If you are looking for information on the public markets, this is not the blog you should be reading. Instead, I encourage you to go read Fred Wilson’s post Market Meltdowns or Howard Lindzon’s post Momentum Monday – A Panic For The Ages.

Rather than watch the news tonight, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Alan Lightman’s book Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine. I’ve loved Alan Lightman’s writing and the idea of a human that behaves like Alan Lightman since I read his first book Einstein’s Dreams when it came out in 1992.

Lightman is an astrophysicist, novelist, essayist, and educator. He’s been foundational at MIT around all of their creative writing endeavors and is currently Professor of the Practice of the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

I don’t know him, but when I think about evolving human journeys, his appeals to me as much as his writing does.

The book starts out strong with a chapter titled “Longing for Absolutes in a Relative World.” For a taste, I loved this paragraph:

On the one hand, such an onslaught of discovery presents a cause for celebration. In fact, the wonders of Einstein’s relativity and the idea of the Big Bang were the engines that propelled me into science decades ago. Is it not a testament to our minds that we little human beings with our limited sensory apparatus and brief lifespans, stuck on our one planet in space, have been able to uncover so much of the workings of nature? On the other hand, we have found no physical evidence for the Absolutes. And just the opposite. All of the new findings suggest that we live in a world of multiplicities, relativities, change, and impermanence. In the physical realm, nothing persists. Nothing lasts. Nothing is indivisible. Even the subatomic particles found in the twentieth century are now thought to be made of even smaller “strings” of energy, in a continuing regression of subatomic Russian dolls. Nothing is a whole. Nothing is indestructible. Nothing is still. If the physical world were a novel, with the business of examining evil and good, it would not have the clear lines of Dickens but the shadowy ambiguities of Dostoevsky.

If you open up any news based website, you are going to get efforts of describing the world in the clear lines of Dickens. Just remember that we are living in the shadowy ambiguities of Dostoevsky. I’m going to happily carry that one around for a while.

Lightman has a long rant on something he calls the Central Doctrine of Science.

Without ever hearing it spoken out loud, we budding scientists simply embraced a principle I call the Central Doctrine of Science: All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws hold true at every time and place in the universe.

He then unfolds this, using the concept of Absolutes and Relatives, and takes us into an endless, parallel universe of mostly empty space.

I’ve been reading plenty of “things to read after you are 50 about the meaning of life”, which feels like a cliche even as I type it. It’s not the only stuff I’ve been reading (e.g. over the weekend, I finished Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights) but I look forward to gobbling down Lightman’s In Praise of Wasting Time soon.

If you accept that the rest of 2020 will be insane, that a year is a tiny portion of the 13.8 billion years since the big bang, that no one really knows what happened before the big bang, that there might be an infinite number of parallel universes, and that most of everything is just empty space, things might be a little less stressful today. Or not …

Facebook is banning all non-essential business travel for its employees globally and will conduct job interviews entirely over video-conferencing software, in the latest sign of how the coronavirus is impacting major businesses.

On Saturday, the Silicon Valley social networking giant sent guidance to employees informing them of the new restrictions, Business Insider learned.

The move comes after Facebook encouraged its employees at its Bay Area headquarters to work remotely due to the viral outbreak, and previously banned social visitors to its offices, and shifted most — though not all — job interviews to video-conferencing.

Facebook's ban on non-essential business travel applies across all its offices for all 45,000-odd employees, as well as domestically within the United States.

At least two Facebook workers have tested positive for the coronavirus — a contractor in Seattle and an employee based in Singapore.

COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has sickened more than 100,000 people and killed nearly 3,500, and is causing mounting disruption around the globe — disrupting supply chains and forcing the closure of corporate offices and major events.

Many major tech companies in the Bay Area — the site of a US outbreak — have instituted remote work policies for at least some of their employees, including Apple and Google. Industry events including MWC, F8, and I/O have been cancelled, and on Friday, the SXSW tech and culture festival in Austin, Texas was also cancelled. 

How is the coronavirus outbreak affecting your work? Contact this reporter using a nonwork device via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), standard email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). PR pitches by standard email only, please.

Coronavirus fears are now affecting fundraising for startups. I am seeing advice that tells any company that might run out of cash in 2020 to start raising now before things might get a lot tighter. RIPGoodTimes?

— Josh Elman (@joshelman) March 1, 2020

Given that fundraising can take several months, if their cash out date is 2020, they should be fundraising soon anyway also hearing from founders it’s already getting hard

— Evelyn Rusli (@EvelynRusli) March 2, 2020

A Singapore-based VC firm told a startup I’m working with that they’re not going to wire the entire $2m investment they committed to in the Series A, which has been in closing the last few weeks. The rationale was to conserve capital due to coronavirus. The funding risk is real.

— Tommy Leep (@leepnet) March 4, 2020

The glamour of flipping a "fixer-upper" has in part been fetishized by home-renovation TV shows on channels like HGTV. One of the most recent and high-profile ones that come to mind is of course Chip and Joanna Gaines' "Fixer Upper," where homeowners paid on average $173,221 for their fixers upfront in the Texas town of Waco before the famous couple gave it their signature touch.

It's common to not only watch on TV but read about how old, decaying structures are reborn into the homes of families' American dreams.

In San Francisco, though, the concept of a piece in the city's tight housing market being a "fixer-upper" has a wholly different connotation. The city's limited housing stock and subsequent housing shortage and crisis translate to even these dilapidated houses selling for north of $1 million.

Business Insider has reported on a portion of the city's "fixer-upper" homes in recent years, including a recent sale of one of the city's famed Painted Ladies purchased by a tech founder for $3.55 million (in cash, mind you.) 

Here's how San Francisco's fixer-uppers have fared on the market, why new owners can't simply demolish their new fixer-upper even if they want to, what their listing agents had to say about them, and what some of them are like inside.

Rent the Runway has shoppers renting everything from high-end designer clothes to everyday staples, and Airbnb lets users share entire homes or even spare rooms.

Similar apps and websites have sprung up all around the country, offering digital-forward twists on the not-so-new business of renting secondhand items.

Be it for cost, convenience, or storage constraints, US consumers are getting used to the idea of sharing through both peer-to-peer platforms and direct-to-consumer sites.

While some services offer users the option to buy their rented items, many of the brands say they're helping consumers shop more sustainably by sharing things they may use only once or twice.

And this all plays into a bigger theme: changes in the way we buy and pay.

Here's a look at 14 startups that are changing the way consumers think about shopping — and the venture capital that's backing them.

"Production hell" is part of Tesla lore. CEO Elon Musk has even joked about it.

When the carmaker first showcased the Model 3 in 2017, I asked him to talk about production hell and how much of it he was about to face.

The answer was "at least six months." But he was quick to note that the then-upcoming Model 3 production hell would be less hellish than the hells the company endured with its previous three vehicles, the original Roadster, the Model S sedan, and the Model X SUV.

As it turned out, his welcome levity did nothing to mitigate a much more severe Model 3 production hell, which was ultimately the production hell to end all production hells. At one point, Tesla had to start building Model 3s under a makeshift structure in the parking lot of its Northern California factory.

So, production hell is no laughing matter. And Tesla is well aware of it. The graphic below, from Tesla's 2019 full-year financial summary, shows how the company's new factory in Shanghai should drastically improve on the manufacturing process at its plant in Fremont, CA.

I say "should" because when Fremont was called NUMMI and was jointly operated by General Motors and Toyota back before the financial crisis, the factory didn't have that much difficulty building over 400,000 vehicles per year.

Tesla is terrible as mass-producing automobiles

Tesla is impressive: No new US automaker has succeeded in decades, and with around 360,000 all-electric vehicles delivered in 2019, Tesla now dominates the still tiny EV market. Customers, for the most part, love their Teslas. The company spends effectively nothing on advertising, while traditional automakers spend many billions.

But until quite recently, Tesla was flatly terrible at mass-producing automobiles. Its Model S and Model X were relatively low-volume vehicles that sold for $100,000 on average, so Tesla's production challenges weren't such a big deal when S's and X's were all that people could buy. 

But moving to higher-volume manufacturing with Model 3 immediately exposed Tesla's lack of manufacturing capability. When the company revealed its tented assembly line, I gave it props for an innovation to an immediate problem (an automated indoor line had failed to work properly), but also noted that the way cars were being put together there would have been familiar to Henry Ford. Twenty-first-century best practices it was not. 

Last week, General Motors showcased a forthcoming fleet of new electric vehicles and also shared details of its battery technology, which uses a completely different architecture than Tesla employs: "pouches" versus cylinders. GM argued that its design is more flexible and with advances in battery chemistry — GM is reducing its reliance on materials such as cobalt — and could bring costs below an important threshold of $100 per kilowatt-hour.

What the company didn't overtly discuss was how the transformation of its products from gas-powered to electric-propelled, with 22 new EVs coming by 2023, would be leveraged by its manufacturing expertise. 

"We're really good at it," GM president Mark Reuss told me. "A big weapon is our manufacturing system." 

He added that a complete revamping of the company's Hamtramck facility in Michigan for dedicated electric-vehicle production should show how agile GM can be about responding to changing market demand. That agility would be well-supported by the new battery design, called "Ultium," which can scale from 50 kWh to 200 kWh packs and power everything from self-driving shuttles to the revived Hummer pickup truck.

Attacking an all-electric future

GM sold almost eight million vehicles worldwide in 2019, but that achievement isn't really priced into the company's value; at about $50 billion, GM's market capitalization is far less than Tesla's $170 billion, minted largely in an epic rally over the past six months.

GM is about to bring that manufacturing strength to bear on a transformation of its business to attack what CEO Mary Barra has identified as an "all-electric future."

When asked this week about how many more new EVs would arrive after 2023, she said, simply, "Many."

It might not be a walk in the park to build a million EVs a year — Barra's expectation — but GM built eight times that many vehicles in 2019.

So make no mistake, Tesla has done something that nobody thought was possible. But now it has to deal with something it's never been able to do well, while a sleeping giant that can build cars from dawn to dark and then from dark to dawn starts to roll out a new electric vehicle every few months.

KOH LANTA, Thailand — Working from home is just the start. 

Over the last decade, "digital nomads" have gone from the fringe to the mainstream, as people move to work remotely while traveling the world. With the rise of remote work and the high cost of living in Western cities known for their tech scenes, such as San Francisco, Paris, and London, millions of people have kicked off careers as digital nomads. 

Six years ago, James Abbott established KoHub, a coworking space on Koh Lanta, an island in southern Thailand. Koh Lanta offers gorgeous beaches, a chill party scene, and lush jungle. Thanks to KoHub, it is also becoming a destination for digital nomads looking for a space to work remotely and a community of others doing the same. 

"I run it like an organized anarchy," Abbott recently told Business Insider. "So I let it evolve into what it needs to be — just trying to shape it, and keep it on the rails and financed."

Digital nomads swarm to KoHub during high season, escaping from the cold of the Northern Hemisphere to the balmy beach climate. And, according to Abbott, most take one crucial step before trying out a career as a digital nomad — or regret not doing so. 

Bob Chapek just became the CEO of Disney, and he might be looking for a new home to go with his new role. 

Chapek was named Bob Iger's successor at Disney on February 25. His Ventura County, California estate is now for sale, asking $3.49 million. The 27-year veteran of Disney's home has been on the market for over a year, according to realtor.com.

The home in Camarillo, California, is designed like a resort inspired by the Italian Renaissance. It has six bedrooms, six bathrooms, and consists of 6,000 square feet on the 20-acre property.

The property at 13723 Nightsky Drive is listed with Erin Pohl of Coldwell Banker Realty.

See inside here.

The coronavirus is sparking anxieties among electronics manufacturers, the companies responsible for assembling everything from computers to lawnmowers to power generators. And if issues with suppliers based in China and potential shipping bottlenecks aren't resolved in a timely fashion, everyday consumers in the United States could start to notice by the summertime.

Many of these electronics manufacturers based in the United States or Europe rely on certain components built by suppliers in China. IPC, an electronics equipment trade organization, ran a survey in February in which 65% of 150 participating electronics manufacturers and suppliers reported delays from suppliers due to the spread of coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19. The outbreak has claimed over 3,400 lives around the world.

So far, these delays appear contained enough, and manufacturers and suppliers will likely be taking on the brunt of the problem for the time being. But IPC chief economist Shawn DuBravac told Business Insider that, if the outbreak continues to drag the industry down into April, regular shoppers may begin to notice the effects firsthand.

And, even if the suppliers themselves become fully operational once more, manufacturers still worry over the strain put on what the IPC report described as "limited" and "finite" transportation networks.

"Where some uncertainty still lies is, even after manufacturing is back online, to what extent is it back online?" DuBravac said. 

'The worst is yet to come'

Many of the electronics manufacturers in IPC's survey work across different industries and domains. These firms typically operate by acquiring necessary electronics components from different suppliers. Suppliers receive orders and ship the requested parts to the manufacturers. The components are assembled, and then the finished product is shipped on to the ultimate client, often a consumer-facing brand.

DuBravac said it's crucial that these manufacturers receive all the elements necessary to assemble a product at the same time, so that production can begin and the company can avoid a buildup of inventory.

But the international outbreak is throwing off that process. In its survey, the IPC found that around 65% of respondents were told by suppliers to expect delays of around three weeks in shipments due to the outbreak. 

When it comes to the impact that the coronavirus will have on their business, 30% of survey participants admitted to being extremely concerned, while 54% said they were somewhat concerned. The survey ran between February 11 and February 16.

Electronics manufacturer representatives quoted within the story expressed concerns about experiencing delayed deliveries, shuttering product lines, and watching suppliers struggle to keep factories in China staffed.

"I believe the worst is yet to come," one anonymous manufacturer told IPC. "The Chinese local government is fully overwhelmed with this process and could take weeks to get flushed out for factory production starting."

And manufacturers' fears don't focus solely on delays stemming directly from reduced-capacity suppliers. DuBravac said that fears of a transportation bottleneck have arisen thanks to the outbreak. Scores of late shipments clogging shipping lines could stand to increase delays, even once factories are back online.

"We're worried that — even after manufacturing returns in China for these components that we use — there'll be further delays because transportation capacity will be maxed out," DuBravac said.

'Unprecedented delays'

Electronics manufacturers have a hand in making all sorts of products, meaning that the coronavirus could have a sweeping impact across industries. Such companies produce everything from electric lawn mowers, in-store control panels, cable boxes, and audio and video devices, and they are crucial to the automotive, aerospace, and medical sectors.

But DuBravac said it's too early to be able to tell exactly what products or companies could stand to get slammed the hardest.

"Because manufacturers have different suppliers, different inventory levels, and end up producing a different mix of products, it's not necessarily easy to identify that, let's say, all electric lawnmowers are going to be in short supply come July," he said. "Chances are some models might be, but they all are built differently by different manufacturers relying on different supply chains and different components."

The manufacturers themselves told the IPC that they believe delays will run longer than suppliers are saying. Over 55% said they anticipated delays of four weeks or fewer, while around 37% said they expected delays to take six weeks or longer. On the transportation side, the IPC report already cited "out of balance" transportation networks, highlighting reduced commercial air travel out of China, US ports brimming with "empty cargo containers," and limited traffic on "seaborne trade routes between China and other countries."

DuBravac said most companies' inventories can likely hold out until Easter. If the outbreak leads to delays of eight to 12 weeks, however, he said the situation would be "unprecedented."

Still, even if "unprecedented delays" come to pass and the situation fails to improve, DuBravac said most people in the United States will observe the issues in "very limited ways" starting around June and July.

'Oh, that's weird'

It's not as if shoppers will be confronted with abandoned electronics stores or aisles, even in DuBravac's worst-case scenario. Many of the manufacturing issues brought about by the coronavirus will be felt more on a behind-the-scenes, industrial basis. Others could result in irritating, but not life-upending, frustrations for customers.

DuBravac gave the instance of a consumer calling to replace a cable box and encountering a "spot shortage" prompted by the delays.

"The rep will say, 'Oh, that's weird. We can't install a new cable box. I'm sorry, I'm not sure why, but we've got a delay for two weeks,'" DuBravac said. "That's the conversation that I think the consumer will end up having."

Some manufacturers told IPC that they were rerouting supply chains to avoid areas in China heavily affected by the coronavirus. DuBravac said many manufacturers are keen to establish a "dual-sourced" supply chain regardless of the outbreak, to keep from overly relying on one supplier or region. 

But finding a new supplier can be easier said than done. Manufacturers are somewhat bound by the preferences of client companies, which may direct them to work with specific suppliers. And even if clients are open to new suppliers, oftentimes they will need  time to "requalify" products to be able to work with parts sourced from new suppliers. 

DuBravac said that in some sense, the current crisis proves how dynamic the supply chains of electronics manufacturers are, given that everyday consumers are unlikely to face too many issues buying electronics. He said he spoke to many firms working to problem-solve with clients and suppliers.

"There's conversation about how fragile the supply chain is, but in a study like this you really see how resilient it is — or at least the desire to make it resilient," DuBravac said. "I think that's one of the reasons why the consumer doesn't always feel the effect."

To Brett Whitaker and Mauro Botta the failings of the accounting industry aren't just a matter of alarming statistics or fears about a potential financial crisis.

They're personal.

Both tried to raise the alarm about accounting problems at public companies. Both say their warnings were ignored. Worse, both lost their jobs, and Botta's been going through a contentious years-long court battle to try to vindicate himself.

Their experiences as whistleblowers are prime examples of why few in the industry speak up about its problems — and why the industry's failings persist, they say.

"Insiders certainly are very familiar [with] how the system works, but nobody talks," Botta told Business Insider in a recent interview.

The accounting industry is putting the economy at risk

Botta, previously an accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC, and Whitaker, the former director of tax reporting at Mattel, last month joined with a collection of watchdog groups to urge the House Financial Services Committee to hold a hearing on the accounting industry.

The coalition was following up on research from the Project On Government Oversight, or POGO, that indicated the four largest accounting firms are doing a sub-par job of auditing public companies and that the industry's quasi-governmental overseer was doing a poor job of watching over them. POGO's research found that in 20% to 50% of cases, the Big Four's audits of public company's financial statements had critical flaws that should have invalidated them, meaning that investors shouldn't have relied on the accounting firm's assertion that the statements were accurate and free of errors or fraud.

POGO also found that while the accounting industry's overseer, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, had discovered 808 cases of bad audits done by the Big Four firms since it was formed in 2003, it had only brought 18 enforcement actions against them and had only assessed them a small fraction of the potential fines it could have hit them with.

The accuracy and veracity of financial statements is crucial to the functioning of public markets. Investors determine how much they will pay for companies' stock based in large part on what's in those statements, including the companies' sales, earnings, and cash flow. Lack of trust in financial statements can lead to sharp sell-offs in individual companies' stocks and financial calamity for those companies. If the accounting problems are wide enough in scale, they can lead to financial crises, such as the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.

Both Botta and Whitaker have seen accounting problems up close

Botta and Whitaker say they know about the accounting industry's shortcomings first-hand. Starting in 2012, while he was working out of PwC's San Jose office, Botta says the firm signed off on the financial statements and audits at three different Silicon Valley tech companies despite his warnings that those documents contained critical errors or shortcomings. In an official whistleblower complaint he filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Botta reported hearing from his colleagues about accounting problems at other companies PwC audited and about conflicts of interest between the auditor and its clients.

PwC has largely denied Botta's allegations and is fighting a lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial in November, that he filed against it. The firm declined to comment on Whitaker's allegations that its auditors helped cover up the error he found. Mattel also declined to comment on Whitaker's charges.

Both Botta and Whitaker said they suffered from speaking out. Botta said he was repeatedly pressured by his colleagues and superiors to not raise a fuss about the accounting problems he found, according to his whistleblower complaint and the lawsuit he filed against PwC.

The firm removed him from the auditing teams for both of the companies at which he found accounting problems, he said in his complaint. Eventually it fired him. But even after that, PwC told his next employer that he was incompetent and should be removed from the project he was working on, according to his lawsuit.

"I escalated these [accounting] issues internally, and PwC, in my view, retaliated," Botta said.

PwC told Business Insider it fired him for "misconduct."

For Whitaker, what happened at Mattel was "personal"

Whitaker had a similarly difficult time after alerting Mattel to the accounting error there. After his superiors, in conjunction with PwC, allegedly decided to cover up the error instead of reporting it, he felt he had no choice but to resign from what he considered his dream job. The whole experience strained his marriage and his relationship with his child, he told Business Insider. Others on his team experienced similar strains or worse, he said.

Such consequences provide ample disincentives for people not to speak up about accounting problems, he said.

"I have a lot of good friends and colleagues that were there with me that are still biting their tongue and for a valid reason — because they don't want to lose their job. They can't lose their job," he said. "They can't go home and take that with them, to the extent that they can avoid it."

In fact a big part of the reason why he signed the letter to the Financial Services Committee and told his story to The Journal was because he wanted to call attention to the personal toll the accounting failures can take both on those who blow the whistle and those who don't.

"To me," he added, "that's really my motivation. It's a personal story. It's not an investor story to me."

Got a tip about accounting issues? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

A cartoonist once drew an illustration depicting Microsoft's organizational chart as warring factions. 

Take a look and you'll see three separate gangs: one blue, one green, one yellow. The gangs are assembled in pyramid-shaped hierarchies, with one leader at the top, two or three deputies at the next level, and so on.

A hand sticks out from each pyramid, pointing a gun directly at one of the others. It's clear. This is war.

And then Satya Nadella became CEO.

That particular cartoon – drawn in 2011 by a Google employee named Manu Cornet, no less – made changing Microsoft's culture Nadella's No. 1 goal as CEO.

"As a 24-year veteran of Microsoft, a consummate insider, the caricature really bothered me. But what upset me more was that our own people just accepted it," Nadella wrote. "When I was named Microsoft's third CEO in February 2014, I told employees that renewing our company's culture would be my highest priority."

Since becoming CEO, Nadella has been credited with a grand reinvention of Microsoft, exemplified by its market value exceeding $1 trillion, one of just a handful in history to hit that mark. When Nadella first took over, its market value was around $300 billion. The company has shifted from a has-been to a cloud powerhouse.

One of the keys to this transformation is a psychological concept that's become a mantra at Nadella's Microsoft: growth mindset.

Cyber Monday is one of the biggest days each year for online retailers, including for the brand centered around a four-pound cat named Lil Bub.

Instead of spending the weekend before the online shopping holiday recovering from Thanksgiving dinner, Lil Bub's owner Mike Bridavsky was busy making sure his website was ready for the onslaught of traffic expected Monday. He prepared for thousands to flock to the Lil Bub online store to snatch up t-shirts, socks, and pillows bearing the cat's recognizable appearance: her small stature due to feline dwarfism, her lack of teeth, and her tongue permanently hanging out of her mouth. But he couldn't have anticipated what else his weekend had in store.

Lil Bub died that Sunday, just over 3 months ago, leaving behind a slew of adoring fans to grieve. In her 8 years of life, Lil Bub accrued millions of social media followers, served as the face for numerous animal welfare causes, and became a widely recognizable and beloved face across the internet. 

"Bub had a complete lack of self awareness, this ability to overcome all the obstacles she's felt," Bridavsky told Business Insider. "She wasn't just a famous Instagram cat ... She engineered herself to look this way so she could catch people's attention and they could learn about her."

Lil Bub turned into an established social media influencer in much less time than it takes many of her human counterparts. Pets like Grumpy Cat and Boo have become not just household names, but full-blown celebrities. These pets have shown that influencers don't have to be human to get fans to line up for hours for meet-and-greets, or earn thousands of dollars a year from ads and sponsorships. 

However, these pets' significantly shorter lifespans raise a whole set of questions about what comes after. After internet pets pass, their owners still remain. Not only are they left with a slew of social media accounts bearing the name of their pets, but also with a loyal following that, in my cases, have turned to these animals as a bright spot during the grayest of days.

"Everyone loves pets. They don't say offensive things on Twitter and they don't get in trouble. They're just adorable and perfect," Loni Edwards, the CEO of pet influencer management firm The Dog Agency, told Business Insider. "Being able to touch so many people regardless of where they live or their age ... that's such a unique type of content creator."

Several owners of famous pets spoke with Business Insider about their struggles and experiences handling the online presences of their animals after they died. While some have preserved these accounts as an homage to their pets, others have continued to share photos of their animals from the massive backlog of content they've acquired. There are still others who have continued their pets' legacies by getting another who can substitute for — not replace — the original on social media.

The key point many owners factored into their decision-making has been the impact their actions have on their pets' followings and fans. Even though some owners stumbled accidentally into the world of influencing, they have nevertheless taken to heart the often significant role their pets played in the lives of their fans.

"You're a lucky man to have had this magical creature in your life, and we were especially lucky that you shared her with all of us," an Instagram user commented on a recent photo of Lil Bub. "Her magic will never be forgotten."

An analysis of the most high-profile Microsoft executive departures under CEO Satya Nadella helps shed light on how the company's transformation into a trillion-dollar cloud powerhouse has taken shape.

Business Insider has been exploring the cultural change led by Nadella within Microsoft since he became CEO in February 2014.

Under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft teams were warring factions and the company's leaders promoted a "star culture" that valued the smartest person in the room. Nadella has tried to make Microsoft more collaborative, both internally and with the company's competitors – and part of that effort included cultivating new talent, even as much of Microsoft's old guard departed for greener pastures.

Some of executive shifts started immediately. Less than a month after Nadella became CEO, he announced two executive departures and made it clear he expected an "'all in' commitment as we embark on the next chapter for the company" from Microsoft senior leaders. Others took time, and unfolded throughout reorganizations.

Here are 13 of the most significant executive departures since Nadella took over as CEO – and what those executives are doing now:

When my editor asked how I'd feel about getting free coffee for a month, I said I'd love it. I spent the next week testing Panera's coffee subscription.

The subscription provides "unlimited" hot coffee, iced coffee, or hot tea at all Panera restaurants for a monthly fee of $9, or about $108 annually. Note that this means free refills in-store, or a coffee every two hours. Panera is rolling it out nationwide over the next week to members of its MyPanera loyalty program. A regular Panera coffee costs $2.49 in New York City, so the savings come around the fourth cup of coffee.

Panera tested this subscription model in three states before its nationwide debut.

"We are the first brand to do it, and we're super excited about that," Panera CEO Niren Chaudhary previously told Business Insider. "We feel that this is a terrific way to get consumers more interested in not only in our coffee platform but also for them to get exposed to the strength of the food that we have in our cafes, particularly around breakfast."