Original author: jyotsna popuri

Original author: jyotsna popuri

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

In late 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced an ambitious plan: to create an independent oversight board that could overrule Facebook's content moderation guidelines, and even Zuckerberg himself.The board is independent from Facebook, but Facebook is funding the board's operations to the tune of $130 million.If users believe their content was removed from the service unfairly or without cause, they can appeal to the independent board directly. If it decides to reverse Facebook's decision, that decision "will be binding," Zuckerberg said, "even if I or anyone at Facebook disagrees with it."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

With over 2 billion users, Facebook has a major moderation problem on its hands.

Whether you're talking about the platform's use by Russian government-backed trolls in the 2016 US Presidential election, or to spread propaganda during the 2016 Rohingya genocide, or when a shooter livestreamed a mass shooting in New Zealand, Facebook has faced moderation issue after moderation issue across the past few years.

And the company is well aware of the enormity of its problem. "One of the most painful lessons I've learned," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in late 2018, "is that when you connect two billion people, you will see all the beauty and ugliness of humanity." 

As a result, Facebook is establishing an oversight board that it says is outside of Facebook's control, that can ultimately overrule Facebook's own policies on content management. The company has even pledged $130 million to get the board funded and operational, with plans to launch in 2020. 

Here's everything we know so far:

Original author: Ben Gilbert

The beloved ex-host of HQ Trivia tweeted Saturday that the company was shut down due to "incompetence, arrogance, short-sightedness & sociopathic delusion."He also accused the company of leaving its staff "in the lurch after being gaslit and lied to."HQ did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.The company's CEO, Rus Yusupov, announced in a company-wide email on Friday that the live gameshow app would shut down, adding that "lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The beloved ex-host of the live gameshow app HQ Trivia railed against the company's leadership on Twitter, one day after CEO Rus Yusupov announced the company would shut down.

"HQ didn't die of natural causes. It was poisoned with a lethal cocktail of incompetence, arrogance, short-sightedness & sociopathic delusion," Rogowsky tweeted Saturday. "Saddened to see it finally succumb; sadder still for the good & talented staff abruptly left in the lurch after being gaslit and lied to."

Rogowsky did not elaborate on his complaints with the company or its leadership, nor did he specify how how he believed employees were "lied to."

Insider has reached out to HQ for comment regarding Rogowsky's tweets.

Rogowsky, known to his fans as "Quiz Daddy," left HQ last April to join the sports streaming service DAZN.

HQ Trivia, which attained viral popularity in 2017, attracted millions of users to play each day during live, 15-minute segments.

HQ Trivia

But, as Business Insider's Julie Bort previously reported, the company was soon plagued with missteps and infighting, and began hemorrhaging users by mid-2018.

The company's co-founder Colin Kroll also died in December 2018, and the company struggled to regain its footing afterwards.

On Friday, Yusupov sent a company-wide email telling employees that "lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company," and that HQ would shut down. CNN was first to report the news.

On Saturday, Rogowsky quote-tweeted Yusupov's 2016 advice — "Don't sell your company!" — and quipped "Don't let him run your company!"

 

Yusupov simply responded, "Hugs."

Original author: Michelle Mark

37-year-old independent agency Wieden and Kennedy is famous for its Nike, Facebook, McDonald's, and other ads, and it gets hundreds of applications a week.The agency seeks out people from outside the ad industry, often finding them through nontraditional channels.Executives there said aspiring employees should emphasize their personal passions rather than awards or titles.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

With 1,500-plus employees in Portland, Oregon and 7 other offices around the world, Wieden and Kennedy is not the largest ad agency by revenue or headcount.

But to many in advertising — especially on the creative side — it's seen as the pinnacle of their profession. The independent firm created five ads in this year's Super Bowl. Its campaigns for brands like Honda, Bud Light, Facebook and, most prominently, Nike, have won scores of awards and landed it on lists of top companies where creatives want to work.

For these and other reasons, it's notoriously hard to get a foot in the door.

Business Insider asked current and former executives and applicants how to land a position at the company that co-president and global creative leader Colleen DeCourcy once called "the island of misfit toys."

The agency eschews traditional factors like awards

Global talent director Melanie Myers, who joined the agency in 1996, told Business Insider her team gets hundreds of applications each week for a small and constantly changing number of roles. But all eight offices operate independently, the agency has no central jobs hub, and many positions aren't listed publicly at all.

The agency sometimes announces job openings on Instagram via @wktalent or the individual offices' accounts, and job seekers are encouraged to contact those offices directly.

Still, Myers said most of Wieden's employees did not get jobs through unsolicited applications. According to Myers and executive creative director Karl Lieberman, who co-leads the New York office and has a say in the hires of department heads and creative directors, having no agency experience and showing even open disdain for advertising can be a plus as long as a candidate has the creative talent and passion needed in a demanding, ever-changing environment.

Lieberman said traditional factors like awards or titles aren't deciding factors in hiring because awards are subjective and Wieden leadership doesn't always agree with them.

"The emails I get with people listing all their awards make me want to kill myself," he said.

Insisting on a certain title is another big red flag for Lieberman. He said the agency has a flat structure to minimize bureaucracy. He cited the recent hire of former BBH chief creative officer Gerard Caputo as a creative director, saying this title change did not amount to a demotion.

One of the often-cited mantras at Wieden, as multiple people told Business Insider, is "leave your ego at the door."

The other is that this agency is the place "where people go to do the best work of their lives."

Wieden finds people in unconventional ways

Wieden and Kennedy first tries to fill open positions internally. To recruit, it uses a variety of methods. Key points:

It seeks out people from outside advertising: Six of Wieden's offices use The Kennedys, a program that recruits current or recent grad students with no advertising experience and pays them to work with Wieden's creative teams for several months. Myers said about half of the Amsterdam's current creative staff came through that program.It looks for people from a variety of backgrounds: The agency's efforts to find people from outside the ad world have led to it hiring a lawyer, trade journalist, political speechwriter, waitress in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and "Portlandia" co-creator Carrie Brownstein, who worked on the Starbucks account for six months in 2006 while her band Sleater-Kinney was on hiatus.Recruiters are always looking for new talent: Wieden and Kennedy recruiters look for less-obvious candidates by following people's careers and encouraging other employees to send them stuff they love from the internet and beyond.It uses former employees to recruit: Lawrence Teherani-Ami, a 28-year veteran who leads the media strategy team in Portland, said independent recruiters who work with the agency are often former longtime staffers who know what Wieden and Kennedy is looking for.Internship programs: Teherani-Ami said the agency brings in several interns each year from programs including MPMS (Most Promising Multicultural Students) and MAIP (Multicultural Advertising Intern Program), which are trade industry efforts aimed at attracting minority students to advertising. Teherani-Ami, who comes from an Iranian-American family, is a MAIP graduate himself.College recruiting: Wieden and Kennedy also recruits students from colleges around the country, including Dan Wieden's alma mater, the University of Oregon, as well as nearby Portland State University. Agency co-founders David Kennedy (L) and Dan Wieden (R). Getty Images

Recruiters review each application personally

Myers encouraged aspiring Wieden employees to apply using different methods, adding that her team gets applications via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram as well as regular email but doesn't usually hire people in this way.

Recruiters review each application, and Myers said the process would never be automated, even though that means the response time can be slower than at other agencies. Two creatives and one account executive known to Business Insider who spoke on condition of anonymity in the interest of protecting their career prospects said recruiters took as long as nine months to respond to them, with one adding that he "applied many times over the years" but never got hired.

Myers said she understands why the wait can be frustrating but warned applicants not to repeatedly call or email, no matter what may have worked at other agencies. She said many applicants eager to get responses do not seem to appreciate the volume of material that her team has to process each day.

Wieden and Kennedy wants people with passion, side projects, and are skeptical about advertising

Successful applicants will demonstrate their uniqueness as creative people — not advertising professionals — current and former employees said.

Myers said former executive creative director Jeff Kling, who was also a mentor to Lieberman, turned in a three-ring binder filled with ads for fictional products that were hand-drawn with a Sharpie marker. Another employee submitted a silk scarf that included a link to her own website printed in a custom typeface. 

Copywriter Chase Zreet created a video cover letter consisting of a three-minute rap tribute to Sprite that three employees shared with the New York team before Zreet submitted it himself.

Lieberman went to extremes. After nearly four years' worth of interviews, he got an inside source when a friend scored a job at Wieden and Kennedy Portland, and soon afterward Lierberman learned of several openings on the Nike basketball account. To show his dedication to the game, he printed out posts that he'd written for a basketball blog and mailed them to the Portland office along with his latest portfolio.

While a lot of applicants try similar stunts, Wieden's official talent account said they should be compelling enough to get recruiters' attention and prepare them to make a practical demonstration of the applicant's skills.

 

Myers emphasized that she's less interested in such presentations than in the sincerity of applicants' side projects and passions, asking: "What languages do you speak? Do you play instruments? Do you paint? Do you have the biggest vinyl collection on the West Coast?"

"Somebody who's awesome at Twitter can be just as helpful as someone who can write a 30-second TV spot," Lieberman added, noting so much of the agency's work isn't focused on TV commercials.

Myers told Business Insider that no one should hang all their hopes on a job at Wieden and Kennedy, because it won't be right for everyone. But the most important suggestion for those who keep trying may be to forget everything they thought they knew about advertising.

Original author: Patrick Coffee

Insurance giant State Farm is bringing back its iconic tagline "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There."State Farm stopped using the campaign in 2016 under its former agency-of-record DDB but brought it back under its new agency The Marketing Arm.State Farm said its research found the old tagline had high trust, recognition and favorability across people of all ages.State Farm said it's also spending more ad dollars on streaming platforms, including NBCUniversal's forthcoming Peacock, where it's a launch sponsor.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

For 45 years, State Farm pitched itself as the "good neighbor" who stands by you when things go wrong — before retiring it in 2016 under its former agency-of-record DDB.

Now, in an about-face, the Bloomington, Illinois-based company and the country's largest insurance provider is launching a new brand campaign that brings back the tagline "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There" as well as the spokesperson character "Jake from State Farm."

State Farm reintroduced Jake played by actor Kevin Mimms in a 30-second pre-game teaser on Super Bowl Sunday and is launching a new marketing push during the NBA All-Star Weekend. This marks a shift from the "Here to Help Life Go Right," tagline that it launched in 2016, which polled poorly.

The strategy shift follows State Farm shifting its creative work to Omnicom's The Marketing Arm from its longtime agency DDB, also part of Omnicom. This is The Marketing Arm's first piece of work for State Farm.

'"We want to make our advertising work as hard as possible for us in this hyper-competitive category," Patty Morris, State Farm's assistant VP of marketing and brand, told Business Insider. "The data and research pointed us toward some of the familiar assets, which caused us to go back to the drawing board and rethink our strategy."

The tagline was brought back after months of consumer research

DDB created the "Like a Good Neighbor" ads under its predecessor Needham, Harper & Steers and it blew up in the 1970s, thanks to a jingle written by pop star Barry Manilow.

State Farm did almost six months of consumer research that showed the old tagline had high trust, recognition and favorability across age groups, Morris said. Ninety percent of respondents recognized the tagline and associated it with State Farm.

While the new marketing push will have familiar elements, State Farm tried to make sure it's up to date.

For example, the forthcoming spot "Not the One" will show Jake comforting a contestant who was just cut from a reality TV dating show, quipping that unlike the bachelorette in question, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. The company will also continue its creative work with NBA player Chris Paul and adapt the jingle to develop a sonic logo, Morris said.

State Farm is diversifying its ad spend, and streaming is getting more important 

Advertisers like State Farm have moved away from the traditional agency-of-record model in recent years where they hire one agency to handle their advertising business and are increasingly working with multiple agencies on a short-term basis.

State Farm is also using new channels in its advertising like over-the-top streaming platforms, which make up 20% of ad spend, with the rest about equally divided between linear TV and digital, Morris said. Among other things, it's a launch sponsor for Peacock, NBCUniversal's upcoming streaming service, which guarantees it exclusivity in the insurance category for 18 months.

"It's not just about our advertising and messaging, but also understanding media consumption and making sure we're approaching that in a modern way," Morris said. "Peacock allows us to really test out different ad formats and interactivity with branded content and think about reinventing and defining the ad experience in a streaming environment."

Original author: Tanya Dua

The official Twitter accounts for the Olympics and Barcelona FC were hacked on Saturday. OurMine, the group responsible for several prominent Twitter hacks beginning in 2016 claimed responsibility. In addition to gaining some level of access to the account, the group sent a tweet that claimed a popular soccer player would be returning to the Barcelona team based on private messages it read.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The official Twitter accounts for the Olympics and FC Barcelona were hacked Saturday by the same group responsible for years of other prominent Twitter account hacks. 

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that both the Olympics and FC Barcelona accounts were hacked by a group called OurMine and through a "third-party platform." 

"As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners to restore them," the spokesperson said. 

"The IOC can confirm that it is investigating a potential breach into some of its social accounts," a spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee said in a statement. 

FC Barcelona also confirmed the hack in a tweet Saturday. 

"FC Barcelona will conduct a cybersecurity audit and will review all protocols and links with third party tools, in order to avoid such incidents and to guarantee the best service to our members and fans," it said.

In tweets that were posted and quickly deleted, OurMine claimed credits for the Saturday hacks.  

"Hi, we are OurMine," the since-deleted tweet from the Olympics Twitter account read. "Everything is hackable."

The tweet then linked to an email address and the group's website, urging users to contact the group to "improve your accounts security." 

The FC Barcelona account hack was a bit more nefarious in that it claimed in another since-deleted tweet to have read private messages indicating that a popular former player — Neymar da Silva Santos Jr. — was heading back to the team. 

"Well, we read some private messages and it looks like Neymar will back here," the tweet read.

While the tweets were quickly removed from both accounts, they were captured via screenshot and posted by other users to Twitter.

UK-based Sports Bible noted that there have been rumors that Neymar, who currently plays for France's Paris Saint-Germain F.C., could return to FC Barcelona where he played from 2013-2017. 

It was the second time that OurMine has claimed responsibility for a Twitter hack on the Spanish soccer team. On February 7, OurMine claimed responsibility for a hack on the Twitter account for Facebook. 

In an email to Business Insider, OurMine confirmed it was behind the cyberattacks against both FC Barcelona and the Olympics. The group, which it said consisted of 5 people, told Business Insider it chooses its targets at random. It confirmed it used a third-party app to access the accounts. 

"We accessed it by security issues on FC Barcelona and Olympics employees, which allowed us to access the third-party app," the group told Business Insider. 

A Wired profile of the group indicated the group surfaced around 2016. That year it hacked people like Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Spotify founder Daniel Ek, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, and actor Channing Tatum, according to the profile.

The group claimed it is a "white hat" group that exists to help show security vulnerabilities, and not for sinister reasons. OurMine told Wired that it does not change the passwords of the accounts it hacks, claiming that it does not have bad intentions, though it does offer services it alleges can reveal digital vulnerabilities. 

The hacking group, which is based in Saudi Arabia, according to NBC News, has also been responsible for recent hacks to Twitter accounts belonging to the National Football League and several of its teams. As NBC News noted, the group said it stopped hacking in 2017 "due to some issues," but acknowledged it had returned. 

A Business Insider request for comment from FC Barcelona was not returned. 

Read more: 

A cancelled conference and supply chain issues: How the coronavirus outbreak is affecting Facebook's business

Here's how 44 insiders at powerful banks, buzzy startups, and big investors are thinking about financial innovation — and why the term 'fintech' may be on its last legs

Private equity's data-hiring push; The top M&A bankers, ranked; Tradeweb's next move

I just spent a day using Samsung's new foldable flip phone — here are the best and worst things about it so far

 

Original author: Connor Perrett

A new coronavirus spreading across the globe has led to temperature screenings at airports, Chinese cities, and businesses.The thermometer guns used in these screenings are "notoriously not accurate and reliable," since many screeners hold them at the wrong distance or use them in the wrong environments, experts told The New York Times.Demand for thermometer guns has spiked since the coronavirus outbreak began, leaving some manufacturers struggling to keep up.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As officials struggle to contain a new coronavirus spreading across the globe, travelers worldwide are undergoing unreliable temperature screenings, experts say.

The new coronavirus, first discovered in Wuhan, China in December, has infected nearly 67,000 people and killed more than 1,500, mostly within China. (For the latest case total and death toll, see Business Insider's live updates.) 

Airports, Chinese cities, and even Apple stores have instituted temperature checks to identify potential patients and prevent the virus's spread. To do this, many governments and businesses rely on thermometer guns — devices that use infrared sensors to measure a person's surface temperature without touching their skin.

"These devices are notoriously not accurate and reliable," Dr. James Lawler, a medical expert at the University of Nebraska's Global Center for Health Security, told The New York Times. "Some of it is quite frankly for show."

That means that many coronavirus cases could go undetected through these temperature screenings.

To account for this possibility, the US has instituted a mandatory quarantine of up to two weeks for anyone who's been to China's Hubei province within the prior 14 days. But China now relies on daily temperature checks as it struggles to contain the virus. 

Why thermometer guns are often unreliable

Most people wielding thermometer guns hold them too far from or too close to the subject, yielding temperature measurements that are either too hot or too cold, according to experts who spoke with The New York Times.

Two different coronavirus temperature screenings using thermometer guns take measurements from different distances using different procedures. Vincent Thian/AP Photo; Hannah McKay/Reuters

Lawler said that thermometer guns had suggested he was dying of hypothermia as he traveled through West Africa during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak.

"My temperature was often 35 degrees Celsius or lower, which starts to become incompatible with life," Lawler said. "So I'm not sure those were accurate."

According to industrial supply company Grainger, the correct distance to hold a handheld infrared thermometer depends on the size of the target.

What's more, environments like a dusty road or a hot car can affect the infrared temperature measurement.

Even if used correctly, thermometers won't catch everyone who could spread the new virus. Studies show that infected people can go up to 14 days without showing symptoms, and some preliminary research suggests that period could last as long as 24 days. It's still unclear if infected people without symptoms can spread the virus to others.

Some patients have experienced nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea before they develop a fever. They could still be infectious at that stage. If someone has taken a fever-suppressing medication, they could show normal temperatures.

The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledges that some infected people will pass temperature screenings, but still maintains that the checks reduce the "risk of importation of the disease." According to the WHO, most of the cases that traveled outside China were detected through screening as they entered another country.

On the flip side, a high temperature does not necessarily indicate illness. Temperature screenings can flag people who aren't infected.

"They could have been exercising, they could be taking certain drugs," Jim Seffrin, an infrared devices expert at the Infraspection Institute in New Jersey, told The New York Times. "A person who's been trying to catch a flight in an airport for which they are late — they may have run down a concourse."

Demand for thermometer guns has spiked since the outbreak began

Health Officials in hazmat suits check body temperatures of passengers arriving from the city of Wuhan at the Beijing airport on January 22, 2020. Emily Wang/AP Photo

The other frontlines defense that characterizes so many photos of life during the outbreak — face masks — is also unlikely to prevent the spread of the virus. Still, face mask sales have spiked since the outbreak began, and manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand. Some thermometer gun manufacturers report a similar predicament.

"It's the most overwhelming thing I've had to deal with in my life," Gary Strahan, the CEO of infrared thermometer technology company Infrared Cameras, told The New York Times. "We've got people coming to us directly, saying: 'Can you supply 1,000 cameras? Can you supply 2,000 cameras?'"

Strahan added that he had been working 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily to keep up with new orders. Mo Yingchun, a general manager at thermometer gun manufacturer Alicn Medical in Shenzhen, China, said that prices have spiked to three to five times their usual level. Mo said that China's quarantine efforts have cut off many of the manufacturer's employees, preventing factories from operating at full capacity.

"Even the governments are fighting for the products among themselves," Mo said. "Local governments want to guarantee their own needs first."

Even he agreed that the infrared thermometers are not always reliable. Mo added that his company's devices are typically used to check infants' temperatures indoors.

"The thermometer guns are used only for quick screening and are not as accurate as traditional thermometers," Mo said. "It was a small industry, and if it weren't for the outbreak, it will not be put in the spotlight."

Original author: Morgan McFall-Johnsen

WeWork pulled its IPO in 2019 after mulling a massive valuation cut to drum up investor interest, and cofounder Adam Neumann was ousted as CEO and chairman. WeWork has been slashing jobs and selling or shuttering businesses. WeWork has announced real-estate veteran Sandeep Mathrani as its new CEO, replacing Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham, who served as co-CEOs since Neumann was ousted. It's also seen a big board shakeup. Marcelo Claure will stay on as chairman, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first broke the news of Mathrani's appointment. Here's how we got here, and what's next for WeWork after it nabbed a lifeline from SoftBank. You can read our stories by subscribing to BI Prime.

Here's everything we know about what's going on inside WeWork:

The latest

Plotting a path forward

WeWork is now paying a retainer of $500,000 a month to Publicis for crisis PR and advertising services just weeks after almost running out of cashWeWork just overhauled its compensation plan, and we have the full memo with details on cash bonuses, base salary changes, and new equity grantsWeWork shutters its restaurant-based coworking subsidiary, Spacious, and lays off the entire staff of about 50 employeesBANK OF AMERICA: WeWork and other IPO disasters could start a domino effect that sends US stocks tumbling. Here's how.WeWork's turnaround plan calls for it to stanch its losses while opening hundreds of new locations. Here's why business and real-estate experts are baffled.WeWork offered about 1,000 people a surprisingly good deal to move to a contractor, but then sent some of them a letter with another dealSome WeWork employees believe working for the company has hurt their careersHere are all the people SoftBank has trusted to turn WeWork around, including the 4 new executives it just announcedInside WeWork's leaked all-staff meeting: The embattled company's path to profitability will focus on 6 pillars, and 4 men were named to executive rolesAs WeWork lays off thousands of employees, its competitors say they're ready to hire hundreds next year as they expandTishman Speyer is opening its own flex offices without go-betweens like WeWork. We got a look at the landlord's new space in New York.Adam Neumann personally invested tens of millions in startups while he ran WeWork. Founders who took his money reveal what it was like.After WeWork's meltdown, competitors say their investors want 'quality' revenue and a plan to navigate downturns

SoftBank bailout

Fallout after the failed IPO

Neumann's personal finances

Neumann's exit

Tanking valuation 

Financials, business history, and real estate

WeWork just released an investor presentation that offers numbers the company didn't include in its widely-derided IPO documentsInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork used massive discounts — in some cases, essentially giving away space for 2 years — to try to poach customers from rivalsWeWork says it has 527,000 'memberships,' but that's not as straightforward as it seemsWeWork opened 400 locations in 3 years. In some cases, it used deep discounts to convince existing customers to relocate to help fill them.We got a peek at WeWork's top landlords. Here's who is most exposed to the fast-growing, but money-losing, coworking company as it prepares to IPO.Here's what we know about Fibra Uno, the Mexico real estate company that's WeWork's biggest landlord. It highlights how quickly the co-working company has been growing overseas.WeWork's CFO says it will generate $2 billion in profit on the desks it's opened this year, and it shows the importance of the 'space-as-a-service' modelWeWork's 'entirely new, nonsense' way of evaluating its profits is eerily similar to the tech bubbleThe past 4 years of WeWork's pre-IPO financials show just how important cash flow is to the company's growthWeWork reported its financials for 2018 and both its revenue — and losses — doubledOne of WeWork's buildings is profitable, and the company says it's a vindication of its modelWeWork documents reveal it owes $18 billion in rent and is burning through cash as it seeks more funding

Coworking rivals

Road to the failed IPO

Neumann's leadership

SoftBank's role

Deals

 

Original author: Business Insider

About a dozen homeowners in South Texas' Boca Chica Village neighborhood have not sold their properties to SpaceX to make way for a planned Starship spaceport.SpaceX and a real-estate firm it hired have told residents they could be removed — and for far less money — through an eminent-domain process started by Cameron County.However, one homeowner told Business Insider that she and her husband would not sell to SpaceX, and they apparently aren't alone. Meanwhile, the Institute for Justice, a libertarian nonprofit group, has discussed possible pro bono legal representation of such residents.But people who've already sold to SpaceX fear that the county would try other ways to complicate residents' plans to keep their homes before any eminent-domain process.SpaceX did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

This is the third story in a Business Insider series about SpaceX in South Texas called "Last Town Before Mars." Read the previous stories here.

Celia Johnson was born in Brownsville, a midsize city in South Texas that borders Mexico. Like most families in the area, hers didn't come from money, so she found recreational escape as a kid by piling into a relative's car and driving 30 minutes east down Highway 4.

Boca Chica Boulevard, as the road is also known, winds through a rugged, wildlife-rich area famous for migratory birds, ocelots, and invasive nilgai antelope. The pavement abruptly ends in a splash of tan-white sand between a pair of dunes capped with beach grasses, opening to the roughly 7-1/2-mile-long Boca Chica Beach. A few miles to the south is the US border and the mouth of the Rio Grande; a few miles north, past a shipping inlet, is South Padre Island, a spring-break hot spot.

Save for locals who fish, cook, camp, four-wheel, or drink, the strip of sand is serene and undeveloped. Some nearby residents say Boca Chica Beach looks much like it did during the days when pirates harbored their vessels in the Laguna Madre Bay, which the beach shelters from storms.

A great blue heron on Boca Chica Beach in Texas. Dave Mosher/Business Insider When Johnson began taking her own kids, she'd pass through a remote neighborhood of one-story brick homes called Boca Chica Village less than 2 miles west of the beach. One day in 1992, her son spotted a "for sale" sign in the front yard of a home.

"My son said, 'Mom, this house is for sale — call the lady, call the lady!'" Johnson told Business Insider.

Johnson bought the house that year, making it an annual retreat from brutal winters in Michigan, where she spent most of her adult life, as well as a gathering point for her extended family.

As she entered retirement, though, Johnson, now in her 70s, increasingly viewed it as a low-tax retreat to spend the rest of her life. To supplement her Social Security income, she also rents out a second home she bought later.

"It's brought nothing but happiness. It's always been a backup for me," she said. "This is a house that was a dream come true when I bought it."

But now SpaceX, the rocket company founded in 2002 by the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, wants her and all her neighbors to leave. The goal: Make way for developing a potentially world-changing spacecraft called Starship and, eventually, build a Mars spaceport.

A senior executive at SpaceX told residents that if Musk "loses his patience," the company would tell Cameron County, where Boca Chica is, that it may pack up and leave. SpaceX and Jones Lang LaSalle, a real-estate firm hired to conduct a village buyout, told homeowners that if that happens, the Cameron County Spaceport Development Corporation might use its eminent-domain authority to remove them.

Despite such intimidating circumstances, some families don't plan to sell to SpaceX.

What's more, they may not be alone if a court battle comes to pass. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian nonprofit law firm in Washington, DC, has signaled it may offer pro bono legal services to affected residents. The outfit is no stranger to property-rights cases; in 2004, its seminal Kelo v. New London suit landed in the US Supreme Court.

Renée Flaherty, an attorney with the firm, told Business Insider that while its board members had not yet approved legal representation for Boca Chica residents, the case would be "right in the wheelhouse" for the institute and "pretty likely" to be taken on if Cameron County moved to use eminent domain.

"The fact that Texas gave this spaceport corporation eminent-domain authority ... why would they give them that power if they didn't plan on exercising it? They've bent over backward for SpaceX, they're not going to let them leave, and SpaceX knows that," Flaherty said.

"Texans love their property rights. If SpaceX wants to be the future of humanity — I agree that what they're doing is awesome — they need to be on a solid foundation. And abusing eminent domain should not be a part of that foundation."

SpaceX's rocket 'Neverland' in South Texas

Many residents of Boca Chica Village chose the area for its solitude. Jennifer Lee

SpaceX's plan is to use the more than 100 properties it's purchased since 2012 to develop, build, and launch Starship, a 39-story, fully reusable, Mars-capable steel rocket system.

"We love Texas and believe we are entering a new and exciting era in space exploration," James Gleeson, a SpaceX representative, told The Atlantic in a story published on Tuesday, adding that "South Texas will play an increasingly important role in our efforts to help make humanity multi-planetary."

In mid-September, the rocket company offered to buy out all homeowners at three times a base appraisal, primarily and ostensibly for safety reasons.

Residents still in the area say they've seen contractors renovating the homes, SpaceX workers sleeping in them, and a real-estate developer sizing up other properties for improvement. One company-owned house has become a kind of recreation center, with a bar, pool and picnic tables, and string lights, said one former homeowner, who requested anonymity to maintain their privacy but whose identity Business Insider verified.

"It's made me madder than anything else they've done. Like they're getting ready for a party or something. This is in the middle of our neighborhood," the person said. "It feels like we're not dead yet and they're already celebrating. It's a kick in the gut."

Johnson said the real goal in buying the village seemed to be creating a private "Neverland" for Musk, SpaceX employees, and VIPs amid a multiplanetary-spaceship operation.

"I live on the site and work in the factory and then go sleep over there in that little village over there," Musk told KRGV News during a Starship job fair in early February. (Business Insider reported on Musk's living situation in South Texas in mid-January.)

Though more than half the village has sold to SpaceX since the deal was offered to homeowners there, many residents have not committed; one family even pulled out at the last minute. Getting everyone moved out seems so important to the company that it keeps dispatching its senior finance director, Dave Finlay, to meet with villagers almost weekly. Though residents described Finlay as affable, he's apologized to them for being bound to negotiation-limiting aspects of the deal.

"Elon wants to pay more attention to this than any project, more than anything else — even if he has to give up Tesla," Johnson said Finlay told her during a visit on Tuesday, referring to the electric-car company of which Musk is CEO.

"In other words: We will get moved out of here no matter what, and he will use whatever money to remove us," Johnson said. "But not by paying us, except through an appraisal based on condemned homes."

SpaceX did not respond to any request for comment from Business Insider for this series. Tesla also did not respond to a request for comment.

Johnson continues to talk to Finlay, and she said his new idea to sway holdouts was the most interesting to her yet: Put a three-times-appraisal value toward SpaceX fully relocating residents to similar properties with brand-new yet similar homes built on them.

"He made another offer about buying some acreage from the county that's got the same waterfront view as here but is 5 miles inland and building houses equivalent to what I have now, including the square footage," Johnson said.

Johnson said that while she's seriously considering the option, she's leaning toward no.

Nothing is certain in a future where Johnson sticks to that decision, but she would not be alone.

'The houses will go to the county on Monday'

The previous owner of an A-frame house in South Texas now owned by the SpaceX subsidiary Dogleg Park LLC. It was once a model home of a planned community called Kopernik Shores. Dave Mosher/Business Insider

As early as 2015, SpaceX representatives told village residents in at least one private meeting that they could all stay — despite all living less than 2 miles from a planned launchpad.

To satisfy US Federal Aviation Administration safety protocols and county agreements, everyone would just have to temporarily evacuate their homes for up to 15 hours on launch days, which were originally supposed to occur once a month. SpaceX said it would put residents in a Brownsville hotel for free, according to some meeting attendees.

On September 28, 2019, about two weeks after SpaceX's buyout offers arrived, residents brought up the hotel-lodging plan with Musk himself during a rare private meeting. Walter Mitchell, who had owned a home in the village since 2005 with his wife, Patricia (the couple sold to SpaceX around early November), specifically asked the billionaire CEO about the idea.

"There are people here that want to keep their property," Mitchell said he told Musk. "I said, 'You guys said in that meeting that you would take us and put us in hotels.' I said, 'Can that work? And they can keep their property?'"

According to interviews with several meeting attendees, Musk said something to the effect of, "Well, if they don't mind frequent shuttles to a hotel frequently, we could probably do that."

But in recent months, SpaceX's actions have suggested that it's trying very hard to avoid this. Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, the head of the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Office, previously told Business Insider that permanently removing residents was not something the federal government had mandated and was instead part of SpaceX's "business case."

In the distant future, that business may be too busy to keep Boca Chica habitable, at least in the current regulatory environment. Musk has said he'd like to fly a Starship and land its Super Heavy rocket booster three times a day from a launch site. Even further into the future, SpaceX aims to replace transcontinental and overseas flights with super-rapid Starship "Earth to Earth" flights; such a scheme may ultimately see 1 million or more launches a year globally, Caryn Schenewerk, SpaceX's senior counsel, said at an FAA conference in January.

An FAA representative told Business Insider on Thursday that SpaceX's safety parameters were "still under evaluation" and that its launch-permit work for Starship prototypes and beyond "is in very preliminary stages."

Whatever the rationale for pushing to clear out Boca Chica Village, many current and former homeowners said that SpaceX and Jones Lang LaSalle had tried to intimidate them into selling and that eminent domain had been the most common tool.

"I have felt like, from the very beginning, that SpaceX has been holding a gun to my head," Johnson said.

Eminent domain is the ability of a government to condemn properties for a "compelling public use," though the US Supreme Court in 2005 — in the case led by the Institute for Justice — interpreted that definition to include private "economic development" projects. Texas, along with dozens of other states, had an allergic reaction to the ruling and spent more than a decade shoring up private-property rights.

Musk has said eminent domain would be a last resort to remove residents. When asked by homeowners, Finlay has said SpaceX has no authority to condemn properties. But in the same beat, he said or implied that SpaceX could ask Cameron County for help or the rocket company would leave — and that local officials would almost certainly act to keep it.

In November, Johnson reached an impasse with a JLL representative when she said she wanted to sell only her rental house, not her main home.

"She called back and said, 'It's both or nothing.' And I said, 'It's nothing then.' And she gave me some spiel about 'I'm going to talk to you like you're my mother or aunt,'" Johnson said. "Then she said, 'We'll close the books on you. The houses will go to the county on Monday.'"

The same JLL representative brought up the legal process in a voicemail, obtained by Business Insider, that was left with Harvey Bloomer, whose family has owned a Boca Chica home for decades, on November 19, a Tuesday.

"SpaceX is riding me because they want to have all the offers in by Tuesday. And they said that if they don't hear back from people, they will assume that they are no longer interested. This worries me because that three-times value will be off the table and you won't be able to get anything close to that offer should the county step in and proceed with eminent domain," the JLL representative said in the voicemail. "That's what is in the newspapers that they're going to do. So give me a call."

JLL declined to speak on the record with Business Insider about either incident and other aspects of this story.

Finlay has also summoned the specter of eminent domain with residents, including in emails sent to the Bloomers that Business Insider obtained.

"I am very concerned that you may be unaware of highly relevant facts related to properties within a designated Space Port in the State of Texas. I would really appreciate if we could connect so that I can explain further," Finlay wrote on February 4. "My goal is to provide full transparency of a difficult situation and to work hard to facilitate the very best outcome for you and your family based on your unique needs in a challenging situation."

JLL and SpaceX have not managed to persuade the Bloomers to sell, and they may never do so. Mary Bloomer said her husband spent parts of his childhood growing up in the beachside home and wouldn't give it up — not even for millions of dollars, or if SpaceX or JLL had handled negotiations differently — since he feels the home is irreplaceable.

"It's not about the money. It comes down to this property being worth more to us than probably any amount you could offer," the Bloomers told Finlay in response to one of his messages.

Mary Bloomer says she still doesn't understand why SpaceX chose Boca Chica instead of somewhere else without a neighborhood.

"Why did they have to do this with this little village of people? They should have thought of this when they first came in," she said.

"I personally don't have anything against him," she added of Musk. "I don't want to stop their progress. I just want to keep my house."

An uncertain future awaits the last town before Mars

A prototype of SpaceX's Starship rocket, MK1, at the company's South Texas launch facility in Boca Chica on September 28. Future versions of Starship are designed to be massive enough to take people to the moon, Mars, and beyond. Loren Elliott/Getty Images

The Bloomers said that a family next door, which Business Insider could not reach for comment, is on board with going to court over an eminent-domain process should the county come knocking and the Institute for Justice, or some other outfit, be willing to represent them for free.

As many as three other Boca Chica homeowners — Johnson included — might join them in challenging Musk's space company.

But the Bloomers are also aware that nothing in life is guaranteed, and that SpaceX may find some way to settle with other holdouts.

"We might be the last ones left, and then I don't know what chance we have," Mary Bloomer said.

If the county does try to condemn homes in Boca Chica through eminent domain, it's possible only those of the residents could be removed, leaving the houses purchased by SpaceX.

"As a general rule, condemnors can pick and choose what they condemn and what they don't. This presumes the right to take exists and there is no fraud or hanky-panky of course," Clay Beard, a partner at Dawson & Sodd, LLP, who's represented private landowners in eminent domain cases for decades in Texas, told Business Insider. "Leaving some and taking others may be evidence of fraud but, again, [it's] a long road in proving it."

Yet because of eminent domain's deep unpopularity in Texas (and in general), it seems unlikely that Cameron County would pursue it as the next option.

That's one major reason Maria and Ray Pointer decided to sell to SpaceX this year. They got somewhat close to the price they sought for their property, and they worried that county officials might make their lives next to impossible to enjoy in Boca Chica.

"The county is not going to lose SpaceX. They'll find another way," Maria Pointer told Business Insider. "They've got 1,000 things they can do. It's not worth it at my age to play that card."

Flaherty said lawyers at the Institute for Justice "strongly believe the negotiations between SpaceX and property owners should be private."

Business Insider requested an interview with County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., but his office said the judge was traveling for work and unavailable to speak until mid-February. We later requested an interview with the next-best official but did not immediately receive a response.

SpaceX, of course, does not have to stay in Texas, or even on land.

Though Musk recently explained why South Texas is ideal for launching Starship, renderings from years ago show Starship launching from an ocean platform. The Daily Breeze, a community newspaper in Torrance, California, also reported in January that SpaceX may revive a plan to manufacture Starships at the Port of Los Angeles, which would permit the company to ship them practically anywhere in the world.

What happens next is up to SpaceX and, largely, Elon Musk himself.

This story is part of a Business Insider series about SpaceX in South Texas called "Last Town Before Mars."

Do you have a story to share about the spaceflight industry? Send Dave Mosher an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or send him a Twitter direct message to @davemosher. You may also consider more secure communication options listed here.

WATCH: Why SpaceX is trying to buy out a small Texas village

Original author: Dave Mosher

Business Insider polled 44 executives across the financial services world to find an answer to a seemingly simply question: what is the definition of fintech?Fintech first entered the mainstream vernacular roughly a decade ago, but with every passing year the term gets harder and harder to define.We split the responses into three groups: traditional players, fintech investors, and fintechs themselves.The goal was to understand how different types of firms and people define a term that's applied widely but is nearly impossible to explain concisely. In 2019, VCs poured more than $24 billion into startups that put a tech spin on spaces ranging from asset management to lending to payments to insurance, according to a CB Insights tally of fintech investment.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

It's arguably one of the most commonly-used terms on Wall Street, yet no one can agree what it means. 

Fintech first entered the mainstream vernacular roughly a decade ago, but with every passing year the term gets harder and harder to define.

As Wall Street puts more research and focus towards technology, what can be categorized as a fintech continues to expand. And with tech players like Amazon and Uber making noise about getting into financial services, things have gotten even more confusing. 

Now, one can hardly read a story about Wall Street without at least a slight suggestion of the power, potential or problems tied to fintechs.

Business Insider set out to pin down what exactly a fintech is by asking the people that should know the answer best: the investors that fund them; the traditional players that partner and compete with them; and startups themselves. 

The responses were illuminating, as they provide perspective on how the most powerful players view up-and-coming technology.

And seeing these responses is crucial if you want to understand how incumbents are tackling the buy or build question, and for unpacking what's truly a disruptor and what's really just a fancy app. 

Some said that "fintech" isn't enough to capture what's really going on, and that there's a serious need for more precise terms. One pointed out that the first ATMs in the 1960s could be counted as the official birth of fintech. And several even argued that the term needs to be retired.

Click below to see responses from all three groups:

We asked 9 execs at Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and JPMorgan what 'fintech' means to them. Here's why they say fintechs are friends, not foes.

Wall Street players largely dismissed the notion of any competition or rivalry. There was a lot of talk about partnerships, and some said that incumbents have been the real drivers of fintech all along. 

14 big investors like Bain Capital Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Point72 weigh in on how the meaning of fintech is evolving — and no one can agree if the term should be expanded or retired

Long answer short — it's complicated. Some big investors see defined borders, others described more of a continuum, and a few try to avoid the term entirely.

Fintech has become a buzzy label that often doesn't really mean anything. We asked execs at 21 startups like Brex, Kabbage, and N26 what really counts.

The lines between big tech, startups out of Silicon Valley — or Alley — and the legacy players of Wall Street are blurring. Here's where startups think they fit in. 

 

Original author: Dan DeFrancesco and Shannen Balogh

Like many companies, Facebook's business has been affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak.Its supply chain for hardware has been disrupted, and it cancelled a conference it was hosting in San Francisco.Employees are being asked not to travel to China, where the virus originated.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Misinformation and rumours about the novel coronavirus outbreak are spreading on Facebook, prompting the social network to talk to the World Health Organization (WHO) about how to battle the fake news — but that's not the only way the virus has affected Facebook.

Like numerous companies, Facebook's core business has been impacted by the viral illness, which has sickened more than 64,000 people and killed nearly 1,500 over the past few months — from upsetting hardware supply chains to forcing it to cancel planned industry conference appearances.

Its effects on Facebook illustrate has the outbreak is disrupting global businesses, and how the issue might wreck further havoc if not contained in the months ahead.

Facebook's hardware supply chain has been affected

Like other tech companies, Facebook's supply chain for its virtual reality hardware is heavily reliant on Asian suppliers, which have been disrupted by the coronavirus. Oculus Quest, its latest VR headset, is facing shortages as a result.

"Oculus Quest has been selling out in some regions due to high demand. That said, like other companies we're expecting some additional impact to our hardware production due to the Coronavirus," a spokesperson said. "We're taking precautions to ensure the safety of our employees, manufacturing partners and customers, and are monitoring the situation closely. We are working to restore availability as soon as possible."

Facebook's Portal, a smart speaker and video-chat device, isn't currently affected by the outbreak.

Facebook employees are being advised against travel to China

Facebook is advising employees against traveling to China and requiring those who need to go to seek company approval in advance, Bloomberg previously reported.

Meanwhile, employees who have visited are being asked to work from home.

Facebook pulled out of a major tech conference

Facebook was one of numerous tech companies to pull out of Mobile World Summit, a major mobile industry event that was due to take place in Barcelona in late-February.

Facing widespread drop-outs, conference organisers GSMA made the unprecedented decision this week to cancel this year's event entirely.

It also cancelled its own San Francisco marketing conference

Facebook has cancelled a conference it had scheduled for mid-March.

The Global Marketing Summit, a 5,000-person San Francisco that was planned for March 9-12, will no longer go ahead, the company announced on Friday.

In a statement, spokesperson Anthony Harrison said: "Our priority is the health and safety of our teams, so out of an abundance of caution, we cancelled our Global Marketing Summit due to evolving public health risks related to coronavirus."

If the outbreak continues to spread over the next few months, it raises questions about the future of another, more significant Facebook event — F8. It's a developer conference that acts as Facebook's largest event of the year, and is scheduled for May.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact this reporter using a non-work device via encrypted messaging app Signal (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.

Read more:

Original author: Rob Price

 

Hello, readers!

Big mergers and acquisitions are team efforts. But at the very top, a battled-tested senior banker provides critical advice and connections that can determine a transaction's success or failure. Alex Morrell worked with financial data firm MergerLinks to publish our first-ever rainmakers list this week. You can see rankings for the top 20 M&A bankers for North American deals here. 

Casey Sullivan wrote about how private-equity firms, long reliant on human judgment to pick investments and figure out how to generate the best returns, are finally starting to add formalized data-crunching to the mix. Still, it will likely be some time until we see an industry-wide revolution — as one recruiter put it, "you can't go from zero to artificial intelligence." Here's how 6 firms like Blackstone and Cerberus are building data-science teams — and what's holding some back from going all in. 

Bradley Saacks and Dan DeFrancesco, our dynamic data duo, talked with 10 insiders to unpack a shakeup at Crux Informatics, which is backed by $41 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, Citi and Two Sigma. The New York-based startup aimed at helping digest and process data has undergone big changes in both its technology and executive leadership. 

Dan also chatted with Tradeweb cofounder and CEO Lee Olesky about what he sees as the next big opportunity for the electronic marketplace operator. The next stage isn't just about growing the various marketplaces it already runs, but helping to facilitate more interaction between them, Olesky said. He said he's always viewed Tradeweb as a type of search engine for customers to find the best price, counterparty, and way to perform a transaction.

Meanwhile, Bradley reported that a Citadel portfolio manager with a medical degree is going it alone and launching his own healthcare-focused hedge fund. Seems like a timely move — despite the huge outflows facing the broader hedge fund industry, healthcare funds have been a bright spot where investors are still hoping to put more money in. 

We also had a fresh WeWork scoop from Meghan Morris. WeWork's head of enterprise sales is out, and the abrupt departure means a role that's key to the coworking giant's turnaround plan is now vacant.

Keep reading for more deep dives: we talked with six former colleagues of WeWork's incoming CEO to learn more about his leadership style; delved into the murky world of litigation finance; asked a Goldman psychologist about the stickiness factor when it comes to fintechs; and chatted with Interactive Brokers insiders to understand the firm's strategy when it comes to being a first mover. 

Have a great weekend!

Meredith

If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here. Are there stories you'd like to see more of, or new areas you'd like to read about? My line is open — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

$35 billion fintech Stripe just inked a deal with hospitality PoS-maker Lightspeed — and it's a case study in navigating the tricky world of payments

Montreal-based point-of-sale software company Lightspeed announced a new partnership with the buzzy $35 billion startup Stripe last week.

But Lightspeed's Stripe partnership, which will power Lightspeed's online and in-store payments offering, isn't so cut-and-dry. Behind the scenes, payments are complicated with a multi-pronged network of players on the value chain. There are layers of processors, facilitators, and, ultimately, both online and in-store checkouts that the end consumers see. 

Payments related to the sale of CBD, gambling, or adult entertainment, for example, are restricted from the Stripe platform. Stripe explains that given their partnerships with financial institutions like Visa and Mastercard, it needs to work within the requirements of those companies.

READ MORE HERE>>

WeWork's new CEO Sandeep Mathrani has to pull off one of the most difficult turnarounds Silicon Valley has ever seen. Insiders explain what he's like, and why he's the guy to do it.

WeWork's incoming chief executive may be the antithesis of Adam Neumann, the coworking giant's cofounder and former CEO whose swirling charisma was at the center of the implosion of its planned initial public offering. 

Sandeep Mathrani, who spent years at a publicly traded mall company, doesn't like to drink with his colleagues after work or play ping pong in the office in the afternoon, former coworkers said. The engineer turned real-estate executive is more likely to be found interrogating colleagues about their data in presentations and has a knack for cutting operational costs.  

READ MORE HERE>>

Litigation finance has boomed into a $10 billion-plus business. Here's why a shadowy industry that dates back centuries is exploding.

They met at a conference in Santa Monica a decade ago, and over dinner Jonathan Molot and Christopher Bogart, both lawyers, hatched an idea to provide outside funding for lawsuits, a practice that had largely been forbidden for decades, even centuries, in some countries.

Funding lawsuits has its roots in the feudal era when the wealthy could financially back another person's legal action in return for a share of any winnings.  Champerty, as it is called, and similar ways of profiting from lawsuits were later outlawed in England.  Later, many US states had the same or a similar prohibition. 

But in recent years, such funding barriers have been weakened.

READ MORE HERE >>

A Goldman Sachs psychologist breaks down why customers stay loyal to old institutions over buzzy banking startups — and reveals the mental barriers fintechs need to tackle

The concept of "stickiness," or customers' tendency to stay with the brands to which they've long been tied, can pose a challenge to new players looking to gain market share in financial services.

We spoke with Patrick Perkins, a psychologist and managing director at Goldman Sachs who oversees executive coaching there, about the ways fintechs and incumbents can think about design and brand loyalty as new options crowd the space.

"The bar is very high for people to actually make significant changes in their financial choices, because they're more motivated to really stick with what they know," Perkins said. "They're more motivated to minimize that chance of a loss and retain their sense of power and control."

READ MORE HERE>>

Interactive Brokers has upended Wall Street time and again. Its cofounder explains how causing chaos is key to staying competitive in a cut-throat industry.

Interactive Brokers, the Greenwich, Connecticut-based brokerage, has led the way during several phases of the industry's fiercely competitive war over price and capabilities that's played out in recent months. 

Senior leaders from the firm, including chairman Thomas Peterffy, spoke with Business Insider recently about their strategy — and what comes next.

Their products have been replicated time after time in this cutthroat industry, they're quick to note, and they say they are concerned about tipping off competitors with much talk of future plans. 

"We are basically computer programmers. We are not experts of finance," Peterffy told us. "What we lack in expertise in finance we make up in our technology expertise."

READ MORE HERE>>

Fintech and proptech

Original author: Meredith Mazzilli

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand original TV shows on streaming services in the US.This week's list includes Netflix's "Stranger Things" and DC Universe's "Harley Quinn."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

DC Universe's adult-oriented animated series, "Harley Quinn," got a big boost in audience demand this week, likely due to the release of the movie "Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)."

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.

This week, Netflix's "The Witcher" fell behind "Stranger Things." Expect the latter to gain an even bigger boost in the week ahead thanks to the release of the first teaser for season four on Friday.

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

Original author: Travis Clark

The Army has been ramping up its recruiting effort, seeking more soldiers from a mix of backgrounds and with differing skill sets.The service has developed a variety of outreach methods to get those recruits.One of its most innovative may be the Army Esports Team, which draws on the Army's own gamers to attract young Americans.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After whiffing on its recruiting goal in 2018, the Army has been trying new approaches to bring in the soldiers it needs to reach its goal of 500,000 in active-duty service by the end of the 2020s.

The 6,500-soldier shortfall the service reported in September 2018 was its first recruiting miss since 2005 and came despite it putting $200 million into bonuses and issuing extra waivers for health issues or bad conduct.

Within a few months of that disappointment, the Army announced it was seeking soldiers for an esports team that would, it said, "build awareness of skills that can be used as professional soldiers and use [its] gaming knowledge to be more relatable to youth."

By January 2019, more than 6,500 soldiers had applied for a team that was expected to have about 30 members. In September 2019, the Army credited the esports team, one of two new outreach teams set up that year, as having "initiated some of the highest lead-generating events in the history of the all-volunteer force."

Staff Sgt. Michael Showes, far right, with fellow Army Esports Team members and a game enthusiast at an exhibition in San Antonio, January 19, 2019. US Army/Terrance Bell

"It's essentially connecting America to its Army through the passion of the gaming community," Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Jones, noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the team, said in January 2019.

Team members who were competing would train for up to six hours a day, Jones said at the time, and they received instruction on Army enlistment programs so they could answer questions from potential recruits.

"They will have the ability to start a dialogue about what it is like to serve in our Army and see if those contacts are interested in joining," Gen. Frank Muth, head of Army Recruiting Command, said in early 2019.

Thousands of soldiers play esports, Muth said, and the audience for it has grown into the hundreds of millions — West Point even recognized its own official esports club in January — but the appeal wasn't obvious at first to Army leaders, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Friday.

"This was one [idea] that when the first time Gen. Frank Muth briefed ... Army senior leadership, we're like, 'What are you talking about, Frank?'" McCarthy told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

"We're about 18 months into it," McCarthy said, and with that team, Army recruiters were "getting their finger on the pulse with 17- to 24-year-old Americans. What are they into? How do they communicate? And [finding] those right venues and shaping our messaging to talk about here's the 150 different things you can do in the Army and the access to education and the kinds of people that you can meet and being a part of something as special as this institution."

The Army Esports Team trailer at ArmyCon 2019, October 12, 2019. Army Esports Team/Facebook

In 2019, the Army rolled out an esports trailer with four gaming stations inside, as well as a semi-trailer with eight seats that could be adjusted so all eight players played the same game or their own on a gaming PC, an Xbox 1S, a PS4 Pro, and a Nintendo Switch, Jones, the NCO-in-charge, told Task & Purpose in October. 

One of the senior leaders dispatched to an esports event was Gen. Mark Milley, who was Army chief of staff at the time and is now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the president's top uniformed military adviser.

"He said, 'You're going to make me do what?'" McCarthy said Friday. "Then when he went, he learned a lot, and he got to engage with young men and women, and what we found is we're getting millions of leads of 17- to 24-year-olds to feed into Army Recruiting Command to engage young men and women to see if they'd be interested in a life of service."

The esports team is part of a change in recruiting strategy, McCarthy said, that has focused on 22 cities in traditional recruiting grounds in the South and Midwest but also on the West Coast and the Northeast with the goal of informing potential recruits about what life in the Army is actually like as well as about the benefits of serving, such as money for college or soft skills that appeal to employers.

The service has also shifted almost all its advertising spending to digital and put more uniformed personnel into the Army Marketing Research Group to take more control of its messaging.

McCarthy on Friday called it "a comprehensive approach" to "improve our performance in a variety of demographics, whether that's male-to-female ratios or ethnicities." That geographic focus yielded "a double-digit lift" among women and minorities, McCarthy said last year.

Army Gen. Frank Muth, back row, third from right, with members of the Army Esports Team in front of USAE gaming truck, in Washington, DC, October 14, 2019. US Army Esports Team/Facebook

The outreach hasn't been universally welcomed.

After the 2018 recruiting shortfall, service chiefs, including then-Army Secretary Mark Esper, said schools were not letting uniformed service members in to recruit. Anti-war activists attempted to disprove that claim by offering $2,000 to schools that admitted to barring recruiters.

Suggestions the Army start recruiting children in their early teens also received criticism for both its impracticality and the harm it could do to the military as an institution.

But recruiting has improved year-over-year, hitting the goal set last year and being ahead of pace now, McCarthy said.

"This has been a major turnaround, because I think we just got a little lazy and we started losing touch with young men and women ... but you have to sustain this," McCarthy added. "We're in a war for talent in this country — 3.5% unemployment, they have a lot of opportunities."

"We travel to a lot of American cities, and we meet with mayors and superintendents of schools and other civic leaders to try to educate those influencers, to try to help us in recruiting, and it's yielded tremendous benefit."

Original author: Christopher Woody

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has canceled a planned trip to meet with President Donald Trump next month after a furious row between the two men.Johnson had been due to visit Washington shortly after his election victory in December.The visit has been repeatedly delayed, however, amid a series of disagreements between the two leaders.Trump slammed the phone down on Johnson last month after the prime minister defied him on the issue of Huawei's involvement in the UK.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has canceled a trip to the US planned for next month after a furious phone call from President Donald Trump in which Trump slammed down the phone on the prime minister.

Johnson had been due to visit Washington last month but repeatedly delayed the trip after a series of rows with the president over Iran, Huawei, and a rejected request by the prime minister to extradite the wife of a US diplomat.

The disagreements culminated in a phone call last month in which Trump hung up on Johnson, according to officials with knowledge of the conversation.

Johnson has now canceled his trip altogether, and is not planning on visiting the country until the G7 summit in June.

A Downing Street source confirmed that the trip had been cancelled due to fears of further clashes with the president.

However, Downing Street insisted on Thursday that Johnson would concentrate instead on his domestic agenda over the coming months.

"When the Eye of Sauron is off the Whitehall machine, things stop working," one source told The Sun newspaper.

"That is why he has stripped down all his foreign travel this year to get his agenda done."

Reuters The prime minister had been one of Trump's few close international allies, with the president labeling Johnson "fantastic," a "good man," and "Britain Trump."

Relations broke down in recent weeks, however, following a series of high-profile threats from Trump and a series of pointed interventions against Trump by Johnson and senior members of his government.

The call last month, which one source described to the Financial Times as "very difficult," came after Johnson defied Trump and allowed the Chinese telecom company Huawei the rights to develop the UK's 5G network.

Johnson backed Huawei despite multiple threats by Trump and his allies that the US would withdraw security cooperation with the UK if the deal went ahead. The US fears that Huawei's technology could have backdoors for the Chinese government.

Trump's threats reportedly "irritated" the UK government, with Johnson frustrated at the president's failure to suggest any alternatives.

Following the call, US Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump administration had made its disappointment with the UK "very clear to them."

Original author: Adam Bienkov