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ENGINEERED TO A HIGHER STANDARD —THE HUMAN STANDARD

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● World-dominating companies 32 ● Earn interest on your Bitcoin? 27 ● AT&T + Discovery = Drama! 17 It’s a special edition! More on page 5

May 24, 2021

THE HOW-TO ISSUE Retire early 70 Build a business online 46

Invest on Robinhood 67

Start a tequila company 71

Vaccinate people 44

Run a soccer team 61

Listen to financial advice 54

Be a good manager 81

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Business By 2024, it’s estimated there will be 4.2 million job openings in the Salesforce ecosystem.1 We collaborated with Salesforce to create Pathﬁnder, a workforce-development program that helps individuals from underrepresented groups in technology to train for and ﬁnd Salesforce-related career opportunities at Deloitte and across the Salesforce ecosystem.

Family Amid COVID-19, Good Grief’s work—helping kids, families and communities through adversity—is both vital and challenging. Deloitte has teamed up with Good Grief to create virtual experiences for its team and driven volunteering eﬀorts to support Good Grief’s strategies, events, facilitators and families.

Society Despite eﬀorts to gain parity in tech, women currently hold just 29% of STEM jobs in the United States.2 To spark girls’ passion for STEM, Deloitte collaborated with The Ella Project to create the inventive Ella the Engineer comic book series and expanded into virtual programs for at-home learning during the pandemic.

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with stakeholders to make decisions and take actions on exceptions in the transit of products. RyderShare™ allows companies to achieve cost savings by reducing redundancies, driving efficiencies, and creating a more predictive supply chain. As a technology platform, RyderShare™ gives organizations access to data that they’ve never had access to. It also provides a robust solution that distills large volumes of data—both internal and external—into actionable items that supply chain managers can use for good decision-making. It connects all parties – suppliers, manufacturers, carriers, and end users – across the supply chain to enhance communication, provide visibility, and enable collaboration. Furthermore, it gives stakeholders the ability to work from the same playbook in real-time. With data science as a core operational strategy, RyderShare™ mines data and transforms it into insights that companies wouldn’t be able to access individually. With robust notiﬁcation capabilities, RyderShare™ helps companies quickly identify and then notify customers/ shippers about potential problems with their shipments. This leads to tangible improvements in customer service and customer satisfaction. Other key results that companies experience when using RyderShare™ include cost savings, a 50% efficiency gain in customer service departments (made possible by fewer calls from customers who are looking for their orders), 35% efficiency improvements in labor management at the freight receiving site (thanks to more precise arrival information), and overall lifts in customer satisfaction. With the RyderShare™ platform in place, companies will be well positioned to leverage new opportunities and provide a differentiated value to customers, while also continually improving their logistics and transportation networks.

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May 24, 2021

HOW TO

Sway a negotiation 44

Persuade someone to get a vaccine 44 Sing postpandemic karaoke 45 Make pennies on Spotify 45

Why is our logo different for this issue? To complement our first-ever weeklong event, The Bloomberg Businessweek! For highlights from the program, please visit bloomberg.com/ 2021howto.

Build a business online 46 Meet deadlines 48 Sell a luxury condo 48 Think about a Covid memorial 49 Pitch a VC 50 Tip your bartender 50 Erect a bike shed 51 Give an economics forecast 52 Fall in love 52 Land on Mars 53 Buy happiness 54 Get financial advice 54 Break up with plastic bottles 55 Extend a movie franchise 56 Stay cool 58 Sketch a courtroom 58 Be a champion gamer 59 Become a restaurant regular 60 Go everywhere on two wheels 60 Start a soccer team 61 Upgrade your condiments 62 Make smarter bets 62 Get wealthy Americans to pay taxes 63 Craft your own quant strategy 63 Develop a cult following 64 Make the perfect cheeseburger 64 Hire Jony Ive 65 Open a family office 66 Use Robinhood, but sanely 67 Run a loyalty program 67 Contemplate socializing again … 68 … or not 69 Live the FIRE life 70 Beat Silicon Valley 71 Market a new tequila 71 Come up with a couch everyone wants to flop on 72 Keep a restaurant alive 73 Live with your family in a van 74 Negotiate cheaper rent 76 Organize your workplace 77 Blow the whistle 77 Own a classic car 78 Negotiate with China 79 Make an airline green 79 Put together your personal board of directors 80 Persuade people to take a chance on you 80 Inspire your employees 80 Brainstorm 81 Think about your next act 81

GETTY IMAGES (5)

Open doors for different kinds of people (keeping in mind that you may be the one who’s different) 81 Mature as an investor 82 Rethink your portfolio 82 Perfectly sauce a chicken parm 83 Meditate 84

CONTENTS

IN BRIEF OPINION AGENDA REMARKS

1 2

BUSINESS

TECHNOLOGY

Bloomberg Businessweek

9 10 10

Commodities keep climbing ○ Bitcoin’s on a wild ride It’s past time to scrap the protectionist Jones Act A post-Brexit EU meeting ○ Jacob Zuma goes to trial

China’s Belt and Road—and now Jab—diplomacy

15 17

Companies scramble to keep shelves stocked AT&T and Discovery team up to challenge Netﬂix

The woman taking EA and gaming into the future

May 24, 2021

COVER TRAIL How the cover gets made ① “This week there’s this virtual event, so I was thinking, what if the audience voted on the cover?!” “You’re scaring me.” “Nonsense. You art folks always have so many good ideas—let the world sample more of your genius.” “Look, I love our readers. But democracy is the enemy of art.” “Is that John Lennon?” “Not even close.… Fine. But let’s make it an art vs. edit showdown. That means edit has to make a cover for once.” “Fantastic! How hard could it be?” ② “OK, edit’s ﬁrst cover. What do you think?”

“Where’s yours?” “I thought the audience was deciding.” “Wow. OK. Playing it close to the vest. Let’s see what they think.” [Votes come in]

3 4 5

Vaccine disinformation goes global on social media

FINANCE

27 29

The rising, risky world of Bitcoin shadow banking For-proﬁt college gets a private equity curriculum

ECONOMICS

32 35

Sizing up the globe’s 50 most valuable companies The high cost of “Covid Zero” containment strategies

POLITICS

36 38 39

The Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade Under Biden, workers’ rights are a thing again Do we really have to go back to the doctor’s office?

How to Contact Bloomberg Businessweek EDITORIAL 212 617-8120 ○ AD SALES 212 617-2900, 731 Lexington Ave. New York, NY 10022 ○ EMAIL bwreader@bloomberg.net ○ FAX 212 617-9065 ○ SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMER SERVICE URL businessweekmag.com/service ○ REPRINTS/PERMISSIONS 800 290-5460 x100 or email businessweekreprints@theygsgroup.com ○ Letters to the Editor can be sent by email, fax, or regular mail. They should include the sender’s address, phone number(s), and email address if available. Connections with the subject of the letter should be disclosed. We reserve the right to edit for sense, style, and space ○ Follow us on social media FACEBOOK facebook.com/ bloombergbusinessweek/ TWITTER @BW INSTAGRAM @businessweek

“Here’s a shocker: Not even one vote for edit. Way to go, art.” “Let’s do this every week!”

Cover: Photograph by Beth Sacca for Bloomberg Businessweek; stylist: Aliesha Hatalovsky; hair: Sean Bennett; makeup: Stephanie Zhang

TECHNOLOGY: PHOTOGRAPH BY JESSICA CHOU FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK. COVER TRAIL: ILLUSTRATION BY OSCAR BOLTON GREEN

“It’s OK, I guess.”

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It’s time for a change. It’s time to trade up to Schwab. Learn more at Schwab.com/Trading From Investor’s Business Daily, January 27, 2020. © 2020 Investor’s Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. Schwab Order Execution Advantage™: Schwab regularly and rigorously monitors execution quality among competing market venues and looks for opportunities to adjust order routing based on performance trends, technological advances, and other competitive developments. Price improvement and savings per order based on performance for market orders in S&P 500 stocks with order size between 500 – 1,999 shares as of Q4 2020. Price improvement is not guaranteed. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you are not completely satisfied for any reason, at your request Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (“Schwab”) or Charles Schwab Bank, SSB (“Schwab Bank”), as applicable, will refund any eligible fee related to your concern. Refund requests must be received within 90 days of the date the fee was charged. Schwab reserves the right to change or terminate the guarantee at any time. Go to schwab.com/satisfaction to learn what’s included and how it works. © 2021 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Member SIPC. (0920-0A3P) ADP112284-00

Bloomberg Businessweek

IN BRIEF

○ AT&T will spin off its media operations and merge them with Discovery’s assets to form a new company. The combined entity, which the deal values at about

○ Global coronavirus cases passed 164 million, and deaths topped

3.4m

Meanwhile, more than 1.5 billion vaccine doses have been given. The virus has ﬂared up again in parts of Asia: A new outbreak has forced Singapore to return to lockdown-like conditions.

○ Fidelity plans to offer teenagers a special brokerage account.

$130b ○ Fighting between Israel and Hamas has now killed at least 224 Palestinians and 12 Israelis. On May 19, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed President Joe Biden’s demand that he wind down the conﬂict, saying airstrikes on Gaza (above) would continue.

could offer some serious competition to streaming giants Amazon, Disney+, and Netflix. 17

By Benedikt Kammel

○ Donald Trump faces another criminal investigation.

On May 18, New York Attorney General Letitia James said her civil investigation of the Trump Organization has morphed into a criminal probe, making her the second state official who might bring charges against the former president.

○ Commodity prices are on a tear as economies emerge from the depths of the pandemic.

Copper surged to a high this month, surpassing

$10k a ton For the ﬁrst time in two months, crude oil jumped above

GAZA: MAHMOUD KHATTAB/QUDS NET NEWS/ZUMA PRESS. CEUTA: MOHAMED SIALI/EFE/ZUMA PRESS. MATA’AFA: COURTESY FAST

$70 per bbl The fund manager will provide investing and savings accounts and debit cards to 13- to 17-year-olds whose parents are clients. There are no account fees or commissions.

Iron ore has also hit a high, reaching more than

$200 a ton

○ “You never know how low is low when a market gets very emotional.” Ark Investment Management founder Cathie Wood, talking about Bitcoin at The Bloomberg Businessweek, a weeklong virtual gathering, on May 19. Bitcoin dropped as much as 31% on May 19, then rallied 33%, ending the day near $40,000. Wood expects the cryptocurrency, which peaked at $63,000 in April, to reach $500,000.

○ Looser patrols have made the city of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the coast of Morocco, a magnet for Africans trying to reach the EU. On May 18 more than 5,000 people—a record—swam around border fences or walked the distance at low tide.

○ Fiame Naomi Mata’afa is set to become Samoa’s ﬁrst female prime minister after the Paciﬁc island’s supreme court broke a political deadlock following April’s contested election. She succeeds Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who held the post for 22 years.

○ The EU’s member states agreed on May 19 to allow quarantine-free travel this summer for vaccinated visitors from countries deemed safe.

◼ BLOOMBERG OPINION

Another domestic energy crisis, another waiver of the U.S.’s Jones Act. In response to the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which delivers about 45% of the fuel for the Eastern Seaboard, President Joe Biden’s administration said it would allow two exemptions from the 101-year-old act, which restricts waterborne commerce between U.S. ports to ships that are built, crewed, and owned by Americans. Citgo Petroleum Corp. and Valero Energy Corp. now have permission to use foreign vessels to transport oil products between the Gulf Coast and the East Coast. Hurricanes forced previous presidents to suspend the law to ensure deliveries of food, fuel, and other goods. This time, Biden should face reality and bury the act under the waves. As with most protectionist measures, the Jones Act harms the very people it purports to help. Because oceangoing Jones Act-compliant ships are more expensive, and there aren’t that many of them, the law leads to higher prices for goods, more congested roadways and pipelines, and additional pollution from greater reliance on carbon-intensive transportation. Its market-bending distortions could scarcely be exaggerated. As a direct result of the law, refineries on both coasts can find it cheaper to import foreign oil than to use domestic sources. Refineries on the Gulf Coast choose to send their products to Latin America instead of the East Coast. The U.S. is a natural gas powerhouse, but it has no Jones Act-compliant liquefied natural gas carriers, which would cost two to three times as much as equivalent ships from South Korea. So Puerto Rico and Hawaii source their LNG from overseas, Northeast ports look to Trinidad and Tobago, and U.S. natural gas goes abroad. The act is even undermining the Biden administration’s vaunted green energy plans. Offshore wind projects need Jones Act-compliant turbine-installation vessels. Right now, the U.S. has one—under construction, that is, and due to launch in 2023 at a cost of $500 million. Hitting the administration’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy production by 2030 will require more vessels, which the law will only make more expensive. It would be one thing if the Jones Act met its stated goal of sustaining a robust merchant fleet. But the number of Jones Act-eligible U.S. vessels in 2019 was 99, vs. 193 in 2000. From 1960 to 2014, even as U.S. output more than quadrupled, the tonnage of domestic contiguous coastal shipping dropped by 44%. The U.S.’s few remaining commercial shipyards are expensive and superannuated: Indeed, some companies that shamelessly defend their Jones Act monopolies send their

ships to China for repairs, which is cheaper even with the 50% tariff they pay the U.S. government for the privilege. The Jones Act survives because it supports the narrow interests of a handful of shipping companies and maritime unions, which pump out a reliable stream of campaign cash to the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus. Never mind the costs to all Americans—especially those in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico who depend heavily on maritime commerce. There are better ways to build up coastal commerce and the maritime industry, from investing in neglected port infrastructure and public shipyards to changing the tax treatment of U.S.-flagged ships. Yet the Biden administration seems committed to preserving the Jones Act, whatever the consequences. Here’s a question for the White House to ponder: If this law is so successful and so vital, why does it so often need to be waived in cases of emergency? <BW> For more commentary, go to bloomberg.com/opinion

◼ AGENDA

▶ Let’s Meet Again EU leaders convene in person in Brussels on May 24-25. Among the topics on their agenda: Reducing carbon emissions at least 55% by 2030 from 1990’s levels and navigating the tense post-Brexit relationship with the U.K. ▶ The Bank of New Zealand announces its interest rate decision on May 26. The bank has signaled it’s in no rush to halt monetary stimulus as the economic outlook remains uncertain.

▶ Ford will brief investors and analysts on May 26. The automaker is expected to provide updates on its EV strategy as part of the Ford+ plan.

▶ At its 74th assembly, being held virtually from May 24 to June 1, the WHO will discuss ways out of the yearlong pandemic and how to prevent the next one.

▶ South Africa’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is set to face trial starting May 26 for corruption and money laundering. He intends to enter a plea of not guilty.

▶ Finance ministers and central bank governors from the G-7 will gather virtually on May 28 to prepare for their in-person summit a few weeks later, which the U.K. will host in Cornwall.

▶ The CEOs of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo will testify before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on May 26.

ILLUSTRATION BY EMMA ERICKSON

Don’t Just Waive the Protectionist Jones Act. Scrap It for Good

May 24, 2021

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● Sudan

12 ● Laos

● Nepal

● Syria

China’s

Vaccine Diplomacy

● China, now that one of its Covid-19 shots was cleared by the WHO, has a new soft-power lever ● By Iain Marlow and James Paton

● Equatorial Guinea

● Cambodia

● Comoros

● Dominica

GETTY IMAGES (7). REDUX (1)

◼ REMARKS

Bloomberg Businessweek

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a devastating public-health catastrophe the world over. For China, it’s also provided an unprecedented geopolitical opportunity. After it got the outbreak under control, and with world leaders distracted by their own countries’ health struggles, it was able to use the chaos of the pandemic to step up political crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Other nations cried foul, but China persisted. Perhaps most important, early exports of its rapidly developed vaccines have provided Beijing with a potent diplomatic calling card in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. And as the global death toll mounts, Chinese officials get to brag about their virus-fighting success around the world even as they gain greater access and influence in far-flung capitals. “The U.S. response to the epidemic is nothing short of a mess and total failure,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, one of the original wolf warrior diplomats, named for their confrontational stance, said last month. “In contrast, China secured major strategic outcomes in fighting the virus.” About China, at least, he’s not wrong. So far the country has shipped about 265 million Covid vaccine doses, more than all other nations combined, with commitments to provide an impressive 440 million more, according to Airfinity Ltd., a science information and analytics company. Other leading powers haven’t kept up. President Joe Biden has vowed the U.S. will become an “arsenal for fighting Covid-19.” His administration promises to boost production of U.S. vaccines and donate 80 million doses overseas by the end of June, including 20 million authorized for U.S. use—the first time he’s shared doses he could have given to Americans. Europe has done better, exporting about 118 million domestically produced doses so far, according to Airfinity, even amid criticism for a slow start to its vaccination drive at home. India, meanwhile, had exported almost 69 million doses to nearly 100 countries until it suffered the world’s worst outbreak and halted further deliveries. China is about to get another big boost. After clearing Western-made shots, the World Health Organization recently authorized the vaccine made by China’s Sinopharm Group Co. A nod for one from Sinovac Biotech Ltd. is expected soon. This will allow Chinese shots to flow to dozens of developing nations through Covax, the global vaccine initiative, which has managed to ship only 68 million of the 2 billion doses it hopes to send out by yearend. “China is going to be a critically important partner in the long run,” says Richard Hatchett, chief executive officer of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, one of the groups leading Covax. The WHO authorization, a de facto approval for regulators in poorer countries, could help unleash hundreds of millions of doses of Chinese shots. The impact of the country’s contributions will also be magnified by the absence of India, making this “the best time for China to practice vaccine diplomacy and to make more use of its first-mover advantage,” says Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy is clearly of the hardball variety. India’s desperately poor neighbors in South Asia were

May 24, 2021

among those China targeted. On April 27, the same day Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi organized a virtual meeting with his counterparts in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe was in Bangladesh, pledging to enhance military cooperation. Within days, officials there gave emergency approval to the Sinopharm vaccine. Less than two weeks later, China’s ambassador to Bangladesh surprised his hosts with an unexpected warning: Any future cooperation with Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S. would inevitably damage the nation’s ties with China. “Bangladesh, which was reliant on Indian doses, is now being subjected to pressure from China over its strategic foreign partnerships in the midst of bilateral negotiations for a large sale of urgently needed vaccines,” says Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong and editor of several books on global health and foreign policy. “It would be foolish to conclude that the aid and supply of vaccines that China is now giving to Asia and the world will not translate into a long-term diplomatic advantage.” The country’s upper hand may not last. India recognizes China’s advantage, but believes it won’t be long-lasting and expects its own exports will ramp up in a few months, according to a foreign ministry official in New Delhi who asked not to be identified. Chinese diplomats’ sometimes overzealous pressure tactics could also backfire. Even Bangladesh complained about the local ambassador’s comments. Another wild card is the reliability of Chinese shots compared with that of the other vaccines. The efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, for instance, varies wildly—from 50% to 90%— in studies. Global surveys have shown Chinese shots are the least favored in several places. Even in Hong Kong, only 37% said they’d take a Sinovac jab, compared with 56% for Pfizer Inc.’s. Western vaccine diplomacy with more effective shots could easily push back gains by China, according to Thomas, the Hong Kong academic. The official in New Delhi says India remains a trusted partner for vaccines around the developing world and that Chinese shots haven’t lived up to expectations. Across Africa, nations have struggled with vaccine hesitancy, suggesting China’s shots may languish in storage rather than generate the political goodwill Beijing intended. “Although some of my workmates have been vaccinated, I am still afraid to do it because of what I’ve read on social media,” says Passmore Mwanza, a 29-year-old supervisor at a candy maker in Zimbabwe. Still, China’s contributions will be crucial in the race to inoculate large populations across the developing world before outbreaks—and variants—spread too widely. With Covax shipments delayed by the India export collapse, China might be the only choice in the near term for many poorer countries. “The pandemic started as a Chernobyl moment for China,” says Suisheng Zhao, director of the University of Denver’s Center for China-U.S. Cooperation. “It has become an opportunity for China to demonstrate to the world that its rise cannot be stopped.” <BW> ——With Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Godfrey Marawanyika, Arun Devnath, John Lauerman, and Josh Wingrove

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Bloomberg Businessweek

May 24, 2021

FEA

F O R

● Surging demand is upending global supply chains. So scared companies are stocking up Dennis Wolkin, whose family has run a business making crib mattresses for three generations, should be sleeping soundly right now. Economic expansions are usually good for baby bed sales. But that extra demand can quickly turn from a blessing to a curse without the key ingredient: foam padding. Lately there’s been a run on the kind of polyurethane foam Wolkin uses—in part because of the deep freeze across the U.S. South in February, and because of “companies over-ordering and trying to hoard what they can,” he says. “It’s gotten out of control, especially in the past month,” says Wolkin, vice president of operations at Atlanta-based Colgate Mattress, a 35-employee

N U R

G N I N

T U O

company that sells products at Target stores and independent retailers. “We’ve never seen anything like this.” Although polyurethane foam is 50% more expensive than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic, Wolkin would rather buy twice the amount he needs and look for warehouse space than reject orders from new customers. “Every company like us is going to overbuy,” he says. A year ago, as the pandemic ravaged country after country and economies shuddered, consumers were the ones panic-buying. Today it’s companies furiously trying to stock up. From mattress producers to car manufacturers, all are buying more material than they need to keep up with rapidly recovering demand and assuage that primal fear of running out. The frenzy is pushing supply chains to the brink. Shortages, transportation bottlenecks, and price spikes are nearing critical levels, raising concern that a supercharged global economy will stoke inflation.

E S S

Edited by James E. Ellis

◼ BUSINESS

Bloomberg Businessweek

Copper, iron ore, and steel. Corn, coffee, wheat, and soybeans. Lumber, semiconductors, plastic, and cardboard. The world is seemingly low on all of it. “You name it, and we have a shortage on it,” Tom Linebarger, chief executive officer of engine manufacturer Cummins Inc., said on an investor call this month. Clients are “trying to get everything they can, because they see high demand,” Jennifer Rumsey, the company’s president, said. “They think it’s going to extend into next year.” The difference between the big crunch of 2021 and past supply disruptions is the sheer magnitude of it, and that there is—as far as anyone can tell—no end in sight. Big or small, few businesses are spared. The operator of Europe’s largest fleet of trucks, Girteka Logistics, says it’s been a struggle to meet all the demand for freight hauling. Monster Beverage Corp. of Corona, Calif., is dealing with an aluminum can scarcity. Hong Kong’s Momax Technology Ltd. is delaying production of a new power charger product because of a dearth of semiconductors. Further exacerbating the situation is an unusually long and growing list of calamities that have rocked commodities in recent months. A freak accident in the Suez Canal backed up global shipping in March. Drought has wreaked havoc on crops. A deep freeze and mass blackout wiped out energy and petrochemical operations across the central and southern U.S. in February. Then hackers brought down the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, driving gasoline prices above $3 a gallon for the first time since 2014. Now India’s Covid-19 surge is threatening its biggest ports, which handled $829 billion of goods in 2018. For anyone who thinks it’s all going to end in a few months, consider the somewhat obscure U.S. economic indicator known as the Logistics Managers’ Index. The gauge is built on a monthly survey of corporate supply chiefs that asks where they see inventory, transportation, and warehouse

expenses—the three key components of managing supply chains—now and in 12 months. The current index is at its second-highest level in records dating back to 2016, and the future gauge shows little respite a year from now. The index has proved unnervingly accurate in the past, matching up with actual costs about 90% of the time. To Zac Rogers, who helps compile the index as an assistant professor at Colorado State University’s College of Business, it’s a paradigm shift. In the past, supply chains were optimized for low costs and reliability. Today, with e-commerce demand soaring, warehouses have moved from the cheap outskirts of urban areas to prime parking garages downtown or vacant department-store space where deliveries can be made quickly, albeit with pricier real estate, labor, and utilities. Once viewed as liabilities before the pandemic, fatter inventories are in vogue. Transport costs, more volatile than the other two, won’t lighten up until demand does. “Essentially what people are telling us to expect is that it’s going to be hard to get supply up to a place where it matches demand,” Rogers says, “and because of that, we’re going to continue to see some price increases over the next 12 months.” More well-known barometers are starting to reflect the higher costs for households and companies. An index of U.S. consumer prices that excludes food and fuel jumped 0.9% in April from a month earlier, the most since 1982. At the factory gate, the increase in prices charged by American producers was twice as large as economists expected. Even multinational companies with digital supply-management systems and teams of people monitoring them are just trying to cope. Whirlpool Corp. CEO Marc Bitzer told Bloomberg TV this month the company’s supply chain is “pretty much upside down,” and the appliance maker is phasing in price increases. Usually Whirlpool and other large manufacturers produce goods based on incoming orders and forecasts for those sales. Now it’s producing based on what parts are available. “It is anything but efficient or normal, but that is how you have to run it right now,” Bitzer said. “I know there’s talk of a temporary blip, but we do see this elevated for a sustained period.” The strains stretch all the way back to global output of raw materials and may persist, because increasing production of what’s scarce—with either additional capital or labor—is slow and expensive. The prices of lumber, copper, iron ore, and steel have all surged in recent months in the face of stronger demand from the U.S. and China. Crude oil is also rising, as are the prices of industrial materials from plastics to chemicals. Some

The Crunch Is On U.S. retailers, seasonally adjusted Inventories

Sales $700b

550

400 1/2019

4/2020

3/2021*

*PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE. DATA: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU

May 24, 2021

“You name it, and we have a shortage on it”

ILLUSTRATION BY NICHOLE SHINN

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of the increases are already showing up in stores. Reynolds Consumer Products Inc., the maker of the namesake aluminum foil and Hefty trash bags, plans another round of price increases, its third in 2021. Food costs are climbing, too. The world’s most consumed edible oil, processed from the fruit of oil palm trees, has jumped by more than 135% in the past year to a record. Soybeans topped $16 a bushel for the first time since 2012. Corn futures hit an eightyear high, while wheat futures rose to the highest price since 2013. Earlier this month, the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index touched the highest level since 2011. A big reason is a U.S. economy that’s recovering faster than most. The evidence of that is floating off the coast of California, where dozens of container ships are waiting to offload at ports from Oakland to Los Angeles. Most goods are flooding in from China, where government figures on May 11 showed producer prices climbed in April by the most since 2017, adding to evidence that cost pressures for that nation’s factories pose a global risk if they are passed on to retailers and other customers abroad. The semiconductor crunch is threatening the broader electronics sector and may start to squeeze Asia’s high-performing export economies, according to Vincent Tsui of Gavekal Research. It’s “not simply the result of a few temporary glitches,” Tsui wrote in a note to clients. “They are more structural in nature, and they affect a whole range of industries, not just automobile production.” For London-based packaging company DS Smith Plc, challenges are coming from multiple sides. During the pandemic, customers rushed to online purchases, raising demand for its ePack boxes and other shipping materials by 700%. Then came the doubling of its supply costs to €200 ($245) a ton for the recycled fiber it uses to make its products. “That’s a significant cost” for a company that buys 4 million to 5 million tons of used fiber annually, says Miles Roberts, DS Smith’s group chief executive, who doesn’t see the lockdown-inspired web purchasing as a temporary trend. “The e-commerce that has increased is here to stay.” At Colgate Mattress, Wolkin used to be able to order foam on Mondays and have it delivered on Thursdays. Now his suppliers can’t promise anything. What’s clear is he can’t sustain the higher costs forever and still maintain quality. “This is kind of a long-term issue,” he says. “Inflation is coming—at some point, you’ve got to pass this along.” �Brendan Murray, Enda Curran, and Kim Chipman

It’s Shark Week for Discovery

THE BOTTOM LINE Businesses are facing raw materials shortages, transportation bottlenecks, and price spikes unseen in years. That’s causing panic buying and inventory hoarding.

May 24, 2021

● Will adding AT&T’s media brands in order to become a streaming giant save it from the bite Netflix is taking out of cable programmers?

Over the years, Discovery Inc., the owner of Animal Planet and steward of Shark Week, has mesmerized TV audiences with all sorts of Darwinian marvels. Alligator snapping turtles. Giant Tasmanian crayfish. Tree kangaroos. Now, Discovery is trying to pull off its own evolutionary leap, crawling out of the choppy seas of basic cable to invade the fertile land of streaming TV. On May 17, Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav sat alongside John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T Inc., at a hastily convened investor call and provided a blurry snapshot of their newly hatched, multiheaded entertainment hydra. The executives disclosed that AT&T, just three years after completing its costly acquisition of Time Warner and renaming it WarnerMedia, would be spinning off its media assets, which include CNN, TNT, TBS, and the Warner Bros. studio, and merging them with Discovery. Zaslav will lead the new, as yet unnamed, entity. Its portfolio will include a mix of highbrow brands such as HBO—known for creating lavishly expensive scripted programming like Succession—along with a slate of middlebrow, basic cable networks, including HGTV, Food Network, and TLC that are adept at churning out low-cost reality shows like 90 Day Fiancé. “There is no reason why this can’t be the broadest, most successful direct-toconsumer platform in the world,” Zaslav said. AT&T and Discovery have struggled to master the streaming ecosystem. Launched a year ago,

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AT&T’s HBO Max got off to a slow start, but it’s since gained traction after striking key distribution deals with Roku and Amazon and showing Wonder Woman 1984, Godzilla vs. Kong, and other Warner Bros. films on the same day as their theater premieres. HBO Max and the traditional HBO channel together have about 44 million subscribers in the U.S. and 64 million total worldwide. Discovery’s streaming service, Discovery+, started in January in the U.S. By late April, it had 15 million subscribers. The AT&T deal may have been inevitable given the current state of streaming TV. The market is increasingly global in its outlook and inhospitable to minnows. Netflix Inc. remains the megalodon, with 208 million subscribers worldwide and a pipeline of hits such as Lupin that are popular across continents. But Walt Disney Co., which two years ago bought Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment empire for $71 billion, is catching up fast, with more than 100 million subscribers to its service, Disney+. WarnerMedia and Discovery are just starting to expand streaming services overseas. WarnerMedia, for now, can’t launch HBO Max in the U.K. and other key European markets because of existing deals HBO made with pay-TV provider Sky. And Discovery lacks the buzzy movie franchises of Warner Bros. Their tie-up is “an explicit acknowledgment that neither company believes it can succeed in the streaming future alone,” says Todd Juenger, a media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. Among the new breed of alpha streamers, massiveness is seen as key to survival. After the announcement, Zaslav boasted to reporters that the new entity would have planet Earth’s “deepest programming and film library,” with more than 200,000 hours of programming including “scripted movies and series, animation, sports, news, nonfiction” and children’s programming: “All areas where we have the talent and strength to compete and win.” But other companies that claimed to have unique synergies—simultaneously owning media properties and the means of distributing them—have seen their hopes for media supremacy dashed. Earlier this month, Verizon Communications Inc. announced it will sell its media division to Apollo Global Management Inc. for $5 billion, abandoning its hold on several once-dominant online brands, including AOL and Yahoo. And while telecom giant AT&T will maintain a stake in the new, unnamed company, it’s essentially ending its broader ambition to use media ownership as a way of reducing churn among its wireless customers. “The fact of the matter is, direct-to-consumer is a global opportunity that is rapidly evolving, and the pace of that evolution is accelerating,” AT&T’s Stankey said.

Traditionally, telecom executives have been accustomed to luring subscribers with hot smartphones from the likes of Apple and Samsung, which come yoked to long-term contracts customers may not scrutinize for years, freeing executives to focus on technical upgrades to wireless infrastructure— engineering challenges that play out over decades. The home-entertainment business, by contrast, has much more short-term volatility and requires constant tweaking of programming, cajoling of customers, and fluffing of talent. The streaming world is even more demanding. Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max have to win subscribers’ attention every hour, every day, every week, or risk losing fickle consumers to whatever streamer has the hottest new drama, blockbuster action movie, or true-crime docuseries. Zaslav, 61, has spent most of his career in the now-fading cable-TV business. As CEO of Discovery since 2007, Zaslav was among the last of the big media chieftains to make his channels available to the growing legions of cord-cutters. But while he’s relatively new to streaming, Zaslav is well-versed in the complexities of running an international media business. Discovery gets about a third of its revenue from outside the U.S. Its shows are seen in more than 220 countries, and it owns a broadcast TV station in Poland. It specializes in the type of unscripted programming that can easily cross borders. Not much of Shark Week gets lost in translation. Discovery has also become a significant player in European sports, with long-term rights to broadcast the Olympics as well as tennis, golf, and cycling across the continent. One question is whether the new company can afford to pay for all the programming it will need to compete in streaming. Before the deal, the two companies spent about $20 billion a year combined on content, according to Zaslav. That’s more than the outlay of Netflix, which plans to spend $17 billion this year. But the company will be saddled with $55 billion in debt, which it will try to pay down using cash from a declining cable business—while investing in programming for money-losing streaming services. “Even the best-in-class companies like Netflix and Disney require constant updating of sexy new content, deep reservoirs of glossy titles, and the commitment to spend dearly until monthly subscriber churn drops to a low enough level that signals it is time to start raising prices,” analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in a note to clients the day after the AT&T announcement. “As we saw yesterday, few had the mettle to stare into this abyss and keep going.” —Felix Gillette and Gerry Smith THE BOTTOM LINE After its marriage with AT&T’s media brands, Discovery may have 80 million global subscribers. But that still pales against streaming leader Netﬂix’s 208 million.

May 24, 2021

○ Zaslav

○ Amount AT&T and Discovery together spend a year on content vs. Netﬂix’s $17b

$20b

ZASLAV: GETTY IMAGES

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May 24, 2021

Laura Miele Is Listening The most powerful woman in gaming is trying to make EA more responsive to its customers

T E C H N O L O G Y

Edited by Joshua Brustein

Bloomberg Businessweek

One of the first things Laura Miele did when she became chief studios officer of Electronic Arts Inc. three years ago was to gather 19 video game influencers in a conference room. “What do you want me to hear? Lay it on me,” she recalls asking them. “One guy sitting at the corner of the table, he just said, ‘I don’t understand why you don’t give players what they’re asking for.’ ” It’s something many gamers have wondered about EA for years. The $40 billion company, one of the biggest in gaming, is responsible for Battlefield, Madden NFL, and other megahit franchises. But many gamers have long seen EA as a necessary evil, resenting the direction in which it took some games and bristling at its aggressive attempts to extract money by charging extra for digital items in games that cost as much as $70 upfront. This dissatisfaction was no secret in 2018: Gamers spent their days filling up Reddit and other message boards with free advice for EA—but many felt its decisionmakers weren’t listening. EA’s leadership knows it has to improve that relationship, and Miele is a key player in its efforts to do so. Her focus group asked for new content for Star Wars Battlefront II and requested new types of games. Miele quickly assigned 70 people to the Battlefront development project, which dramatically improved its net promoter score, a measure of how likely people are to recommend the game. She also prompted EA to create a skateboarding game and committed to reintroducing its college football franchise, the two genres at the top of the influencers’ list. In a sense, the guy at the meeting became a stand-in for all of EA’s long-suffering customers in Miele’s eyes. “I wanted to do right by this player,” she says. As chief studios officer, Miele manages 6,000 staffers and thousands of contractors globally. She oversees EA’s 24 studios, where she makes personnel decisions and sets strategy, and she’s reshaped how the company uses analytics to create and market its games. In the process she may have become the most powerful woman in gaming. In a 2019 International Game Developers Association survey, fewer than 30% of the more than 1,100 respondents were women, and few if any hold a more central role at such an important company. “It’s a tough place for a woman,” says Peter Moore, who was Miele’s boss when he was EA’s chief operating officer. “It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but she battled her way through.” Proving good intentions is more important for EA than ever, as the business model of gaming

continues to shift in ways that have the potential to alienate customers. Like its rivals, the company is increasing its focus on free-to-play games, making money through sales of digital products such as outfits and weapons for characters. There are signs it’s succeeding. Apex Legends, EA’s free-to-play hero shooter game, has posted more than $1 billion in sales since it was first published in 2019, and it continues to grow. “The way to succeed with free-to-play games like that is to listen to and engage your customer base and earn their loyalty through incremental purchases,” says Doug Clinton, managing partner of the venture capital firm Loup Ventures, who says Miele deserves much of the credit for Apex Legends. “It feels like a proof point for her that the company is adapting well beyond traditional disk sales.” Miele, 51, was born in San Francisco but grew up on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. She got her start in games—the kind that require a board—during family nights, when she pitted herself against her brother in Monopoly, Clue, Yahtzee, and backgammon. While attending the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, she worked at architectural companies. By the time she dropped out she’d moved on from receptionist positions to more senior roles, while gaining a reputation for organizing lunch-hour card games with her co-workers. Miele landed a job as a project manager at Westwood Studios, a video game developer best known for Command and Conquer, in 1996. She eventually took over all marketing for its parent company, Virgin Interactive. It wasn’t always a hospitable atmosphere: Miele remembers her colleagues expecting her to take notes at meetings, then clean up afterward. “That is just not something I would do today,” she says. “I adapted a lot because I was so passionate about what I was doing. I found my voice along the way.” When EA acquired Westwood in 1998, she stayed on. At the time, the company did revenue forecasting by looking at sales data once a month and putting together spreadsheets by hand. Miele was tasked with developing more advanced analytics. She hired a group of data analysts, nicknamed “the Jedi,” and had them build EA’s first statistical regression models to examine sales trends, seasonality, and preorders. It took almost two years to put the system in place, but it overhauled the company’s business processes, and executives were soon using it to determine how to invest in advertising and promotions. “I loved how data and analytics can inform your judgment and your gut instinct,” Miele says. Miele also decided to make one major break with EA’s existing business practices. In 2011 about

May 24, 2021

▲ EA games

COURTESY ELECTRONIC ARTS (2). *OF PEOPLE WHO CONSUME NEWS. DATA: REUTERS INSTITUTE

◼ TECHNOLOGY

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80% of game advertising budgets were spent on TV ads. But she saw how much time gamers spent online and decided to spend the bulk of the ad budget for Battlefield 3 on digital, downplaying other types of ads and cutting the TV ad budget to only 30%. Messing around with the plan for Battlefield 3 was a good way to make people nervous. Miele remembers two executives calling her in for a meeting and demanding to know why they weren’t seeing billboards for the game as they drove in to the office. “It was scary for me, too, and I don’t blame our executives questioning me on that,” she says. But the game ended up being EA’s fastestselling, moving more than 5 million copies in its first week. From that point, Miele’s marketing strategy became the standard for the company. When EA signed a 10-year deal with Walt Disney Co. in 2013, Miele became Star Wars general manager. In 2014 she took over publishing operations, marketing, and other key areas, first in the North American region, then globally in 2016. At the time, the game industry was moving from physical disks to digital downloads, transforming its relationship with retail partners such as Walmart Inc. and Best Buy Co. Miele was in charge of smoothing things over, explaining that EA would start competing with them for customers even as the retailers accounted for the largest portion of the revenue. “I never said to them, ‘Hey, see you later, we are moving on,’ ” she says. “It was, ‘How can we move forward together?’ ” EA began making physical cards with digital credits that its retail partners could sell at their stores, allowing them to share in the revenue from digital sales. EA’s studios are spread around the globe, and Covid-19 altered Miele’s routine radically. “It was a very difficult year, and I’m really proud about how our company showed up,” she says. “I considered myself a wartime leader last year. You had to get in a bunker with everybody.” Days became an endless progression of Zoom calls. To keep up with gamers, Miele started spending evenings listening to Clubhouse chats while answering work emails. Because she hasn’t been on the road, she’s also had more time to dine at home and play board games or Apex Legends and The Sims with her 16-year-old twins. As the pandemic retreats in the U.S., her schedule might change, but she still envisions providing more flexibility to her employees to work from home and office. “I do think we’re going to have a different work environment as we go forward,” she says. Miele is itching to get back to the studio visits.

She’s helping steer EA further toward smartphones. The company plans to release mobile versions of Apex Legends globally this year and spent $2.1 billion in April for Glu Mobile Inc., a mobile game publisher, while also preparing the next releases in its existing franchises. “I think the next Battlefield and the mobile shooter games, along with how successful the M&As come out will be key litmus tests of her management this year,” says Matt Kanterman, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “Her scope is clearly rising.” �Olga Kharif, with Dina Bass and Jason Schreier

May 24, 2021

THE BOTTOM LINE EA’s studio chief is trying to make the company more responsive to gamers as its business model shifts in potentially polarizing ways.

Exporting Misinformation ● Misleading or false content about Covid vaccines continues to circulate abroad after being blocked in the U.S.

One of the earliest people to get Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine was a nurse in Tennessee, who fainted after getting the shot on live television in December. The incident sparked rumors that she had died and that the vaccine was a tool of genocide. Five months later the nurse, who is not dead, continues to be bombarded by messages from strangers on social media. They send condolences to her family or demand details about the incident. Oddly, they often do so in German, Italian, or Portuguese. The international fixation on this case follows what is becoming a common pattern. U.S.-based social media users begin spreading misleading or false information, which then moves to other countries, according to researchers studying the rumors. The U.S. may not yet have figured out an efficient way to distribute shots to other countries, but it has become a major exporter of misinformation. The U.S. “dominates social media culture the way it dominates pop culture,” and not always to the world’s benefit, says Cameron Hickey, project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship, a civic organization based in Washington. He’s been researching misinformation in Spanish-speaking Facebook communities and says most of what circulates is “a carbon copy of rumors that we first see in English.” Major social media companies are constantly criticized for failing to crack down

▼ Share of online population getting news from Facebook* Poland 65% Italy 56 Brazil 54 France 43 Canada 41 U.S. 35 Netherlands 28 Germany 22 South Korea 19 Japan 6

on misinformation in the U.S., but advocates complain their performance is even worse when dealing with content in languages other than English. The machine learning algorithms that companies such as Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube use for content moderation were built in English first and aren’t as effective in other languages, Hickey says. Advocates have also criticized the tech companies for not sufficiently staffing content moderation teams outside of the U.S. Facebook has 80 fact-checking partner organizations working in 60 languages, according to Kevin McAlister, a spokesman. “We use machine learning models in more than a dozen languages to send potentially violating content about Covid-19 and vaccines to reviewers—including native speakers— who remove violating ones,” he says. The company doesn’t share the number of content reviewers in a given country, saying it wouldn’t reflect its efforts. Elena Hernandez, a YouTube spokeswoman, says its “approach to addressing misinformation is global and applies across all languages.” Content often continues to go viral abroad even after it’s removed or fact-checked and deprioritized in the U.S. Videos from anti-vaccination influencers that Facebook has banned, such as Del Bigtree and Sherri Tenpenny, have been translated into Arabic, Dutch, German, and other languages, and continue to circulate among Facebook groups and YouTube channels. The Plandemic video, one of the most prominent pieces of Covid-related disinformation over the past year, spread widely in Italian, Polish, and Spanish for days after Facebook took action on the English version, according to Renée DiResta, the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory. A review by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based anti-extremism group, found that Arabic-speaking communities are influenced by content from the U.S. or Europe, “using Arabic subtitling or voiceovers often unencumbered by moderation and fact-checking efforts.” For instance, Facebook removed U.S.-made videos of women who appeared to be shaking in response to the Covid vaccine, but the same content with Arabic subtitles continued to spread without a fact check. U.S. groups pushing disinformation also provide a “blueprint or how-to guide” for local anti-vaccine groups to follow, according to Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a counterextremism group. People have used data from the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System to undermine public confidence. The government established Vaers in 1990 as an early warning system to detect

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potential side effects. Patients can report reactions independently, and doctors and vaccine makers also submit reports. Misleading content about side effects and deaths based on Vaers data is spreading on Dutch, German, and Spanish Facebook pages. Conspiracy theorists outside the U.S. have also begun to use Vaers-like programs in their countries as the raw material for their own claims, O’Connor says. People disseminating disinformation abroad don’t necessarily feel secure in their ability to continue using mainstream social media and are learning from their U.S. peers how to prepare for their potential expulsion, says Kristina Gildejev, a researcher for the fact-checking group Logically.ai. Gildejev has been monitoring anti-vaccine communities in Germany. They were active on Facebook, she says, until recently, when they “followed their English-speaking counterparts and switched to Telegram.” �Sarah Frier and Daniel Zuidijk THE BOTTOM LINE Social networks say their efforts to combat disinformation are global, but critics say they’re falling down at policing content in languages other than English.

May 24, 2021

ILLUSTRATION BY ARNE BELLSTORF

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May 24, 2021

Hodler, Can You Spare a Bitcoin?

ILLUSTRATION BY KLAUS KREMMERZ

● Crypto savings accounts pay yield to borrow your tokens, but don’t mistake them for a bank It’s not just the outlandish returns of the past year that some Bitcoiners are bragging about these days. There’s also the yield. At a time when interest rates on conventional bank deposits are pinned to the floor—often below 0.5%—financial technology companies are offering to pay owners of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies annual percentage yields of 2% to 6% and sometimes more. You can deposit your coins with a few taps on one of their smartphone apps.

What’s the catch? There are several, actually. In addition to the risk you’re already taking in owning crypto, the earnings are paid in cryptocurrencies, too. As Bitcoin investors have seen in recent trading, token prices can fall sharply, wiping out whatever yield advantage you’re getting, if you’re comparing it with what you could’ve made investing dollars. And you’re essentially lending companies your crypto without many of the protections that come with a bank account, such as coverage from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Some of the companies hawking yield accounts have websites that look more than a little like an online bank’s. Crypto lender Nexo uses the tagline “Banking on Crypto” and touts the $375 million of insurance it carries on custodial assets. What that

F I N A N C E

Edited by Pat Regnier

Bloomberg Businessweek

policy covers, however, isn’t like FDIC insurance, which protects savers from losses. On a separate page on its site, Nexo says the insurance is in place to protect users against “commercial crime,” which includes “physical and/or cybersecurity breach, and/or employee theft,” not losses that may be incurred from its lending activities. Yields are part of a surprising turn in the crypto market. Bitcoin and its descendants, such as Dogecoin, Ether, and countless other tokens, are often seen as a way to avoid the established financial system. Some “hodlers” (crypto slang for longterm holders) are wary of yield accounts because they’d have to entrust the service with their private keys, the alphanumeric strings that grant control of a digital asset. But alongside that world has sprung up a complex, interconnected market that looks a lot like a wilder version of Wall Street—complete with financial derivatives, arbitrage, borrowing, and a panoply of middlemen. Some have called it a shadow banking system for crypto. At the lower end of yields is the 2.05% being paid on Bitcoin by Gemini Earn. The product is part of the Gemini crypto exchange, founded by the billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Deposits made into an Earn account leave Gemini and go to another company called Genesis, which in turn lends to institutional and high-net-worth clients. These clients may want to borrow cryptocurrency for financial trades. For example, a trader might want to short a cryptocurrency, or bet that its value will drop. One way to do this is to borrow it, then sell it, and pocket the difference if the price falls. But borrowing for big speculative shorts on Bitcoin is comparatively rare these days. Another reason to borrow Bitcoin could be to construct an arbitrage trade that takes advantage of discrepancies in market prices. Some crypto-based businesses and exchanges also borrow Bitcoin for liquidity, such as to quickly make a payment in crypto or settle a trade. But all of that is happening behind the scenes. Customers depositing their crypto with Gemini Earn ultimately have to trust that Genesis is doing a good job vetting its borrowers and controlling its risk—and that it’s maintaining a strong enough balance sheet of its own to pay back Gemini Earn customers even if some bets go wrong. “At the end of the day, if anything would go wrong on the borrower side, that risk is on Genesis,” says Roshun Patel, vice president for lending at Genesis. “Since inception to date, we haven’t had a single default or capital loss.” Still, as with other crypto yield providers, Gemini Earn’s website notes that accounts aren’t insured by the FDIC.

BlockFi, perhaps the most visible nonbank cryptocurrency firm, currently offers 5% on a deposit of up to half a Bitcoin (at the recent price of about $40,000 per token, half a Bitcoin is $20,000) and 2% on additional deposits above that amount and up to 20 Bitcoins. It, too, mostly depends on lending to pay its depositors, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Zac Prince says in an email. He says the firm also engages in its own trading. After the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. lawmakers were concerned enough about banks doing their own trading that they restricted the practice with the so-called Volcker Rule. BlockFi is neither a bank nor subject to such regulations, but that rule points to the fact that trading can be risky. Prince says the company’s activities can be better described as “market making.” In addition to borrowing and lending, BlockFi runs platforms for trading cryptocurrency. “For example, when a retail or institutional client trades with BlockFi, they are facing BlockFi directly for the trade, and we are not matching the order before confirming it for our client,” Prince says. So BlockFi can potentially make or lose money if prices change after the trade. But Prince says the company isn’t trying to make bets on the direction of prices. “Everything we do at BlockFi is sized and managed relative to all risk considerations,” he says, adding that the firm has “maintained a perfect track record in high Bitcoin volatility environments” and that the “vast majority” of BlockFi’s loans are overcollateralized—meaning they’re backed by assets worth more than the loan. Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., doesn’t offer a yield product for Bitcoin. It does offer staking yields of as much as 6% for some less well-known cryptocurrencies. Staking yields are another kind of beast altogether, with no close parallel in the rest of finance. In a stake-based cryptocurrency, owners can allow some of their tokens to be used in the process that verifies transactions. Those who do can earn a reward. If that’s all a bit baffling, focus on the key risk trade-off: To earn a yield, you have to bet on a crypto you might not otherwise want, with a future at least as uncertain as Bitcoin’s. Antoni Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, echoes many crypto enthusiasts in dismissing the safety of banks. “When you have a traditional bank deposit the standard deposit insurance amount is up to $250,000 in the US and up to €100,000 in the EU, and from there on you are on your own,” he wrote in an email to Bloomberg. “That feeling of security that deposits are safe and insured above these amounts at traditional banks is largely rooted in the perception

May 24, 2021

“Never risk your whole stack, and don’t risk what you can’t lose. These are private companies with no federal backing”

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY 731. PHOTOS: ALAMY

◼ FINANCE

FINANCE

that banks are solid, trustworthy institutions.” Trenchev added that Nexo can be trusted because its loans are overcollateralized. Yet many dedicated Bitcoiners remain skeptical of crypto yield accounts in general. Dan Held, a longtime Bitcoin investor who writes a monthly report on the state of the Bitcoin yield market, says he deposits a small percentage of his Bitcoin holdings into interest-bearing accounts but advises his readers to be cautious. “Never risk your whole stack, and don’t risk what you can’t lose,” he says. “These are private companies with no federal backing.” Some apps offer even higher yields if you accept payment in the company’s own custom token. Held says he avoids these. “There is no reason why you need a token as it introduces regulatory and structural risk,” he wrote in his March yield report. For a sense of what can go wrong, consider the case of cryptocurrency lender Cred. It filed for bankruptcy in November after an executive was alleged to have misappropriated at least 225 Bitcoins. Because of stories like that, Brandon Quittem, head of user acquisition at Swan Bitcoin, an application that automates regular purchases of Bitcoin, urges hodlers to forgo seeking interest. “The historical precedent is custodians blow up,” Quittem says. A custodian is anyone who holds your crypto instead of you. “Bitcoiners have a bit of PTSD around custodians, but to be fair we’ve come a long way on the exchange and custodial front.” To Quittem the idea of risking Bitcoin—an asset that’s had a triple-digit annualized growth rate over a decade—for single-digit interest payments isn’t worth it. “Why would I take on additional risk to seek a yield?” he asks. “I find the excitement around these products to be slightly misguided.” Parker Lewis, head of business development at Bitcoin financial-services company Unchained Capital, cautions against lending out more than a small percentage of one’s holdings and says half of Unchained’s clients indicate they’d never lend their Bitcoin. (The company is working on its own lending product that’s meant to address concerns about custody and the transparency of risk.) To fintech companies and traders, Bitcoin might be just another asset to borrow, lend, and bet with. For many Bitcoiners it’s a precious asset that they firmly believe could take over the world. “If you do decide to lend Bitcoin,” Lewis says, “you better be able to quantify the costs, because you’re trading the greatest asymmetry that has ever existed for counterparty and credit risk.” —Brandon Kochkodin THE BOTTOM LINE Cryptocurrency you put in a yield account is typically lent out to other ﬁnancial players in a kind of shadow banking system. That comes with risk.

Bloomberg Businessweek

May 24, 2021

Apollo Goes To School ○ The private equity giant says it can ﬁx a for- oﬁt college. The grades aren’t in yet

Apollo Global Management Inc. is known for its no-holds-barred dealmaking. But not long ago, the private equity firm pitched itself to pension funds and other wealthy institutions as an emerging force in “impact” investing, the movement to make money while also turning the world into a better place. Exhibit A: higher education. In 2017, Apollo led a $1 billion takeover of the company that owns the University of Phoenix. Before the acquisition, th fit college ll g chain h i “ he ffor-profit “came under fire for aggrressive marketing practices and lower-qu uality degree programs,” Apollo said in a confidential Octob ber presentation. But the firrm said it was working to trransform the school into a “trusted education provide er” that helps working adults achieve their dre eams. Apollo said this earlier deal showed d its social responsibiility bona fides as it raissed money for its firrstever impact fund.. Fresh complaints from cu urrent and form mer students suggest the transformation—the doing good part—is still a work in progress. But in classic private equity fashion fashion, Apollo has already nailed the doing well part. The U. of Phoenix’s parent company also owned other schools, including separate programs in Germany, Mexico, and South Africa. The company sold those after the acquisition and is in the process of selling a U.K. school. From these divestments and other payments—including the return of cash the federal government had required the school’s new owners to put on temporary deposit—Apollo

Bloomberg Businessweek

May 24, 2021

expects dividends to its fund that holds the company to soon total $956 million, according to March documents sent to investors. Apollo’s original cost for its stake in the company was $634 million. And the firm is still the majority owner of a profitable enterprise, which it can one day sell or take public. When all is said and done, Apollo told investors in March, they should expect to almost double the money they invested in the for-profit colleges. Apollo says it’s already reformed the college’s offerings, and it held off paying itself dividends until the U. of Phoenix was in strong financial shape. Unlike many PE transactions, the acquisition was funded without debt. “This is a great example of how new ownership that is committed to serving students and to providing the necessary capital can combine with new management to change the trajectory of an institution,” says Theo Kwon, an Apollo partner who’s on the education company’s board. John Sperling, a former San Jose State University professor, founded the University of Phoenix in 1976 to offer an alternative for working adults who needed flexible class schedules. It pushed early into online education and catered to many traditionally underserved students, such as members of minority groups. At its peak the school enrolled almost half a million students. Its business relied almost entirely on federal financial aid. As a publicly traded company, the school saw its market value soar to $10 billion in 2009. Confusingly, given its current ownership, its parent company was called Apollo Group and then Apollo Education Group Inc. By the time Apollo, the unrelated Wall Street investment firm, came calling, it had only 165,000 students, and its stock had lost about 90% of its value. Apollo’s partner in the deal was Vistria Group, a Chicago private equity firm. Vistria co-founder Marty Nesbitt is a close friend of former President Barack Obama and chairman of his foundation. Tony Miller, Vistria’s chief operating officer at the time of the deal, was deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Education under Obama, whose administration led a crackdown on for-profit colleges. Apollo says it’s put the U. of Phoenix’s bad practices behind it. It cites a drop in student loan default rates, which are better than the national average for for-profit schools and only a bit above the average for all schools. Apollo says the college installed new management, invested more than $600 million in technology to support students, and eliminated 80 associate degree programs, which had poor records for job placement or improving students’ earnings. It cut marketing spending to focus more on student retention, which Apollo says has improved.

There’s reason to be skeptical of buyout funds as stewards of higher ed: Based on data from before the U. of Phoenix sale, a 2020 study by researchers from the University of California at Merced and other schools found private equity ownership led to declining graduation rates and greater levels of student debt at for-profit colleges. More than 3,000 consumers have complained to the Federal Trade Commission about the U. of Phoenix since the 2017 acquisition, according to data released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Their grievances include harassing sales calls and emails, being shortchanged on federal financial aid, and getting pushed to sign up for unnecessary classes. Apollo says many of the complaints are from students who began or completed their studies before the change in ownership. Some complaints are from military personnel and veterans, long a big source of students for the U. of Phoenix. “We haven’t seen anything that would indicate a dramatic change in their behavior,” says Aniela Szymanski, a senior director at Veterans Education Success, a research and advocacy group. “It is kind of disappointing when we speak to veterans.” Brendon Walker, a 35-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who’s studied on and off with the U. of Phoenix since 2014, doesn’t see improvement, either. He says his online psychology and science bachelor’s program offers little instruction. “It is not a lot of learning,” says Walker, who filed a complaint with the veterans group. “I don’t feel I can use the information.” The U. of Phoenix points to students such as King Imani, who completed his management doctorate in December. The college’s new owners made the school more efficient, says Imani, 31. “The changing technology, the structuring of the staff, everything seems to be more streamlined,” he says. Apollo says the school doesn’t have an unusual number of complaints for a for-profit college. To monitor sales and other practices, the school has more than 85 compliance workers, and it records calls and reviews them using artificial intelligence. “We have probably been scrutinized more than any other university, and we welcome that,” says Kwon. “This is an area where no corners are cut and we embrace dialogue and focus on quality.” The Biden administration has indicated it may renew a crackdown on for-profits, and traditional colleges are competing with beefed-up online offerings. It may not matter much for Apollo, given the value it’s already reaped from the deal. —Sabrina Willmer

Top private equity deals in higher edrelated businesses from January 2016 to April 23, 2021

THE BOTTOM LINE Apollo has done well with its deal to acquire the University of Phoenix, thanks largely to the sale of overseas schools. But the college has a troubled legacy to overcome.

$1.1b

Apollo Education Group

383m Laureate Education

320m Hobsons

Tiber

Meteor Learning

○ Kwon

KWON: APOLLO GLOBAL MANAGEMENT INC. DATA: PITCHBOOK

FINANCE

Technology advanced

A sustainable world

Markets and investing

Power and trade flows

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Join the conversation: QatarEconomicForum.com

Bloomberg Businessweek

Edited by Cristina Lindblad

A trawl through 30 years of data traces the evolution of superstar firms, a difficult-to-tame species The world’s biggest businesses were doing fine until Covid-19 arrived. Now they’re doing even better. The top 50 companies by value added $4.5 trillion of stock market capitalization in 2020, taking their combined worth to about 28% of global gross domestic product. Three decades ago the equivalent figure was less than 5%. That’s just one measure of how superstar firms have come to dominate the world economy, according to a new study by Bloomberg Economics that maps out their changing role. The findings provide ammunition for policymakers bent on reining in the giants—including a U.S. government that’s

seeking to rally global support for higher levies on corporate profits. The biggest companies generally post fatter margins and pay less in taxes than they did in decades past, the Bloomberg Economics study shows. Their median effective tax rate of 35% in 1990 had dwindled to only 17% last year—while profit margins headed in the opposite direction, soaring from 7% to 18% over the same period. They also devote a smaller portion of their earnings to job-creating investments: In 1990, IBM— at the time the world’s biggest publicly listed company—devoted 9% of its revenue to capital

ILLUSTRATION BY TIMO LENZEN

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Bloomberg Businessweek

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expenditures. Fast-forward to 2020, when Apple— its replacement in the top spot—spent just 3%. The advantages superstar firms enjoy became all the more glaring during the pandemic, which is one reason why the issue of how to tame them has vaulted up the political agenda in so many countries. Tech giants such as Amazon.com Inc. have business models that are tailor-made for a year of social distancing, unlike Main Street competitors dependent on foot traffic. And government rescues worked best for the biggest companies, which benefited from central bank backstops that kept borrowing costs low and stock prices high. In contrast, patchwork relief efforts for small businesses left many struggling to pay their bills. In the U.S., President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking to raise corporate taxes as part of a wider effort to halt the long drift to inequality. He wants to reverse at least some of the cuts implemented by his direct predecessor, Donald Trump. He’s also pushing for a global tax deal that would make it harder for the biggest companies to lower their bills by shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions. That practice spread as corporations grew bigger. A 2019 study by the International Monetary Fund found that as much as 40% of what on paper looks like foreign direct investment is “phantom investment into corporate shells with no substance and no real links to the local economy.” In a speech in April, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cited a global “30-year race to the bottom on corporate tax rates.” She said agreement among Group of 20 countries on a global minimum charge will create “a more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations.” The U.S. proposal for a 21% minimum rate is putting pressure on European Union countries to follow suit—and drawing objections from EU member states such as Ireland, whose low corporate tax rate has encouraged multinationals including Apple Inc. and Google owner Alphabet Inc. to set up regional headquarters there. A fight could be in store, because EU decisions must be unanimous. In 1990, there were no Chinese businesses among the top 50 exchange-traded companies; last year there were 8. China’s gains have come largely at the expense of European enterprises, whose presence on the list has shrunk from 15 to 7 over the period. Alongside the shifting geography of the world economy, the Bloomberg Economics study also captures a profound change in what the biggest companies do. Technology dominates the top of the list, and fossil fuel companies—with the exception of Saudi Arabia’s flagship Aramco—have dropped off.

The 50 Largest Public Companies Globally in 2020 The rise of China, advances in technology, and the clean energy revolution are driving turnover at the top of the rankings ● New to top 50 since 2010 ● Technology company ● Based in China Apple

Aramco

Microsoft

Amazon

Alphabet

Facebook

Tencent

Tesla

Alibaba

Berkshire Hathaway

Visa

TSMC

Samsung

J&J

Walmart

JPMorgan

Kweichow Moutai

Mastercard

P&G

Nestlé

UnitedHealth

Disney

Nvidia

LVMH

Roche

Home Depot

PayPal

ICBC

Bank of America

Toyota

Verizon

Adobe

Comcast

Netflix

Coca-Cola

Ping An Insurance

Median profit margin

Novartis

Meituan

Median effective tax rate

Nike

Pinduoduo

L’Oréal

Merck

PepsiCo

AT&T

Pfizer

Intel

ASML

Salesforce

Abbott

CCB

Market value

$2.26t

Market value of the 50 as percent of global GDP 30%

0 1990

2020

Median cash as percent of capital expenditures 360%

180

0 1990

2020

40%

0 1990 $191.9b

2020

DATA: BLOOMBERG

Bloomberg Businessweek

The extraordinary growth of tech companies in particular is what’s spurring government action. They’re in the crosshairs of politicians and regulators almost everywhere. That includes China, where regulators blocked a proposed initial public offering by Jack Ma’s Ant Group, slapped record fines on affiliates including Alibaba Group Holding, and have extended the crackdown to other tech giants like Tencent Holdings. Europe has been working on ways to tax companies such as Amazon and Alphabet based on where they operate, rather than where they’re based. The idea led to tension with the U.S. under Trump, but with the Biden team in place, there’s hope for a deal. In the U.S., there’s bipartisan support for a tougher approach to Big Tech that goes far beyond tax rates. It’s one area where Biden looks set to stick with the policies of his predecessor. The president has nominated Lina Khan, a Columbia Law School professor and author of a landmark paper accusing Amazon of monopolistic behavior, to a key job on the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is already seeking to break up Facebook Inc. in a lawsuit begun under Trump, and the Department of Justice has filed a monopoly case against Alphabet. Amazon “has built its dominance through aggressively pursuing growth at the expense of profits,” a strategy that the economics of internet platform markets encourages, Khan wrote in 2017. “Under these conditions predatory pricing becomes highly rational.” For his economic council, Biden has tapped Tim Wu, another Columbia law professor whose 2018 book, The Curse of Bigness, calls for more aggressive use of antitrust law. The growing interest in that agenda has drawn comparisons with the classical age of U.S. trustbusting more than a century ago, when politicians led by Theodore Roosevelt broke up monopolies in oil, railroads, and other industries and subjected the corporate titans of the day to tougher regulation. Back then, as today, politicians from both parties worried that corporate wealth and power had become concentrated to a degree that was antidemocratic and that a failure to halt the trend might open the way to more radical and populist demands in a society riven by wealth inequalities and a sharp urban-rural divide. Many of the concerns driving governments are specific to tech and its growing influence in all areas of life, including free speech and the vast amounts of personal data companies accumulate. But others relate to bigness in general, which creates market power: the ability to stifle competitors, strong-arm suppliers, milk customers, and shape regulation.

There’s also a growing body of research showing the increased dominance of superstar firms has placed workers at a disadvantage. Many economists have attributed the slow U.S. wage growth of the pre-pandemic decades at least in part to waning competition. Some tech companies have business models that allow them to scale up without adding many staff. Others, Amazon and Alibaba among them, employ huge numbers of workers but often in low-skill and low-paid jobs—though Amazon, after defeating an attempt to form a union at an Alabama warehouse, has announced pay increases across the board. Another measure of the growing might of superstar firms is the increased profit margins that Bloomberg Economics documented, which would likely be even wider if some companies weren’t sacrificing short-term income for gains in market share that will deliver larger payoffs in the years ahead. Economists studying the problem of bigness have concluded it shows up at levels below the world’s top 50, too. For example, a 2017 study found that three-quarters of U.S. industries saw an increase in concentration over the previous two decades, with the market dominated by fewer and bigger companies. With fat profits, light tax bills, and limited need for capital or even workers, the new generation of megafirms poses challenges for monetary and fiscal policy, too. The supply-side argument that lower taxes spur growth by fueling hiring and investment— never particularly well supported by the data—now looks even more tenuous. And the idea that central banks can achieve the same effect with lower interest rates takes a hit when the megacorporations have amassed so much cash they don’t need to borrow. In 2020 the top 50 companies were sitting on a cash pile of $1.8 trillion, enough to fund their entire capital spending for the year more than five times over. Amid all the concerns triggered by the emergence of superstar firms, the Bloomberg Economics study offers one finding that may be more reassuring. In each of the last three decades, about half of the top 50 spots in the corporate rankings have turned over. That doesn’t necessarily say much about the prospects for newcomers trying to break into an industry. It may merely reflect an economy’s changing contours, such as the generational shift from Big Oil to Big Tech. But it does show that market dynamism is still at work and that getting to the top is no guarantee of staying there. �Tom Orlik, Justin Jimenez, and Cedric Sam THE BOTTOM LINE The world’s 50 most valuable companies have gotten bigger, techier, and more Chinese since 1990. The pandemic has given fresh impetus to efforts to curb their influence.

May 24, 2021

*“PEOPLE COVERED” DIVIDES THE DOSES ADMINISTERED FOR EACH VACCINE TYPE BY THE NUMBER OF DOSES REQUIRED FOR FULL VACCINATION; DATA AS OF MAY 17. DATA: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BLOOMBERG VACCINE TRACKER

◼ ECONOMICS

Bloomberg Businessweek

The ‘Covid Zero’ Trap A smattering of places, mainly across the Asia-Pacific region, have achieved stunning victories in the battle against Covid-19, effectively wiping it out within their borders. Now they face a fresh test: rejoining the rest of the world, which is still awash in the pathogen. In some ways, the success of “Covid Zero” strategies is becoming a straitjacket. As financial and travel hubs such as New York and London return to business as usual—tolerating hundreds of daily cases while vaccinations gather pace—counterparts in Asia like Singapore and Hong Kong risk being left behind as they maintain stringent border controls and tighten other curbs in response to single-digit flareups. China, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand have suffered fewer deaths during the entire pandemic than many countries—even highly vaccinated ones—currently log in a matter of days. That’s allowed their citizens to lead largely normal lives for much of the past year, even going maskless. But sustaining this vaunted status also has required stop-start lockdown cycles, nearblanket bans on international travel, and strict quarantine policies. The few travelers permitted to enter must spend weeks in total confinement, unable to leave a hotel room. Now that mass inoculation drives are allowing other parts of the world to normalize, experts and residents are starting to question whether it makes sense to stick with zero-tolerance policies. “This is neither wise nor tenable for much longer,” says Donald Low, a professor at the Institute of Public Policy of the Hong Kong University of Science, who argues that Hong Kong and other Covid Zero locales are now “at a serious disadvantage” vis-a-vis countries where there’s an expectation the disease will become endemic, meaning it will circulate at some level without exacting large death tolls. As other countries open up, Asian economies will have to implement measures that are harsher and more strict to maintain zero infection rates. Hong Kong requires a three-week quarantine for most travelers and recently forced the families of toddlers who attended a playgroup together to isolate in a cramped government-run quarantine center after one of the parents became infected. Singapore, where locally acquired cases have climbed to the highest level since April 2020, is returning to restrictions it last imposed a year ago, banning indoor dining and limiting gatherings to two people. The resurgence also forced authorities to postpone

May 24, 2021

● Places that successfully corralled the coronavirus are finding it harder to reopen

a highly anticipated travel bubble with Hong Kong. Taiwan reported 333 local cases on May 17, more than 10 times its previous peak. It promptly shut down schools in Taipei for two weeks and banned entry to foreigners for a month. Australia has said it probably won’t open its international borders until the second half of 2022. “Because we have been so successful, we are even more risk-averse than we were before,” says Peter Collignon, a professor of infectious diseases at the Australian National University Medical School in Canberra. For Hong Kong and Singapore, the economic costs of maintaining a Covid elimination strategy may be significant. Both are particularly reliant on travel, compared with export-led economies such as China and Australia that can stand being shut for longer. In 2019, Hong Kong was the world’s most popular city with international visitors—even after months of political unrest—while Singapore came in fourth, according to market researcher Euromonitor. London was No. 5, and New York was No. 11. A major obstacle to reopening is the slow vaccine rollout in these Covid havens, resulting from a combination of supply limitations and citizens’ lack of urgency about lining up for shots. China has administered enough vaccines to cover about 15% of its population. In Australia the figure is 6%, and in New Zealand it’s just 3%. The U.S. and the U.K., which prioritized immunizations after having failed to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, have fully vaccinated more than 40% of their populations. Not everyone agrees that elimination can’t be pursued long term. For Michael Baker, a professor of public health at the University of Otago in New Zealand, the benefits of the approach are evident in how deaths in the country—from any cause—dropped in 2020. “If there had been the commitment to having elimination as the first option, we may have been able to eliminate it entirely and avoided this global disaster,” he says. Nonetheless, Covid Zero economies risk becoming stuck in a perpetual cycle, unable to move past the pandemic. “If their vaccination rates are low, that further jeopardizes their ability to open up,” Low says. “If so, the earlier ‘victory’ of these places over Covid-19 would have been a Pyrrhic one.” �Michelle Fay Cortez and Jinshan Hong THE BOTTOM LINE Economies in the Asia-Pacific region that embraced Covid Zero strategies risk falling behind as immunizations gather pace in the U.S. and Europe.

▼ Covid by country Cases in the past month, per 100k people Percent of people covered by vaccines* China 0 New Zealand 1 Vietnam 2 Australia 2 Hong Kong 2

Taiwan 5 Singapore 14 Israel 24 U.K. 97 U.S. 394 Italy 491 UAE 521 Germany 548

P O L I T I C S

Edited by Amanda Kolson Hurley

May 24, 2021

Roe v. Wade on the Line The Supreme Court opens the door to a reversal on abortion, stoking the culture wars The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider gutting the constitutional right to abortion, saying on May 17 it will hear Mississippi’s case to ban the procedure in almost all instances after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The move suggests the court’s strengthened conservative wing may be ready to roll back, if not overturn, the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide. The Mississippi case—which the court will hear in the nine-month term that starts in October—will be its first abortion case since the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett last October, which gave the court a 6-3 conservative majority. It lobs a contentious cultural issue back to the forefront of national politics under a new president who’s so far avoided wading into the culture wars and centered his agenda on the economy. Already, abortion-rights groups and anti-abortion

activists are preparing for a fight before next year’s midterm elections. “Abortion just became one of the top issues of the 2022 midterm elections. See you on the battlefield,” tweeted Nikki Goldschein, associate director of Planned Parenthood’s political action committee, after the court indicated it would hear the case. Mallory Quigley of the Susan B. Anthony List, which backs anti-abortion candidates, called the Mississippi case “the most consequential case for the court to take up since Roe v. Wade” and said it’s “encouraging for pro-life voters to see the fruit of past elections coming to bear.” Mississippi’s law is part of a recent wave of abortion restrictions passed by Republican-controlled states, spurred by the prospect of a receptive high court reshaped by three appointees of former President Donald Trump. In 2021 alone, states

ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKKA DUNLAP

Bloomberg Businessweek

◼ POLITICS

Bloomberg Businessweek

May 24, 2021

have enacted more than 60 restrictions, including near-total bans in Arkansas and Oklahoma, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that backs reproductive rights. Abortion hasn’t played a key role in national electoral politics for years. If the court strikes down the Mississippi law, the issue could fade again. But a decision that threatens Roe v. Wade could fire up voters who haven’t been moved by the issue for a long time, says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake: “It has the potential to energize our side and energize suburban women.” Republicans need moderate and swing voters, especially women who opposed Trump, if the party hopes to regain control of the U.S. House and Senate. Republican messaging has focused on Biden’s economic plan, which the GOP calls a move toward socialism, and its funding through tax increases on people who make more than $400,000 a year. Some voters may tune out that message if the court rules against abortion rights. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll found that 80% of Democrats and 35% of Republicans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 59% of moderate and liberal Republicans support legal abortion. The death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year, and her replacement by Barrett, led to a surge in donations and volunteers to Planned Parenthood’s advocacy arm, says Samuel Lau of the group’s PAC. But abortion historically has mobilized conservatives more than liberals. That reflects the fact that abortion-rights advocates have believed the issue is settled law, while anti-abortion activists are fighting for change. A Gallup poll last year found that Americans who oppose abortion rights are more likely than those who support them to say it’s a threshold issue for them—meaning they’ll vote only for candidates who share their views. The gap was 30% to 19%, the largest in 20 years of the poll. “There’s a complacency on the pro-choice side,” Lake says. “The feeling is that ‘Mississippi could pass this law, but it’s not going to impact me.’ ” The Mississippi ban makes exceptions only in cases of severe fetal abnormality or a major health risk to the woman. A federal district judge and then a federal appeals court said the ban was unconstitutional. Mississippi’s appeal seeks to let states outlaw abortion even before a fetus becomes viable. That would eviscerate the core holding of the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling, which said states can’t impose significant restrictions before viability. In that ruling, the court didn’t pinpoint

when viability occurs, but suggested it was at around 23 or 24 weeks. In its appeal, Mississippi claimed that viability is “not an appropriate standard for assessing the constitutionality of a law regulating abortion.” “America cannot be a humane, civilized society if its courts preclude lawmakers from imposing reasonable limits on the taking of innocent life,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued. The state’s only abortion facility, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, challenged the 2018 law. “In an unbroken line of decisions over the last fifty years, this court has held that the Constitution guarantees each person the right to decide whether to continue a pre-viability pregnancy,” the clinic argued in a brief that urged rejection of the appeal.

Unchanging Views on Abortion U.S. adults who believe abortion should be … Legal under any circumstances

Legal under certain circumstances

Illegal 60%

Planned Parenthood v. Casey 30

0 4/1975

6/1992

5/2020 DATA: GALLUP

(The clinic provides abortions through 16 weeks.) The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the law this fall but likely won’t render a decision until spring or summer of 2022. That’s just when primaries and fundraising will be gearing up for the midterms. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who supports abortion rights, is up for reelection and faces challenges from the right after voting to impeach Trump. The case will also drive some progressive groups that are pushing to expand the court. Biden has appointed a commission to study whether the nine-member body should add four or more justices, a proposal critics have attacked as “courtpacking.” Brian Fallon, director of the advocacy group Demand Justice, says the institution is “a looming threat to our democracy and in urgent need of reform.” �Gregory Korte and Greg Stohr THE BOTTOM LINE The test of Roe will energize anti-abortion voters ahead of the midterms, but it could also mobilize ordinarily complacent supporters of abortion rights—including swing voters.

Bloomberg Businessweek

A Broader View of Workers’ Rights

act was passed, would have contemplated that it would potentially be used by their 2020 counterparts to join together and demand personal protective equipment during a pandemic, or to challenge the denial of employment protections in a gig economy, or to talk about the silencing of harassment victims. But in my view, it is manifestly clear from the plain language of the act that it does protect all of this and more. When you say the act covers protections for gig workers, what is the scope of that? It would depend on the specific factual circumstances of that workplace and what those people are doing. My personal perspective is that the act’s definition of who is an employee is broad. The Supreme Court says that we’re supposed to be using the common-law definition for employee, and that that is a broad definition.

● NLRB Chairman Lauren McFerran signals a new approach to enforcing labor law under Biden

In 1935, when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act and established employees’ right to protest and organize, it gave Americans a single place to file complaints if those rights were violated: the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency led by a five-member board charged with interpreting and enforcing the law. Under the Trump administration, the NLRB took a narrow view of workers’ rights. Its general counsel determined in 2019 that Uber drivers were contractors, not employees entitled to legal protections. The board issued rulings and regulations making it easier for companies to ban organizing discussions via company email and harder to hold companies such as McDonald’s Corp. liable for what happens in franchised restaurants. On his first day in office, President Joe Biden fired the board’s general counsel and replaced the chairman appointed by Donald Trump with Democrat Lauren McFerran, an attorney and former Senate staffer who was first appointed to the board by former President Barack Obama in 2014. She’s still outnumbered by Republican members because terms are staggered, but the board is likely to have a Democratic majority by winter. That could mean big changes in such areas as who counts as employees, what’s considered a working condition they’re allowed to protest, and how they’re allowed to do so. The board could also weigh in on such controversies as a union’s bid to overturn its election defeat at Amazon.com Inc.’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. McFerran talked with Bloomberg Businessweek on May 6. (The interview has been edited for length and clarity.) When you meet people who have no idea what the NLRB is, what do you tell them? I guess I’m more interested in educating people about the act than the board. I mean, the board is just a group of people who decide cases, but I always want people to understand what the act is and what power it has. It’s such a foundational tool for workers. You know, I don’t think anyone, when the

In 2018, Elon Musk tweeted, “Why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing?” Tesla argued that the tweet was First Amendment-protected free speech on Musk’s personal Twitter account. An agency judge and you and two of your Republican colleagues all have ruled that the tweet violated federal labor law. Why? The Tesla case kind of speaks for itself, and I wouldn’t want to elaborate on the board’s decision there. In terms of the issue more generally, I’d say it’s actually one of the rare issues where there’s not much disagreement, even among the current board members. The same principles of law apply in the context of statements made on social media that apply to other types of communications that workers could be on the receiving end of. People may be more intemperate in what they say on social media, but there’s no Twitter

May 24, 2021

▲ McFerran

PHOTOGRAPH BY GABRIELLA DEMCZUK FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

◼ POLITICS

Bloomberg Businessweek

sarcasm exemption to the NLRA. We’ve never, in any context, allowed employers to get away with threatening their workers by saying, “I was just kidding.” So if a reasonable, economically vulnerable employee would interpret your tweet or your Facebook post or whatever as an attempt to interfere with, restrain, or coerce them in their ability to exercise their rights under the act, you violate the law. And it doesn’t really matter what form you use. There have been issues in recent years around what sorts of collective worker action are protected by the law. How do you approach those sorts of questions? My view is broader than my current colleagues’. Section 7, which grants rights to employees, is the absolute heart of the act. And construing it too narrowly—leaving workers exposed to restrictions or reprisals that undermine their ability to exercise their rights— frustrates what Congress intended to do. In Alstate Maintenance [a 2019 case involving an airport skycap who complained about not being tipped and was fired], I said that tips were a working condition, and that raising concerns about tips was for mutual aid or protection.

My colleagues disagreed, which I find a little unfathomable. I don’t know if they ever worked for tips in the past, but if you ask any tipped employee whether getting stiffed on tips is a matter of concern about their employment, they would say yes, I would think. [The NLRB ruled that the former skycap’s dismissal was lawful.] In Amnesty International USA [a case about employees of the human-rights nonprofit advocating for interns to be paid], when employees stood up for the interns they worked with, even though the interns themselves weren’t covered by the statute—in my view, co-workers helping co-workers is mutual aid. [The NLRB ruled in 2019 the employees’ activism wasn’t legally protected.] As long as some statutory employees are involved, our job is not to read the act in the narrowest way possible to try to exclude situations from its protection. Section 7 is broad. It’s the heart of what we’re supposed to be doing, and we should interpret it broadly. �Josh Eidelson

May 24, 2021

“We’ve never, in any context, allowed employers to get away with threatening their workers by saying, ‘I was just kidding’ ”

THE BOTTOM LINE McFerran’s expansive view of worker protections suggests that after other Democrats join her on the NLRB, its rulings will shift in workers’ favor.

Averting a Telehealth Cliff ● As legal relaxations on remote health care expire, supporters scramble to keep them

Video conferences have long outlived their charm, but one pandemic staple remains popular: the virtual doctor’s visit. Now politicians around the country are racing against deadlines to make sure their constituents aren’t forced back to in-person medicine if they don’t want it. For months, Jim Des Marais, who has ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, has been video-calling with his specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital instead of making the exhausting three-hour-plus drive to Boston from his home in Vermont. For now, he’s still able to make the drive. “But that won’t last,” says Des Marais, a 60-year-old lawyer. ALS is a degenerative neurological disease. “There will be a point in time when my disease progresses, and traveling will be very difficult for me.” Many telemedicine visits became legal because of emergency government measures early in the Covid-19 pandemic. States and the federal government swept aside some of the legal and insurance

thicket that for years held back technological progress in the almost $4 trillion U.S. health-care sector. Practicing medicine across state lines without all the usual licenses? Sure. Virtual Medicare visits? Fine. Charging the same for online visits as in-person? No problem. In the last week of March 2020, telehealth visits surged 154% from the year before, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By the end of the year, a Harris poll found that roughly two-thirds of Americans would prefer to get at least some of their health care online. Now the emergency measures that enabled many of those virtual visits have begun to expire. In response, almost 600 bills to help support and regulate distance health care are pending in U.S. statehouses, up from about 100 two years ago, according to the American Telemedicine Association. Congress is also considering relief, including a

Bloomberg Businessweek

Senate measure that would expand telemedicine access, particularly for Medicare. Led by Senators Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, and Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, it’s drawn 53 bipartisan sponsors, more than half the Senate. “Telehealth has been a lifeline” for people in rural Wisconsin, a Democratic congressman from that state, Ron Kind, said at a recent hearing. “And I feel, and I think most members do feel, that there’s no going back at this point.” Patients like Des Marais with out-of-state doctors could be especially vulnerable to losing access because of licensing rules. A doctor can face criminal charges for providing care without a state license. “It’s absolutely terrible,” says Lee Schwamm, vice president for virtual care at Mass General Brigham, Massachusetts’ largest hospital system. “To do the right thing for their patients, they would have to do the wrong thing.” For now, Des Marais’s virtual visits are safe. The Vermont legislature, just days before the state’s pandemic-era telehealth rules expired this spring, passed a one-year extension, including permission for care by out-of-state doctors. Earlier this year, Massachusetts passed a law that requires equal insurance coverage of telemedicine treatment for primary care, behavioral health, and chronic disease management. It will assess the results in two years. In Arkansas, a telemedicine bill passed last month after backers argued that equating telehealth with in-person health would help bring more medical care to rural areas.

Remote Health Care Surges During the Pandemic

The wide support for telehealth comes as the industry has taken off. Investors plowed more than $10 billion into telehealth startups last year, up from $6 billion in 2019, according to technology data firm CB Insights. But looming post-pandemic legal changes are sowing uncertainty and talk of a telehealth “cliff ” when the federal government ends the state of emergency that vastly expanded virtual visits for Medicare patients. “We see the cliff coming, and

May 24, 2021

Telehealth visits as share of all visits (baseline week of March 1-7, 2020) Weekly

By specialty* 12% 56%

Behavioral health 25

Endocrinology 8

0 12/29/19 Week began

12/20/20

Neurology

Rheumatology

Gastroenterology

Anesthesiology

Pulmonology

Adult primary care

Pediatrics

Allergy/Immunology

*AVERAGE OF LAST THREE FULL NONHOLIDAY WEEKS OF 2020. DATA: COMMONWEALTH FUND

we’re on cruise control,” warns Kyle Zebley, public policy director of the American Telemedicine Association. The Biden administration has signaled it will leave emergency measures in place at least through this year. At the same time, the U.S. Justice Department is targeting a downside of telemedicine: the potential for fraud. In October federal prosecutors charged more than 86 criminal defendants with submitting $4.5 billion in false claims to Medicare and other government insurers. Telemed businesses paid doctors to order unnecessary equipment, tests, and pain medicine with fleeting or no interaction with patients, the government alleges. More remote care could also add to legitimate health-care spending because of its convenience, according to Harvard health-care policy professor Ateev Mehrotra. “If you do see a big increase in unnecessary spend without improvements in health, then we’ll have to pull back,” he says. Telemedicine companies, such as American Well Corp., are fighting against any retrenchment. Amid the pandemic, Boston-based Amwell saw revenue jump 65% last year, to $245 million. Shares of the company, which went public in September, have lost half their value this year as competition has grown and the proportion of care that’s virtual has dropped. Peter Antall, Amwell’s chief medical officer, says reverting to more restrictions on digital doctor’s visits would be like cracking down on online banking. “Imagine,” he says, “if some regulator came in and said, ‘No, we can’t do that anymore. You’ve got to go to the bank.’ ” �Carey Goldberg and John Hechinger THE BOTTOM LINE Removing barriers to telemedicine beyond the pandemic could help rural Americans in particular, although fraud and higher spending are concerns.

ILLUSTRATION BY XAVIER LALANNE-TAUZIA

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IF YOU SPENT THE PAST YEAR FEELING LIKE GETTING BY WAS THE BEST YOU COULD DO, WELL, SAME . So we thought, why not ask experts how they do what they do? The result is our (executives! VCs! movie directors!)

HOW-TO ISSUE. It addresses questions from the pressing to the frivolous , from the fiendishly hard , to the ridiculously easy . Our experts’ answers explain the inner workings of business, finance, politics, technology, and luxury. Plus, our own writers pitch in with thoughts on subjects such as meeting deadlines , tipping a bartender , and falling in love .

(how to get wealthy Americans to pay their taxes, page 63)

(how to sing karaoke, page 45)

(how to sauce a parm, page 83) (how to land a rover on Mars, page 53)

—edited for length and clarity!—

(page 48)

(page 50)

(page 52)

You may find, as we did, that reading about all of this is educational and inspirational. And that might make whatever you’re going through a little more bearable. a

PERSUADE PEOPLE TO

GET

V A C C INAT

May 24, 2021

JESS MCINTOSH Creative director, Fellow Americans

Gottemoeller got into the Christmas spirit—sort of

Progressive organizations and advocacy groups are using Fellow Americans’ video ads to try to increase coronavirus vaccine rates. As of mid-April about 1 in 5 American adults were unwilling to be vaccinated, according to a Monmouth University poll.

We’ve tested Covid messaging several times since the pandemic began. Often, it performs quite well but causes It kind of took the air out of a backlash among conservatives, especially his tires. I always say being men. To promote uptake, a good ad has to avoid a nuclear negotiator is not this. With this in mind, we commissioned three rocket science. If you’ve got teenagers at home, you vaccine-specific videos. know how to negotiate. The first was a raw emotional appeal, lots Some negotiators are of footage of crying health-care workers more histrionic. Some overwhelmed that the shots are finally coming pound the table more. Some focus more on the out. It tested sort of meh. The second ad was technical details. At various a happy little celebration: footage of cases points in the negotiations, of vaccines rolling off the conveyor belt, less you have to show streaks heartstring-tugging than the first one. For the last of each. Although I tend to be a fairly even-tempered one we went nuts with the exuberance level. It’s person, I lost my temper basically a cheerleader number—people shouting, a couple of times and “Gimme a V!” The tests showed it was far and pounded the table. I was even told by my delegation away the best. that my face turned bright We’d assumed going in that the red. A good negotiator has emotional appeal or the middlethe range to surprise the ground ad would be the winner. other side. In my case, the Russians were so used to my being calm that Nope. The straight-up hype video when I lost my temper it had a real effect. blew them away. In any negotiation, you have a front row This suggests there’s a huge who sit at the table, and then you have appetite for optimism—for the back row, where the experts are. I made a special point of reaching out to the unbridled joy—about the vaccine. women in the back row. There were never The ad didn’t just increase uptake, any women in the front row on the Russian including with Republicans. It made side. I began to hassle my counterpart, people happy. Actually happy! saying, “Why don’t you let some of your really good female experts come and talk?” We tested a lot of videos over the I sent the women White House Christmas last year, and believe me, that’s ornaments, and I didn’t send them to the not a typical finding. —As told to men. They got kind of mad at me. Joshua Green —As told to Peter Coy

ROSE GOTTEMOELLER Distinguished lecturer, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford She led talks with Russia on behalf of the Obama administration that culminated in 2011’s New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Her book, Negotiating the New START Treaty, is out this month from Cambria Press. Anatoly Antonov, who’s currently the Russian ambassador to the U.S., was my counterpart during the New START negotiations. In any negotiation, you want to have the capability to knock your counterpart off balance from time to time. He did it to me. I did it to him. There has to be that edge of uncertainty to get people to pay attention. I invited him to lunch one day, and he ended up coming almost an hour late, expecting me to storm out or to be angry when he showed up. But I responded calmly: “I’m sorry you’re late. Let’s get on with it. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (2). ILLUSTRATION BY CAROLYN FIGEL

SWAY A NEGOTIATION

Bloomberg Businessweek

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Compile a Post-Pandemic Karaoke Playlist There are plenty of things I feel sort of comfortable doing again. But one of them is not packing into a cramped space that smells of Sapporo and screaming songs into the faces of a dozen people. I’ll know that we’re past the pandemic when I’m back in a karaoke room with co-workers after a grueling week at the office. And when that happens, I’m going to be singing these songs, roughly in this order. They all meet Standard Karaoke Code: They’re not too long (fade out that Prince jam at about 3:45); they don’t have long instrumental breaks; and none are too obscure. The songs are also on theme. My post-Covid karaoke outing won’t be a time for vulnerability. Or, to put it in Phil Collins-ese, the night will be less Against All Odds, more Sussudio. —Sam Grobart

DON’T STOP ME NOW, QUEEN “Tonight I’m gonna have myself a real good time,” Freddie Mercury begins. “I feel ali-i-i-ive. And the world, I’ll turn it inside out.” Let’s do as the man says.

I WANT TO SEE THE BRIGHT LIGHTS TONIGHT, RICHARD AND LINDA THOMPSON Next you’ll want something with a more laid-back groove. Linda sings, “I’m gonna dream till Monday comes in sight.” This implies the existence of a weekend. Remember those? It’s time to get pumped about having two days off in a row.

RHYTHM OF THE NIGHT, DEBARGE Remind everyone how good it is that you’re all here together, and “to the beat of the rhythm of the night, dance until the morning light.”

HOUNDS OF LOVE, KATE BUSH There’s always that point in the evening when a few people peel off. With fewer friends around to say, “Huh?” to your choices, get weird. Take those shoes off, as Bush sings in this 1985 indie rock hit, and “throw them in the lake.”

MAKE PENNIES ON SPOTIFY

My five-piece band, the Gincident, plays what we call “twangwave and grungegrass,” a mashup of country, jazz, and punk. We’ve gotten reasonably good reviews on obscure websites, and we’re on Spotify and other streaming platforms. But at a fraction of a penny per stream, we’ve earned just $9.58 from our two albums in the past year. What have I done with my earnings? I haven’t gotten my share yet, because…well… what’s the point? But I expect that in the next few months we might be able to buy some new guitar strings—and maybe even a few beers for 45 the band to share. —David Rocks

UPTOWN, PRINCE If you haven’t performed a Prince song, you haven’t actually done karaoke. This one, which “ain’t about no downtown, nowhere-bound, narrow-minded drag— it’s all about being free,” speaks to our communal wanderlust.

NOTHING’S GONNA STOP US NOW, STARSHIP Karaoke nights live or die on duets. Is there a more optimistic, let’s-do-this, twohands-on-the-mic song than this one? “Let ’em say we’re crazy. What do they know?”

FREEDOM! ’90, GEORGE MICHAEL You need a closer, a song for the whole room. No, it’s not that one by Journey; this past year has taught us that you very much can stop believin’. When the day comes that I’m standing on vinyl banquettes, I want everyone around me to know: “I won’t let you down, I will not give you up.”

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Bloomberg Businessweek

ETSY KATE ANTESBERGER (PLANNERKATE1) For seven years, Antesberger and her husband, Karl, have run a business making stickers and sticker tape for day planners. They did $2.5 million in business in 2020.

[[]] Stickers from Antesberger’s shop

I’ve always loved planners. I’d posted a picture of my calendar on Instagram—I’d made some stickers that popped. People said, “You should sell those.” That day, I started an Etsy shop. In six months, I left my job at IBM to do Etsy full time. I have an accounting degree and an MBA. My dad was like, “You’re foolish.” The sticker industry has blown

May 24, 2021

up. We make everything ourselves. There are stickers for things like a doctor’s appointment that’ll just say doctor, or it’s a stethoscope. There are stickers to make your planner look cute for birthdays, paydays. Others are for therapy or women tracking their cycles. Some of the bestselling ones last year were the quarantine trackers. We started with one sheet marking days 1 to 50. The stickers said quarantine day #1, #2, etc. We ended up going to day 460. There was also a “quarantini” sticker of a martini glass to mark another solo happy hour. People had more time for it last year, so that might have played into our growth. The comfort of being able to track things and keep normalcy in our lives helped. I had customers thank us for bringing joy to their lives. We have such a strong community of planner people. �As told to Jordyn Holman

BUILD A BUSIN COURTESY KATE ANTESBERGER. COURTESY NATHAN MILNER. DREAKNOWSBEST/TIKTOK. DHAR MANN STUDIO (2)

TIKTOK DREA OKEKE (@DREAKNOWSBEST) Okeke’s comedy, lifestyle, and culture videos have attracted 5.3 million followers. She charges brands, including Amazon Prime, Bose, L’Oréal, and Tide, from $10,000 to $20,000 per post. Most people think the only way to make money on TikTok is through deals with brands. But that’s not true— it’s not even the easiest way. It took me a while to build the kind of following that lets me charge what I charge. For example, you could give your videos some type of catchphrase. Maybe you’re always saying, “It’s food time!” in skits or in your tutorials. Then you can sell [[]] Okeke

merchandise with the catchphrase on it. Whatever you’re selling, make sure you’re making videos of you creating the product. Use songs that are trending. Music is the best way for your video to get traction. Get some microinfluencers to use your product and have them make a video that’s authentic, like, “Hey, guys, I was looking through the internet, and I saw this, and I had to buy it—here’s how I used it to decorate my room.” Nobody’s going to know it’s an ad, because these guys don’t have many followers. You can pay them or give them stuff for free. If you don’t have your own product to sell, you could try affiliate links, which give you a kickback for posting about something. This guy recently posted this cool video of a microscope thing that goes in your ear and sees your earwax and put the link to buy it in his bio. Anytime someone clicks to purchase it, he gets money. Whatever you do, put links in your bio. �As told to Sarah Frier

[[]] Stills from Mann's videos

ONLY FANS STARR HAWKINS (@BABYMOMMAFIT) Almost 400 people subscribe to watch her workout videos, each paying $30 a month. I trained a lot of Miami’s hottest moms, like Karlie Kloss and sports agent Drew Rosenhaus’s wife [Lisa Thompson]. But when the pandemic hit, I couldn’t do classes in public. I’d been teaching for eight hours a day, charging up to $80 a class. At first I started streaming on Instagram Live, doing classes for free. Then Beyoncé mentioned OnlyFans in a song, so I decided to check it out. I never miss a day. Consistency

is key. If Christmas falls on a Wednesday, we’re working out on Christmas. When you become a part of their day, they get hooked. I post the video every day at the same time, and now the girls are waiting for it. There are months when the business doesn’t grow. When that happens, I make a challenge. The person who lost the most weight gets $200. I post photos to Instagram showing what girls looked like before they worked out with me and after, to spread word-of-mouth. On Friday, I do “Bring a Friend Friday” to expose someone new. I sold 200 T-shirts in a month and a half, and people wear them to class. There are girls in Singapore and Australia wearing my shirts. They say “Baby Momma First” and “Class of Ass.” I started with 150 subscribers. In January last year, I was a single mom, $30,000 in debt, working from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., and living paycheck to paycheck. Now I’m making $10,000 to $12,000 a month on OnlyFans and might have enough money to buy a house. �As told to Lucas Shaw

[[]] Milner

YOUTUBE NATHAN MILNER (UNSPEAKABLE) Milner, who has about 11 million subscribers for five gaming and vlogging channels, says he has annual revenue in the “tens of millions of dollars” from posting videos with names such as ESCAPING 100 LAYERS OF CARDBOARD! WE’RE TRAPPED! The first videos I posted were about the game Minecraft. I didn’t expect to make any money. I was only 13 or 14. In one video, I ranked my top five modifications, like adding a miniature map to the screen or an option that lets you see how hurt another character is. That video now has 357,000 views— about 50 times more than any of my earliest videos. That’s when I realized that not a lot of people offered that kind of information. I found that niche and went all-in. When I was getting 100 million views a month, I was one of the three most-watched Minecraft channels. My most successful videos weren’t the “top five” videos anymore. They were of me trying to entertain people while I played games. That’s when I decided to start a video-blog channel. I saw a video of a dude making a Hot Wheels track. So I made a Hot Wheels track, only I made it go underwater. I now operate five different channels. Our most popular video is us building a massive Lego tower. It’s gotten a lot easier now that I have a team. We upload videos every week, and each one gets at least a couple million views. We toss out 80% of our ideas. If we film something and it doesn’t work, I’m not going to upload it. That’s probably why I end up working 80 hours a week. Good titles and thumbnails are everything. I make two or three for every video. I pick whichever I think is best, but if it doesn’t perform, I switch it out. The channels combined generate more than 300 million viewers a month, and revenue from the business doubles every year. A lot of that comes from ads, but a growing portion comes from merchandise and branded-content deals. I made enough money that I bought a house in north Houston surrounded by water to film the videos. My next goal is I want to buy a submarine. �As told to L.S.

NESS ON … INSTAGRAM DHAR MANN (@DHAR.MANN) Mann, who has 4 million followers, produces videos that tackle thorny subjects such as bullying (Student Humiliates Special Ed Kid) and overparenting (Mom Forces Girl to Play With Barbies). He says the content generates six figures in annual revenue from ads on the platform’s IGTV feature. When I started, it was just me talking to a camera. I wouldn’t break 1,000 views. Then I added animation with a voice-over, and I’d get more than 10,000. Then I analyzed the data to figure out what people wanted: something that sparked emotion, was about a topic of current conversation,

and ended with a twist, leaving them with a memorable feeling. I started casting my own family members. My third one, about a CEO talking down to a janitor, took off. I pull in more money on other platforms, about $25 million a year from the ads that run on my YouTube and Facebook videos. IGTV became a surprise hit for me, though, and is starting to become more important because of the new revenue share from the ads. If I were a creator starting fresh, I’d focus on YouTube or TikTok. Insta is saturated—you could make $60,000 a year with 100,000 followers, but it would be hard to become a millionaire. Just don’t buy followers or comments. People can tell it’s not real. �As told to S.F.

MEET A DEADLINE FOR YOUR BOOK ABOUT DEADLINES 48

The problem with writing a book about deadlines is that everyone expects you to submit the manuscript on time. I couldn’t read my own book for advice; it hadn’t been written yet. Luckily, my reporting produced two early insights for a treatise on timeliness that saved me from being late. One of my first interviews was with Bill West, head of operations for Airbus Americas Engineering. Building a jet is incredibly complex—more daunting than writing a breezy business book, even. It can require 10 years to go from first designs to federal certification to production. Even so, airlines expect their planes to arrive on time. “Once I tell JetBlue I’m going to deliver an airplane on the 15th of December,” West told me, “it’s got to be delivered on that date.” The secret was to plan “right to left”: Fix your deadline and work back from there, figuring out big stuff first and filling in the rest later. “People try to get too detailed instead of building a toplevel schedule,” West said. For my book I had a year to

get everything done, and I knew I wanted to embed in as many highpressure workplaces as possible to see how they approached deadlines of various sizes and severity. So I made a simple calendar: I would report on two places in the spring, three in the summer, and three in the fall, filling in expert research along the way. That framework allowed me to chart my way from the first blank page to the completed book. The second breakthrough came during a month I spent with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten while he prepared to open two restaurants on back-to-back days. (“A massive pressure,” he told me.) Even as construction crews were hammering and sawing and drilling all around us, Vongerichten began to offer daily dinner service to staff. These mock services were first for 20 employees, then 30, then 40. They acted as self-imposed deadlines, miniopenings on the way to the big night. The trick was to treat each one as if it were real— demanding customers

May 24, 2021

were out there judging the food, the waitstaff, the menu. I wanted to replicate that checkpoint approach for the book. Rather than scribbling down notes and saving the writing for last, I would complete a chapter right after I finished reporting on each workplace. In place of an audience of hungry diners, I imagined my editor, red pencil in hand. The result was that, well before the year was up, I had a rough draft of the book waiting for me. What did I do then? I read it, revised it, and turned it in right on time. —Christopher Cox Cox’s The Deadline Effect: How to Work Like It’s the Last Minute— Before the Last Minute will be published on July 6 by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster.

other parts of New York doesn’t work now, because you don’t see as many foreign buyers. There’s still demand for what we call “prime” Upper East Side between Park and Fifth avenues, between the high 60s and high 80s. There’s a group of buyers who only want to live in this rectangle on the map, and there isn’t much available. In terms of floor plans, they’re looking for grand rooms, big spaces without beams or weird ceilings with ducts. Then you consider an open vs. traditional layout. We have a kitchen with MIKI NAFTALI The Benson a doublewide Founder, opening with sliding Naftali Group LLC doors, so that you can either keep it open to the dining room His New York development company’s or you can close it off so it’s more formal. latest project, the Benson, a 19-story I strongly believe in pre-selling—we condo on the Upper East Side of sell while we’re still building the project. Manhattan, is scheduled to open at When we opened the sales office for the the end of the year. Apartments in Benson, the first people who put in offers the Madison Avenue building start at were expecting a discount because of $13.25 million, and all 15 units were in the pandemic. I said, “I’m sorry, there contract as of mid-April. are no discounts in this building. The site cost me a fortune. The building cost me a I start with location. What used to work fortune to build.” We priced the units very a few years ago on 57th Street and in fairly. —As told to James Tarmy

SELL A LUXURY CONDO

PHOTOS: HAYES DAVIDSON/NAFTALI. BRITTA PEDERSEN/GETTY IMAGES. POPOW/GETTY IMAGES. ILLUSTRATION BY OSCAR BOLTON GREEN

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Contemplate a Covid memorial

because I’m 88 years old. It’s so unnecessary, the number of people who’ve died. It could have been prevented if the government had acted better. Do we want a memorial that memorializes the ineffectiveness of government? That’s not what memorials PETER EISENMAN are about. Where do Founder, Eisenman Architects, I love the idea of culture and visiting professor, Yale School of we even put and remembrance and Architecture silence? institutionalizing memory. His studio designed the We are a culture that needs Memorial to the Murdered Jews these kinds of reminders. But a of Europe in Berlin. Covid memorial right now? It would be an empty gesture. I just can’t help When I designed the Memorial to the but think that. Maybe I don’t have the Murdered Jews of Europe, I wanted an visionary spirit. One thing I could think abstract memorial. I didn’t want something of is an online memorial. A pandemic is that had overt symbolism. No Jewish stars, placeless. It’s everywhere. What do we no remembrances, nothing. Just silence have that can memorialize everywhere? is what I was looking for—silence in the The internet. So why not design one that field of stones. In a society of so much we could interface with? noise, maybe silence was a good thing. If you asked me personally to do If you said you wanted the same thing another one, I wouldn’t know what to do. for a Covid memorial—“We want silence I don’t want to be involved with anything to hear the voices of the dead”—I would to do with Covid. �As told to J.T. say, “How would we create a different kind of silence?” The victims of Covid don’t speak. They’re silent. And they never had a chance to speak at the end. As I understand it, most people who die of Covid don’t have a chance to say goodbye. And so the memorial would be their way of saying goodbye. But where do we even put silence? Do we put markers around the world that tell you how much of a population was lost? I would begin in 50 years. There’s nobody that’s had a chance to reflect on Covid because it’s still with us. I was in [[]] Eisenman (top); the memorial in Berlin this house for months, scared to death,

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

[[]] The way you discover an insight can be as meaningful as the insight itself, Gupta says

Pitch a VC

SUNEEL GUPTA Co-founder, Rise

Ba Ti rt p a en de r

Gupta, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, is the author of Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on

You, published in March. Rise, his one-on-one nutritional coaching startup, was sold to primary care provider 1Life Healthcare Inc. in 2016 for a reported $20 million. I’d gone zero for…more than 12 pitching Rise. It was going so

re the f 07, ho , 20 wort lly, a 4 l 30 pri 2,71 glob of A 49,05 tion .gov a As [[]] e $1,5 circul asury r e we ills in to tr b g $2 ordin acc

In my bar-going younger days, a buddy of a friend taught me a trick. When you hit the bank on Friday— and, yeah, this will require that you go inside an actual bank—ask the teller to give you your withdrawal in as many $2 bills as possible. There aren’t many in circulation. Sometimes you’ll get one or two; other times you might get $20 worth. But no matter how many you get, you’ll be able to tip twice as much as the schmuck next to you—and you’ll be much more memorable for future rounds. Anyway, after the past year, your bartender needs that extra buck more than you do. �Joel Weber

May 24, 2021

poorly that, hoping there would be investors in the audience, I agreed to be the keynote speaker at the 2012 FailCon, a San Francisco tech conference that celebrated flops. Not only did that not work, but my photo appeared in the New York Times a year later at the top of a story about failure. If I didn’t get a VC to invest soon, I’d have to shut down the company. So I went to another conference room at another VC firm in Palo Alto and gave my pitch. When the VC picked up his phone and started answering an email in the middle of my presentation, I knew I was done. I hurried through my slides, which included one about our pilot customers. He asked, “How did you find them?” I was afraid to give the answer, because it was not very Silicon Valley. The truth was that I stood outside Weight Watchers meetings. I told him how one group escorted me from the premises. How I approached one man who, it turned out, wasn’t a Weight Watchers member. The VC put his phone in his pocket and began to ask more questions. He became the first VC to say yes, even though we wound up going with other investors. I learned that how you discover an insight can be just as meaningful as the insight itself. My story had clear characters and vivid visuals. It showed that I had dedication and drive. I used the Weight Watchers story at every pitch after that first successful one, and it was always the part VCs loved the most. That’s because a great pitch is based on an “earned insight”—information you gather from firsthand experience. That could be through talking to customers, test-driving competitors’ products, or attending obscure meetups. Put yourself into the narrative. �As told to Joel Stein

GUPTA: PHOTOGRAPH BY EMILY ROSE BENNETT FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK. BARTENDER: CLASSICSTOCK. SHED: PROP STYLIST: JASON ROONEY

Bloomberg Businessweek

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

erect A Bike My middle son, who’s 18, is a heavy metal drummer, and he did his best to stimulate the economy by turning a pandemic unemployment check into the biggest drum set he could find. To accommodate the kit, I converted half of our garage into a music studio. But then I had to figure out what to do with three bikes that were now crowding my remaining garage space. One of my neighbors wanted to replace a cedar picket privacy fence on our property line, so I told him I’d remove it. That was a lot of lumber to be salvaged, and I needed a shed. I spent a couple of weekends on the project, about half the time pulling nails from the fence, tapping them straight, and stashing them in a coffee can for later use in the build. I sawed off the rotten bottoms of 4-by-4-inch posts—fences tend to rot from the ground up—saving at least 6 feet from each one, which was plenty to build a 4-by-6-foot frame for the shed’s base.

May 24, 2021

[[]] The structure, reproduced as a 1:9 scale wood architectural model

 Photograph by Ryan Duffin

Shed I had a scrap piece of plywood from building the music studio, and I used that for the floor. Then I framed the walls using the slats from the fence. I made the rear wall taller than the rest to slope the rolled asphalt roof, which will drain the rain. I started feeling good watching it come together when some neighborhood children walked by and asked me why I was building an outhouse. The finished product is a 24-square-foot shed that holds three bikes vertically on hooks, as well as my bicycle tools, helmets, locks, and other stuff. I spent about $100 on the roofing materials. I was so proud, I made a YouTube video. Lockdown made it easy to stay inside and be fairly sedentary. The bike shed helped motivate me to get outside. And maybe I’ve encouraged other people to make use of old fences instead of sending them to a landfill. �Spencer Soper

Bloomberg Businessweek

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

May 24, 2021

Answer Someone Who Asks How The Stock Market or Economy Will Perform I get this question a lot when people find out I cover economics for this magazine. What I’d like to say is: “Glad you asked! Of course I know the answer. My perfect foresight has made me inconceivably rich.” What I actually say is:

Don’t even get him started on Fed rates

It’s the perfect way to end a boring conversation. —Peter Coy

FALL IN LaVE Last spring, stuck alone in a studio apartment in Los Angeles, I redownloaded Tinder. I had low expectations and a lot of time, but it took me only a few swipes to match with Anthony, a teacher with striking blue eyes. In a normal world, we might not have found each other: Anthony had been teaching in China for two years, only to be marooned with family in Florida after visiting for a friend’s wedding. Tinder’s Passport feature lets you choose a city to swipe in—Anthony picked L.A., because he imagined living there one day. After messaging on the app, we moved to the phone. Our second call lasted six hours. We didn’t experience most of the standard first-date jitters, though I later found out that until our first Zoom date he’d been mildly anxious that I might not have teeth, given my predilection for not smiling in photos. He was relieved to find out he was wrong. Without the usual life distractions— and a renewed focus on the things that

mattered—I could easily see what made Anthony so special. He was intelligent, empathetic, deep, playful, sensitive, and strong. He made me feel like we could have a future together. In one care package, he included a sea bean. He explained that they detach from trees and float in the ocean, sometimes for years, before washing up on shore far from where their journey began but exactly where they’re supposed to be. By August, with no end in sight to the pandemic, we decided we were tired of waiting to be together. We picked a date, and Anthony prepared to move more than 2,600 miles across the country. We realized there was a certain degree of crazy to it, but what did the traditional rules of dating matter when everything in life had changed so much? Anthony arrived a few weeks later. We moved into a new apartment, and on April 17 we celebrated our one-year anniversary. —Laura Bolt

The couple on a road trip to Phoenix for Thanksgiving

COY: COURTESY PETER COY. LOVE: COURTESY LAURA BOLT. MARS: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH

“The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicts U.S. gross domestic product will grow 6.3% this year. The median estimate for the yearend S&P 500 is 4,150.”

ALLEN CHEN Systems engineer, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Chen leads the entry, descent, and landing team for the Mars 2020 project, the mission that sent the rover Perseverance to the Red Planet.

a second. It goes from being fully packed to the density of an oak tree, basically. While slowing down on the parachute, we’re going from supersonic speeds to near subsonic. Still going at about six-tenths the speed of sound on Mars, Perseverance jettisons the heat shield that protects it throughout the entry to get a look at the ground. We start taking a

Landing on Mars is all about finding a way to stop, and stop in a safe place. And really it’s about the spacecraft doing it all by herself. We can’t joystick it down. It takes about 11 minutes for signals to arrive from the spacecraft to Earth. There are so many things that have to go right! Every Perseverance spacecraft hits the top of the Martian atmosphere going around 12,000 miles per hour but needs to touch down at 1 mph. The first step of that is to use the Martian atmosphere to slow down. Encased in that protective capsule, it goes streaking across the Martian sky like a meteor. Not only does it have to survive that intense heating and the intense deceleration that it sees during that part of flight, it also has to steer its way to the landing target. It’s using look with the radar to figure out thrusters to basically fly itself how high up we are and what the like an airplane to the place we’re velocity of the vehicle is. And trying to land. then as we get lower we activate That only takes you down from a system called terrain-relative hypersonic speed to supersonic navigation, which was a new speed. When it’s still going system for Perseverance. In the almost twice the speed of sound, past, we’ve taken pictures during Perseverance has to deploy a the descent but never asked 70-foot-diameter parachute. This the spacecraft to do anything is a supersonic parachute, not a with them. This time we gave parachute you normally think of Perseverance an entirely separate as folks jump out of a plane. This brain to process those images and parachute inflates in a fraction of

Land

compare them with images we’d taken from orbiters overhead. I don’t think anyone does this anymore, but I remember back in the day driving around with a map and looking out the window, trying to line things up and figure out where you are. That’s what Perseverance does with that terrain-relative navigation system, still going at about 160 mph down. That’s about the same speed as you or I would be going if you jumped out of an airplane skydiving and headed straight for the ground with no parachute. Race-car fast. The parachute has done its job. It can’t slow us down anymore. So Perseverance jettisons it and lights up engines to finish the job. That terrain-relative navigation system, having helped us figure out where we are, now has a map of all the safest spots at the landing site and flies to one of them. It’s still going 160 mph at that point. It uses those engines to slow down, fly over that spot—in this case, Jezero Crater—and come down directly above it, slowing down to 1 mph. We have this rocket-powered jetpack that’s been doing the job of slowing us down. We deploy the wheels of the suspension system of the rover—the landing gear, if you will. So: Put those landing gear down. Put that rover on the ground safely at a nice, low speed of 1 mph. Make sure we’ve touched down. Cut that rocket-powered jetpack boost, and let it fly away to a safe distance. And we have a safe rover on the ground. —As told to Justin Bachman

Mars

Assess FinAnciAl Advice

BUY HAPPINESS (

PELOTON

ST AT AR $1 TIN ,89 G 5

(Or $49 per month for 39 months, which is how I can afford it, plus a $39-per-month membership fee) [[]] WHY I BOUGHT IT I figured if I was going all-in on exercise equipment, I might as well get the one piece people were talking about. Elizabeth Dunn, co-author of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending, recently told Bloomberg Opinion that it’s worth it to spend money on exercise in particular, because it improves our emotional well-being. [[]] HOW IT MADE ME HAPPY I ended up using it about four days a week. When the weather was dark and horrible, I felt less stressed knowing I was getting in a workout. onepeloton.com

$1 AB DUNI 5 F OU OR T PREMIUM 20 NAPKINS [[]] WHY I BOUGHT THEM A Psychology Today story, “Get More Bang for Your Happiness Buck: Revel in Anticipation,” convinced me of the benefit of eagerly awaiting deliveries. The article said one element of being happy is having things to look forward to, because it makes the future seem brighter. So I got excited about ordering napkins, printer paper, and envelopes online. I’d also read that small luxuries (napkins, say, instead of paper towels) can bring a disproportionate amount of joy relative to cost. [[]] HOW IT MADE ME HAPPY Following every twist and turn of the supply chain on my orders page made it seem like something exciting was happening. I read all the emails about my orders being processed and dispatched. They were even rerouted sometimes! amazon.co.uk

Every three months I ask a group of the best money managers around a question for Bloomberg News: Where is the best place to invest $10,000 right now? They’ve introduced me to ideas I’d never have thought of— Chinese government bonds, dividend-paying companies in Japan. But when looking for money advice, you have to stop and think whether

you’re asking the right questions. Most people, most of the time, don’t have a lot of idle cash to throw at a creative investment idea. They’re stashing away a bit of their paycheck each month for a long-term goal and should be asking their adviser how to build a sustainable strategy. The answer to that question will be different from the one I ask managers every quarter—and more boring: Build emergency savings, max out your 401(k),

CAPRI: NAUM CHAYER/ALAMY. BOTTLE: PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTINA POKU FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK. ILLUSTRATION BY AISHA FRANZ

I was employed, healthy, and regularly donating to a charity for seniors in London. And yet the pandemic gloom persisted. I couldn’t go out and do anything in the city. Could buying stuff make me happy? The saying, of course, is that money can’t buy happiness. But that’s not really true. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences even refuted the roughly decade-old theory that money doesn’t affect your sense of well-being above a certain income level. The past few months are evidence that money can, in fact, buy me happiness. Here’s what I bought—and what it did for my mental health. �Charlie Wells

(IN A PANDEMIC)

Avoid Single-Use Plastic Bottles RAY MEARS

Woodcraft and survival expert His book, We Are Nature: How to Reconnect With the Wild, was published in March by Ebury Press.

$8 ST AT AR $1 TIN 99 G

THERAGUN MASSAGE TOOL

[[]] WHY I BOUGHT IT An article I read in the Wall Street Journal, “Science of the Perfect Gift,” quoted a study that found toddlers exhibited greater happiness when they were offering treats rather than receiving them. I never give good gifts. I decided to up my game for my mom’s birthday. [[]] HOW IT MADE ME HAPPY I worked with my siblings to buy and ship the Theragun. The plotting and planning were fun, and I felt great when my mom, who loves massages but couldn’t get them because of the pandemic, told me it was the best gift she’d ever received. theragun.com

and create a balanced mix of stock and bond index funds. The most exciting thing to do then? Rebalance every so often so you’re selling high and buying low. Chinese bonds rarely enter the equation. Even many professional investors don’t often change their deeply held views. That’s what one famous money manager said when he dropped out of the project—he didn’t have a new idea every quarter. Many investment ideas

A FUTURE ITALIAN VACATION

,00

(With half due upfront, refundable until June) [[]] WHY I BOUGHT IT Behavioral research in the past few decades shows that people feel happier when they spend on experiences rather than material goods. The positive emotions last long after the outing is over, whereas the fun from a new thing wears off fairly quickly. [[]] HOW IT MADE ME HAPPY I booked a fourbedroom apartment in Capri. I spent hours looking for properties, scouring maps, and reading blogs and articles about the best spots for a trip. I couldn’t afford this on my own and missed my family, so I invited them to join me and split the cost. Border policies have varied lately, so who knows if this will happen? But I’ve started studying Italian in case I’m miraculously able to travel con la mia famiglia questo agosto (“with my family this August”). vrbo.com

are more valuable as something to learn from than as something to buy. One theme in the experts’ advice is that they’ve had to cast a wider net to find reasonably valued investments as the U.S. market keeps climbing. If your adviser’s ideas are getting more exotic, look out for the risk that’s building up in the stocks you already have. To borrow a saying from financial planners: No one ever went broke taking a profit. �Suzanne Woolley

[[]] “I hate the plastic bottle— it’s the most awful thing,” Mears says

I remember as a boy that if we were going on a cycle ride in the summer, you needed to take water with you, and the problem was that we all used glass bottles. The worry was always that if you put your pack down too quickly, you might break the bottle. I was always envious of my friends who were getting apple juice in those bottles with the French clip top, because the bottles were stronger. Now when I go for a walk, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I come across a plastic bottle, testament to somebody who’s walked into the forest with a bottle full, drunk the contents, and, when it’s at its lightest, left it behind. How has humanity fallen from the realms of wisdom? Find a water bottle you’re happy with. I reuse old army surplus bottles—it’s a plastic bottle, but it’s still functional. I cherish my water bottle. For somebody else, it might be the Gucci of stainless steel bottles. Find one you can live with for many years. �As told to Jess Shankleman

Bloomberg Businessweek

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

May 24, 2021

KEEP A MOVIE FRA JUSTIN LIN Director

Photograph by Elizabeth Weinberg

The Fast & Furious movies have grossed more than $5 billion worldwide since 2001. Lin, who directed the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth installments, has returned to direct the ninth (filmed prior to the pandemic and scheduled to be released on June 25) and 10th.

Lin in his Los Angeles office

I made my first film, Better Luck Tomorrow, for $250,000, paid for with credit cards. That got into Sundance in 2002 and changed my life. A few years later, I was making my first studio film at Disney when an executive at Universal tracked me down to talk about the third Fast, which was set in Tokyo. When I read the script, which had cars drifting around Buddha statues and women in kimonos, it was an easy no. The characters were stale, and I had a big issue with the White male lead hooking up with the token Japanese female. “I’ve seen this movie a million times, and I’ve never liked it,” I said. Stacey Snider, then the studio chief, asked, “Well, what if you get to do what you want instead?” We had two and a half months until we had to go into production. It was chaotic, but it was fun to bring my indie sensibility and create Asian characters that did more than serve “Asian” purposes. Then, like now, it’s my job to make sure that I have a point of view on what we’re going to explore.

2 GO GATTACA When we were making the third film, Tokyo Drift, Universal had just released The Bourne Supremacy. Bourne was already a blockbuster franchise, plus it had critical acclaim. I remember talking to our producer and saying, “Look, it’s great to be next to a franchise like

that. And it’s OK to say, ‘People see Fast as disposable.’ People can see us however they want to see us. But let’s redefine that through our work.” It reminded me of Gattaca, the sci-fi movie from 1997, about two brothers. To me, Bourne was like the genetically engineered brother. Fast was the merely human brother, played by Ethan Hawke. In Gattaca

GROOMER: SONIA LEE

1 HAVE A POINT OF VIEW

Bloomberg Businessweek

the brothers compete to be the fastest swimmer, and once, Hawke gets to the buoy first. So whenever we’d start a new chapter of Fast, I’d say, “Let’s go Gattaca! Let’s go all out. We’re going to swim as hard as we can to that buoy.”

3 DON’T BE AFRAID TO STEP AWAY After we finished 6, which was released in 2013, we were definitely talking about 7, but I wasn’t feeling the process was going to help me grow. It wasn’t easy to walk away, because we had built something. But it was time. Then J.J. Abrams called and said, “Do you have any interest in Star Trek?” Growing up in the ’80s, my family didn’t go to the movies. Everybody was a Star Wars fan, but I watched Star Trek reruns with my dad. My parents’ fish-and-chips restaurant would close at 9, we’d have family dinner at 10, and we’d watch Star Trek at 11. So I had a true connection. I directed Star Trek Beyond, which came out in 2016. The next year there was a 15th anniversary screening of the Sundance cut of my first

W-TO HE HO

ISS UE

E I A

feature. Afterward, at the Q&A, someone in the audience brought up #JusticeForHan, which was an online fan movement. Han, played by Sung Kang, was a character we’d introduced in Tokyo Drift, who’d supposedly died at the end of 6. I hadn’t seen the eighth movie, so I was confused when this fan said it had a scene in which Han’s killer, played by Jason Statham, showed up at a friendly barbecue with the Fast crew. I thought, “That’s weird.” Months later, I woke up one morning and felt like I had the idea for the next chapter. In the trailer for 9 we reveal “Justice Is Coming” for Han, who is back from the dead. It’s as if we didn’t miss a beat.

4 THINK LIKE YOUR AUDIENCE It takes so much effort to figure out, “OK, this is the ninth film. How do we evolve this? How do we do something that gets us excited and gets the viewers excited?” Vin Diesel and I are both old school. He plays Dominic Toretto, the patriarch of the Fast & Furious group, and he’s an executive

May 24, 20

F10 will be released in two parts

producer. Before we jump into the next chapter, we spend days talking—not about the script or action sequences, but about where we are as human beings, where we are as a world, and where these characters are in that context. I immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan when I was 8. The only blood relatives I have in America are my two brothers and my parents. Vin has shared a lot of his journey. Our conversations have connected us to the DNA and the soul of the franchise. You have to try to understand why, after 20 years, people still love these characters. And then you have to take the audience on a journey that, thematically, explores something else. The third movie was about identity. In the fourth movie we were exploring sacrifice. In the fifth, freedom. For 6 it was trust. Every Fast sequel that we’ve done, there are elements that scare me. Like having a pregnant character in Fast 5. Even when we were doing it, that was like, “Wait, we’re going to have kids?” But it’s necessary. Or else you’re just doing the same thing over and over. —As told to Amy Wallace

[[]] Rosenberg in her New York City studio

Bloomberg Businessweek

STAY COOL Co-founder and managing director, Highsnobiety

Carvalho’s site is one of the premier chroniclers of streetwear. No brand gets more attention than Supreme, which started as a New York skateboard shop in 1994 and has since become a major fashion label: Last year a one-of-a-kind T-shirt with its logo sold at auction for $52,000. The Carlyle Group Inc., a private equity company, paid $500 million for a 50% stake in Supreme in 2017; its new owner is VF Corp., an apparel and footwear company in Denver that acquired it in November for $2.1 billion. People in the industry were doing their best to punch holes in Supreme going mainstream in 2017. There’s this assumption that being cool means you can never get bigger or “sell out.” But all companies at some point need a hand, especially if you’re trying to scale, and Supreme was trying to get into

international markets. Supreme’s ability to place its brand on a variety of products is what keeps it ahead of the curve. They work with brands like Meissen porcelain, Comme des Garçons, and Louis Vuitton, but they also collaborate on Playboy jackets, Hanes shirts, Everlast boxing gloves, and Spalding basketballs. What’s cool about the VF deal is that the company already owns a group of brands including North Face, Vans, and others that Supreme has been collaborating with for decades. So it’s a strong match, and if we know anything about how VF has handled those brands, it’s going to allow Supreme to continue to do what it does. VF is going to bring in a larger operational support system and the opportunity for Supreme to work much closer with its brands. Supreme has stayed cool by doing what it’s always done: keeping its head down and not getting caught up in the industry conversation. �As told to Kim Bhasin

 Photograph by Savanna Ruedy

Sketch a Courtroom JANE ROSENBERG Artist

Rosenberg’s pastel drawings have appeared in print media and on TV for more than 40 years. She sold her first sketch while covering the 1980 arraignment of Craig Crimmins, who was convicted of killing violinist Helen Hagnes Mintiks in the so-called Murder at the Met case. My goal is to make the central character as realistic as possible. I prefer to capture an emotion, some quick gesture, like someone slouched over or looking askew, not posing stiffly. My job is to sketch the expression they portray inside the courtroom, not to render judgment. I try my best to be objective. Everything depends on my view. I pray I get a good seat. My last trial before the pandemic hit was covering Harvey Weinstein, and they put the artists in the third row. I’m not tall, so it was hard to see, and I had to wait for him to lean forward and back a lot. So I made this weird thing out of Styrofoam and smuggled it in as a booster cushion, to give me a couple of extra inches. Generally speaking, women are harder than men. You can’t caricaturize them. Martha Stewart? Blond, pretty, nothing exactly to grab onto. Leona Helmsley, though, was quite puffy everywhere, and her makeup was so harsh. I’ve been sketching from a screen for the past year. I don’t enjoy it. The images can be tiny, and everyone’s in a mask. But Steve Bannon—he comes in, his face is beet red. I’d never seen a face as red as that. Between that and his hair, I could capture a likeness. I worked on Derek Chauvin’s trial. His whole likeness is in his thin lips. �As told to Mark Ellwood

ILLUSTRATION BY AMELIE FONTAINE. SKETCHES: COURTESY JANE ROSENBERG. CONTROLLER: GETTY IMAGES

JEFF CARVALHO

GAME A GAME SEAN “DAY9” PLOTT E-sports commentator

BERNIE MADOFF He had squinty little eyes, thin, tight lips, a bumpy nose. He did not exhibit any expression of guilt.

EDDIE MURPHY He was suing his agent or something, a civil case. And he kept making fun of me sketching him and even did a little sketch of me on his tiny yellow notepad. He gave me the sketch.

Plott, who got his start playing StarCraft, won the U.S. World Cyber Games tournament in 2005. His YouTube and Twitch channels, where he dispenses tips for strategy games such as Hearthstone, Dota2, and Magic: The Gathering, have more than 500,000 subscribers each. When I was in grad school, I lived with a bunch of gamer nerds. I took everything way too seriously: “Oh, Connect 4? I’ll f---ing crush you at this s---.” One time I was showing friends one of my favorites, [the card game] Dominion. I was explaining some good things to do, some bad things to do. One of my roommates says: “Guys, don’t listen to anything Sean’s saying. Just f--- around a little bit and have fun. Then after about 20 games, you can start thinking about strategy.”

MARTIN SHKRELI He had that smirk on his face all the time. I remember that his hair parting was constantly changing. He would come back from a break, and his hair was parted on the opposite side.

ANTHONY MARSHALL Lawyer convicted of stealing millions of dollars from his mother, socialite-philanthropist Brooke Astor He was fun to draw, with clear, big blue eyes and wonderful hair. He was friendly and bought a couple of my sketches of him and his wife, who always sat behind him in the courtroom.

[[]] “Load up the game with no plan— and have some fun with it”

DONALD TRUMP I had to draw Trump, but not while I was in a courtroom. It was for the cover of a magazine, and they showed me my Madoff sketch and said, “Can you do a composition like this?” They didn’t use it, and then they wanted me to rework the whole thing a year later, with his hand up, taking the oath in a theoretical court setting [New York, “The Case for Consequences,” September 2020]. I was trying to capture a certain expression, like “how dare they annoy me with this inconvenience?”

JOHN GOTTI Mob boss He wanted to look better. He said, “Make my double chin less.”

That struck me. If someone said, “Hey, Sean, how do I get good at Game X?” I’d say the first thing is to have a good time. Try out some ridiculous ideas. Load up the game with no plan—and have some fun with it. Then come up with a plan. It’s not a plan that guarantees you win. It just tells you what to do. I’ve been playing Age of Empires II lately, and one plan is to focus only on amassing workers and town centers but never building combat units. This is a bad plan. It will cause you to lose. But if you pick two or three things you’re working on—and declare that you’re not working on anything else—you’ll focus on a digestible amount. The third piece is emotional. Be nice to yourself and remember that, if you’re trying to improve, you’re not trying to win every game. In fact, you’re not trying to win at all. You’re trying to develop the skills that will help you win later. �As told to Jason Schreier

Commute On Two Wheels How far do you need to go?

I’ve started relationships with restaurants for the flimsiest reasons— once it was a crush on the bartender—but I’ve stayed on for the important ones: the food, the service, the community. Know that you’re going in as a hapless investor. You put in time, money, and enthusiasm—and give over space on your Instagram feed and Facebook Stories to keep the business going in these perilous times—ever aware that you’ll be eating your profits. The benefit of all your activity will be little more than the occasional free drink or dessert. But also, a warm welcome at a place where everybody knows your name. There is no greater love. �Howard Chua-Eoan

A few miles

More than a few miles

May 24, 2021

My commute from Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan is about 10 miles each way, and it takes me roughly an hour by subway or car, depending on the time of day. But public transportation or driving hasn’t always been reliable for me, even before the pandemic. Sometimes I ride my bicycle (a Sirrus, by Specialized), which is also an hour trek. Other times I take my motorcycle, a BMW R nineT, which cuts 15 minutes off, because motorcycles are allowed in the high-occupancy vehicle lane for safety reasons. Want to try commuting on two wheels? I’ve been doing it for 10 years, and here’s what I’ve learned. �Lee Wilson

Upgrade to a scooter or motorcycle and take a class from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (prices vary; msf-usa.org) to learn the fundamentals. I get gear from Union Garage (uniongaragenyc.com). Invest in a helmet like Shoei’s RF-1400 ($530), as well as gloves (starting at $70), a jacket (starting at $160), and sturdy footwear (starting at $120).

I’d suggest a bicycle

How much do you want to pay?

Just get me where I need to go

Those stimulus checks aren’t gonna spend themselves

Enroll in a bike-sharing program. They’re popular in New York ($179 annually; citibikenyc.com), Chicago ($108; divvybikes.com), Portland, Ore. ($99; biketownpdx.com), and other cities. A pedal-assist bike can make your ride less strenuous.

Brands such as Specialized sell bikes that cost from $650 to $13,000 (specialized.com). Mount a bag, like Ortlieb’s Back-Roller Free ($110; ortliebusa.com) to carry lunch and a fresh shirt. Backpacks are uncomfortable in the summer.

What’s your vibe? I don’t need to set any speed records

[[]] Honda PCX150

Scooters are good for urban centers— you don’t have the annoyance of shifting in traffic the way you do on a motorcycle. Honda’s PCX150 (starting at $3,799; powersports.honda.com) and the Yamaha Zuma 125 (starting at $3,599; yamahamotorsports.com) are workhorses.

RESTAURANT: HOWARD CHUA-EOAN. HELMET: COURTESY SHOEI. SCOOTER: COURTESY HONDA. MOTORCYCLE: COURTESY KAWASAKI. FOUDY: LISA BLUMENFIELD/GETTY IMAGES. HAMM: ALEXANDER HASSENSTEIN/GETTY IMAGES. WAMBACH: CRAIG BARRITT/GETTY IMAGES. CHASTAIN: NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES. FERRERA: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. GARNER: ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES. LONGORIA: RICH FURY/GETTY IMAGES. PORTMAN: ROY ROCHLIN/GETTY IMAGES

Become A Restaurant Regular

[[]] At Contra, in Manhattan, with chef friends Jeremiah Stone (left) and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra (center)

Bloomberg Businessweek

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

May 24, 2021

START A SOCCER TEAM JULIE UHRMAN

NWSL. Natalie blew up Kara Nortman’s phone. Kara’s a venture capitalist and a member of Co-founder and president, Time’s Up’s board. [Portman is a founding Angel City Football Club member of the organization, which raises money for victims of sexual harassment.] They Angel City will be the 11th team in the National started talking about the issue Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) when the Foudy of pay equity. club starts playing next year in Los Angeles. Kara and I have known each Uhrman advises startups and venture funds. other for 20-plus years. Our friend Robyn Ward has this The idea for Angel City came from Natalie women-in-tech basketball Portman. She heard a speech by Abby Chastain league. So we’re at a friend’s Wambach, the retired U.S. Women’s National Hamm house, playing basketball, and Team star, about how the life of a retired Kara tells me about the idea she female athlete is significantly different from and Natalie have to bring a team the life of a retired male athlete. Natalie to L.A. Kara asked me if I wanted started asking why. She met Becca Roux, to help. My first question was, the executive director of the women’s team “What’s the NWSL?” players association. Becca explained the Ferrera Kara said, “Natalie and world of soccer, the NWSL, and the national Wambach I have day jobs. You’re an team’s fight against its governing body, the entrepreneur. Help us.” U.S. Soccer Federation, for pay equity and better We started having investor playing conditions. At some point, it turned from Natalie asking why to conversations in October 2019. We’re funding this like it’s a startup, and asking what she could do. In April 2019 the national we heard a lot of noes. We were team played a friendly against Belgium at Banc of Garner introduced to Alexis Ohanian, the California Stadium in downtown L.A. Natalie showed founder of Reddit and Serena Williams’s up wearing a USWNT jersey. husband. He understood. [Ohanian is Her friends did the same the largest shareholder and controlling thing. But her friends owner; Portman, Nortman, and Uhrman are Jessica Chastain, are co-founders.] We have something America Ferrera, Longoria like 60 investors. We have 14 former Jennifer Garner, and women’s team players, including Julie Eva Longoria. Foudy, Mia Hamm, and Wambach. After the women won Having former USWNT players be part the 2019 World Cup that I want to summer, Natalie said that of the organization is an incredible way zip to work for them to push their legacy. —As told we need to bring a team (and have fun on the to L.A. and be part of the to Mary Pilon Portman weekends)

If your commute takes you on the highway, pick a bike with at least a 300cc engine so you can keep up with the flow of traffic. The Kawasaki Z400 (starting at $4,999; kawasaki.com) is a good choice for beginners. Bikes from Japanese manufacturers tend to be easier to maintain and cheaper to repair than more premium European brands. I pay about $20 a day to park my motorcycle in a garage near the office, though some cities have made parking easier. Toronto, for example, exempted motorcycles and scooters from having to pay metered street parking.

The Z400

Photograph

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

May 24, 2021

by Ryan Jenq

UPGRADE YOUR GO-TO CONDIMENT 62

I keep a jar of soy sauce dressing in my fridge at all times. The mix is four parts vegetable oil to two parts soy sauce and two parts red wine vinegar. Throw in judicious amounts of fresh crushed garlic or garlic powder, dry mustard, and hot sauce. The umami savoriness makes it compatible with whatever: salads, pasta, roast chicken, tacos, or, of course, that leftover Chinese takeout. —Kate Krader

ED MILLER Co-founder, Deck Prism Sports

PLACE SMART BETS

Miller is a poker expert and co-author of The Logic of Sports Betting; Deck Prism Sports specializes in setting in-game betting odds. Bets on the point spread (1), moneyline (2), and point total are

dominated by people who do this professionally. It’s a common myth among casual bettors that you should bet the over (3), but that strategy tends not to make you money in the long run, because there are too many smart people looking at those numbers. The more obscure or prop-like (4) the bet, the better the chance you’re going to have as a casual gambler to find a good wager in terms of risk-reward. The odds are

typically less uniform. You can use multiple apps and likely will find different odds, partly because there’s far less money on the line. The bets are less predictable. Your chance to find a good bet on which NBA player is going to score the most points in a given night or which team will get 15 rebounds first is much higher because there are no smart people sweating those prices. —As told to Bailey Lipschultz

1 Point spread: A number generated by oddsmakers that serves as a handicap. “Miami Heat -5.5” means that the team is favored and must win by 6 points to result in a winning bet. 2 Moneyline: A wager in which a bettor simply picks a team or player to win outright. Underdogs pay out more money than favorites. 3 Over-under: A bet on whether the outcome of a game, normally the combined score of two teams, will be above or below a number set by a sportsbook. 4 Prop, proposition, or novelty bet: A bet made regarding the occurrence or absence of an event in a contest or series of contests. Examples include whether a specific golfer will hole-in-one and if the New York Islanders will win the Stanley Cup.

FOOD STYLIST (DRESSING): ERIKA JOYCE. FOODS: GETTY IMAGES (4). ILLUSTRATIONS BY TIM LAHAN

Replace your classic vinaigrette with this one

Get Wealthy Americans to Pay Their Taxes CHYE-CHING HUANG Founding executive director, Tax Law Center, New York University Huang was a corporate lawyer in her home country of New Zealand and later the senior director of economic policy at the

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank. The Tax Law Center is a new effort to analyze and design tax policy. One of the problems tax administration has faced over the past 10 years is that the IRS budget for enforcement has been cut by more than a fifth. So one piece of potentially low-hanging fruit is to ensure that wealthy people pay the taxes they already owe. A new paper estimates that more than a fifth of their income goes unreported. The rates of audits on the highestincome people and wealthiest corporations

have been cut by about half since 2010. The number of people who are expert enough to audit the most complex tax returns— which tend to be the returns of wealthy people—is down by more than 30%. Of those left, a large number are eligible for retirement over the next few years. There’s a potential crisis there. An underfunded IRS means multinationals and high-net-worth individuals can outgun the IRS when there’s a dispute or an audit. They have more resources available to them than the IRS does. The service has performed admirably in a pandemic, but it’s a critical time to rebuild. —As told to Ben Steverman

If a CEO always talks about numbers, you need to know that. Otherwise, it may be an unfair comparison with CEOs who tend not to talk numbers. Prepared remarks from CEOs and CFOs have been vetted—the gold mine is the Q&A, because it’s difficult to prepare for.

Engineer a Ñ Quant Ò Strategy JEFF SHEN Co-head, Systematic Active Equity, BlackRock Inc. Shen’s unit oversees about $150 billion invested using computer-based methods.

MEASURE We look at the numeric ratio—the percentage of numbers relative to the total number of words in what CEOs and CFOs say in a conference call transcript. The idea

is if you have a good quarter, you’re going to be precise when talking to analysts. It’s like when a kid comes home and you ask him or her, “How did you do at school?” If they’re precise and say, “I got 97 on my math test,” that’s pretty good, vs. “I did all right.”

KNOW YOUR HISTORY In any quant strategy, you need to get as much data going as far back in history as possible.

it. Diversification across ideas will help you achieve the level of consistency that’s expected. There’s always a risk of one type of idea not working because of the investment environment or because competitors are crowding in. 63

BACKTEST Get a sense of how the strategy would have performed if you were going back five years. Would it have made money? Even if a strategy makes money reasonably consistently, there’s still room to think: Is it making money for the right reasons? It’s important to challenge your central thesis to see if you just got lucky.

ASK: IS IT SPECIAL? Is this an enhancement of something we already have? Or is it truly unique?

DIVERSIFY Combine it with your other ideas, or “signals,” and trade

FINE-TUNE When something isn’t working, look at it. Adjust your algos—or kill them. We haven’t been shy about turning things off. Performance can certainly be a driver. The second one is: Is the idea still relevant in the current environment? We’ve got to change the model to adapt to the new world, not the other way around. —As told to Justina Lee

Letterr’s Roblox avatar

Excite A Fan Base MEGAN LETTER aka TheMeganPlays, gamer Letter has 1.6 million followers, collectively known as the Peachy Squad, on the Roblox platform. She and her husband, Zach, run Wonder Works Studio, which produced the popular Overlook Bay, a role-playing game that lets people decorate homes and adopt pets—and, she says, that helps provide the couple with “well over a seven-figure salary.” In a game like The Sims, you have a job, and you live a life, and you age. But in Overlook you stay the same. It’s like playing house or playing pretend. You use your imagination to create storylines. You can go fishing. Sometimes I log in, and I see people pretending to do their homework. Our demographic is anywhere from age 9 to 16. We even have grown adults, like 50, 60 years old. It’s predominantly female. I love my audience. It’s like my dream audience—70% is in the U.S., 20% is in the U.K., and then it’s Australia, Canada, and other countries. They’re so sweet, they’re so kind, and they keep me going every day. My audience is the reason I’m so bubbly and happy. I attribute a lot of my personality to high school and being in a sorority [at the University of Texas at Arlington]. I was pretty down on myself, didn’t have a lot of confidence. But when I went into a sorority, I learned a lot about philanthropy and treating others the way you want to be treated. I always, always, always try to remind my audience to treat everybody with respect. Why would I want to make anybody feel sad or upset? They’re always talking to me. If I post a video on my YouTube channel where I say, “Today we had to take my dog to the vet for a checkup,” they’ll say, “Hey, how is your dog?” It’s like, oh my gosh, wait, they know what’s happening in my life. They care about what’s happening in my life, and they care enough to check. —As told to Jennifer Zabasajja

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Perfect Cheeseburger INA GARTEN Chef, cookbook author, TV host Garten is the host of Barefoot Contessa and Barefoot Contessa: Cook Like a Pro on the Food Network. Her latest book, Modern Comfort Food, was published in October by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The first thing you need is good ground beef. Find a butcher who will grind the meat for you, and buy it just before dinner. I’ve tested the recipe with pre-ground meat, and you can see the difference in color. I use a mix of sirloin and chuck: sirloin for the flavor, chuck for the fat. I add steak sauce, too. I prefer Smith & Wollensky ($25 for three bottles; smithandwollensky.com), but use whichever one you like best. A pat of butter, too, keeps it moist. It’s important not to compress the burger. I mix it with a fork, so it’s not dense. I know everyone likes to stand at the grill with a spatula and press on it, and it makes a satisfying splatter, but then you’re just giving your guests a bad hamburger. I cook mine on a charcoal Weber grill. There are fancier ones that do

a better job, but I like to have the equipment that other people have. The other big mistake people make with hamburgers is they don’t let them rest. Just like any type of protein, cover it with foil and let it rest for five minutes after it’s cooked. It makes them particularly juicy. Instead of cheddar, I love blue cheese. Blue cheese and beef together—it has a spiciness and saltiness and bite to it. And it’s certainly better than American cheese. No Kraft Singles here! When it comes to condiments, I use Heinz ketchup, and there’s no other one. I’m still rebelling against when my mother would buy cheap ketchup. I don’t think this burger needs bacon, but you can add it if you want. For the bun, I like a brioche roll from Eli Zabar ($24 for 12; elizabar.com), but Martin’s potato rolls are also so good. You want to lightly grill the bun, just so it’s a slightly different texture from being soft. And then I build the burger by putting some butter lettuce on the bottom of the bun, then the grilled patty, blue cheese, and a slice of tomato. And there you have it. —As told to Kate Krader

AVATAR: MEGANPLAYS/TWITTER. PATTY, CHEESE, KETCHUP: GETTY IMAGES. GRILL, BUN, SAUCE: COURTESY COMPANIES. GARTEN: QUENTIN BACON. IVE: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Bloomberg Busines

HIRE JONY IVE For decades at Apple Inc., Ive designed some of the most influential and iconic products on the planet— the MacBook and iPod, the iPhone and Apple Watch. Then in June 2019 he announced he was leaving the company to start LoveFrom, an independent studio, with fellow industrial designer Marc Newson. Almost two years later, Ive has proved as elusive as when he operated out of Apple’s hush-hush headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., under Steve Jobs. Until last October, Apple was LoveFrom’s only disclosed client. Then came the announcement of a partnership with Airbnb Inc.—co-founder Brian Chesky is good friends with Ive—and media reports that Ferrari NV was considering INA GARTEN’S recruiting Ive. But unless BLUE CHEESE you know Jony on a firstname basis or run an BURGER exotic sports car brand, In a large bowl, using the hiring LoveFrom is likely tines of a fork, carefully a challenge. Its website mix 2 lb ground chuck is a blank white page with 1 lb ground sirloin, 6 extra-large egg yolks, without text or contact 3 tbsp of your favorite information. (A company steak sauce, 1½ tsp spokesperson says it’s kosher salt, and ¾ tsp in development.) freshly ground black pepper. Don’t mash the During his time at mixture. Press lightly Apple, Ive worked on a into shape to form 8 to limited number of outside 10 patties. Press a thin projects, mostly eclectic slice of cold unsalted butter into the top of creations for charity each patty (using 4 tbsp auctions, such as a onebutter total), making sure of-a-kind Leica camera, the meat entirely encases the butter. an all-diamond Light a charcoal grill or heat a grill pan over medium-high heat. Cook the hamburgers for 4 minutes on one side. Turn and cook for 3 minutes on the other side for medium rare. Transfer to a platter, cover with foil, and let rest for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, grill buns, cut side down, until just toasted. Place a hamburger and 1 oz blue cheese on each burger. Add arugula and tomato to the burger if desired and serve hot. Makes 8 to 10.

ring with San Francisco-based Diamond Foundry, and a Christmas tree display for London’s Claridge’s Hotel. We reached out to some of Ive’s philanthropic partners over the years—as well as to LoveFrom and its clients—for insights into procuring his talents. Here’s what they emailed us. —Austin Carr LOVEFROM SPOKESPERSON “Sounds like we can’t help at the moment and Jony’s not ready to do interviews about his plans quite yet.” MARC NEWSON LTD. SPOKESPERSON “I’ve passed on your message onto the press team and someone will follow up from there if they’d like to pursue the feature further.” APPLE didn’t respond to requests for comment. AIRBNB SPOKESPERSON “I’m sure you are unsurprised to learn that you’re not the only person who has this line of

inquiry and it isn’t something we’re going into at this time.” FERRARI SPOKESPERSON “Thank you for your kind email, but we don’t provide comment on these kinds of topics.” LEICA didn’t respond to requests for comment. DIAMOND FOUNDRY SPOKESPERSON “We can’t accommodate an interview at this time.” CLARIDGE’S HOTEL SPOKESPERSON “Sadly we are unable to help further on contributing to this story.”

Ive with an iPad, another of his designs

Luke Kowald, an Australian product designer who purchased the website LoveFrom.style to get Ive’s attention: “When I heard the news that Jony Ive was leaving Apple and starting his own company, LoveFrom, I thought, ‘Sweet! Let’s check out his website!’ So I checked it out and there’s nothing there! I love doing random, creative, fun things, and I do web design and search marketing, so I whipped up a page in a day. And then—bang—within a few weeks, it was right at the top [of Google’s search results]. “I’ve had soooo many people contact me through there—hundreds and hundreds of people. It’s ridiculous. I’ve met some cool peeps: people adding me on Insta, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, the whole lot. So many convos with artisans. People looking for the LoveFrom website. All sorts of people saying, ‘How do I get in contact with Jony?’ ” —As told to A.C. Garten and her favorite ketchup

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Bloomberg Businessweek

WENDY CRAFT

Chief of staff, Fulcrum Equities LLC Family offices are private companies that handle the financial interests of a rich person or family, with a focus on preserving generational wealth. Fulcrum manages the family money of real estate developer Kent Swig.

The first thing I ask anybody who says, “I think I need a family office,” is, “Really? Why?” It’s different for everybody. Do I want great-grandchildren, who I may never meet, to know who I was? Do I want to separate my wealth from my business? The next thing you need to do is to come up with a name. I always advise against using your own name. Everyone can find you, and you’ll get 6,000 calls a day from people raising money or looking for investment. Pick something that means something to you. You’re setting up something that’s going to survive for generations. You need to start thinking about things like, what if my child marries a spouse I don’t like? Am I going to let the spouses have an equal say at the table on investment decisions with my children? Are we going to do prenups? Am I going to treat my children equally financially if one of them follows me into the family business and the other two become schoolteachers and earn less? Remember, the family will grow. There are families in Europe that are 12 to 14 generations old that now have over 1,000 family members. If every member does more than just replace his or her own life, then the share of the pie is diminished. A medium-size family office has four to six staff members. You need a chief executive officer, a chief investment officer, a couple of accountants, and a personal assistant who are bright on their feet and can run around and help the family principals. If

you’re big, you’ll have a tax department. If you have full-time service staff in your home or a security detail, you need a concierge component of your family office to help manage that. You can’t just hire people and say, “Here’s your job—go do it.” They need to be trained. They’re your gatekeepers.

May 24, 2021

Then there’s what I call the sustainability of the family office. By the third generation, 90% of family offices lose their wealth. There’s often a problem where the person in control doesn’t want the younger generations involved. This has a detrimental effect on sustaining wealth. �As told to Devon Pendleton

Open a Family Office

[[]] Family wealth is rarely sustained through the third generation

 Photograph by Tim Schutsky

INVEST LIKE A SANE PERSON ON ROBINHOOD CHARLES ROTBLUT

Chartered financial analyst, vice president, American Association of Individual Investors The trading app has amassed a following among young investors, who helped fuel the rally earlier this year in meme

stocks such as GameStop Corp. But sorry, kids, the path to building wealth over time is far more boring. Rotblut says newbies with about $5,000 to invest—the average Robinhood customer account size as of February—should avoid single stocks at first.

[[]] Run the numbers before you start picking stonks, Rotblut says

IF YOUR PRIMARY GOAL IS SHORT-TERM SAVINGS Bypass stocks for an interest-bearing savings account to keep three to six months’ worth of expenses. This is money that shouldn’t be put at risk.

CALCULATOR: MONICA DURAN/GETTY IMAGES

IF YOUR PRIMARY GOAL IS LONG-TERM SAVINGS Opt for a broad equity market index fund or go for more diversification by holding a few funds. Our aggressive allocation strategy calls for holding large-cap stocks, mid-cap stocks, small-cap stocks, international developed stocks, and emergingmarket stocks—roughly 20% each, maybe a little less for the riskier emerging-market category. You can allocate using ETFs—and with fractional shares, you can do so even with small dollar amounts. As investors build their wealth, they can then consider adding single stocks. I wouldn’t advise doing this until an investor has built up a portfolio of about $10,000, unless you’re experimenting with a very small percentage of your savings to get familiar with investing. People who aren’t coming from wealthy families start out with hardly anything in their accounts. Start simple. �As told to Annie Massa

Run a Loyalty Program GREG GREELEY

President and chief operating officer, Opentrons In 2004, Greeley and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos were trying to figure out a way to get consumers to shop more on the site, where Greeley was then a vice president for worldwide media, when they came up with Amazon Prime. Greeley left Amazon in 2018. At Opentrons, he develops robots for life scientists. Jeff said, “I think it should be called ‘Prime.’” Because we had been talking about it in terms of “all-you-caneat” free shipping, my initial thought was, “Well, won’t people confuse that with a prime rib buffet?” I thought there must be better branding there. I said, “Jeff, ‘Prime’ is great, but let me grab some experts, and we’ll come back with a list of alternatives.” We did a diligent exercise of getting hundreds of names and narrowed it to three or four we liked better. Jeff read this list and said, “OK, this is great. So we all agree! We should call it ‘Prime.’” Many people thought the service was all about shipping speed, but we were focused

on making it a premium experience. Obviously that was insightful. Eight years later we were adding more than fast shipping—like Prime Video, music, and photos. Everyone across the company was asked, “What can your group do for Prime?” We initially charged a $79 annual fee. Lots of analysts were questioning how we could afford it, because if you looked at the math, the revenue we were collecting didn’t match the cost of our shipping. What was not public was how much engagement the service was driving. What we quickly saw with Prime members was a good combination of repeat visits and putting more than one item in the cart. We also knew that we would continue to build more warehouses to deliver that fast, predictable experience more economically. Amazon Prime is not a loyalty program. Because it’s a great experience, people who use it become loyal. Other programs get caught in this trap of thinking how expensive it’s going to be. Or how to deceive customers into thinking that it’s more than it is. But doing the hard things right generally ends up working every time. �As told to Brad Stone

 Illustrations by Dorothy Gambrell

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

REENTER SOCIETY

ROBIN DUNBAR

Emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology, University of Oxford

The “sympathy group” is about 10 people whose death would upset you deeply. They’re a core part of your world and the people you see most often.

May 24, 2021

Dunbar is the author of Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships, which was published in March by Little, Brown Book Group.

The quality of your friendships is the single best predictor of your psychological health, physical health, and even your longevity.

Your inner core of five includes the ones who’ll drop everything for you, who’ll pick you up when your world falls apart. These are the people you need to see first.

Family members are more likely to help you out of obligation.

Social media slows down the rate of decay, but staying in touch online is not going to stop a friendship from eventually disappearing.

Social bonding depends on being able to walk around to someone’s house, bang on the door, and say, “Let’s have a beer”—or your personal equivalent of that.

Friendships need more time investment to keep in rhythm, so choosing who to see is a bit of a dilemma. You want to trigger endorphins, whether it’s singing in a choir, dancing, or having a coffee.

Physical touch is vital. Handshakes have deep evolutionary roots. The way people touch can say more than a thousand words. That’s why elbow bumping will pass. We’re very good at adapting.

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THE HOW-TO ISSUE

REMAIN A HERMIT As restrictions lift, we’re seeing increases in social anxiety, probably because we’ve been alone or only with the same few people for a long time.

PAMELA QUALTER Professor of psychology for education, University of Manchester

Yet people are now also able to question how much social interaction they need.

May 24, 2021

Qualter led 2018’s Loneliness Experiment, a survey by the BBC and academic institutions that asked more than 55,000 people in the U.K. about the subject.

If you’re anxious after being invited to a gathering, it’s OK to say you’re not sure you want to go. You can probably explain that you’re enjoying spending time on your own. Or approach the organizer and say that you’re going to come along, but you’re trying to limit the amount of time you’re with people.

When you’re out, you can keep monitoring how it’s going. It’s OK to say, “I’m going to head back now”—or to take some time out, do something else for 10 minutes, reset the balance.

Be honest with friends about your temperament. You might be quite surprised. They may be feeling exactly the same.

We have the choice right now. When we go back to work, many of these interactions will almost be forced on us. But right now we’ve got the choice.

There’s something to be said for being with people but not interacting, just feeling the pull of something. Going to the supermarket or talking to someone at the train station in the morning can be enough for some people to feel like they’re a part of the human world.

A lot of people have found out during Covid that they like certain hobbies, maybe reading novels or painting. They’ve found pleasure. It may be that they want to do more of those activities than before.

�As told to Adam Blenford

I E THE ‘FIRE’ LIFE FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE RETIRE EARLY

 Photograph by Braylen Dion

JULIEN AND KIERSTEN SAUNDERS Bloggers, Rich & Regular

Members of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) community share strategies for supersizing savings. On their blog, married couple Julien, 40, and Kiersten, 36, discuss everything from revisiting financial plans in light of the pandemic to how to eat well on a budget. (Julien is a former chef.) Their book, tentatively titled Rich & Regular: The Anti-Excellence Guide to Financial Freedom, is due out next year from Portfolio Books.

JULIEN: We’re considered “coast FIRE,” people who have already saved enough to sustain themselves in retirement years or are close to getting there. They may still be working, but they have the privilege of pulling back on saving and perhaps in how they earn income. What led me to the movement was frustration with my job. I was a brand manager for a hotel franchiser. We had relatively high salaries, a rental property, and were investing. But I realized I didn’t want my earnings potential—and my family’s livelihood—in the hands of other people. I quit in the summer of 2018. I bought my first home for $102,000 in 2007. Kiersten and I met in 2012. In 2014 we bought our first rental property, for

$62,000 with $18,000 down. At our peak in real estate earnings, we could count on about $2,000 a month to supplement the income from our jobs. From 2013 to 2017, we saved about 40% of our income on average. We had good salaries, so we weren’t scrimping, but when Kiersten knew she’d be leaving her executive role, she stopped buying new work clothes.

the snowball method, going from the smallest to largest debt. From early on we invested at a high rate in index funds— 90% in stocks and 10% in bonds. Once the debt was paid off, we ramped up investing. We started the blog in 2017 but didn’t treat it as a business venture until after Julien quit. Along with blog income, we have brand partnerships and the book deal, and we launched a video series.

KIERSTEN: I’d heard of FIRE, but it sounded more extreme and frugal than I was willing to do. Then I met all these people in the movement who talked about what we could do as a result of reaching the “FI” part—we could work but didn’t have to—and I was on board. We had $200,000 in combined debt in 2013. We paid it off using

JULIEN: We’d hoped to hit our “FI” number in 2021— our minimum target net worth is $1.8 million. It’s now a goal we’ll likely reach in 2022 or 2023 given our selffunded business venture, raising a child, the pandemic, and financially supporting my mother. �As told to Suzanne Woolley

KANGAROO: FREDER/GETTY IMAGES. VARVATOS AND JONAS: CRAIG BARRITT/GETTY IMAGES

[[]] The Saunderses at home

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Bloomberg Businessweek

Start a Tequila Company

MELANIE PERKINS

Co-founder and CEO, Canva Inc. The Australian graphic design platform, which lets novices make posters, invitations, presentation materials, and more, has 55 million monthly active users (including 3 million who pay), giving it a $15 billion valuation.

NICK JONAS AND JOHN VARVATOS

I was teaching complicated design programs at a university in Perth. It took students the whole semester to learn something basic. People had to go and learn different things—photo editing, publishing, content management, printing, website design. I thought it should be simpler and more collaborative. Our objective was to integrate the design ecosystem.

ilicon Va S t ll e ea

d n U

The pop star and the menswear designer got their collaboration off the ground in 2019 after teaming up with master distiller Arturo Fuentes.

Co-founders, Villa One Tequila

Down

We focused on ensuring that Canva is a valuable free product that helps people create unlimited designs. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of YouTube tutorials created by our community. Being in Australia is a competitive advantage. We’re able to attract top talent. We had 130,000 applicants last year from across the globe. If we were in Silicon Valley, we’d have stiffer competition. Everyone who works for us believes that visual communication should be accessible regardless of economic status or location. That’s why we operate in 100 languages and focus on accessibility. People with no design experience can create something that looks fairly good. �As told to Yoolim Lee

VARVATOS: Nick and I met probably five years ago at a dinner in New York. We ended up talking about music, fashion, our families. We’d been sipping tequila throughout our conversation. The next day, Nick called and asked if I wanted to come to the studio to listen to music that he was working on. He kindly had another bottle of tequila sitting there. We knew that we were going to be fast friends and that there was going to be something we were going to work on together. The first thing was a capsule

May 24, 2021

[[]] Varvatos and Jonas’s first collaboration was in fashion

[clothing] collection that I did under my brand. And then we launched a fragrance that was a crazy success, and while we were working on it, we were also working on the Jonas Brothers documentary, Chasing Happiness—all of it spent with a bit of tequila, enjoying the moment or reflecting on positive things in our lives. JONAS: Tequila was something we shared a passion for and wanted to learn more about, and we kind of threw it out there: “What if we started our own brand?” And so we built a vision for it without having the liquid, the bottle, anything like that. We brought the idea to Stoli Group. A couple of weeks later we were on our way down to Jalisco, Mexico, to meet with Arturo Fuentes. We stopped in Cabo and had a great night of food, music, and tequila. We were trying to think of a name for the brand. We couldn’t think of anything, but we knew that we wanted it to embody the feeling that we had that night, which was great experiences with great people. I did a toast and said, “To life as it should be,” which became our motto for the brand. The following day, we woke up a little bleary-eyed and looked at the plaque on the door of the villa we were staying in. It said “Villa One.” And so we’d solved our problem. �As told to Carol Massar

DAVID BARON, RYAN COCCA & HANNAH FUSSELL Co-founders, Nugget Comfort

Nugget’s $230 “infinitely configurable play couch” has been a pandemic sensation with homebound parents and their kids; at one point there was a five-month waitlist. The couch’s popularity—the company is on track for sales of more than $100 million this year—can be partly attributed to cultish Facebook groups, where parents swap fort ideas, share pictures of their kids playing, and—in risqué Nugget After Dark forums—talk about more, uh, adult uses.

BARON: The concept was a reaction to futons we had in dorm rooms. They easily broke, they weren’t comfortable, they were difficult to put together. Those problems traced to the connecting pieces. By creating this waybetter futon [with no

connecting hinges], we made something new. It’s a plaything, a puppet theater, an obstacle course, building blocks for forts.

Build a Cult

FUSSELL: If you offer children the opportunity to play on furniture, you allow them to have openended play experiences. Parents were putting their child on top of the shipping box and taking a picture on the porch with the hashtag #nuggetsonnuggets. Now if a delivery person messes up the box, we’ll get customers saying, “Please send me a new box. I want to take a porch picture.”

times what we had in stock. I remember being like, “What are we going to do about the rest of the year?” Many people were on there in bad faith, trying to get it before other people so they could resell it. It would vary from color to color, but most Nuggets would be listed at over $1,000. Today, many listings on EBay are still at a two- to three-times markup. We don’t administer or manage any

Facebook groups, but we hear about things. I don’t know what it says about the product [that adults use it for sex], or what we want to say about that, other than there’s a way that we’ve connected with parents. �As told to Sarah Holder

COCCA: Aug. 14, I believe, we did a summer release. Visitors to the site were three

 This page:

Photograph by Naila Ruechel Opposite page: Photographs by Justin Cook

Brand

[[]] Baron

PASTRIES: COURTESY THE DERSCHANG GROUP

[[]] Fussell

[[]] Cocca

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

May 24, 2021

KEEP THE LIGHTS ON

spending a little bit here and a little bit there on different ideas to see what was going to stick. “A mercantile inside the restaurant? Sure, let’s try it!” It didn’t work terribly well. But our brand manager and my director of operations had this attitude of LINDA DERSCHANG “Why not? Sure, that could work!” Owner, Oddfellows Café + Bar Having that positivity around saved me, because I wasn’t always as Derschang has owned eateries positive as I needed to be. and bars in Seattle for more On the first day when we were than two decades. She opened allowed to have limited seating Oddfellows in the Capitol Hill inside again in the fall, I saw these neighborhood in 2008. stylish, twentysomething women sitting with salads. At one time, Our final day of service last year it would’ve been such a normal was Sunday, March 15. I had a thing—people dressed up window of 8 to 12 weeks— a little bit to spend the 16, max—that our cash day walking around would hold out, which Capitol Hill, do a was a bit longer little shopping, than a number and eat lunch of independent at Oddfellows. businesses. I looked at these I have an two women and accountant who started crying. scolded me It hit me hard, about five years what we had been ago and said, through. It was “You need to hold maybe six weeks later a lot more cash for a when we had to shut rainy day.” I called him down again. It was getting and thanked him. Three colder, and it didn’t to four weeks in, we [[]] Baked goods at Oddfellows make sense to stay knew that we were open through the winter. going to try to get a PPP [Paycheck Even as we were closing Protection Program] loan, and once down, we were making plans for we received it, which I believe was reopening. I was in New York in the April 24, I felt like we’d been saved. fall and took tons of photographs We reopened the next month of the “streeteries” that cropped for takeout only. Oddfellows is up, getting ideas of what we could known for homemade biscuits do to make ours look good when with scrambled eggs. At first we we reopened in March. We charted thought that was going to be kind out how many tables we could of tricky. But I asked friends, and fit and hoped for good weather. they said, “No, no. Please put it on We ran the numbers. It’s all about the menu.” And it was a big seller. People were forgiving of the quality butts in seats. The response to our reopening of food at many restaurants that has been phenomenal. Our regulars weren’t known for takeout. We are coming back, and people are were given a little bit of a pass, telling us they’re so happy that we which we all needed. made it. �As told to Noah Buhayar As time went on, we were

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May 24, 2021

MIKE: Everything can run off the solar panels. We put an air compressor in, so you can blow up stand-up paddleboards and bike tires. We’ve got a little squatty-potty that’s flushable. There’s a thermostat, so we can keep the van whatever temperature we want.

 Photographs by Benjamin Rasmussen

AMBER: The kids love the van. The day we got it, we cranked up the music, and we all just danced around in here. AMBER: A lot of times I end up working in the front seat if we’re in transit and I have to do some calls.

 Trick Out a Van  AMBER, MIKE, BLAKELEY, AND PIERS MCCORD When the pandemic hit, Amber and Mike McCord couldn’t do much about their kids’ transitioning to remote learning. But they could try to retain some normalcy around Blakeley and Piers’s extracurricular passion: ski racing. They wanted more flexibility for themselves, too, because they were also working remotely—Mike as an outdoor-gear sales

rep, Amber at a pharmaceutical company—and didn’t need to be home in Denver for morning-to-night Zoom calls. They bought a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 3500XD 170 and had Tourig, a company in Golden, Colo., convert it so they could live and work in ski resort parking lots and in Moab, Utah, where they like to camp. “It was about $200,000, all-in, but we keep adding stuff,” Mike says. (Tourig’s founder, Eric Miller, says he expects to do 75 conversions this year and double that in 2022.) �Kyle Stock

75 MIKE: The van has two queen beds that fold away, and you can put a table there that stores up top. We eat off it and work off it, and we play games there if there’s crummy weather.

MIKE: We have plenty of storage. It’s like an airplane: Everything is locked down. It will fit about 10 pairs of skis, and we typically travel with at least six.

MIKE: There’s a two-burner induction cooktop. It boils water in like a minute and a half. We’ll cook peanut butter or chocolate chip pancakes. The fridge is underneath. We have a sink with a 20-gallon water tank.

NEGOTIATE YOUR RENT Dear

Staff attorney, National Housing Law Project His organization advocates for tenants’ rights. According to a U.S. Census Bureau survey, nearly 14% of renters were behind on payments as of mid-April.

Until recently, I can’t think of a market where rents were going down so much that tenants would have leverage. There’s no tried-and-true way to negotiate, but success depends on the market—and more important, your neighborhood and even your building. Here’s the email I’d write your landlord for a rent reduction. �As told to Sarah Holder

([[1]]),

My name is

, your tenant at

apartment No.

. Because of the pandemic, [my work hours have been cut/

my wages have been reduced/I’ve had to cover unexpected medical and other expenses]. Things haven’t improved in the past year. Although I’ve done my best to pay what I can, I’m stretched too thin to keep paying full rent moving forward. This is why I’m proposing a reduction in my rent, to $

([[2]]), which is the

amount that’s financially feasible for me at the moment. That rent is also aligned with other area homes. For example, I’ve learned that a

-bedroom unit such

as mine in the building across the street, [set up similarly with a dishwasher/ in-unit laundry/additional bathroom], is being rented for $ I also saw that you listed another for $ $

a month.

-bedroom apartment in this building

a month. And according to Zillow ([[3]]), my apartment is worth about a month.

I’d respectfully ask that you apply for the rental assistance payments being distributed by the [city/county/state] ([[4]]). Attached is more information on the program ([[5]]). These funds can be used to cover future rent obligations (not just past-due amounts) for as many as [city/county/state] will pay only

months. OR ([[6]]): I understand that the % of the rent and requires you to forgive

the balance. Alternatively, or in addition to, a rent reduction, perhaps you’d be amenable to [switching to a month-to-month lease/a $

laundry credit/a free

parking pass]. Thanks for considering my request. Please reach out if you’d like to discuss the matter further. Sincerely,

PHOTO: RICHARD DRURY/GETTY IMAGES. ILLUSTRATION BY MIA NOLTING

[[1]] Big companies have more room to negotiate, but they may not need to, because they’re also better able to absorb vacancies and market dips. [[2]] While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s federal moratorium on evictions has been contested, many states and localities have additional rules preventing eviction for nonpayment because of Covid. Check if your region is covered at https:// www.rhls.org/ evictionmoratoriums/. These protections could preemptively bolster your case. [[3]] Find your “Zestimate” on zillow.com. [[4]] Emergency rental assistance programs vary by jurisdiction, but for eligible lowand moderateincome tenants, they’ll cover close to—if not 100%— of rent. If you’re eligible for your local program, then before requesting a rent reduction, you might want to ask your landlord to participate. It could cover your entire rent for several months. [[5]] The National Low Income Housing Coalition has a database on rental assistance for tenants and landlords (nlihc.org/ rental-assistance). [[6]] In California, for example, landlords can apply for as much as 80% of the rent. If that’s the case, proceed as follows.

MARCOS SEGURA

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Bloomberg Businessweek

Unionize A Workplace CHRISTINE BALL-BLAKELY Staff attorney, Animal Legal Defense Fund She helped lead a successful campaign to organize about 40 employees at the 42-year-old nonprofit headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. ALDF workers began the process in 2020, and after management declined to voluntarily start bargaining with them, they petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election. In March they voted to join the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union (NPEU). We realized that management was gearing up for an anti-union campaign. Bosses are never happy about a union effort. That’s just as true in the nonprofit context as in any other.

w o l B Think you have a case? Thomas might disagree

JORDAN THOMAS Partner, Labaton Sucharow A former assistant director for enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he helped set up its whistleblower program after the 2008 financial crisis. Now in private practice,

They had weekly meetings. My department had one where my director would share anti-union information. Some people got calls from members of management on their personal phones on nights and weekends, and even holidays, trying to convince them to vote no. Management would say that this outside group is coming in and trying to unionize, even though we were the ones to initiate it. We counted at least 15 anti-union emails, including one in which our executive director told our staff that “the union does not care about animals.” The first thing we’d done was establish an organizing committee. We tried to get somebody from every department. We had NPEU in our corner, preparing us. We checked in on people: Some would be like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so tense. It’s so hard.” And we would sympathize with that. At Zoom happy hours, we got speakers from other nonprofits who’d gone through this. At a certain point, you start to think, “Maybe I’m crazy,” you know? And it’s validating to hear other people explain what they went through. There’s a real power imbalance in all workplaces, and we wanted more democracy in ours. Though we have gone through a lot as an organization, we are excited about the future. Our union is

empowering us to do our best work for the animals. —As told to Josh Eidelson ALDF CEO and executive director Stephen Wells says the organization for years has “focused a lot of energy on making sure we were an outstanding place to work.” He says management promoted an “open conversation” on unionization. Regarding the alleged anti-union emails, calls, and meetings, he says, “How someone characterizes something as being pro or anti or whatever, that’s open to interpretation.” ALDF’s communications director, Elizabeth Putsche, says, “Emails are easy to ignore if you’re not interested in reading them, and the meetings were never mandatory.” She adds that she isn’t aware of anti-union calls and that the ALDF is now working with the union to schedule contract negotiations.

e l t s i h W ! ! ! ! ! e !!!!!!!!!!!!! h t

Thomas files whistleblower cases at the SEC, which lets individuals collect monetary awards for providing unique information on violations such as accounting fraud, bribery schemes, and investment scams. (Payouts average $5.3 million, but one tipster got $114 million.) Would-be whistleblowers always think they have a case. Most of them don’t. I get wack jobs who don’t have any evidence of “massive” fraud. I get Eagle Scouts who think unethical behavior is the same thing as illegal conduct. My firm only takes about 12 clients a year. Once we think a client has a case, we investigate them. We have ex-law enforcement

on staff to probe any potential prior convictions, social media posts, or questionable affiliations. We’re lending our reputation to them, so we want to make sure they’re legit. Our clients almost always file anonymously. We sometimes disguise their voices on calls with the SEC using pitch-changing technology. Clients have put on FBI wires if there’s potential criminal liability at their place of employment. A lot of our clients still work at the hedge fund or private equity firm they’re blowing the whistle on. Some even stay on a year or two after getting an award, so no one suspects them. They’re secret millionaires going to work every day. —As told to Matt Robinson

JAY LENO Comedian

FOR

CAR

Buy what you like. If it goes down in value, at least you still like it. If you enjoy it and it goes up in value, great. Ignore the mileage. I meet guys who say, “I’ve got a Ferrari Enzo. I’ve had it 15 years. It’s got 9 miles on it.” That’s in worse shape than a car that’s driven regularly. Oil is blood. It needs to circulate. I have a Mercedes with 326,000 miles. These people who get rid of a car—“Oh, it’s got 65,000 miles on it, I gotta get rid of this thing.” No, that’s barely broken in.

Photograph by Tracey Nguyen

Join the club. There’s always an elderly person who’s been in the Model A club or whatever for 15 or 20 years. They can’t drive anymore. They’d like to sell their car. You might pay a little more, but you get a car that’s been maintained properly. Also, somebody in the club will let you use their garage, and you’ll help them fix their car. Maybe next week, they’ll help you. That happens a lot. You meet people who live and breathe these cars. I have a Tatra. It’s Czech. One day I see an ad in a magazine, I call the Tatra club. I go, “Hi, I’m Jay Leno. What Tatras do you have? I’d like to join the club.” They said, “Good, yes, $80. We have a Christmas party. We put out a newsletter.” I said, “How many people in the club?” “Including you? Four.” No matter what you’re into, there’s always somebody way more into it. —As told to Hannah Elliott

Leno in Burbank, Calif., in front of a custom car built with a tank engine from the Korean War

LAMBORGHINI MIURA

MCLAREN F1

MASERATI 3500 GTi

I essentially got it for free in the early ’80s. Dean Martin bought it new. His son cracked the crank case. A buddy of mine bought it. His wife said, “The thing’s sittin’ in the yard. Give it to Leno.” Now, at minimum, it’s a $1 million car.

When this came out in 1992, it was about $1 million—Lamborghinis were $100,000. They built 64. McLaren Cars shut down. So the price of it went up [to $21 million for one in top condition, according to the Hagerty Price Guide].

A repair shop wanted to get rid of it. It was $25,000 15 years ago. We needed to do the engine, the transmission, other work. Now it’s probably a $300,000 car. The trick is to find something that broke some other guy’s heart.

LAMBORGHINI: MARTYN LUCY/GETTY IMAGES. MCLAREN: IAN BOTTLE/ALAMY. PLANE: JETHUYN CAN/GETTY IMAGES

P O H S C I S S CLA

Leno, who owns hundreds of vintage rides, hosts Jay Leno’s Garage on NBC and YouTube.

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NEGOTIATE WITH CHINA CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY Partner, WilmerHale

The U.S. trade representative from 1997 to 2001, Barshefsky, in her final year on the job, was chief negotiator with China on its historic agreement to join the World Trade Organization.

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Most countries have their own negotiating style. It reflects their culture, collective histories, and personalities. People think of Americans as talkative, generally nice, and cooperative to a point. The Japanese are resistant to change and adept at teasing out tiny variations in substance and tempo to understand the other side. The Chinese are pragmatic, entrepreneurial. They get that both sides have to come out with something. You have to separate out their obligatory rhetoric from potential practical outcomes. When

May 24, 2021

push comes to shove, the Chinese are nonideological. But they need that permission: If their government didn’t have the political will during WTO negotiations, the talks would have gone around in circles. Americans tend to benefit as negotiators when they can be direct. With the Chinese being direct and analytical, not dramatic, this is often met with a positive U.S. response: Say what you mean to say—the Chinese can be equally direct. The more direct, the less room for misunderstanding and the less room for finger-pointing. ——As told to Peter Martin

STOP BS’ING ABOUT 79

CARBON OFFSETS SCOTT KIRBY

CEO, United Airlines Holdings Inc. Kirby has pledged to eliminate the company’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To help United do so, the company has announced multimilliondollar investments in carbon capture technology, an electric air-taxi startup, and sustainable aviation fuel. We can’t solve climate change unless we’re real about the size of the challenge and the solutions. It’s not as easy as saying, “Oh, let’s make everything electric.” The thing that burns me up is the number of corporations using traditional carbon offset programs as their way to get to net-zero. A CEO who’s not a geek like me and hasn’t been reading in Scientific American about climate change for 30 years says, “Oh, this is a problem. We need to do something about it.” And somebody says, “Write a check to this conservancy fund, and they’ll offset

our carbon flows.” And the CEO says, “Great!” They think they’re helping, but they’re not. They’re doing it because it’s convenient. It’s a marketing exercise. We produce 4,000 times the emissions today as we did in the pre-industrial era. We can’t plant 4,000 times as many trees. If CEOs were given the education to do the right thing, they would want to do the right thing. I view my job as playing a role in forcing the conversation to real solutions. [Carbon capture technology and sustainable aviation fuels] are not economical today, which is why we need to invest in them, just like wind and solar, to drive the cost down. Ultimately it’s going to require some kind of government scheme— sticks and carrots. Going through the pandemic strengthened my conviction that this was the right thing to do. If you didn’t believe we were part of the global community and everything that happens everywhere in the world affects us, it’s impossible to make that argument after Covid. �As told to Brooke Sutherland

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LEARN FROM LEAD LAUREN DILLARD

Executive vice president, Investment Intelligence Dillard, who joined Nasdaq in 2019, has increased the company’s analytics, index, and data business 21% in the past 12 months.

THE ARCHETYPES [[]] THE INDUSTRY VET Whatever work-related matters you want to better understand, this is your first call. [[]] THE CHEERLEADER You want someone who pumps you up, brings you joy, and keeps you focused on a purpose. [[]] THE TRUTH-TELLER You need this adviser to tell you how it really is, to push you and be ruthless with feedback.

[[]] THE INNOVATOR What’s the newest trend? What podcast or book do you need to spend time with? This board

VIMEO LLC ANJALI SUD CEO

She’s guided the video software business, which has more than 200 million users, to a $6 billion valuation—and an anticipated spinoff from IAC/InterActiveCorp. I was promoted to CEO in 2017 after spending a year convincing our investors we should pivot. Instead of investing in original content or trying to be a viewing destination,

I saw a bigger opportunity in doubling down on better serving businesses with the tools to use video. I got passionate. Investors invest in people as much as ideas. Conviction is infectious. Ultimately you need to prove yourself. I didn’t say, “I want to pivot the strategy.” I asked for a small, dedicated team to build a minimum viable product to prove the strategy could work. And it did. The more you can “de-risk” the first ask with a short path to validation, the more people are willing to take a chance on you. �As told to J.W.

member pushes for personal and career evolution and adaptability. [[]] THE NETWORKER This person helps you make connections, ideally based on your personality type. [[]] THE WELLNESS GURU Your health is crucial to your success, and you need someone making sure you ride your Peloton, do yoga, or whatever moves you.

THE RULES [[1]] Nothing proprietary gets discussed. [[2]] Everything is confidential. [[3]] Schedule regular meetings. [[4]] If follow-up is required, see it through. [[5]] Change board members. These aren’t lifetime commitments. [[6]] Old age is not a prerequisite. [[7]] Offer to join other people’s boards. [[8]] Get outside your comfort zone. Maybe even recruit a competitor you admire. �As told to Joel Weber

“Inspire your employees to see a green light where others may see a stop sign. People will come up with new ideas and run with them when they feel a sense of autonomy and creative ownership.” �MARCELO CLAURE CEO, SoftBank Group International, and COO, SoftBank Group Corp.

GETTY IMAGES (5)

NASDAQ INC.

If I were giving advice to my 25-year-old self, I’d say start finding people who can help you. Create a personal board, and think of your board members as advisers or mentors. Few things have provided as great a catalyst for my professional development as these relationships.

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DERS AT …

May 24, 2021

ARK INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LLC CATHIE WOOD

CURALEAF HOLDINGS INC. BORIS JORDAN Chairman

Curaleaf is the biggest U.S. marijuana company, with a market value of about $10 billion. I spend a lot of time reading. One of my favorite things to do is read biographies or autobiographies of entrepreneurs, political leaders, businesspeople. I’ve learned a lot from reading them. I started my insurance business [Renins Finans], which I’m about to take public, because I read Warren Buffett’s book on how he got going. I loved that story. But I’m planning the next phase of my life. I don’t want to be involved in running businesses anymore like I do now. I want to be a mentor to young entrepreneurs. I had a great dinner the other night with a guy from Massachusetts. He was telling me about everything he’s doing in the cannabis sector with minority communities in Massachusetts and Maryland. I got super excited about what he was doing. I told him I’d love to seed him. I said, “Why don’t I use my 30-odd years of experience in building businesses and the capital I’ve built up to help you out?” At the end of the day, who needs all that money if you can’t help someone? The world is not a static place. I remember when I was going through my education, people were doing 10-year plans. I don’t even do threemonth plans anymore. �As told to James E. Ellis

Founder, CEO, and chief investment officer Wood’s company has about $40 billion in assets under management thanks to her pioneering practice of using actively managed ETFs to make bold bets on technology. Our morning meeting starts at 8:45, and we’re usually on until 10:30. It’s a free flow of ideas. Fridays, our analysts come in. They’ve selected the most provocative ideas they’ve heard all week or the biggest breakthroughs they’ve had in their own research. They’ll throw out an idea for discussion. Many people join our brainstorm who aren’t part of Ark. Our analysts usually meet them on Twitter. It’s a win-win: We push our research out on any social network that will help our analysts engage with people who are innovating. These people can spot errors in our assumptions, and they have so much gratitude for what we’re doing to highlight their innovation. There’s a natural dialogue. �As told to Carol Massar

UBER TECHNOLOGIES INC. BO YOUNG LEE

Chief diversity and inclusion officer In the past year, Lee says, the number of women in leadership at the company grew more than 15%. I have two rules to help open doors. First, don’t think of yourself as the norm and everyone else a deviation from your norm. Think of yourself as a deviation from everyone else’s norm. If you assume everyone has a different normal than you, you’re more open to shift your mindset. Second, never assume. How often do we ask, “How do you like to work?” Or “Can you tell me about your communication style?” Instead we make assumptions, and those assumptions can be based on stereotypes. I’m dyslexic, so I process information differently than how you might assume. It’s important to understand there’s not one right way to do most things. �As told to J.W.

THE HOW-TO ISSUE

Bloomberg Businessweek

Rethink the

Mature As an Investor Chairman and CEO, A-Rod Corp. In addition to his company, which oversees the former MLB All-Star’s real estate holdings and investment portfolio, Rodriguez also runs a special purpose acquisition company and venture capital firm with former Walmart Inc. executive Marc Lore.

As a player, you’re presented with endorsement or licensing deals where you can rent your name and walk away. As an investor or owner, you have to be much more involved—it’s a different level of responsibility. We’ve seen this power shift with personal brands becoming as powerful as big institutions. Now athletes and entertainers have a seat at the table with these conglomerates and can compete for the same

“Think about having a barbellshaped approach within the 40%”

in Your 60-40 Portfolio Rodriguez

SEEMA SHAH Chief strategist, Principal Global Investors LLC

asset, which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. As a professional athlete, you learn to go narrow and deep. You train to be perfect— or at least try. You learn from your coaches. It’s the same as an investor. You adopt attributes from mentors. I’ve learned that we can be good at a lot of things but can’t be great at everything. Narrow and deeper plays, where we invest our energy and interests, are the most worthwhile. By investing with that philosophy, others begin to learn what you like, and we’re presented with better opportunities. To ensure we’re allocating resources where it makes sense, we like to move quickly and say no to deals that don’t fit. People appreciate clear communication, and even if that first deal doesn’t work out, it can be the beginning of a relationship. Declining certain deals properly and responsibly often creates future opportunities. —As told to Jason Kelly

Shah helps oversee more than $820 billion for the asset management company. Investors are wondering if the traditional mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds is the way forward, given high stock market valuations and low interest rates. I don’t think 60-40 is dead. There are just different variations within the framework that can be used now. With your 40% bucket, you’re looking for stability. If you want the diversification that bonds provide, then real estate is a good way to go. When inflation picks up, real estate tends to do better than energy and commodities, which are volatile. Crypto keeps coming up, but from our perspective, it’s far too volatile to be included in the 40% bucket. If anything, that’s just a reflection of how desperate investors are for some kind of return. Think about having a barbell-shaped approach within the 40%. On one side you take more risk—corporate or emerging-market bonds, for instance. Emerging markets have become a core part of portfolios, which makes sense given that they’re more than 50% of global GDP. The important thing is that there are so many different variations within emerging markets that you need to understand exactly what you’re investing in and take an active approach. On the other side of the barbell you play defense with U.S. Treasuries and developed-nation government bonds. Although you’re not going to get much in returns, you still get that stability if there’s disappointing growth. —As told to Michael P. Regan

RODRIGUEZ: MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES. 60-40: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY 731; PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

ALEX RODRIGUEZ

May 24, 2021

CE A CHICKEN PARM [[]] “You don’t wanna drown it”

 Photograph by

Justin J. Wee

JEFF ZALAZNICK & MARIO CARBONE

with home cooks in mind, who’d likely substitute with chicken.

In March, Major Food Group, best known for its Carbone restaurants in New York and Miami, announced it was entering the consumer packaged-goods market with three sauces sold under the Carbone Fine Foods label. The marinara, inspired by the sauce that tops a veal parm at Carbone, was bottled

ZALAZNICK: What is the role of sauce in a chicken parm? CARBONE: One of the major players. ZALAZNICK: You got the chicken, you got the breadcrumbs, you got the sauce, you got the cheese. CARBONE: That’s it. That’s all you got. ZALAZNICK: The sauce is 25% of that equation, but it probably has

Co-founders (with Rich Torrisi), Major Food Group

May 24, 2021

the largest effect because it can go wrong in so many ways. You can not only have a sauce that doesn’t taste good, but you can put too much of it on, which is prevalent right now in society. CARBONE: Oversaucing. ZALAZNICK: Oversaucing. We’ve always focused on not oversaucing. It’s something we really advocate. CARBONE: In the Italian-American culinary vernacular, the idea of abundance went too far. You wanna serve that abundant ItalianAmerican meal, but you don’t wanna drown it in sauce. ZALAZNICK: We’ve put in hundreds of hours designing this sauce so that it goes perfectly with chicken parm. Me and you were sick of eating chicken parm by the end. CARBONE: It’s a cross we bear. ZALAZNICK: It’s a cross we bear. CARBONE: I think we made chicken parm probably 100 times. We kept tweaking the sauce, the techniques. You wanna make sure it’s not too sweet, it’s not too sour. The very best tomatoes. Fresh oregano. Dried oregano. Fresh basil. Garlic. I talked to my mom. I said, “What do you use the sauce for?” First answer: “Chicken parm.” She’s very happy with it. Mrs. Carbone’s happy. ZALAZNICK: Mrs. Carbone’s happy. That’s when we knew we had something—2021, Year of the Chicken Parm. CARBONE: You heard it here. ZALAZNICK: I’m gonna eat chicken parm every single night of the month of August in celebration of my birthday. CARBONE: I want you to call me with a report on a nightly basis after you eat the chicken parm. ZALAZNICK: I thought you’d be with me. CARBONE: Most nights. ZALAZNICK: When you’re not there, I’ll call you. CARBONE: Please. �As told to Bima Mandic and Kate Krader

your breath. Your attention is on your breath, not your thoughts. Become aware of any sounds. Remind yourself, “I am present in everything I hear.” Ask yourself, “I wonder what my next thought is going to be?” Wait for it. Notice that when you wait for a thought, it doesn’t come. Let your awareness expand outside the boundaries of your skin. Let it pervade space and time. Remind yourself, “I’m present in every experience I have.” Start to repeat your first name: “I’m Deepak. I’m Chloe, I’m Sandra, whatever.” Let go of your name and just repeat, “I am. I am.” Now replace that with the mantra, the sound of “I am,” which is a-hum. Repeat the mantra, a-hum. If you get distracted, come back to the mantra, a-hum. Finally, release the mantra and be aware of the presence of your own being. Feel the energy. This is what we need to do. Every once in a while, stop and ask, “Am I present?” That’s all. “Am I present?” Asking that question will bring you into presence, which is healing. That’s meditation. �As told to Claire Suddath

A-hum … a-hum … a-hum …

Meditate [[]] Chopra (below) says to ask, “Am I present?”

DEEPAK CHOPRA

Doctor, author, wellness advocate 84

AP PHOTO. CHOPRA: BUSINESSWIRE

He’s founder and chairman of the nonprofit Chopra Foundation, which promotes “spiritual knowledge, expanding consciousness, and world peace,” according to its website.

Meditation is a way to bypass the thinking process, which gives us anxiety. As soon as you feel stress, your cortisol goes up, your adrenaline goes up. Your breath gets shallow, your heart rate speeds up. The best way to stop that is to just stop. Take three deep breaths. Smile from your head to your toes. Observe what’s happening in your body and outside. Pause. Ask yourself, “What’s the best way for me right now to handle this situation?” Sit quietly, close your eyes, and don’t do anything for 5, 10 minutes. Your mind will get silent. Observe

Bloomberg Businessweek (USPS 080 900) May 24, 2021 (ISSN 0007-7135) R Issue no. 4700 Published weekly, except one week in February, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November by Bloomberg L.P. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices. Executive, Editorial, Circulation, and Advertising Offices: Bloomberg Businessweek, 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Bloomberg Businessweek, P.O. Box 37528, Boone, IA 50037-0528. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 41989020. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to DHL Global Mail, 355 Admiral Blvd., Unit 4, Mississauga, ON L5T 2N1. Email: contactus@bloombergsupport.com. QST#1008327064. Registered for GST as Bloomberg L .P. GST #12829 9898 RT0001. Copyright 2021 Bloomberg L .P. All rights reserved. Title registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Single Copy Sales: Call 800 298-9867 or email: busweek@nrmsinc.com. Educational Permissions: Copyright Clearance Center at info@copyright.com. Printed in the U.S.A. CPPAP NUMBER 0414N68830

May 24, 2021

JON RIMANELLI Founder and CEO, ASX.US

“ WE AR E DE S IG N IN G TH E F UT URE IN M IC HIG AN.” Innovation. Resilience. Agility. It’s how Michigan businesses continue to build the future. Tech companies, engineering talent and innovators in manufacturing are all coming here for a reason. Our expertise, talented workforce and proven adaptability are making a difference now and shaping the future. Join us and make your mark where it matters. Put your plans in motion by visiting michiganbusiness.org/pure-opportunity