Girlboss

The resignation of Glossier CEO Emily Weiss inspired another wave of obituaries for young female founders. Nevertheless, they persist—and refuse to be put on glass pedestals again. I n October 2021, Rent the Runway cofounder Jennifer Hyman took her 12-year-old subscription fashion company public at a $1.7 billion valuation, valuing her 5.1% stake at nearly $49 million. The 41-year-old CEO was one of only about 25 American women in history to go public with a company she had founded. But Rent the Runway’s IPO was even more unusual for not only having a female founder but also a female CFO and a female COO. Hyman celebrated the moment on a flowery Nasdaq podium surrounded by the key women on her team, her two daughters and a shower of pink confetti. But for all the femininity onstage, there is one word that Hyman would not use to mark the moment: “Girlboss.” “We've created a false narrative because we looked at two or three examples of women who were building businesses … [Read more...] about Why Female Entrepreneurs Welcome The End Of The Girlboss Era—Once And For All

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook/Meta’s chief operating officer and champion of women climbing the corporate ladder, recently announced she’s stepping down from her role after 14 years with the company she transformed. Her departure comes fresh off the heels of Emily Weiss, founder and CEO of cosmetics company Glossier, who was considered one of the last #girlbosses standing. These high-profile exits feel like the end of an era branded by corporate feminism that asked women to “lean in” and make their mark across male-dominated industries. advertisement advertisement Recent years have seen many such departures, including Sophia Amoruso from Girlboss , Man Repeller founder and CEO Leandra Medine Cohen, Reformation founder and CEO Yael Aflalo , and cofounder and CEO of The Wing Audrey Gelman —figures that at one point represented a “girl power” pinnacle for female success. Weiss was one of the few who held onto her title through the reckoning that … [Read more...] about #Girlbosses are over. The alternative is still problematic

After throwing lifelines to troubled digital currency platforms BlockFi and Voyager Digital, Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old billionaire founder of FTX, warns that some crypto exchanges will soon fail. T he question on everybody’s mind in the crypto world is whether we’ve reached the market bottom. Nearly $2 trillion in crypto market value has evaporated since November. Two bellwether digital assets Luna, a $40 billion crypto asset associated with TerraUSD, a $16 billion stablecoin designed to maintain parity with the U.S. dollar, have collapsed. Earlier this month bitcoin traded for below $20,000, its lowest level since December 2020. But the fallout is far from complete. Earlier this month, Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a highly levered crypto trading firm with $200 million of exposure to Luna revealed that it was nearly insolvent. Three Arrows’ had borrowed large sums from numerous crypto firms including New Jersey’s Voyager Digital and New York-based … [Read more...] about Bankman-Fried Warns: Some Crypto Exchanges Already “Secretly Insolvent”

Flying Fourth of July weekend or later this summer? Pack your patience and this game plan. Y ou know travelers are in for a bumpy Fourth of July weekend when airlines and the U.S. government begin pointing fingers at each other in the days ahead of the holiday. For months, travelers have been dealing with above-normal levels of flight delays and cancellations, with airlines chopping more than 15% of scheduled summer flights due to staffing shortages and other operational issues. Unfortunately, experts see more of the same on the horizon. “Looking at the past few weeks, I don't think there's any reason to think that things are going to go especially smoothly this weekend,” says Scott Keyes, co-founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights , an airfare deals newsletter with more than two million subscribers. “With 11 million travelers expected to fly over July Fourth, we are expecting a busy holiday weekend and travelers should be prepared for potential disruptions,” says Hayley … [Read more...] about The Smart Traveler’s Survival Playbook For Summer Flight Cancellations

Jeff Greene, who made his first fortune shorting subprime mortgages during the Great Recession, sees trouble ahead for real estate and no relief for crypto or tech stocks. By Giacomo Tognini D uring the last major recession from 2007 to 2009, a little-known entrepreneur named Jeff Greene made billions of dollars by buying credit default swaps on subprime mortgage-backed bonds as the housing bubble collapsed. Now Greene, a Palm Beach-based real estate mogul with an estimated $5.1 billion fortune, thinks the economy is going through another bubble in assets ranging from crypto and SPACs to overvalued tech stocks and real estate. "We've been in an omnibubble, there's no question about it," Greene, 67, told Forbes in a phone call from his Hamptons estate, something he’s been saying for months now. "If you spend trillions and trillions of dollars in every advanced economy in the world and have coordinated fiscal and monetary stimulus, obviously you’re going to create … [Read more...] about Trump’s Billionaire Neighbor Warns U.S. Economy Is In An “Omnibubble”

The maker of Photoshop and Premiere Pro gave the world AI-powered tools to create convincing fakes. Now CEO Shantanu Narayen wants to clean up the mess. By Aayushi Pratap I magine a deepfake video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in which her speech is intentionally slurred and the words she uses are changed to deliver a message that’s offensive to large numbers of voters. Now imagine that the technology used to create the video is so sophisticated that it appears completely real, rendering the manipulation undetectable, unlike clumsy deepfakes of Pelosi that circulated—and were quickly debunked—in 2020 and 2021. What would be the impact of such a video on closely contested House races in a midterm election? That’s the dilemma Adobe, maker of the world’s most popular tools for photo and video editing, faces as it undergoes a top-to-bottom review and redesign of its product mix using artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques. That includes upgrades to the … [Read more...] about Deepfake Epidemic Is Looming—And Adobe Is Preparing For The Worst

Winmark Corp.—which oversees 1,300 franchised resale stores like Plato’s Closet, Play It Again Sports and Once Upon A Child—has a long history of being profitable and keeping shareholders happy. Its buzzy online competitors can’t say the same. I n a busy strip mall in Vero Beach, Florida, a little secondhand sporting goods store called Play It Again Sports sits sandwiched between much larger chains like Best Buy, Lowe’s and Ross. Adorning one wall are hundreds of gently used frisbee golf discs in purple, orange, blue and yellow. Callaway golf clubs start at $19.99 each, with golf balls piled high in metal bins priced at a dime apiece. A bright-pink girl’s lacrosse stick and matching shoes go for a bargain-basement price of $40. Many customers are parents, looking to trade in soccer cleats and baseball gloves that their kids have outgrown or retired and put the 40% cash back toward gear for the next season. The outpost is part of a little-known resale empire out of … [Read more...] about Meet The Midwestern Retailer Quietly Making A Fortune Selling Used Stuff—And Beating The S&P 500