Category: Business Planning

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We expect our emails and texts to send instantly. Why not our money?

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Recent events such as the Robinhood-GameStop controversy and financial hardships brought on by the pandemic have cast light on a pressing underlying issue: The U.S. financial infrastructure is too slow. The snail’s pace of the system is denying consumers and businesses access to their money when they need it, with crucial tasks such as collecting a salary payment or transferring money to family members taking far too long. In a confirmation hearing earlier in March, Rohit Chopra, the newly appointed director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, advocated for a “real time system” as a tool to achieve equal access. So, what’s holding us back? Of the many policy debates that arose in February when Robinhood became a household name due to the GameStop controversy, CEO Vlad Tenev cited the two-day trade settlement policy as a key reason for the slowdown of trading. While multiday settlement might be a burden for investors, the slow speed of the U.S. payments infrastructure also negatively impacts millions of consumers and businesses every day. Though payment technology companies are leading critical innovations, they continue to be bogged down by the archaic system in place. Read More …

Meet the CRISPR pioneers who are making gene editing easy

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Henry Ford is  still best known for his 1908 Model T, an inexpensive automobile that almost anyone could own. But his real innovation was integrating the conveyor belt into assembly line production. The inspiration came from the meat packing industry. There, factory workers bled, skinned, and sliced ugly carcasses into smooth chops and filets. Ford adapted the process for cars Read More …

How a former Apple executive is streaming international chefs into your kitchen

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It might seem odd that a company that offers virtual cooking classes with chefs from around the world who whip up exotic, local dishes has its roots in Buffalo wings, but that’s where the story began for Jenn Nicken , the founder of The Chef & The Dish .   Nicken, after all, hails from Buffalo, New York, where she says “wings” are the equivalent of pizza on Mulberry Street or poutine in Toronto. “They’re a part of your life,” she says. “You go for wings and beer. They’re at birthday parties.”   This wasn’t something Nicken was acutely aware of when she was working at Apple back in the iPod days. She helped launch that product across North America and then moved on to become the head of marketing for Apple/iTunes’s entertainment division in Canada, where she’s now based. But when she decided to shake up her career in 2015, enrolling in cooking classes and traveling around the world to learn more about international cuisine, she began to see her hometown—and its native dish—in a new light.   The Chef & The Dish founder and CEO, Jenn Nicken [Photo: The Chef & The Dish] During her travels, she would try wings in different places, but something was off. “The further I got from Buffalo, the more I realized wings weren’t the same. It’s a dish that’s so simple but when you get it in the place it originated from, that’s what makes it so wonderful. Recipes that you get at the source deserve to be protected and celebrated. Just like Bolognese sauce is best in Bologna.”   This revelation—along with the joy of learning to cook Bolognese sauce in Italy as well as Pad Thai in Thailand—led her to quit her job at Apple and launch The Chef & The Dish in 2016. The company offers live, online private cooking classes—$299 for a couple; group classes are also available—with chefs based in such locales as Peru, Laos, Turkey and Italy Read More …

How tech companies can work with HBCUs to meaningfully improve equity

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Over the past few years, we’ve seen various efforts to address racial disparity in terms of opportunity, access, and financial support for Black entrepreneurs and technologists. This includes everything from big tech company reports that document progress in diversifying their workforce to the onboarding of high-profile diversity and inclusion officers to address and improve the lack of D&I internally. But progress has still been glacially slow. That’s why corporations need to adopt a “yes, and” approach when it comes to improving diversity in the technology industry. This way of thinking comes from the world of improv, where all actions are supposed to be built upon. Instead of adopting “yes, and,” corporations all too often follow the lead of their competitors or simply dust off last year’s playbook, choosing comfort over innovation—yes, we need a more diverse workforce, so let’s do more of the same. The technology industry’s engagement with historically Black colleges and universities as a vehicle to recruit talent is one area where a “yes, and” approach would pay significant dividends. Although companies like Google, Apple, and others from the Fortune 1000 have committed more than $66 billion to racial equality initiatives since the killing of George Floyd by police, this funding alone will not solve the issue of bias toward and ultimately lack of access for HBCU students when it comes to getting into the tech industry. Are HBCUs a great source for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates? Absolutely. Read More …

Netflix is asking some users to prove they’re not sharing passwords

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Don’t call it a crackdown just yet, but Netflix is testing a new way to keep password sharing under control. In a screenshot shared on Twitter this week, Netflix appeared to seek extra verification before letting users into the app, offering to send a one-time passcode to the account holder via email or text message. The prompt also showed an option to “verify later.” O no. Netflix doing the purge?!? pic.twitter.com/XXlHtfgfsy — chante most (@DOP3Sweet) March 9, 2021 “If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching,” the message said, while offering a 30-day trial. Netflix confirmed the test’s authenticity to streaming news site The Streamable but offered few additional details. “This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so,” a spokesperson said. Is a crackdown coming? Netflix’s overall posture toward password sharing has stiffened in recent years as subscriber growth has slowed down. Although Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings once referred to password sharing as “something you have to learn to live with,” chief product officer Greg Peters said in 2019 that the company was looking at “consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges” of password sharing as it monitored the situation. But in lieu of more information, it’s hard to say how drastic a measure this might be. Netflix has not answered additional questions about what type of usage would trigger the test or what happens if users ignore the verification prompts. (We’ll update this story if we hear back.) Media companies in general have been extremely wary about cracking down on password sharing in a draconian way Read More …