Dave Mayer pointed me at this video today. After struggling with how I was feeling all morning, during my run, and while I read the Sunday New York Times, this finally helped me put a framework around my feelings.

I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m confused. I’m appalled. I’m scared. I’m upset. And this is completely independent (and on top of) of all the challenges around the Covid crisis.

Seth wrote a great post on Wednesday titled Uncertainty.

The amount of uncertainty, on all dimensions of our lives in America right now, are at an extreme high. And, then, on top of that, another white cop murders another black man, and our president once against behaves in a way that divides rather than unites.

I woke up to Gotham Gal’s post This Picture Says It All.

I’m lucky – I’m a middle-aged white guy with lots of resources. I’m stretched on a lot of dimensions on ways I’m trying to be helpful to others, but systemic racism is another category that I can’t, and don’t want to, be passive engaged with anymore.

As with my efforts on eliminating sexism and gender discrimination, I realize that I need to learn and participate as an advocate, rather than show up as “hi, I’m a white guy here to solve the problem.” So, I’m starting right now to understand systemic racism in America better and try to get involved in a constructive way to help eliminate it.

The punchline to Joanne Wilson’s post is “When this pandemic is over, we need to find a new path to leadership and a country that cares about all of us. We are a democracy, not a regime.”

I only have one minor modification – we can’t wait for the pandemic to be over.

Augmented reality marketplace startup Poplar has closed a $2.1 million seed round, kicking off and closing its raise despite the ongoing pandemic and a slowdown in startup investment.

Chief executive David Ripert founded Poplar in 2018, after leaving a high-paid job at Google's YouTube.

The startup promises augmented reality and 3D ad campaigns on demand, pairing brands to a marketplace of creators who can rustle up a sponsored filter or virtual product, perhaps more cheaply than a digital agency. The company is a trusted partner for Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok.

Poplar was born out of Founders Factory, the UK startup factory cofounded by serial entrepreneur and investor Brent Hoberman.

Its new fundraise was led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from Haatch Ventures, Ascension Ventures and Super Ventures.

"We started [raising] at the end of January — everything was going well, we were talking to the lots of investors from the biggest US VCs to boutique VCs here in the UK and angels," Ripert told Business Insider. "Then in March the crisis hit and that was really scary."

Ripert added, though, that prospective investors had noted that people's use of social media would tick up through the pandemic, and that retailers deprived of a high street presence would need to look to innovative ways to sell products. "They couldn't do out-of-home [advertising] any more, billboards, stuff on the Tube," Ripert said.

Poplar has 1,600 AR and 3D creators on its platform, and has helped brands including MG Motors, Disney, Universal Music, and Speedo launch AR campaigns.

Take a look at its redacted pitch deck:

Elon Musk struggled to describe how he felt after SpaceX, the company he founded in 2002, launched its first people into Earth's orbit on Saturday.

At 3:22 p.m. ET, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the Crew Dragon spaceship that SpaceX designed and NASA funded. Inside sat two NASA astronauts: Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

It's the first time a commercial spacecraft has carried humans into space, and the first time astronauts have launched from the US since the end of the Space Shuttle Program nine years ago. 

"I'm really quite overcome with emotion on this day. It's kind of hard to talk, frankly," Musk told reporters in a call after the launch. "I've spent 18 years working toward this goal, so it's hard to believe that it's happened."

Currently on board the Crew Dragon and orbiting Earth, Hurley and Behnken will test some of the spaceship's systems, eat, and sleep before they're scheduled to join the International Space Station on Sunday at 10:27 a.m. ET.

"It is a little hard to process. I think at this point I haven't sorted out my emotions," Musk said. "This is hopefully the first step on a journey towards civilization on Mars, of life becoming multiplanetary, a base on the moon and expanding beyond Earth."

Here's what Musk shared about his feelings leading up to the launch, his fears going forward, and his responsibility for the lives of the astronauts on his company's spaceship.

By Saturday, Musk said, 'I didn't feel nervous'

The Demo-2 launch was originally scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Behnken and Hurley boarded the Crew Dragon, and the rocket was filled with propellant below them, but bad weather forced NASA and SpaceX to scrub the launch just 17 minutes before liftoff.

"On Wednesday during the first countdown my adrenaline was railed at 100%, and when the launch was called off it went to 0%," Musk said. "I just basically collapsed and slept for the longest time I've slept in probably a year."

The next launch preparation, on Saturday, was a different story.

"Oddly enough, today, I don't know, it felt like the fates were aligned and I didn't feel nervous," Musk said. "I felt like it was going to work."

Though weather forecasts were similar to Wednesday throughout Saturday morning, the clouds cleared about an hour before launch, making way for the Falcon 9 rocket to hurtle Behnken and Hurley into space.

'We've done everything we can to make sure your dads come back OK.'

Behnken and Hurley each have a young son. Their wives are also astronauts, and they all waved goodbye before the men climbed into a Tesla to drive to the launchpad.

NASA TV microphones picked up Behnken telling his son: "Be good for mom. Make her life easy."

When asked about his responsibility for the men's lives, both as SpaceX CEO and as a dad himself, Musk noted that the mission had just begun. The astronauts must dock to the space station, live there for up to 110 days, ride the Crew Dragon on a fiery fall through Earth's atmosphere, and splash down safely off the coast of Florida.

"The return is more dangerous in some ways than the ascent, so we don't want to declare victory yet," he said. 

Then he stuttered and went silent. Finally, he said, "I'm getting choked up, I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can answer the question."

Musk has previously expressed concern about the spaceship's reentry. The asymmetric design, he has said, could cause the ship to rotate too much as it hurtles through Earth's atmosphere, catch plasma in its thrusters, overheat and lose control. He has also noted a concern about the ship's parachutes, which must deploy to slow down the Crew Dragon as it falls through thicker atmosphere.

Musk told NASA TV on Wednesday that he had spoken with the astronauts' families before they boarded the spaceship for the first launch attempt.

"I felt it most strongly when I saw their families just before coming here," he said, pausing for a few seconds and appearing to gather himself before continuing. "I said, 'We've done everything we can to make sure your dads come back OK.'"

On May 23, NASA told Business Insider that it estimated there was a 1-in-276 chance that the flight could be fatal and a 1-in-60 chance that a problem would cause the mission to fail (but not kill the crew).

Behnken and Hurley, for their part, have accepted the risk.

"I think we're really comfortable with it," Behnken told Business Insider on Friday.

Despite the uncertainty of the mission's future, the astronauts, NASA officials, and Musk all expressed pride in the achievement of launching astronauts aboard the new spacecraft.

"We haven't quite yet docked to the space station, and of course we have to bring them back safely, and we need to repeat these missions, and have this be a regular occurrence, so it's a lot of work to do. But it's just incredible," Musk added. "It's something that I think humanity should be excited about and proud of."

Private-equity firm Silver Lake is best known for doing leveraged buyouts of big-name, mature technology companies. Think Dell Technologies, Skype, or Broadcom. 

That was the reputation even heading into January of this year. Then, the company quickly peeled off a flurry of minority investments, starting with the enigmatic life-science company Verily Life Sciences.

In March, as the coronavirus pandemic gathered steam in the US, the company plowed money into Google's self-driving car unit Waymo and Twitter. In April and May it followed with investments in Airbnb, Expedia, and India broadband startup Reliance Jio. Its latest investment was in a blank-check company just this week.

Just this year, the company has invested alone or alongside partners in $7.3 billion worth of deals. But despite its big-name moves, the firm is something of a cipher to outsiders. And even industry insiders describe the firm as "media shy." 

The flurry of activity reestablished Silver Lake as a preeminent private-equity fund for the technology industry after several years in which competitors Vista Equity Partners and Thoma Bravo stole attention with big deals as valuations climbed.

One banker who is familiar with their deals and friendly with some of the execs sums up the recent activity: "they view it very much as their reemergence." 

But the big question across Wall Street and Silicon Valley now is — what exactly is Silver Lake up to? It's not necessarily a change in strategy, some say, but a reflection of how the private-equity landscape itself has transformed. Others see it as a more fundamental departure from what had long been Silver Lake's bread and butter.

Instead of focusing solely on pure technology investments like software companies and video conference platforms, it's now backing companies that span media, entertainment, sports and travel.

And while Silver Lake has long been comfortable doing minority investments, some insiders say its spate of 2020 dealmaking has taken "non-control" deals to a whole new level. 

In Jio, for instance, it bought a 1.15% stake. 

"It's very, very typical of large financial institutions who kind of exhaust the playbook within the sector they're in, and then they look for other sectors," said Mark Leslie, a management lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, when asked to comment on the 2020 deals some view as a departure from Silver Lake's core focus. "They call it strategy drift."

Leslie, who was once an investor in Silver Lake after he worked with the firm in a $20 billion deal when he was CEO of Veritas Softare, also said Silver Lake's deal appetite is likely the product of the turbulent environment. 

"There's an old saying about investing, which is, buy on gunfire and sell on trumpets," he said. "Now is a good time to buy."

Silver Lake is currently in the midst of trying to raise a $16 billion fund, according to a Reuters report in April. And their string of recent deals has many in Wall Street curious to see what they'll spend on next. 

A Silver Lake spokesman declined to comment for this story.

Do you have a tip about Silver Lake? Contact Dakin Campbell at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., reach him by phone, text, Signal or WhatsApp at 917-673-9252, or on Twitter @dakincampbell. Or get in touch with Casey Sullivan by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Signal at 646-376-6017, or on Twitter @caseyreports. 

Read more: Hollywood's top talent agencies may need a bailout from their PE backers as the coronavirus hammers big bets on live sports and studio production

'These investments are different'

Business Insider spoke with more than a dozen bankers, lawyers, competitors, and deal partners to understand Silver Lake's strategy. Many said it was too early to judge the recent investments. 

"You look at some of their huge wins: Broadcom or Dell or Skype," said one of the people. "They were super hands-on. They were on the board and crafting the strategy, and they were super creative financially. These investments are different."

The two men assumed their roles in December as part of a succession plan that saw managing partner Mike Bingle become a vice chairman and a managing partner emeritus, while Ken Hao became chairman of the firm.

The four men, who grew up together at Silver Lake, took over day-to-day management years ago from original founders David Roux, Jim Davidson, Glenn Hutchins and Roger McNamee, who founded the company in 1999. McNamee left a few years later to found Elevation Partners. 

"They were one of the first pioneers in tech buyouts and tech private equity," said Steven Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago's business school who has conducted extensive research into the private equity industry. "It was very controversial at the time – people didn't think you could put leverage on tech companies. That turned out to be very wrong."

Silver Lake saw its opportunity when valuations plunged earlier this year and solid companies with iconic founders and seemingly durable business models suddenly needed financing. Silver Lake quickly showed itself to be, as one banker put it, "validation capital." 

"If you're raising money and you have one key investor and you have one phone call to make, these are the guys we call," another banker said. "It's the tech version of Warren Buffett." 

Read more: We talked to 14 private-equity insiders about how they're planning to play the coronavirus turmoil. They identified 2 huge opportunities.

Unusual deal talks

Silver Lake's $1 billion investment in Twitter effectively called a truce between CEO Jack Dorsey and activist investor Elliott Management. Durban joined the Twitter board. 

After Elliott went public with its demands, Durban called Dorsey and asked how Silver Lake could help, according to one person with knowledge of the exchange. The Silver Lake partner had been interested in the social-media company for years and finally saw his chance.

The time between the first call and the investment was about one week, lightning fast in the world of private equity, according to someone with knowledge of the talks. 

The Airbnb investment also unfolded in an unconventional manner. When Silver Lake began talking to Airbnb about more funding, Durban had never met Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, according to a person familiar with remarks he made at a recent event for JPMorgan private-wealth clients. Deal talks progressed virtually and Silver Lake conducted due diligence without meeting the management team, others said. 

In the end, the company joined with Sixth Street to invest $1 billion in a combination of debt and equity securities.  The company also took a piece of another $1 billion senior loan made to Airbnb by a second group.

The investment, along with one made in Expedia, is a big bet that travel will come back strong. Durban won't join the Airbnb board. 

"This was a situation where there was dislocation and there were liquidity issues," Kaplan said. "People are looking for money and they aren't looking for control." 

Earlier this week, Silver Lake made another minority investment, spending $100 million to buy 12% of Far Point Acquisition Corp.

The blank-check company is in talks to buy Global Blue, a Swiss player in tax-free shopping, from the private equity firm for $2.6 billion. FPAC's board is resisting the deal, so Silver Lake bought the stake in the blank check company to lend their support to the deal.

One attorney who has worked with Silver Lake considered the move "aggressive," given that the investment essentially positions the firm on both sides of the deal.

Read more: Read the full memo Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky just sent to staff announcing 1,900 job cuts. It lays out severance details and which teams are getting hit the hardest.

'That's a head scratcher'

Silver Lake has always been structured in a way that gives it flexibility to invest in large-scale buyouts, minority investments, and everything in between. The company has a fund called Alpine that focuses on "non-control" debt and equity investments.

And in December, the company said it would "expand its asset base" not only for large-scale private equity, but a "structured equity and debt investment strategy."

Even so, a bunch of minority investments where they can't drive the company strategy aren't going to put up the kind of return numbers that investors in their funds expect, industry sources said. 

"In the absence of doing large-scale control deals, they are starting to do minority deals and PIPE deals and that's ok if you do one or two of them," one private-equity manager said. "But if you start deploying virtually all your deals in a form and fashion that is different from what was successful originally? That's a head scratcher."

Read more: Wall Street is betting AMC is in a downward spiral. Here's the inside story of how the world's biggest movie-theater chain is battling for a comeback.

CAPE CANAVERAL — Amid the threat of rain and lightning on Saturday, one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets heaved itself off the ground at 3:22 p.m. ET with a thunderous roar of flames, smoke, and dust.

Then, about 12 minutes later, a relatively small payload popped off the top of the 23-story launcher while moving close to 17,500 mph, slipping the spacecraft into low-Earth orbit.

However, this payload is unlike anything the world has seen: a privately developed commercial spaceship called Crew Dragon, which is carrying SpaceX's first human passengers — NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

Shortly before their historic crewed space launch, the first from American soil since July 2011, the men shared ceremonious words from SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship over the radio.

"It is absolutely an honor to be part of this huge effort to get the United States back in the launch business," Hurley said, minutes before liftoff.

The flight not only resurrects American crewed spaceflight for NASA, but also opens a door for SpaceX to help commercialize space.

The NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, became emotional while delivering remarks after the crew reached orbit.

"I'm breathing a sigh of relief, but I will also tell you I'm not going to celebrate until Bob and Doug are home safely," Bridenstine said, adding: "I've heard that rumble before, but it's a whole different feeling when it's your team on top of that rocket."

Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, expressed his enthusiasm during the first launch attempt on Wednesday: "This is a dream come true for me and everyone else at SpaceX."

"I didn't even dream that this would come true."

Poor weather threatened to delay the mission a second time, as clouds crowded the Florida skies and teased rocket-threatening lightning. A rain shower briefly soaked the rocket.

Similar conditions forced NASA and SpaceX to scrub their first launch attempt just 17 before liftoff on Wednesday, since the Falcon 9 rocket could trigger lightning strikes from electrically charged clouds.

Though the historic mission is on its way, the hard part is not over for the two men, SpaceX, or NASA — a partner that has invested more than $3.14 billion to foster the system's development.

Launching rockets is something SpaceX excels at, with now 86 successful liftoffs under its belt. Flying crewed space capsules and keeping the passengers alive is another matter.

To prove to NASA and the rest of the world it can be done, the astronauts will spend the next day catching up to the International Space Station, where they will dock the new spaceship for about 110 days before returning home.

The stakes are enormous, with the success of the mission — marked by a safe landing in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida — bound to shape the future of SpaceX, NASA, and human spaceflight in general.

A 3-month spaceflight to tame the Dragon 

Ahead of the crew is a highly choreographed sequence of events for their experimental mission, called Demo-2.

Now in orbit, Behnken and Hurley will climb out of their spacesuits, get a bite to eat, and begin to test out as many systems on Crew Dragon as they can — including overriding the spaceship's automated controls to pilot the vehicle. They also plan to try out the toilet (which is shrouded in proprietary mystery) and eventually get some sleep inside the vehicle.

"We're just excited to kind of put it through its paces," Hurley said during a press briefing on May 1.

Within a day of launch, the ship will pull up to the International Space Station (ISS): SpaceX and NASA's ultimate, football field-size destination in orbit. Behnken and Hurley will try their hand at the manual docking controls before turning the automated system back on.

If the procedure goes well, NASA says the ship should berth on Sunday at 10:27 a.m. ET and the hatches between the ship and the space station should open around 12:45 p.m. ET. The three-person crew of the station's Expedition 63, commanded by fellow NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, will be waiting to greet Behnken and Hurley.

Although the Crew Dragon's final version is designed to stay in space for nearly seven months, NASA and SpaceX said this particular ship could stay up to 110 days. That shelf life, they said, is determined by the ship's solar panels; over time, a corrosive form of oxygen high above Earth will degrade the panels.

"That schedule is a little bit in flux," Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, said during a May 25 briefing. "NASA will tell us when we're ready to go."

Before Behnken and Hurley leave the ISS, though, they'll grab a historic memento: an American flag flown on the first space shuttle mission and left by the crew of NASA's 135th and final space shuttle flight, of which Hurley was a member.

President Barack Obama in July 2011 called it a game of "capture-the-flag" for the first commercial spaceship crew to reach the station.

That competition is now down to SpaceX and Boeing, which is slated for a crewed test flight of its CST-100 Starliner spaceship in early 2021.

"We definitely feel like we're in the lead to make it to the International Space Station and retrieve the flag that STS-135 left behind. But we aren't really focused on who's going to win and who's going to lose," Behnken told reporters on May 1.

He added: "We're really focused on making sure that we technically get into space and get this vehicle checked out and accomplish the ultimate mission, which isn't winning against Boeing: It's providing this capability to the International Space Station so that we can start rotating crews from American soil."

Elon Musk is most worried about the landing of Crew Dragon

When the astronauts are ready to return, they'll climb back into Crew Dragon, put on their spacesuits, and undock from the space station. Then they'll get into position to blast off the spaceship's thrusters, allowing Earth's gravity to pull them back to the planet.

This reentry of the space capsule through Earth's atmosphere — aside from the threat posed by space debris — is the "biggest concern" for Musk, he told Irene Klotz of Aviation Week.

His worry concerning the new spaceship was the capsule's asymmetric design, which is driven by its emergency escape system. While screaming back to Earth at 25 times the speed of sound, the capsule's heat shield will deflect and absorb the energy of superheated plasma — but the forces of atmospheric reentry have a slim chance of causing catastrophic issues, Musk said.

"If you rotate too much, then you could potentially catch the plasma in the super Draco escape thruster pods," Musk said, adding this could overheat parts of the ship or cause it to lose control (by wobbling). "We've looked at this six ways to Sunday, so it's not that I think this will fail. It's just that I worry a bit that it is asymmetric on the backshell."

After slowing down due to drag, Crew Dragon is supposed to open its parachutes and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida, where recovery boats will pick up the astronauts. Koenigsmann told Business Insider that is a concern, since the parachute packing can't really be tested before launch, but that the risk of failure is very low due to scores of tests performed by SpaceX.

In all likelihood, according to NASA and SpaceX's risk estimates, the mission has more than a 98% chance of success and even higher odds of keeping Behnken and Hurley safe. NASA estimated the chance SpaceX might lose the spaceship during the landing phase to be less than 1 in 500.

The 'beginning of a golden age of commercial spaceflight'

Assuming all goes well from start to finish with the Demo-2 mission, experts believe the mission could represent a bold new era for human spaceflight.

Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, who worked for many years on SpaceX's cargo and crewed spaceship programs, said Crew Dragon and Demo-2 could signal major progress within the spaceflight industry.

For one, he said, it'd be "the ultimate validation" of NASA's decision to split roughly $8 billion between SpaceX and Boeing and have the companies develop their own spacecraft and, in the end, privately own and operate them. That model contrasts with the agency's Orion spaceship and Space Launch System rocket programs, which NASA will own and operate but have amounted to tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer costs without a single test launch.

"I think that the combination of those two things — the performance plus the cost savings — would be an incredible validation and endorsement of this whole approach," Reisman said.

He added that the next stage will be the flights of private astronauts (or "spaceflight participants" in NASA parlance) to the space station. To that effect, NASA recently streamlined the ability of companies to fly citizens to the laboratory and foster commercial activities — even including the filming of action movies.

Put together, he said success for Demo-2 would represent "the beginning of a golden age of commercial spaceflight."

"We would be within a year of flying ordinary citizens in space, and that will be hugely transformative," he added.

Reisman says that at first only the wealthy and well-connected will have access to space. But he added that the early days of commercial aviation looked very similar, with passengers spending inordinate sums to fly in biplanes while wearing tuxedos because it was such a rare event.

"That's where we're at with space travel today, we're in the very beginning stages," he said. "We have to look forward to the day when we have Southwest and JetBlue."

"The day will come when when everybody that wants to go to space will, for the most part, be able to afford to go," Reisman said.

SpaceX is hard at work on a follow-up crewed launch called Starship, which Musk hopes can reduce the cost of access to space by 1,000-fold or more.

He hopes to launch a prototype on a short "hop" at the company's burgeoning development site in South Texas in the coming weeks. SpaceX is working with NASA to possibly land the vehicle on the moon in 2024. Musk also wants to begin crewed launches in the mid-2020s and, perhaps in the 2030s, start building permanent cities on Mars. 

SpaceX also hopes its Starship project will dramatically speed up international travel from days to minutes with regular point-to-point flights at hypersonic speeds.

Update: SpaceX launched astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into orbit around Earth on Saturday. They are expected to reach the International Space Station at 10:27 a.m. ET on Sunday.

The last time the United States launched humans into space from American soil was in 2011, when the last space shuttle made its final voyage into orbit.

Since then, NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. That has become increasingly expensive and limited US access to the station.

That could all change on Saturday afternoon. If weather, hardware, and other factors cooperate, SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship, built with NASA funds, will launch the astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley toward the ISS in a mission called Demo-2, at 3:22 p.m. ET.

The launch was originally scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but was scrubbed just 17 minutes before liftoff due to poor weather conditions — specifically, thunderstorm anvil clouds and an electric field that could trigger lightning strikes.

A successful flight would resurrect the US's ability to launch people into space. It would also mark SpaceX's first mission with passengers in the company's 18-year history.

"This is the culmination of a dream," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told "CBS This Morning" hours ahead of the scheduled launch. "This is a dream come true. In fact, it feels surreal. If you'd asked me when starting SpaceX if this would happen, I'd be like, 1% chance, 0.1% chance."

A Demo-2 success would also mark the first crewed commercial spaceflight ever, opening a new era of space exploration.

Here's how you can watch the launch live.

'American astronauts on American rockets from American soil'

Russia has used its spaceflight monopoly to charge more and more per round-trip ticket for each NASA astronaut. The cost has risen from about $21 million in 2008 (before the shuttle was retired) to more than $90 million per seat on a planned flight for October.

A seat on SpaceX's Crew Dragon, meanwhile, is projected to cost $55 million, according to NASA's inspector general.

That's why NASA began funding SpaceX and its competitor, Boeing, to develop human-ready spacecraft in 2010. The effort, called the Commercial Crew Program, is three years past its original deadline.

Having a spacecraft and launch system in the US would give NASA better access to the space station. While Soyuz can carry only three people at a time, the Crew Dragon can seat seven.

Once NASA can send more astronauts at a lower cost, it will also be able to use the space station's microgravity environment to conduct more science experiments — in pharmaceuticals, materials science, astronomy, medicine, and more.

"The International Space Station is a critical capability for the United States of America. Having access to it is also critical," Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, said during a televised briefing on May 1. "We are moving forward very rapidly with this program that is so important to our nation and, in fact, to the entire world."

He added, "We are going to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil."

Demo-2 brings SpaceX one step closer to the moon and Mars

SpaceX has big plans. Musk dreams of flying people around the moon and later landing on the lunar surface, then moving on to establish Martian cities and put a million settlers on the red planet.

At the forefront of commercial spaceflight, SpaceX also plans to fly space tourists. In February, the company announced that it had sold four seats through a spaceflight tourism company called Space Adventures. Then in March, news broke that Axiom Space — led in part by a former ISS mission manager at NASA — had also signed a deal with SpaceX.

Even Tom Cruise intends to fly aboard Crew Dragon so he can film a new action movie on the space station.

NASA shares some of Musk's ambitions (sending humans back to the moon and, eventually, to Mars) but there are a lot of steps along the way. Sending astronauts to the space station aboard the Crew Dragon is the first big milestone.

But the mission won't be considered a success until it returns Hurley and Behnken to Earth.

"We're going to stay hungry until Bob and Doug come home," Kathy Lueders, who manages the Commercial Crew Program for NASA, said in a briefing on Friday. "Our teams are scouring and thinking of every single risk that's out there, and we've worked our butt off to buy down the ones we know of, and we'll continue to look — and continue to buy them down — until we bring them home."

Update: SpaceX launched astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into orbit around Earth on Saturday. They are expected to reach the International Space Station at 10:27 a.m. ET on Sunday.

CAPE CANAVERAL — SpaceX is poised to rocket its first people into space on Saturday, resurrecting human spaceflight in America after a nine-year hiatus in NASA astronaut launches.

The mission, called Demo-2, aims to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley atop a Falcon 9 rocket, orbit Earth aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship, and dock with the International Space Station. After staying for up to 110 days, the crew will depart inside Crew Dragon, reenter Earth's atmosphere, and splash down in the ocean.

The launch, scheduled for 3:22 p.m. ET, is not without risk. NASA has estimated a 1-in-276 chance of losing the crew, but it's not the part of the mission that most worries SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

"The part that I would worry most about would be reentry, which won't happen, hopefully, for a few months from now," Musk told Irene Klotz of Aviation Week.

During reentry, the Crew Dragon must hurtle back through Earth's atmosphere — a process that burns up spacecraft that aren't designed to survive the heat.

Musk added that while the threat was low, his "biggest concern" about the new spaceship was the capsule's asymmetric design, which is driven by its emergency escape system. While screaming back to Earth at 25 times the speed of sound, the capsule's heat shield will deflect and absorb the energy of superheated plasma — but the forces of atmospheric reentry have a slim chance of causing catastrophe.

"If you rotate too much, then you could potentially catch the plasma in the super Draco escape thruster pods," Musk said, adding this could overheat parts of the ship or cause it to lose control (by wobbling). "We've looked at this six ways to Sunday, so it's not that I think this will fail. It's just that I worry a bit that it is asymmetric on the backshell."

Musk expressed the same concern about a roll instability, as the issue is called, during a press briefing after the company's Demo-1 mission — an uncrewed test flight of its spaceship to orbit and back — lifted off in March 2019.

He also noted a concern about the ship's parachutes, which must deploy to slow down the Crew Dragon as it falls through thicker atmosphere.

"The parachutes are new. Will the parachutes deploy correctly? And then will the system guide Dragon 2 to the right location and splash down safely?" Musk said at the time, though he said he sees "hypersonic reentry as probably my biggest concern, just because of the asymmetric back shell."

During a May 25 press briefing, Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, was asked what kept him up at night in regard to the launch. He, too, pointed to parts of the reentry process.

Like Musk had in the past, he named the Crew Dragon's parachutes as one concern, since their packing can't be tested until they're deployed.

But Koenigsmann indicated he's deeply satisfied with the years of work toward making Crew Dragon safe to fly.

SpaceX has cut down risk by flying its Falcon 9 rocket dozens of times beforehand. It also based the design of its new Crew Dragon vehicle, also called Dragon 2, on its older Cargo Dragon ship, or Dragon 1, which has successfully reached the ISS 20 times. Meanwhile, the Crew Dragon has flown to orbit just once and performed a high-stress abort test once, in January 2020.

"I'm at the point right now where I'm actually worried about the weather, and that's a good sign," Koenigsmann told Business Insider.

The original launch time, on Wednesday, was scrubbed and delayed to Saturday as storm clouds threatened lightning.

As of Saturday morning, forecasts predicted a 50/50 chance that weather would be unsafe for launch. As of 49 minutes before launch time, weather monitors said the clouds were clearing.

SpaceX and NASA were forced to delay their first astronaut launch on Wednesday, largely because the sky held too many fluffy clouds.

The high-stakes demonstration flight, called Demo-2, is set to fly people in a commercial spacecraft for the first time ever. If successful, the mission would resurrect the US's capability to launch its own astronauts and kick off a new era of commercial space exploration.

SpaceX, which was founded by Elon Musk in 2002, designed and built its Crew Dragon spaceship with the help of NASA funding to shuttle astronauts to and from the International Space Station. It's currently perched atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The next launch attempt will be on Saturday at 3:22 p.m. ET. The same weather conditions clouded the skies all of Saturday morning, but forecasters say the clouds may clear before launch time. Mission commanders will watch the weather closely in the hours and minutes leading to liftoff.

Mission commanders scrubbed Wednesday's scheduled launch just 17 minutes before liftoff, since storm clouds created unsafe weather conditions for the rocket and the two NASA astronauts inside the spaceship.

"You have the bubbling clouds out there — those big white puffy clouds that look like big cotton balls — those are cumulus clouds," Jason Fontenot, who oversees the team that monitors and forecasts weather for rocket launches at the 45th Weather Squadron, said in a call with reporters.

"Those provide the biggest threats when it comes to launching rockets," he added.

That's because the clouds' bubbliness comes from vertical development, which creates electric charge inside the cloud. 

"So if we launched near that cloud, we could potentially induce or trigger a lightning strike from that cloud," Fontenot said.

That happened to the Apollo 12 mission in 1969. The astronauts inside the rocket felt the lightning strike, and it disabled nine nonessential instrument sensors.

"Falcon/Dragon are designed to withstand multiple lightning strikes, but we don't think it would be wise to take this risk," Musk tweeted on Saturday.

Of the 10 lightning-related weather conditions that could scrub a launch, the presence of cumulus clouds is the most common.

"We had those hard requirements that when something hits, there's nothing we can do about it," Fontenot said of the weather restrictions. "So yes, it was kind of disappointing, but I'd much rather launch during better weather, and hopefully we'll get a chance on Saturday."

The 45th Weather Squadron projects a 50% chance of safe conditions for the upcoming attempt. The main concerns are rain, thunderstorm anvil clouds, and those puffy cumulus clouds.

If weather doesn't scrub the mission again on Saturday afternoon, the Falcon 9 will launch astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the space station. They will stay there for up to 110 days before the Crew Dragon brings them back to Earth.

"Scrubs are part of conducting spaceflight safely and successfully. During my last mission to [the space station], weather caught us too," Behnken tweeted on Friday. "We're ready for the next launch opportunity!" 

The last time the United States launched humans into space from American soil was in 2011, when the last space shuttle made its final voyage into orbit. Since then, NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station, a practice that has become increasingly expensive and limited US access to the station.

But that could all change this weekend.

"It is a pretty surreal experience and I'm extremely grateful to be a part of this big moment in history," Fontenot said.

Update: SpaceX launched astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into orbit around Earth on Saturday. They are expected to reach the International Space Station at 10:27 a.m. ET on Sunday.

The ways NASA's astronaut office picks a crew from the members of its esteemed corps is something of a mystery.

But with the space agency's 2018 selection of Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to fly SpaceX's now imminent rocket launch of its new Crew Dragon spaceship, the process seems obvious in hindsight.

Each man graduated from the same crop of astronaut candidates in 2000. Each is an engineer and flew military aircraft. Each has flown to space twice aboard a space shuttle. Each married a fellow astronaut who's journeyed to space and fathered a son with her. Each spent years working with SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, to perfect the commercial spaceship they will now attempt to ride to orbit.

And both share the aspiration of every test pilot turned astronaut: the freak opportunity to fly a brand-new bird.

"If you gave us one thing that we could have put on our list of dream jobs that we would have gotten to have someday," Behnken told reporters on May 20, "it would have been to be aboard a new spacecraft and conduct a test mission."

A high-stakes resurrection, 9 years in the making

On Saturday, the duo drove out to Launch Complex 39A, ascended the launchpad's tower, and sealed themselves inside the Crew Dragon. The men are scheduled to lift off at precisely 3:22 p.m. ET and slip into low-Earth orbit within 13 minutes.

Then, about 19 hours after that, the crew aims to pull up to and dock with a football-field-size orbiting laboratory called the International Space Station (ISS). The plan is to stay for roughly the next 110 days before departing, careening back to Earth, and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

The stakes of the astronauts' mission, called Demo-2, could hardly be higher.

SpaceX, though it has launched 85 and counting orbital-class Falcon 9 rockets, has never flown a single human being. NASA, meanwhile, flew its last space shuttle in July 2011. Since then, it's had no means to reach orbit except by paying Russia for seats aboard its Soyuz spacecraft — and that reliance is a problem for the US, which has sunk about $100 billion into the ISS.

What led to this moment is a roughly $8 billion, 10-year public-private effort called the Commercial Crew Program. NASA awarded SpaceX about $3.14 billion of that to develop, build, and fly Crew Dragon.

The joining of forces was designed to help both entities overcome the obstacles to their own success. NASA got to groom the rocket company into a reliable commercial spaceflight provider that can sell the agency tickets to orbit for its astronauts. SpaceX, for its part, is now poised to finish the program with a human-rated spacecraft that will permit it to break open a new era of commercial spaceflight for the entire world.

"Unfortunately we're in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Our country has been through a lot. But this is a unique moment where all of America can take a moment and look at our country do something stunning again, and that is launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, said during a Tuesday press briefing. "We're going to go to the International Space Station. And what we do there, of course, is we're transforming how we do spaceflight in general."

Essential to that transformation, both years in the past and at the outset, will be the two people proving the gambit has worked.

SpaceX: They're 'badass' pilots, astronauts, and dads

Hurley, 53, grew up in New York near the Pennsylvania border, graduated at the top of his class in high school, and chased a civil engineering degree from Tulane University. By joining the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, he eventually would up as a test pilot in the Marine Corps with the call sign "Chunky" — and later a member of NASA's year 2000 astronaut class.

Behnken, a 49-year-old Missouri native, followed a similar path. He pursued a mechanical-engineering degree from Washington University in St. Louis, later picking up a master's degree and a doctorate in the topic from Caltech. Amid that academic work he'd joined the US Air Force's ROTC program, which led him to become a test pilot and also a member of the same class of NASA astronaut candidates.

The men befriended each other in NASA's program and each flew two space-shuttle missions. Hurley's last mission, aboard space shuttle Atlantis, in July 2011, was also the final flight of NASA's program.

Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who joined SpaceX in 2011 to help develop its spaceships, and is now an astronautics professor at the University of Southern California, says he knows both the men well from working with them. He even overlapped with Behnken by sharing the same doctoral adviser and trekking in nature with his future fellow astronaut.

"Doug likes to play a dumb pilot, but he's actually a really smart guy," Reisman told Business Insider. "And Bob's nickname is 'Dr. Bob.'"

Reisman added that Behnken "is very even-keeled" and quiet and "tries not to let his mouth get out in front of him."

Reisman shared a story about being in a SpaceX meeting with Behnken in which some employees began to talk to him "like a dumb pilot" him about vehicle-control theory — which the astronaut studied for his Ph.D.

"I'm sitting there laughing my my ass off because I know that he knows more about this stuff than they do," Reisman said.

Behnken and Hurley's experience, tenor, and attention to detail led NASA to pick the duo and two other astronauts in 2015 as part of a "Commercial Crew Cadre." The goal: Work with SpaceX and Boeing on new commercial spaceships. It also fast-tracked them for coveted spots on Crew Dragon.

During a press briefing on May 1, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX, described both men as "badass" dads, pilots, and astronauts.

When later asked what makes each other a badass — and while avoiding saying the expletive — Behnken said Hurley "is ready for anything all the time" and "always prepared."

"When you're going to fly into space on a test mission, you couldn't ask for a better person or a better type of individual to be there with you," Behnken said. "I'm just thankful that, doing something like this, I'm doing it with with Doug Hurley."

Hurley, for his part, praised Behnken's wit.

"There is no stone unturned, there's no way that he doesn't have every potential eventuality already thought about five times ahead of almost anybody else," Hurley said. "There's no question I can ask him that he doesn't already have probably the best answer for."

Both say their first real jobs were working for their dads, and it wasn't fun work, but it built them up.

"That's probably the hardest boss that you ever worked for is your father," Behnken said in a NASA video.

Leroy Chiao, who flew to space four times as a NASA astronaut before retiring, says the reputations of Behnken and Hurley precede them.

"I would certainly fly with them, either one of them or both of them, in a moment," Chiao told Business Insider.

'When you're watching, you're just a spectator'

Behnken and Hurley found a lot more in NASA's 2000 astronaut class than space shuttle flights and work helping developing the first private spaceships. They also met their wives.

Megan McArthur, who helped repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009, married Behnken. The two later had a son, Theo, who's 6 years old. Fellow astronaut Karen Nyberg, meanwhile, married Hurley and had a son Jack, who's now 11. Both women and their sons have traveled to Florida to watch Behnken and Hurley rocket to orbit.

In an interview with The Washington Post's Christian Davenport, McArthur expounded on the difficulty of seeing the father of their child launch to space in a turning of the tables.

"One of the hardest things to do is watch the person that you love launch into space," McArthur told The Post.

"It's much harder than actually doing it yourself when you're in the rocket. You have the training. You're prepared for the mission. When you're watching, you're just a spectator. And no matter what happens, there's nothing you can do to contribute to the situation."

Still, having a spouse who understands the inherent risks of launching to space has helped the couples parent their sons through what to expect.

Behnken says the delays in the Commercial Crew Program — the first launch of a SpaceX or Boeing spacecraft was supposed to happen in late 2017 — have worked to their advantage in the parenting department.

"We've had a lot of the conversations over the years rather than having to have them all in the last couple of weeks," he told Business Insider. "It's kind of become more routine, if you will, in terms of expectation that I would eventually be flying on a SpaceX vehicle off to the Florida coast."

'That's how we like it to be'

In the early-morning hours of March 2, 2019, Musk and some NASA officials held a cursory press conference after launching Demo-1: a full launch, docking, and reentry of a Crew Dragon spaceship with a mannequin named Ripley and plush Earth toy inside. Behnken and Hurley joined the SpaceX CEO and chief designer on the dais to answer questions.

Though Musk was beaming, he quickly copped to being "emotionally exhausted" from the flight, and explained all the work to come, including docking and — most worrisome to him — reentry and landing. (The mission was a total success, though the capsule was accidentally destroyed months later during a ground test.)

Toward the end of the briefing, Business Insider asked Musk how, given his stress levels, he might handle the coming flight of Demo-2 — and the two astronauts sitting to his left.

"I suspect it will be extremely stressful," Musk responded, looking over to Behnken and Hurley. But Musk added the Demo-1 test flight will go "a long way towards feeling good about the flight with Bob and Doug" on Demo-2.

He also noted that Behnken and Hurley monitored the launch data from the control room, including the successful separation of the Crew Dragon ship from its rocket and insertion into low-Earth orbit.

"I went over and asked them what what they thought," Musk said. "How do you feel about flying on it? Seems like you're feeling good about flying on it?"

"You guys told us what was going to happen, and that's what happened. That's how we like it to be," Behnken interjected.

SpaceX and NASA attempted a launch on Wednesday but a threat of lightning intervened. On Saturday, or whenever the mission manages to lift off in Florida's fickle weather, the astronauts will wish for similarly by-the-book behavior of their launch vehicle. But this time, with their own bodies, hopes, and dreams riding to space aboard a Dragon.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on May 27, 2020.

In its 15-year history, YouTube has become the undisputed king of online video.

It has over 2 billion monthly users who watch hundreds of hundreds of millions of hours of content every single day. But many people don't know how YouTube got its start.

The company rose like a rocket ship after its founding in 2005, and was bought by Google 18 months later. Under Google, YouTube went from being a repository of amateur video to a powerhouse of original content, not to mention a launching pad for its own new brand of superstar, like PewDiePie and the Smosh Brothers.

Here is how YouTube got its explosive start, and maintained that momentum to become the biggest force in online video.

Like many great novels — War and Peace? — the Mercedes-AMG GLS 63 has conflict and resolution at its core. 

To be precise, the stonking V8 suggests a serious muscle-SUV, while the sumptuous interior does not. But maybe you want your chauffeur to stomp the accelerator from time to time, blasting from 0-60 mph in approximately four seconds. You'll be quaking in your Ferragamos.

But you'll tell Jeeves to do it again. And again. And again.

Fuel economy be damned. My tester didn't come with those official specs, but figure on 20 mpg combined city/highway. Or less. On premium.

Normally, you'd think of a gargantuan SUV such as this in terms of straight-ahead velocity and leave the curves and corners to people who like to race bread trucks and battleships. But just like every other Mercedes I've tested of late, the AMG GLS 63 is staggeringly good at masking its vulnerability to the laws of physics. 

Sure, I relished the flat-out freeway-destroying speed that the beast could command. But I took it up into the New Jersey backwoods for the twist and turns and ups and downs and galdurnit if the big guy didn't handle it all with competence and grace. I wouldn't call this SUV tossable, but I did toss it, and AMG Ride Control tech in the Sport or Sport + setting allowed for some aggressive driving with no worries about the GLS taking the laws of motion to any alarming Newtonian places. The Pilot Sport-4 tires certainly helped, as did the 4Matic AWD setup. The GLS 63 does lurch, but you have to be pushing it very hard.

If you do find yourself off the asphalt, offroad "trail" and "sand" modes can get you back on — or just keep you on trail or sand.

I wish I could have savored the subplots delivered by the AMG-tuned exhaust, but an $1,100 "Acoustic Comfort Package" took the edge off. A good thing, perhaps. The active driver-assist suite was also included with my tester, but the lane-keep feature continued a theme with Mercedes for me of being too stringent. It was almost troubling in its enthusiasm for disciplining even slight meanders from the path before it.

Yes, $153,000 is a lot to pay for a luxury high-performance SUV (most of which, save that German-sourced, magnificent V8, is made in Mississippi) with literary depths. But it's something special, by design. You could match it up against the Lincoln Navigator or the Cadillac Escalade, but those wouldn't be fair fights. 

So if you need massive power, massive torque, massive gentility, massive tech, and a really, really large Mercedes badge on the prow, crack open the heavy cover of the 2021 Mercedes-AMG GLS 63 and get lost in the sprawling story.

Russian cybercrime has regularly terrorized the world – from interfering in the 2016 presidential election to a hacker group known as Evil Corp. being charged with stealing $100 million from US banks in December. "Russia is the leader in cybercrime, reflecting the skill of its hacker community and its disdain for western law enforcement," the Center for Strategic and International Studies found in 2018.

But who are Russian hackers? No one may know them better than defense attorney Arkady Bukh, a Soviet-born tech aficionado who has defended 100 of them for crimes that he says range from online murder schemes to stealing personal information.

Sometimes his clients are famous. Bukh consulted on the defense of Sergey Pavlovich, one of 11 hackers charged with the massive 2008 credit card data theft from TJ Maxx and Barnes and Noble. Bukh later hired Pavlovich – after he did time for the crime in Belarus – to work at his startup consulting US companies on cybersecurity. 

Bukh's more recent clients include Maksim Boiko, a hacker and rapper from northern Russia currently waiting to stand trial in Pennsylvania. And he represented Fedir Hladyr, who pleaded guilty in September to hacking and wire charges and agreed to pay $2.5 million in restitution. 

Bukh also represented a famous client who is not a hacker: Azamat Tazhayakov, convicted of conspiracy and obstructing justice in the Boston Marathon bombing case. 

Bukh takes part in hackers' forums on the dark web, and advertises his law firm there with banner ads. He can speak to them in his native Russian about their other favorite language, Python, the computer coding language they favor.  Those forums are the key to understanding Russian cybercrime, Bukh believes. They give a view of Russian hackers that is much more human than Hollywood might have you believe.

At least some hackers gather in those sorts of virtual spaces not knowing what they will be hired to do. Sometimes they are promised good jobs at Apple and Google if they perform well on a project, Bukh suggests — then end up creating programs that will be used to siphon databases of credit card numbers. 

Many of his clients have key things in common: They are from Eastern Europe; they're smart; and they're stuck in a life with few real prospects. "I don't think they turn to crime because they are having a great life." 

As a defense attorney of suspects apprehended by US law enforcement, Bukh does not encounter the vast nation-state hacking that is behind much of Russia's largest cybercrimes. "My clients are often middle-class Russian and Ukrainian boys with good knowledge of computer science. They have difficulty finding a job, so they prefer to break the law — knowingly or unknowingly." 

'That is part of the US justice system'

Bukh, 47, is himself a contradiction in many ways. He is an American citizen with deep reverence for the work of the FBI and CIA – while working to get his Russian clients free from their prosecutions. He has defended hackers who attacked American companies, then hired them to work in his startup.

Bukh was born in the former Soviet Union, where his parents were both academics. The family sought religious asylum in the US because they are Jewish, and moved to New York, where he went to college and law school. He now runs law offices in Brooklyn and Las Vegas. After almost 20 years in practice, he's come to see defending these hackers as something akin to his patriotic duty.

"Everyone has a right to a fair trial and an attorney," he says. "That is part of the US justice system, and part of what makes it great." 

'True and not true'

One misconception that Bukh would like to dispel: Many believe Russian hackers cannot be prosecuted because their government protects them. It's not that simple, he says. 

"That is both true and not true," Bukh says. "It is true because Russia has no extradition treaty with the US. But, usually through negligence, they get apprehended after traveling to Europe or the US." 

So the image of a Russian hacking mastermind is false? 

"This is again true and not true," he says. 

There are vast nation-state enterprises and occasional criminal masterminds, to be sure, but Bukh has mainly forund an industry of frustrated techies with limited opportunities who are sometimes even unaware they are committing crimes. 

"You have to understand there is desperation in Russia for political and financial considerations. The government helps to create a breeding ground for criminal hacking. The government's propaganda says the US and the West are the enemy, and hurting the enemy is not a crime. The worst case in Russia is probation where they are not even locked up. On the other hand, most administrative violations can result in jail time," he says.

Even the Russian mob, he says, is also deeply misunderstood by the West. "It's not what it used to be," he says. "They've gotten older, crime has evolved and gone online. Many can no longer operate. They start a business and enjoy the rest of their lives." 

 

Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week. 

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It's hard to believe Memorial Day has come and gone already, and that we're just about at the end of May. One area of Wall Street certainly didn't appear to take much time off over recent days. As Alex Morrell reports, US ECM volume roared back this month to close out with a record $72 billion. 

Pandemic-fueled debt binges aren't gone, exactly, but the script has flipped. There's debt fatigue among investors, bankers say, and some companies are now turning to equity markets instead to raise cash to ride out any more downturns - and in some cases, potentially do some deals.

And while much of the May activity was follow-ons and convertibles, there are signs that the IPO market has been thawing, too. Warner Music Group, which announced plans for an IPO in February before the pandemic had gripped the US, is now moving forward with its public offering and is set to price next week. 

Read the full story here:

On the real-estate front, Dan Geiger explained how a potential court fight over a Victoria's Secret flagship NYC store highlights a wider battle between retail tenants and landlords. He also broke the news that IBM is ditching a big WeWork office in Manhattan, revealing the risks of the popular flex-space model as the pandemic prompts Blue Chip companies to rethink their real-estate footprints.

And in case you missed it last weekend, Casey Sullivan and Meghan Morris had a must-read inside story about elite law firm Boies Schiller — Pay rifts, a partner divide, and a threat at the Ritz Carlton: 50 insiders reveal all on a massive shakeup at BSF.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend, 

Meredith 

Campus housing bets put to the test

Way back in January, 2020, before COVID-19 turned the world on its head, Microsoft made a jaw-dropping, ten-year pledge on climate change, in which the tech titan pledged to be carbon negative by 2030.

All across its operations — from building Xbox consoles to cloud computing — it plans to, essentially, stop spewing harmful carbon into the atmosphere and then go further by removing some. By 2050, it plans to "remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975."

The promise was in stark contrast to its major rival Amazon, which had a group of activist employees pressuring CEO Jeff Bezos to make a similar big, bold pledge. 

In a research note released on Friday, Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss discussed Microsoft's big plan, following a virtual roundtable discussion the bank hosted with Lucas Joppa, the software giant's chief environmental officer. 

As Joppa told Morgan Stanley, Microsoft will reduce its current carbon footprint by half and then use reforestation, soil sequestration and direct air capture to nullify the rest and remove carbon from the atmosphere. 

And it has put some teeth behind the measure. Because people do what they are measured on, each of its business units will be charged $15/ton for their emissions — a price slightly higher than the cost of buying renewable resources, Joppa told Morgan Stanley. That way, every team across its massive company is motivated to take part. The money charged to each business unit will be used to fund sustainability projects.

But things get more interesting from there. Microsoft can fairly easily mandate that its own business units reduce their carbon emissions and buy energy from sustainable sources. 

But Microsoft has promised to do the same for its enormous ecosystem of suppliers. That will be trickier, more complicated and will involve the company creating all kinds of business systems for tracking and helping its suppliers to get with its program.

Microsoft believes that therein lies a huge business opportunity, and Morgan Stanley agrees, too.

"As the company continues to develop its internal climate expertise, as well as deploy capital from its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund, there could be opportunities to leverage (and monetize) that expertise across other sectors and verticals. Grid optimization, supply chain efficiency, and smart buildings are a few areas that have potentially large TAMs [total addressable markets]," Weiss wrote in his May 29 research note.

In addition to being able to sell services that help organizations of all sizes go green, Microsoft and its ecosystem could drive additional benefits that go beyond its immediate impact, Weiss notes. It will become a big buyer, with deep pockets, of new green technologies, helping to drive down their costs and make them more affordable for all.

Microsoft is "trailblazing with the carbon negative initiatives," Weiss sees. Whereas some industries have lobbied for decades to conduct their business at the expenseof the environment, Microsoft plans to prove that what's good for the earth is good for business.

While Microsoft's pledge to go carbon negative in a decade is a standout, its not the only cloud player working on this problem and, possibly, creating new businesses in the process. In January, Salesforce also announced its support of the One Trillion Tree initiative to plant a trillion trees by 2030, which is another way to sequester carbon.

Amira Yahyaoui isn't exactly a huge Star Wars fan, but she is familiar with Tatooine. 

In the franchise, the desolate desert planet was home to Luke Skywalker. It is based on a real-life city in the desert of southern Tunisia called Tataouine, where Yahyaoui is from. 

When she started her first company, an education startup, she pulled inspiration from her home city's fictional twin. Mos is part of the name of major cities within Tatooine. It's also easy to pronounce regardless of someone's accent, easy to spell, and even easier to remember. Yahyahoui was sold, and Mos the startup was born.

Yahyahoui said her journey to Silicon Valley is "the absolute opposite" of the traditional way, and Mos isn't exactly another app for on-demand delivery. With nearly $17 million in funding from all-star backers like Sequoia Capital, Steph Curry, Jay Z, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, Mos is tackling the college affordability crisis by offering a one-stop-shop approach to searching and applying for all government-offered financial aid packages.

"I personally believe that it's absurd for students to pay that much to get an education," Yahyaoui told Business Insider. "There are ways of significantly lowering the bill, but the process is insanely complicated with a lot of red tape and applications. We don't think someone deserves an education just for spending hours on Google searching or filling out forms."

As many schools shuttered during the pandemic, sending droves of students out of dorms and back into their families' homes, the affordability crisis that had long been simmering reached a boiling point. Many students have struggled to justify the sky-high costs of tuition now that the entire college experience has moved online while many universities haven't budged on the costs. This disconnect has left many students wondering what the value of a college education really is, Yahyaoui said. 

In the immediate term, Mos has put its resources behind appealing financial aid decisions for students that have been directly affected by the pandemic. This includes students who have lost jobs, or are trying to support family members that have lost their jobs.

"Students are seriously suffering during this period and many have lost their income or their parents have lost their income, which means they are eligible for more financial aid," Yahyaoui said. 

'A kid of the internet' and a revolution

Yahyaoui didn't get into any universities she applied to the first time around. As a Tunisian student, she didn't meet the requirements to study abroad. But after leading an active role in the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Yahyaoui was suddenly an internationally recognized face. She said she had offers from many Ivy League universities in the United States, and eventually went on to accept paid fellowships at both Yale University and Stanford University. 

"When we say the US has a good education system, it's true. It's bad in that it's unequal, but it's great in that it's the most interesting and highest quality," Yahyaoui said. 

But Yahyaoui still struggled to understand why she was being paid to attend when she so recently struggled to be accepted, let alone qualify for financial assistance. By 2017, she started building the tool that would eventually become Mos by collecting all the information on government-funded scholarships and financial aid packages in a single webpage. 

"As a kid of the internet, I believe that tech can be a force for positive construction and change," Yahyaoui said. "That's how the Arab Spring was and without it, we weren't able to make any change. I wanted to build something that helps change people's lives."

School, interrupted

Yahyaoui said that 2019 was the first academic year that Mos completed, although it looked much different at the end than she had expected. And there are big questions looming over the future of today's pricey higher education system, she says.

"There are two areas of thought on what comes next," Yahyaoui said. "Some people think 'Oh colleges are dead, no students will go back, and everyone is doing a coding bootcamp instead,' and that's not true or possible. Others think colleges can still bill $100,000 a year and it will be business as usual and in two years this will be forgotten. Both are not going to happen"

Instead, Yahyaoui sees a future where students pay less, take more time off, and get the real work networks and experiences that colleges have been traditionally known for. Without significant changes, however, the university model as it currently stands will not continue, she said.

"The question is now how the universities will review their business model and how the financing of colleges will be in the future," Yahyaoui said. "We are far from the revolution of education. It's not an engineering problem. You need learning but you also need the experience, and the online experience right now is pretty poor."