SpaceX, for the first time in the company's 18-year history, is poised to rocket humans into space.

But the company wouldn't have grown enough to be ready for the feat if not for its many failures, Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer, said Friday during a series of NASA press briefings.

"We've grown up," Shotwell told Business Insider. "It was a little Wild West early on, but candidly I think that those beginnings and those roots are critically important to our success."

The company joined pre-mission briefings to answer questions about Demo-2, SpaceX's upcoming mission to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley toward the International Space Station (ISS). The flight will be SpaceX's first with passengers, who will pilot the company's new Crew Dragon spaceship after launching atop a 23-story Falcon 9 rocket.

Demo-2 is currently planned for May 27 at 4:32 p.m. ET. On Friday, NASA officials said the backup launch day is May 30, and that the astronaut's stay at the ISS may last for more than six months.

Shotwell joined the first virtual press conference with NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and top members of the Commercial Crew Program Friday. The roughly $8 billion public-private partnership began in 2010 to eventually replace NASA's space shuttle fleet, which was retired in July 2011. SpaceX won its first contract through the program in September 2014, though the company has officially worked with NASA since 2006.

"Hopefully, NASA has enjoyed the relationship as much as we have. We've learned from them. We've obviously been pleased by their financial support, their technical support, wisdom, and knowledge and helping us get to this day," Shotwell told Ars Technica's Eric Berger during the briefing. 

Shotwell said she joined SpaceX in 2002 as its chief salesperson, and always worked to keep a close relationship with NASA.

"I knew when I joined the team that NASA wanted to build a space transportation system that was reliable enough and low-cost enough for people to be able to go to other planets. That sounded very kind of outer-worldly to me at that time in 2002," she said. "But I certainly understood that if we were to achieve that, we would certainly do that hand-in-hand with NASA. So I've seen this company grow from roughly 10 employees to the thousands that we have now."

Yet along with that growth, Shotwell added, came a lot of failures, which the company has seen its fair share of primarily during tests but also operational missions.

'The aerospace industry shies away from failure'

In 2015, SpaceX's seventh space-station cargo resupply mission for NASA disintegrated late in its launch. The company also lost a commercial telecommunications satellite to a flawed pressure tank design when a Falcon 9 exploded during a launchpad test in September 2016.

Over the past two years, SpaceX also saw parachute issues and an explosive escape engine test on the ground, problems which both the company and NASA say they've resolved and closed.

"Even today, when we're talking about flying people and flying other precious cargo as well, you have to learn those hard lessons," Shotwell said. "I think sometimes the aerospace industry shies away from failure in the development phase. It looks bad, politically. It's tough, and the media certainly makes a lot out of failures."

But, she added, "the best way to learn is to push your systems to their limit, which includes your people, systems, and your processes, and learn where you're weak and make things better."

Kathy Lueders, who manages the Commercial Crew Program for NASA, said such lessons have not only been transferred from SpaceX but also learned in partnership with the company — and through disagreements with it.

"The best way to learn technically is to have a healthy tension and dynamic and be able to have to defend technical positions. And SpaceX makes us defend technical positions, as we make SpaceX technical positions," Lueders said. "What that does is creates a body of work that I think we, as an agency, have really been able to build and I can tell you are building on [for] our future programs. So I think this has been a great relationship for the both of us over the last 13 years."

'I will start sleeping again when they when they're back safely on the planet'

"My heart is sitting right here, and I think it's going to stay there until we get Bob and Doug safely back from the International Space Station," She said, holding her finger up to her throat. "But between now and then, there's still work to do. I've got thousands of SpaceX employees who are focused on this mission."

Shotwell described Behnken and Hurley as "badass" test pilots and astronauts, but also dads and people. She noted that SpaceX employees put photos of the crew on electronic work orders for Crew Dragon to keep the stakes of their task front-and-center.

"I will start sleeping again when they when they're back safely on the planet," Shotwell told Marcia Dunn of the Associated Press. "I don't think I need to remind my employees how important this is. They remind themselves, and they are helpful in reminding me."

Behnken said during another press briefing that SpaceX's agility has impressed him most about Crew Dragon's development. He also indicated that the ability to work quickly gives him more confidence going into his historic flight — the first debut of a new human-rated spaceship since 1981.

"Doug and I flew on shuttle missions separated by a couple of years," Behnken told Business Insider on Friday. "We [didn't] get, probably, the same level of change that we can get in a month from the SpaceX team during the couple of years that was between our shuttle flights."

He added: "I hope I don't have to see it: That agility in response to an issue during our mission. But we've seen it during the development process, and I know they could execute it if we needed them to while we are in orbit."

IBM is known as one of the most acquisitive companies in the world. But the tech giant was expected to go slow on the M&A front after buying Red Hat for $34 billion last year, the biggest acquisition in IBM's history.

"We've focused all of our M&A effort on Red Hat in the last 18 months," IBM senior executive Rob Thomas told Business Insider in February when the company unveiled a new AI imitative. "$34 billion consumes a lot of time and energy."

Shortly after the interview, the coronavirus crisis pandemic led to global economic downturn. Suddenly, the tech landscape has changed. The economic slump has disrupted the sector, crushing valuations to the point that experts expect a rash of M&A activity.

In fact, when IBM reported first quarter results last week, new CEO Arvind Krishna indicated that Big Blue was prepared to begin buying again.

"You should expect that over time — over time meaning just that as it gets past the next few months — we will get back to an acquisitive strategy," he told analysts on the company's first quarter earnings call. "We've been clear that we will acquire when we find properties that are both attractive or that fit our strategy and hybrid cloud and AI are the focus of our business going forward."

With that in mind, here are 9 companies that experts say IBM could try to buy:

Disney Plus' "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" dethroned "Tiger King" as the most in-demand TV series in the US this week. Meanwhile, Hulu's "Little Fires Everywhere" has gained momentum with audiences after its finale last week. 

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand TV shows on streaming services in the US.

The data is based on "demand expressions," Parrot Analytics' globally standardized TV-demand measurement unit. Audience demand reflects the desire, engagement, and viewership weighted by importance, so a stream or a download is a higher expression of demand than a "like" or a comment on social media, for instance.

There was also a rare Apple TV Plus sighting on this week's list with the Chris Evans-starring "Defending Jacob."

Below are this week's nine most popular original shows on Netflix and other streaming services:

To dominate the flexible-workspace industry, WeWork snapped up over 9 million square feet of space in New York City in recent years, vaulting past tech giants, big banks, and white-shoe law firms to become the city's single largest office occupier.

Once the lynchpin of the brand's effort to become a $50 billion public company, that sprawling footprint is now a growing cause of concern among real-estate executives.

WeWork and its peers in the fast-growing flexible workspace sector have slashed their workforces, entered into talks to renegotiate or exit leases, and are bracing for an uncertain future in a post-coronavirus world. The tumult in the sector could cast millions of square feet onto the market at a time when tenant appetite for new space has been diminished by the crisis and the economic damage the pandemic has inflicted on commerce.

Altogether, flexible-workspace firms occupy about 18 million square feet in the city, according to data from the real-estate brokerage and services firm Newmark Knight Frank, a block of space equivalent in size to about six Empire State Buildings.

That square footage accounts for roughly 4% of the office market's inventory of space in Manhattan, according to Newmark. While that may not like sound like much, office experts say vacancy increases of just a few percentage points can send office rents tumbling and trigger a downturn in the market.

What happens to NYC real estate in a recession 

If flexible workspace firms begin casting off space, it could become a compounding factor in a wave of availabilities that many experts anticipate will result from an expected recession touched off by the crisis — which may prompt tenants across the city to shed space or put offices they occupy up for sublease.

"If we were just talking pre-Covid, I would say that the impact of coworking vacancies on the market would be huge," said Jeffrey Peck, a vice chairman at the real-estate services firm Savills. "Post-Covid, it could be percentage points on top of what we already believe is going to be an even bigger number."

The workspace sector's ongoing problems were on display this week, with WeWork initiating another round of layoffs to cut costs. The virus crisis has raised questions about the viability of flexible-workspace firms, whose clients generally occupy spaces on short-term contracts they may seek to now cancel because of the upheaval.

Another industry player, Knotel, which has about 2.5 million square feet in the city, has stated it will slash its portfolio of space by 20% and has laid off workers.

"What we're hearing is that every major coworking firm is approaching their landlords to evaluate their remaining obligation and either reduce their rent or negotiate a termination," said Jared Horowitz, a vice chairman at Newmark. "The business model can't survive right now. These are firms that leased space at the tippy top of the market and how do you convince tenants to pay a premium on top of those rents when the market is falling now? It's a huge challenge."

Read More: Airbnb and RXR Realty are scrapping a partnership at Rockefeller Center that the home-sharing giant's CEO touted as a '21st-century hospitality model'

The availability rate in Manhattan, a calculation that includes present vacancy and spaces that are expected to become empty in the coming months, was 11.8% at the end of the first quarter, according to Newmark data. Average asking rents were a record $81.71 per square foot, the firm reported, a factor of both years of solid leasing that have absorbed space and newly built spaces in markets such as Hudson Yards that are more expensive than existing office space and whose entry to the market pushes average prices up.

During the last recession, average office asking rents in Manhattan fell from just over $70 per square foot to about $48 per square foot in the trough of the downturn in 2010, a decline of about 33%.

WeWork has been vague about what steps it is taking to rightsize its portfolio and hasn't named specific locations where it is seeking rent reductions or to potentially exit space.

"As part of our plan to seek profitable growth, we are conducting an in-depth review of operations and assets globally in order to rightsize the business and optimize our real estate portfolio," a WeWork spokeswoman, Nicole Sizemore, said in a statement. "As we work through this process, we are working with industry partners where appropriate."

Read More: Mandatory temperature-taking is largely seen as a critical way to return workers to offices. But some big NYC landlords are worried about its effectiveness.

WeWork and rivals helped tighten the market 

WeWork and its peers played a large role in pushing up the office market in recent years.

"They helped tighten the market," Savills executive Jeffrey Peck said. "If you were with a tenant looking for 100,000 square feet, you knew you had a coworking company behind you that was willing to bid up pricing for the space and compete. Not having that alone now has hurt landlords."

Flexible-workspace firms also often vacuumed up spaces that landlords had difficulty leasing.

"They would take lower floors in a building with less light and views and they were sucking up a lot of the hard-to-use spaces," Peck said. "If these spaces are handed back to landlords they are especially problematic to refill."

Some observers forecast that the aftereffects of the pandemic could actually bolster flexible workspace firms, rather than unravel them. Uncertain of how office space occupancy may have to evolve as a result of the crisis, tenants may opt to take short term, flexible deals with workspace providers rather than commit to longer term conventional leases for the time being.

"You might actually want to take some coworking space right now because of this crisis," said Mary Ann Tighe, the New York area CEO of CBRE. "I would not for one minute want to make a long-term commitment until we have had time to absorb what's going on and what the implications will be."

Have a tip? Contact Daniel Geiger at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 352-2884, or Twitter DM at @dangeiger79.

Applying for a job at Tesla is a competitive process. The electric-car maker said in 2018 that it had received almost 500,000 applications for around 2,500 open positions in the past year, and last year, Tesla ranked 16th on LinkedIn's list of the companies people most want to work for.

Despite the company's decision to furlough many of its salespeople in response to the disruptions caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus, Tesla is still hiring salespeople in the US.

Six current and former sales employees told Business Insider their advice on how to maximize your chances of getting a job in Tesla's sales division. Each of the current and former employees asked for anonymity due to a fear of reprisal from Tesla, but their identities are known for Business Insider.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can also reach out on Signal at 646-768-4712 or email this reporter's encrypted address at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The health and safety of Amazon's massive global workforce is the key responsibility of one top executive: Heather MacDougall.

In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Business Insider, MacDougall described how she spends her days in the midst of the pandemic, talked about when she realized coronavirus would be more serious than previous crises, and revealed what could change permanently about how Amazon operates as a result of the pandemic.

"I've learned in my first year with Amazon that there's speed in business, there's Amazon speed, and now there's pandemic speed," she said. "We've had to think fast and move quicker."

She said Amazon is tracking confirmed and suspected cases among employees and third-party workers, in addition to tracking the rate of employees going into quarantine due to close contact exposure. 

"We have seen the quarantine rate fall dramatically," she said. "We aren't done though, we're continuing to innovate, exploring technology, such as through an app, to assist in reminding our people of the importance of social distancing — and providing reminders when they get too close."

MacDougall said she spends her days in internal meetings assessing the company's new and existing protective measures, such as temperature checks and disinfectant spraying in buildings. As she helps manage the company's response internally, she has also been reaching out to "peer companies" to discuss issues impacting the global supply chain, she said.

"Like so many people, my days are long and blur one into the other," she said. "I have two teenage daughters, one home from college, and I try to take a break for dinner with them or to get outside to go for a walk or run but each day is consumed with planning and assessing Amazon's COVID-19 response. We can't rest."

MacDougall also addressed recent employee walkouts concerning safety issues and discussed the challenges of making decisions in an environment where information is rapidly changing, such as guidance on the efficacy of face masks.

"There are times when you don't know what you don't know; so we are at the tip of the spear in this," she said. "We faced a global lack of masks or knowledge as to the value of masks to slowing transmission of the virus. Guidance from various sources — whether that's WHO, CDC or OSHA — either initially hadn't been formed or continually evolves.

"This is one of the few times that I think employers are asking the government to issue guidance!" she continued.

Before joining Amazon, MacDougall was an attorney and served as a commissioner and chairman on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an independent federal agency that reviews citations and penalties resulting from workplace inspections.

Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, and it's turned into the world's biggest and most powerful online video company and an advertising juggernaut.

With original programming and user-generated content that reaches more than two billion people each month, YouTube rivals streaming giants including Netflix and Amazon.

It pulled in $15 billion in advertising revenue in 2019, more than TV networks ABC, NBC, and Fox combined. Another $3 billion came from non-ad revenue in products like YouTube Music and YouTube TV, though YouTube pays a portion of that money back to networks and publishers in distribution rights. And YouTube is making a bigger push into TV and streaming as more people shift from watching linear TV.

Business Insider identified the 33 executives there with the most power, from policy, engineering, content, and advertising, these insiders are leading all of YouTube's businesses.

The platform has turned content creators, from MrBeast to Emma Chamberlain, into stars with multi-platform businesses and major brand partnerships. With the help of partner managers, top YouTube creators are establishing new business models for Hollywood.

YouTube has also drawn regulators' antitrust and privacy questions. In September, YouTube got hit with a $170 million fee for reportedly violating the Child Online Privacy Protection Act. The company has struggled to keep out extremist content and ads that break its rules against misinformation.

Business Insider identified the top people behind YouTube's growing ad business. They include Kevin Allocca, who leads the global culture and trends team focused on analyzing and tracking trending content at YouTube. It also includes leaders like Neal Mohan, who reports directly to CEO Susan Wojcicki and oversees all of the products on the viewer and creator side.

Click to read the full list below:

Finland turned to virtual reality to compensate for some of the lost celebrations due to the coronavirus.

May Day is a major holiday in Finland, when people gather outside for parties and concerts. While a mass gathering isn't safe right now because of COVID-19, the city of Helsinki came up with a way to move the celebration online.

The country hasn't been hit especially hard by the coronavirus, but a city-wide party could be a big setback. Traditionlly, as many as a hundred thousand people gather in only a few parks. The city of Helsinki formed a partnership with VR company Zoan, which had already been working on virtual Helsinki, host a concert.

Finland has a population of around six million, and 700,000 viewers tuned into the virtual concert, according to the city of Helsinki, meaning that nearly 12% of the country watched the event. Of those attendees, 150,000 went beyond just watching and created avatars to participate. 

Here's what the first virtual May Day was like. 

It was the pictures of nurses coming to work wearing trash bags for protection against COVID-19 that riled up Mike Sinyard into doing something. 

Sinyard is founder and CEO of Specialized Bicycle, one of the world's largest high-end bicycle manufacturers. Its bikes can be seen all over the roads and trails among those who are willing to spend big bucks on their sport. The flagship S-Works bike frequently graces the podiums at mountain biking world cups and pro WorldTour races.

The private company, with an estimated $500 million in sales back in 2011 — the most recently published data — was founded by Sinyard in 1976 in the sleepy little town of Morgan Hill, California, the southern outpost of Silicon Valley. It now employs about 600 people worldwide, including the impacts from a layoff of 46 people (about 7% of its workforce) last week, mostly in Europe, where COVID-19 has been raging in bike-loving places like Italy. As part of that layoff, Sinyard is forgoing his salary and his top management is taking pay cuts, reports Bicycle Retailer's Marc Sani.

About a month ago, Sinyard heard the tales of hospital staff struggling to get enough protective gear and vowed to do something.

He looked to his own network of Asian manufacturers that produce all sorts of products for his company, from complicated bike parts to clothing. 

"Initially, we were stunned at the significance of this. We have a lot of colleagues in Europe and Italy," he said. After reading the story of the nurses wearing trash bags. "All the sudden I became obsessed with this thing."

At first, he thought his team could manufacturer face shields, as they love engineering and building stuff, he said. But then he realized that spinning that up would take too long. The immediate need was (and still is) professionally manufactured face masks, both N95 and surgical masks.

So he vowed to buy 1 million face masks and have them imported to the US. He also needed to procure masks to protect his employees. Bike shops are essential businesses in the US and have remained open.

"So I thought, 'Oh this easy. No problem,'" he says.  But it wasn't. With the whole world trying to buy masks, Sinyard ran into one road block after another. "Asia, Oh my God. Trying to get those face masks."

Although Sinyard says he's paying for the masks out of his own pocket, he turned to his right-hand man, Specialized's executive vice president Bob Margevicius, who spent days working with the company's Asian and worldwide manufacturing contacts. Sinyard and Margevicius didn't ask their existing manufacturers to retool into sewing masks. Instead, they wanted their contacts to introduce them to companies that were already capable of pumping out a million masks.

"We would go to certain countries and they'd say, 'We can't. The government won't allow us to export anything," he says. A few of his contacts were longtime friends in the manufacturing world. Even they refused to sell him masks, citing legal restrictions.

When he did locate some suppliers able to make the masks, he dealt with price-gouging. Prices were 10 times higher than normal circumstances. He wasn't having any of that. He told them, "Look, this is a humanitarian effort. This is not about business."

So far, Sinyard has managed to procure 40,000 masks, he said, and he's sent a batch of them to New York. But he's still determined to get a million. "We went through probably 20 or 30 different different suppliers and we finally ended up on a couple that we work with. So we're working with a couple right now," he said. He thinks he'll have the full million in less than 90 days.

In the meantime, Specialized donated 400 electric bicycles to medical staff to help them commute to work so they don't have to worry about exposure using public transit.

Sinyard says that in these difficult times, when the federal government has essentially left the states to fend for themselves, wealthy business leaders like himself have a social responsibility to help.

"I think business has to take on the social roles going forward and I think we already see that," he said.

Although "the sadness hasn't ended yet," he's optimistic about the post-coronavirus future. His company has learned that it can work remotely and he thinks the bicycle business will boom when the economy recovers, as people look for ways to keep fit that don't involve going to the gym. "I think it's kind of like a reset. "

As to advice to any other wealthy business leaders wanting to buy and donate masks or other medical grade protective equipment, he says, "Good luck!"

Looking for group? Guilded wants to be your gaming guild’s headquarters

I’m excited to announce the launch of Energize Colorado, a new Colorado-based non-profit to help energize companies in Colorado survive the Covid crisis and then thrive as we get the crisis under control.

A month ago (which seems like a year ago), I wrote a post explaining that the Covid crisis was actually three interwoven crises: health, financial, and mental health. As I went deeper through my work on various aspects of the Covid crisis on a volunteer basis across a number of initiatives, I began forming a clear view on the importance of the private sector taking a leadership role in helping the private sector.

I was fortunate that several of people who I started working with, including Wendy Lea, Erik Mitisek, and Marc Nager, were highly motivated by the mantra “Coloradans helping Coloradans.” The group rapidly expanded through both my network and theirs and quickly shifted to a mode of actively doing things, as volunteers on the private sector side, to actively support local businesses, entrepreneurs, rural businesses, women & minority-led businesses, non-profits, and contingent workers.

On March 23rd, a founding team of 15 people, led by Wendy Lea, got together to sketch out the idea for a new Colorado non-profit called Energize Colorado. The simple notion was to rally a large group of volunteers across the state who would donate their time and talent to help Colorado businesses under 500 employees stabilize, rebuild, and grow.

Amy and I have seed-funded many non-profits and are happy to include Energize Colorado in the list of things that we were the first funders for. Five weeks later, Energize Colorado is over 200 volunteers and growing daily.

In addition to creating new initiatives, Energize Colorado is focused on amplifying many of the activities happening throughout Colorado to help small businesses. Rather than duplicate efforts, Energize Colorado is adding to the mix, amplifying things that other non-profits are doing, highlighting new initiatives, and helping business people understand and navigate the many new initiatives from our State and Federal government.

The various categories of activities and information are currently organized as:

There will be at least two major new initiatives launched next week, with a steady stream after that. Follow along by subscribing to the newsletter or following the Energize Colorado twitter feed.

If you want to get involved and help in any way, please sign up on the volunteer form.

I’m proud to be a Coloradan helping other Coloradans in this crisis.