every record label, they have a budget now for TikTok because it's becoming so huge," Ariell Nicholas Yahid, a talent manager at the TikTok-focused talent-management upstart the Fuel Injector, told Business Insider. 

In addition to helping artists and labels launch new tracks, song promotion has become an important source of revenue for TikTok's top creators who are looking for ways to make money on an app that still has limited monetization features.

And for up-and-coming artists, TikTok can offer an effective way to build an audience quickly. You can see that clearly in the seemingly instantaneous music careers of TikTok stars like Dixie D'Amelio, Jaden Hossler, and Josh Richards.

Artists like Abigail Barlow and the group Avenue Beat have also used TikTok to test out new tracks before releasing them on streaming platforms. Avenue Beat's recent smash hit, "F2020," blew up on TikTok first before the group committed to recording a full version of the song in July. It's since landed on Apple iTunes' top 50 chart for pop songs.

"We hadn't finished writing the song, we'd literally just written a verse and chorus," Avenue Beat's Savana Santos said. "We just threw it up on TikTok, not thinking that anything was going to happen because we'd never had a video really take off before. We went to bed and we woke up and the next day it had 4.5 million views."

TikTok isn't the first social-media platform to leave its mark on the music industry.

YouTube has long been a key promotional tool for record labels and artists alike (Justin Bieber was a YouTuber before he became a pop star). And artists have recently used other social platforms like Instagram and Twitch to perform shows remotely for fans as live performances have come to a halt during the coronavirus pandemic.  

But music is at the core of the TikTok experience.

The short-form video platform's song-friendly interface (adding a "sound" is part of each user's video upload process) harkens back to the app's roots as the dancing and lip-syncing app Musical.ly, which TikTok's parent company ByteDance acquired and merged with TikTok in 2018.

Some of TikTok's biggest stars are dancers who can spark the creation of millions of user-generated videos and streams of a new song by posting a single dance video. And TikTok's content recommendation page (the "For You" page) serves up an algorithmically determined assortment of posts that can make any song go viral, whether a track is being used in a paid promotion by a top influencer or in an original dance routine conceived by a non-famous teenager.

One need look no further than the Billboard 100 or Spotify Viral 50 to see the app's imprint on popular music in recent months.

To understand the power players driving music on TikTok forward, Business Insider compiled a list of the music marketers, artists, digital creators, record labels, and other industry insiders who are using TikTok to define popular music in 2020.

The list was determined by Business Insider based on our reporting and the nominations that we received. We took into consideration how a company or individual has used TikTok to grow an artist's, song's, or label's prominence in the industry.

Here are the 24 music industry players that are using TikTok to reshape popular music in 2020 (listed in alphabetical order):

Image Credits: Sundays

Former Casper execs are building a direct-to-consumer dog food startup called Jinx