The simple reason tech CEOs have so much power

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Coinbase’s plan to go public in April highlights a troubling trend among tech companies: Its founding team will maintain voting control, making it mostly immune to the wishes of outside investors. The best-known U.S. cryptocurrency exchange is doing this by creating two classes of shares . One class will be available to the public. The other is reserved for the founders, insiders and early investors, and will wield 20 times the voting power of regular shares. That will ensure that after all is said and done, the insiders will control 53.5% of the votes . Coinbase will join dozens of other publicly traded tech companies —many with household names such as Google, Facebook, Doordash, Airbnb, and Slack—that have issued two types of shares in an effort to retain control for founders and insiders. The reason this is becoming increasingly popular has a lot to do with Ayn Rand , one of Silicon Valley’s favorite authors , and the “myth of the founder” her writings have helped inspire Read More …

The Air Force is using this mental health service to help with stress

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The pandemic has been stressful for everyone, and that includes members of the military. In the past two years, suicide rates among active military service members have gone up 15%. The military has long offered resilience training and access to therapy, but in 2020, the Air Force decided to take a different course of action. It began offering an innovative mental health platform called NeuroFlow to make care more accessible and to track how members were doing, so it could intervene if it seemed someone was a risk to themselves. “It is known throughout the mental health community that the Department of Defense is experiencing a spike in suicides at an alarming rate,” says Durel Williams, a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Mobility Command, where he’s responsible for 2,800 security forces members. Of those, 600 have signed up for NeuroFlow, which tracks fitness, sleep, well-being, loneliness, depression, alcohol use, and anxiety. It also offers tools for emotional regulation, like guided meditation, journaling, and video and written resources. All of this data becomes part of a user’s electronic health record. Artificial intelligence will then alert clinical staff about people who seem at risk. So far, 12 people have been flagged as at-risk, and in one instance a person was stopped from harming themselves. [Photo: courtesy of NeuroFlow] Military members can sign up for the app anonymously. Their data is also shared only with healthcare providers, not management. If they are flagged for any reason, a care coordinator gives them a call to check in on them and see if they need more help. Before this pilot with NeuroFlow, the military offered mental health care through traditional talk therapy and resilience training. Williams has been working as a resiliency trainer for the last 10 years, giving people tools to help them rebound from a difficult situation. However, accessing care is complicated. In order to see a therapist, service members are removed from duty, which is extremely stigmatizing. However, Williams says, it is a necessary step. “Their duty is to secure and protect, and they are on an arming roster where every day they’re expected to be able to pick up their weapon and go to work. Read More …

Hulu’s WeWork doc tries to recapture the energy of the 2019 saga

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In fall 2019, the story of WeWork’s Icarian plummet —from the startup destined to change the way we work and live to the laughing stock of Wall Street—played out with all the drama you’d expect when at its center are a messianic CEO and a Japanese billionaire enabling his reckless whims. As you may recall, former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann had a vision of creating a culture of communal workspaces that was turbocharged by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son investing more than $10 billion in WeWork with a mandate to Neumann to think bigger. WeWork soared to a $47 billion valuation and was on the precipice of going public until its prospectus raised a sea of red flags —from the company reporting $900 million in losses and $47 billion in lease obligations to Neumann’s wife, Rebekah, being granted the power to name his successor should anything happen to him. It was a tale of staggering hubris, lavish excess, and toxic leadership that became catnip for a storm of media coverage. Indeed, in today’s insatiable market for content for video streaming and on-demand audio, the WeWork saga inspired a flurry of deals to turn this story into tragedy, farce, or a bit of both. Last year there was Wondery’s deep-dive podcast miniseries WeCrashed , and New York Magazine contributor Reeves Wiedeman published the book Billion Dollar Loser. Yet to come is the book The Cult of We from Wall Street Journal reporters Maureen Farrell and Eliot Brown, which is being adapted into a limited series with Succession breakout star Nicholas Braun. Another forthcoming book, about SoftBank, from Fast Company contributor Katrina Booker, was fast-tracked for a TV series from Blumhouse. An Apple TV Plus limited series starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway as the Neumanns has also been announced Read More …

Want to make healthcare cheaper? Bring the hospital to you

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At first blush, the idea of moving most healthcare from hospitals and medical offices to people’s living rooms seems impossible. Of course, once upon a time, so did getting your groceries without leaving your couch. Or voting. Or attending college. Or talking to your doctor. Or virtually any of the activities in our daily lives that used to require going somewhere and doing something. There’s not many silver linings to COVID-19, but the emergence and acceptance of virtual healthcare is certainly one of them. Patients and doctors are now far more comfortable interacting over video or text, discussing intimate healthcare issues, prescribing treatment and conducting the follow up, all without anyone having to go anywhere. No one with a fever prefers climbing into a car or squeezing onto a crowded subway to sit in a germ-infested waiting room only to eventually have a doctor ask the same standardized questions that could have fit into a text Read More …

Hankering to meet new people? Try one of these virtual networking apps

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During the coronavirus pandemic, design executive Trip O’Dell says he’s connected with dozens of new people. It’s not that he’s been dodging the need to quarantine. Instead, O’Dell has been connecting through video chats arranged by a startup called Lunchclub that pairs people with common interests for serendipitous conversations. “There’s an element of meeting that really interesting person on a cross-country flight that you just end up talking the whole time,” he says. Through the service, he’s connected with venture capitalists, making connections for a startup he advises, and even lined up a speaking engagement after discussing his own experiences with dyslexia and his work in accessible design. Lunchclub and apps like it have come to fill a void during a time when business conferences, local meetups, and social outings of all kinds have gone to Zoom—or just gone away. These digital tools connect users via shared interests and a dose of randomness by putting two strangers on a video call where hopefully they hit it off. Some, like Lunchclub, focus more on connecting for business purposes, while other services connect people to discuss hobbies and other shared interests. These services have effectively stepped in to fill a pandemic-era void, in which the types of serendipitous encounters that drive people to move to big cities and attend conferences and conventions have been strictly limited for virus safety reasons. Lunchclub , which uses machine learning to match members with others who share their interests, didn’t originate during the coronavirus era. It got its start about three years ago primarily connecting people for actual in-person lunches and meetings. Cofounder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski says that the platform’s creators had realized that traditional social networks don’t really facilitate new connections—rather, they’re built around existing ones. About a year ago, with the spread of the virus, the company successfully switched from in-person meetings to video calls. “Last year, we grew across the board very significantly,” Novakovski says, explaining that the professionally focused network saw a rise in new members who work in entertainment, biotech, and other industries. Novakovski says users range from young students to senior executives; members are asked to specify their interests and a bit about what they do when they sign up. Members also list goals like “explore new projects” or “brainstorm with peers,” and connect sites like LinkedIn and Twitter to provide data for better matchmaking. “Everyone has long-term goals, and we understand what those are and ask about them on registration,” he says. “At the end of the day, people understand the way they’re going to achieve them is through building their network with relevant people who have mutual interests and mutual values around the same place in their career.” The platform is currently free, but Novakovski says he envisions that in the future Lunchclub could license its technology to anyone looking to connect like-minded people, whether that means wedding planners or conference organizers Read More …