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Silver Lake Partners is a private-equity firm known for doing leveraged buyouts of tech giants like Dell Technologies and Skype. But this year, the firm has done at least seven deals in which it's taken a minority stake. Altogether it has invested in deals worth a combined $7.3 billion. The big question across Wall Street is whether the deals represent a change in strategy for the investment firm, or just a reflection of the environment in which it's operating.  Silver Lake is run by Egon Durban and Greg Mondre, named as co-CEOs in a December management shuffle. Ken Hao serves as chairman.  Click here for more BI Prime stories. Private-equity firm Silver Lake is best known for doing leveraged buyouts of big-name, mature technology companies. Think Dell Technologies, Skype, or Broadcom.  That was the reputation even heading into January of this year. Then, the company quickly peeled off a flurry of minority investments, starting with the enigmatic life-science company Verily Life Sciences. In March, as the coronavirus pandemic gathered steam in the US, the company plowed money into Google's self-driving car unit Waymo and Twitter. In April and May it followed with investments in Airbnb, Expedia, and India broadband startup Reliance Jio. Its latest investment was in a blank-check company just this week. Just this year, the company has invested alone or alongside partners in $7.3 billion worth of deals. But despite its big-name moves, the firm is something of a cipher to outsiders. And even industry insiders describe the firm as "media shy."  The flurry of activity reestablished Silver Lake as a preeminent private-equity fund for the technology industry after several years in which competitors Vista Equity Partners and Thoma Bravo stole attention with big deals as valuations climbed. One banker who is familiar with their deals and friendly with some of the execs sums up the recent activity: "they view it very much as their reemergence."  But the big question across Wall Street and Silicon Valley now is — what exactly is Silver Lake up to? It's not necessarily a change in strategy, some say, but a reflection of how the private-equity landscape itself has transformed. Others see it as a more fundamental departure from what had long been Silver Lake's bread and butter. Instead of focusing solely on pure technology investments like software companies and video conference platforms, it's now backing companies that span media, entertainment, sports and travel. And while Silver Lake has long been comfortable doing minority investments, some insiders say its spate of 2020 dealmaking has taken "non-control" deals to a whole new level.  In Jio, for instance, it bought a 1.15% stake.  "It's very, very typical of large financial institutions who kind of exhaust the playbook within the sector they're in, and then they look for other sectors," said Mark Leslie, a management lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, when asked to comment on the 2020 deals some view as a departure from Silver Lake's core focus. "They call it strategy drift." Leslie, who was once an investor in Silver Lake after he worked with the firm in a $20 billion deal when he was CEO of Veritas Softare, also said Silver Lake's deal appetite is likely the product of the turbulent environment.  "There's an old saying about investing, which is, buy on gunfire and sell on trumpets," he said. "Now is a good time to buy." Silver Lake is currently in the midst of trying to raise a $16 billion fund, according to a Reuters report in April. And their string of recent deals has many in Wall Street curious to see what they'll spend on next.  A Silver Lake spokesman declined to comment for this story. Do you have a tip about Silver Lake? Contact Dakin Campbell at dcampbell [at] businessinsider [dot] com, reach him by phone, text, Signal or WhatsApp at 917-673-9252, or on Twitter @dakincampbell. Or get in touch with Casey Sullivan by email at csullivan [at] businessinsider [dot] com, Signal at 646-376-6017, or on Twitter @caseyreports.  Read more: Hollywood's top talent agencies may need a bailout from their PE backers as the coronavirus hammers big bets on live sports and studio production 'These investments are different' Business Insider spoke with more than a dozen bankers, lawyers, competitors, and deal partners to understand Silver Lake's strategy. Many said it was too early to judge the recent investments.  "You look at some of their huge wins: Broadcom or Dell or Skype," said one of the people. "They were super hands-on. They were on the board and crafting the strategy, and they were super creative financially. These investments are different." Some see the source of the recent investments as stemming from the company's December management shake up, as a sign that co-CEOs Egon Durban and Greg Mondre are putting their own mark on the firm.   The two men assumed their roles in December as part of a succession plan that saw managing partner Mike Bingle become a vice chairman and a managing partner emeritus, while Ken Hao became chairman of the firm. The four men, who grew up together at Silver Lake, took over day-to-day management years ago from original founders David Roux, Jim Davidson, Glenn Hutchins and Roger McNamee, who founded the company in 1999. McNamee left a few years later to found Elevation Partners.  "They were one of the first pioneers in tech buyouts and tech private equity," said Steven Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago's business school who has conducted extensive research into the private equity industry. "It was very controversial at the time – people didn't think you could put leverage on tech companies. That turned out to be very wrong." Others see the latest moves as the outcome of a lack of attractive opportunities for transformative deals. Unlike Vista or Thoma Bravo, Silver Lake seemed unwilling to chase valuations over the past few years. That put them at a relative disadvantage, according to some of the people.  Silver Lake saw its opportunity when valuations plunged earlier this year and solid companies with iconic founders and seemingly durable business models suddenly needed financing. Silver Lake quickly showed itself to be, as one banker put it, "validation capital."  "If you're raising money and you have one key investor and you have one phone call to make, these are the guys we call," another banker said. "It's the tech version of Warren Buffett."  Read more: We talked to 14 private-equity insiders about how they're planning to play the coronavirus turmoil. They identified 2 huge opportunities. Unusual deal talks Silver Lake's $1 billion investment in Twitter effectively called a truce between CEO Jack Dorsey and activist investor Elliott Management. Durban joined the Twitter board.  After Elliott went public with its demands, Durban called Dorsey and asked how Silver Lake could help, according to one person with knowledge of the exchange. The Silver Lake partner had been interested in the social-media company for years and finally saw his chance. The time between the first call and the investment was about one week, lightning fast in the world of private equity, according to someone with knowledge of the talks.  The Airbnb investment also unfolded in an unconventional manner. When Silver Lake began talking to Airbnb about more funding, Durban had never met Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, according to a person familiar with remarks he made at a recent event for JPMorgan private-wealth clients. Deal talks progressed virtually and Silver Lake conducted due diligence without meeting the management team, others said.  In the end, the company joined with Sixth Street to invest $1 billion in a combination of debt and equity securities.  The company also took a piece of another $1 billion senior loan made to Airbnb by a second group. The investment, along with one made in Expedia, is a big bet that travel will come back strong. Durban won't join the Airbnb board.  "This was a situation where there was dislocation and there were liquidity issues," Kaplan said. "People are looking for money and they aren't looking for control."  Earlier this week, Silver Lake made another minority investment, spending $100 million to buy 12% of Far Point Acquisition Corp. The blank-check company is in talks to buy Global Blue, a Swiss player in tax-free shopping, from the private equity firm for $2.6 billion. FPAC's board is resisting the deal, so Silver Lake bought the stake in the blank check company to lend their support to the deal. One attorney who has worked with Silver Lake considered the move "aggressive," given that the investment essentially positions the firm on both sides of the deal. Read more: Read the full memo Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky just sent to staff announcing 1,900 job cuts. It lays out severance details and which teams are getting hit the hardest. 'That's a head scratcher' Silver Lake has always been structured in a way that gives it flexibility to invest in large-scale buyouts, minority investments, and everything in between. The company has a fund called Alpine that focuses on "non-control" debt and equity investments. And in December, the company said it would "expand its asset base" not only for large-scale private equity, but a "structured equity and debt investment strategy." Even so, a bunch of minority investments where they can't drive the company strategy aren't going to put up the kind of return numbers that investors in their funds expect, industry sources said.  "In the absence of doing large-scale control deals, they are starting to do minority deals and PIPE deals and that's ok if you do one or two of them," one private-equity manager said. "But if you start deploying virtually all your deals in a form and fashion that is different from what was successful originally? That's a head scratcher." Read more: Wall Street is betting AMC is in a downward spiral. Here's the inside story of how the world's biggest movie-theater chain is battling for a comeback.SEE ALSO: We talked to 14 private-equity insiders about how they're planning to play the coronavirus turmoil. They identified 2 huge opportunities. SEE ALSO: Wall Street is betting AMC is in a downward spiral. Here's the inside story of how the world's biggest movie-theater chain is battling for a comeback. SEE ALSO: Hollywood's top talent agencies may need a bailout from their PE backers as the coronavirus hammers big bets on live sports and studio production Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

The coronavirus pandemic crippled global oil demand, causing the price to collapse by as much as 75% in April, with some futures going negative for the first time in history. Most oil and gas giants have already slashed capital spending and dividends, laid off or furloughed staff, and changed their production targets. Business Insider is tracking how 18 top companies are responding to the oil price shock and will update this story as news breaks.  Visit Markets Insider to view the latest on oil prices. Oil markets are finally starting to stabilize after plunging to historic lows earlier this spring. But the industry that built itself around the commodity — which is still down in value almost half since the start of the year — continues to suffer from a pandemic-fueled rout.  In a remarkable move, supermajor Royal Dutch Shell cut its dividend for the first time since World War II in late April. Equinor did the same just days before. Every major oil company has slashed its capital spending program — in some cases, by a staggering $10 billion. At least two major oil companies have gone bankrupt.  Employees are feeling it, too. As Business Insider reported, the oilfield services company Halliburton laid off almost 2,700 people across three states, citing the "most severe" downturn in a generation. Meanwhile, rival Schlumberger furloughed its North American staff and cut pay for some hourly workers.  Read more: 'I wish you the best of success': A leaked document reveals that oil giant Schlumberger told some workers about wage cuts using a template for promotions Altogether, more than a million oilfield service jobs are likely to be cut this year, according to the energy consulting firm Rystad Energy. More layoffs are likely on the horizon, as are further spending cuts. Business Insider is keeping track of them all here for 18 of the world's top oil companies. Have you been laid off by an oil company? Is there any information mission? Please contact us at energy@businessinsider.com or through the secure message app Signal at (646) 768-1657. SEE ALSO: 'There is no company that will be safe': Massive layoffs and furloughs are coming to the oil industry, experts say Whiting Petroleum was the first major oil company to file for bankruptcy. What it is: A Colorado-based oil and gas exploration and production company with large projects in North Dakota and Colorado.  Employment changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: On April 1, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in Houston, "touting a proposed settlement with creditors to eliminate $2.2 billion in debt in return for a 97% equity stake," the Wall Street Journal reports. The move follows an announcement the company made in March that it's slashing its capital budget by 30%, down to $400 million to $435 million, for 2020.  Production cuts: "The capital reduction is projected to have a moderate impact on full-year 2020 total production and oil production," the company said in March, though it didn't specify what that means in barrels.  Click here to subscribe to Power Line, Business Insider's weekly energy newsletter. Oklahoma's Devon Energy is cutting its capital spending budget in half. What it is: A large Oklahoma-based company focused on oil and gas exploration and production.  Employment changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: Devon is slashing its 2020 capital investment by about 45%, or about $800 million, down to a budget of about $1 billion, according to a public statement.  Production cuts: The company cut its 2020 forecast to between 300,000 to 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 328,000 to 339,000 barrels, Reuters reports.  Apache has laid off at least 85 people and cut its quarterly dividend by 90%. What it is: A large oil and gas exploration and production company, headquartered in Houston, Texas.  Employment changes: Apache has laid off at least 85 people in Midland, Texas, state filings show. "We are lowering our Permian rig count to zero and focusing capital elsewhere in our portfolio and, as a result, have made the difficult decision to further reduce staff," Apache said in a statement. "We are working to support affected employees." Spending cuts: Apache is cutting its upstream capital budget by more than half, down to $1.1 billion, according to a public statement. The oil and gas exploration company is also slashing its quarterly dividend by 90% — from $0.25 to $0.025 per share.  Production cuts: Apache is reducing activity in Egypt and the North Sea and eliminating all drilling and completion activity in the US, according to a public statement.  Have you or an acquaintance been laid off by an oil company? Please contact us at energy@businessinsider.com or through the secure message app Signal at (646) 768-1657.  Continental Resources will cut production by almost 150,000 barrels per day in May and June, analysts say. What it is: An oil and gas exploration and production company, and the largest leaseholder in the Bakken oilfield of North Dakota and Montana.  Employment changes: The company has not reported any layoffs or furloughs but it is shrinking its rig count, which could result in changes to its workforce. Spending cuts: The company said it would slash capital spending by more than 50%, down to $1.2 billion from an original planned $2.7 billion. Continental Resources is also suspending its quarterly dividend.  Production cuts: Production will be down almost 70,000 barrels per day in April and nearly 150,000 barrels per day in May and June, according to a Rystad Energy analysis. "Global crude oil and product demand is estimated to have been impacted by 30% due to COVID-19," Bill Berry, Continental's chief executive, said on April 7. "Accordingly, we are reducing our production for April and May 2020 in a similar range." Diamondback Energy is cutting production by as much as 15% in May. What it is: A Midland-based oil and gas exploration and production company operating in the Permian Basin.  Employment changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: Diamondback cut its 2020 capital budget by more than 40%, or $1.2 billion, down to between $1.5 billion and $1.9 billion, and it's "prepared to decrease its budget further should commodity prices remain weak," the company said in a public statement.  Production cuts: Diamondback said it would curtail production by as much as 15% in May in "areas where the company can manage production economically and without the addition of material operating expense."   Halliburton laid off almost 2,700 workers across three states. What it does: One of the world's largest oilfield service and product companies, headquartered in Houston, Texas.  Employment changes: Halliburton has laid off almost 2,700 employees across Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado, Business Insider previously reported. The recent layoffs are in addition to a 60-day furlough program that began in March and ended on May 4.  Spending cuts: The company cut capital spending for 2020 in half, down to about $800 million, according to a public statement.  Read more: Oil giant Halliburton laid off almost 2,700 workers across 3 states amid the 'most severe' downturn in a generation, filings show     Occidental Petroleum has cut its budget three times since March. What it is: Occidental is a large oil and gas exploration and production company, and "the leading producer and largest acreage holder in the Permian Basin," according to its website.  Employment changes: Occidental, or Oxy, said it will significantly reduce executive salaries. "Some of Occidental's US workers will have their pay cut by 30%," while others will see smaller cuts, Reuters reported in late March. The oil giant also cut CEO Vicki Hollub's pay by more than 80%, and suspended bonuses and hiring, according to the Houston Chronicle.  Spending cuts: Oxy is cutting its 2020 capital spending program by more than 50% to between $2.4 billion and $2.6 billion, down from $5.3 billion, the company said in a public statement. In March, the company also cut its quarterly dividend by about 85%, from $0.79 a share to $0.11. Schlumberger furloughed staff and cut wages, according to leaked documents. What it is: The largest oilfield services company in the world.  Employment changes: Schlumberger is furloughing its North American staff to reduce their work hours by about 20%, as Business Insider previously reported. Some hourly workers have also had their pay cut by 15%. Executives and the senior management team have also reduced their pay by 20%.   Spending cuts: The company said it would cut capital investment by 30%, relative to last year, down to $1.8 billion, according to a public statement. Schlumberger also slashed its quarterly dividend by 75%, down to $0.125 per share.  Production cuts: "The company expects a rapid reduction in active drilling and hydraulic fracturing activity, estimating the number of rigs in operation could fall to levels last seen during the 2016 downturn," Reuters reported in March.  Read more: 'I wish you the best of success': A leaked document reveals that oil giant Schlumberger told some workers about wage cuts using a template for promotions EOG Resources cut capital spending for the year by almost a half. What it is: A large oil and gas exploration and production company, based in Houston.  Employment changes: No staff layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: EOG said it's shrinking capital spending for 2020 by 46%, down to between $3.3 billion and $3.7 billion. Production cuts: The Houston-based company plans to produce about 390,000 barrels of crude per day in 2020, down 15% relative to last year. It will bring fewer than 500 wells into production over the year, "compared with the original forecast of 800 net wells," the company said in a statement.    Downstream giant Phillips 66 slashed capital spending by $700 million. What it is: A spinout of the oil giant ConocoPhillips focused on midstream and downstream products, such as gasoline and petrochemicals, headquartered in Houston.  Employment changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: Phillips 66 is slashing consolidated capital spending by $700 million, down to $3.1 billion, for 2020, it said in March. The company is also cutting operating and administrative expenses by an additional $500 million for the year.  Production cuts: The Houston-based firm said it would defer several projects including the Red Oak Pipeline and the Liberty Pipeline, which is expected to deliver crude oil from the Rocky Mountains and Bakken oilfield to Cushing, Oklahoma, a major trading hub.    ConocoPhillips is cutting production by about 460,000 barrels of oil per day in June. What it is: One of the largest oil and gas exploration and production companies in the world, also based in Houston.  Workplace changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: ConocoPhillips is cutting planned capital spending for 2020 by $2.3 billion, or about 35%, the company said in a public statement. The company is also slashing operating expenses by about $600,000.  Production cuts: The Houston-based firm expects to pare back May production by 265,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) and June production by about 460,000 bpd, per a public statement. "Future voluntary curtailment decisions across our areas of operations will be made on a month-by-month basis," the company said.  Equinor was the first oil major to slash its dividend. What it is: A Norwegian energy giant that develops oil and gas projects, in addition to clean energy, such as offshore wind.  Employment changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: On March 25, Equinor said it's trimming capital expenditure for 2020 by about $2.5 billion, or 20%, and reducing exploration and operating costs by a total of $1.1 billion. On April 23, the company also announced that it's slashing its dividend by two-thirds for the first quarter of 2020 — from 27 cents per share in the last three months of 2019 down to 9 cents per share. Equinor is the first oil major to announce dividend cuts.  Production cuts: "Within US onshore activities, drilling and completion activities are being halted to produce the volumes at a later period," the company said in March.  Read more: A top energy analyst says dividends of these 7 oil majors are unsustainable — and shares one metric that reveals the 2 companies most at risk Italian oil major Eni cut capital spending by 30%, but it has yet to touch its dividend. What it is: Eni is one of the world's largest oil and gas companies, headquartered in Italy.  Employment changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: The Italian major is cutting capital spending for 2020 by 30%, or about 2.3 billion euros (about $2.5 billion), according to a public statement. Eni is also planning to reduce other expenses by about 600 million euros (about $650 million).  Production cuts: "Production this year should be around 1.75 million-1.8 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), down from a forecast in February of about 1.9 million and slightly lower than last year's 1.87 million boepd," Reuters reports.  BP said it wouldn't lay off staff for pandemic-related reasons until at least July. What it is: A London-based supermajor and one of the largest energy companies in the world, involved in both upstream and downstream activities.  Employment changes: BP said it would not lay off staff for pandemic-related issues for at least three months, on April 1.  Spending cuts: BP is cutting its 2020 capital expenditure by about 25%, down to about $12 billion, according to a public statement. As part of that, the company said it would slash around $1 billion from both upstream (oil exploration and production) and downstream (refining and petrochemicals) activities.  Production cuts: BP expects to produce 70,000 fewer barrels of oil equivalent per day, making 2020 production lower than output in 2019.  Total froze recruitment and cut more than $4 billion from its capital spending budget. What it is: A French multinational oil major and one of the largest energy companies in the world.   Employment changes: Total is freezing recruitment. "I'm instructing everyone to freeze hiring," Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman & CEO of Total, said in a video message to employees in March. Spending cuts: Total is cutting capex by more than $4 billion, or 25%, from $18 billion to less than $14 billion, according to a public statement. The company is also shrinking operating costs by $1 billion.   Have you or an acquaintance been laid off by an oil company? Please contact us at energy@businessinsider.com or through the secure message app Signal at (646) 768-1657.  Royal Dutch Shell cut its dividend for the first time since WWII. What it is: One of just a handful of oil supermajors, Shell is involved in nearly all aspects of the energy supply chain.  Employment changes: No layoffs or furloughs have been reported so far.  Spending cuts: Shell sent tremors through the oil and gas industry in April when it announced that it would cut its quarterly dividend for the first time since World War II. Shell is also shrinking capital expenditure for the year by about $5 billion to $20 billion or below, the company said in a public statement, while reducing operational expenditure by a further $3 billion to $4 billion, relative to 2019.  Production cuts: Shell is cutting production at two Louisiana refineries, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Read more: Shell's CEO explains why the oil giant had to slash its dividend for the first time since World War II   US oil giant Chevron will cut up to 15% of its workforce. What it is: California-based Chevron is one of the world's largest oil and gas companies involved in both upstream and downstream activities.  Employment changes: Chevron will cut 10% to 15% of its global workforce, or as many as 6,700 employees, as the company streamlines its structure to match the current market conditions, a spokesperson told Business Insider. "Impacts in each location, business segment, and function will vary," the spokesperson said. "This is a difficult decision, and we do not make it lightly." Spending cuts: Chevron is paring back capital spending by about $6 billion to as low as $14 billion in 2020, largely by shrinking spending in the Permian Basin. The company is also reducing its operating expenses by about $1 billion.  Production cuts: The company said that 2020 production will remain relatively flat, compared to 2019, though its spending cuts translate to "125,000 fewer barrels of oil equivalent per day," Bloomberg reports.     ExxonMobil is slashing capital spending by $10 billion and cutting production by 400,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day. What it is: An oil and gas supermajor involved in upstream and downstream activities. It was formed in 1999 through the merger of Exxon and Mobil and is now the largest oil company in the world.  Employment changes: No company layoffs have been reported, but Exxon's spending cuts are likely to affect its workforce. "We are notifying contractors and vendors of our intended reductions, and they may be adjusting their staffing and budgets accordingly," a spokesman told Reuters. Exxon also cut 1,800 contractors at a refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana earlier this month, per Reuters, though they were employed by a third party.  Spending cuts: The Texas-based major is cutting capital spending for 2020 by 30%, or $10 billion, from $33 billion down to $23 billion, per a public statement. It's also reducing operating expenses by 15%.  Production cuts: Exxon plans to curb production by about 400,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day in the second quarter, according to the company.  Are we missing information? Let us know by reaching out to energy@businessinsider.com. 

Donald Trump is effectively inciting harassment against one of Twitter's employees. Yoel Roth is being targeted after Twitter fact-checked two inaccurate tweets from the president. Trump wants Twitter to back down and stop applying its rules.  Twitter now must choose between making a mockery of its policies and holding firm and facing ever-more negative political scrutiny and attacks on its employees.  Twitter is in an impossible position. President Donald Trump is effectively inciting harassment of one of its employees in response to the company correctly applying its policies. It now faces a choice between enforcing its policies and facing ever-more harassment and negative political scrutiny — or to back down, making a mockery of its rules. The firestorm started on Tuesday, when Twitter took the unprecedented step of applying fact-checks to two inaccurate tweets from Trump that made allegations about mail-in ballot fraud. Trump responded in fury, initially threatening to shut down social media platforms, before going on to prepare to sign an executive order targeting their legal protections. Meanwhile, his right-wing supporters began attacking Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, over the fact-checks and his past negative tweets about Trump — despite the fact that wasn't responsible for the fact-check decision. On Thursday, Trump dramatically escalated matters — directly targeting Roth in a tweet to his 80 million followers: "So ridiculous to see Twitter trying to make the case that Mail-In Ballots are not subject to FRAUD," he tweeted. "How stupid, there are examples, & cases, all over the place. Our election process will become badly tainted & a laughingstock all over the World. Tell that to your hater @yoyoel." (@yoyoel is Roth's Twitter handle.) Roth has already received harassment and death threats after being targeted by the right. Trump's tweet is certain to inflame this. It also arguably violates Twitter's policies on harassment, which "prohibit behavior that encourages others to harass or target specific individuals or groups with abusive behavior. This includes, but is not limited to; calls to target people with abuse or harassment online and behavior that urges offline action such as physical harassment." The question is whether the phrase "tell that to your hater" is directed at Twitter, asking the company to talk to its employee, or at Trump's Twitter followers as an instruction to swarm the employee with messages. Either way, the outcome is the same: Roth will face a new tidal wave of abuse as a result of the president's tweet. Taken collectively, Trump's actions are a clear attempt at intimidation. He wants the social network to back down, stop its fact-checking, and generally bend to his will. (The attack are also viewed as popular with Trump's voter base; some on the right have long made unproven claims of anti-conservative bias by tech companies.) But Twitter has now set a precedent. To stop its fact-checking efforts now would be to admit it had been bullied into submission by the president, and that any of its rules can be broken if you're powerful enough. The alternative, though, is to face escalating right-wing anger, further hostile legislation and executive orders, and unfounded harassment of its employees by the most powerful man in the world. Do you work at Twitter? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.SEE ALSO: Trump is unleashing an executive order against social media companies, and it could trigger a legal fight they desperately want to avoid Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Alternative-data provider SimilarWeb, which tracks web traffic for millions of websites, lays out the numbers behind the coronavirus pandemic's impact on different industries. Winners include sporting-goods retailers and telehealth providers, while travel companies and luxury brands fell hard. Go inside the data that hedge funds use to make their big market bets. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The best version of alternative data gives a story more detail or a new perspective. Cell-phone geolocation can give a consumer-level insight into how long they're willing to wait for a new iPhone. Satellite images can show how full a barge is when it leaves port. Social media trackers can determine what kind of buzz a company is generating.  For many hedge funds, these data inputs have become a huge part of their process, supplementing — and occasionally replacing — traditional data feeds for their quants and fundamental analysts. And in the novel coronavirus pandemic, that's been the case even more as record levels of market volatility pushed funds to gather as much information as possible, as quickly as possible, to determine the impact of the global shutdown. These data feeds though can also serve as an important look-back, not to help predict future, but to put in context how much damage has been done by a single virus. Data from SimilarWeb, an alternative-data vendor that tracks the online traffic of millions of websites, shared with Business Insider shows how different industries, and the underlying companies, were impacted.  Below is a heatmap from SimilarWeb looking at weekly web traffic for these different industries compared to the same week a year before. The changes for some companies have been drastic, so much so that businesses are going bankrupt. Business Insider took a deeper look at the underlying data in 11 industries to understand the businesses that were most impacted by the novel coronavirus. SEE ALSO: 'A $35,000 data set that could have saved or made $100 million': Alt data is back in the spotlight — here's how providers and buyers have adapted SEE ALSO: Hedge funds are using these 10 alt-data sources to gain an investing edge as the coronavirus wreaks havoc on global markets SEE ALSO: The world's biggest hedge funds like Bridgewater are blending quantitative and fundamental trading. Here's why it's gaining hype on Wall Street. Retail investing With market volatility reaching all-time highs, it should come as no surprise that people keen to take advantage of the wild swings headed to brokerage websites.  However, one site stood out among the group, attracting an incredible amount of traffic. Robinhood, the financial app popular with first-time investors, saw huge upticks in unique visits during the crisis, with views up at least 120% compared to the previous year for all but one week in March, April, and May. The traffic volume came despite the popular app facing multiple outages during March.  To be sure, TD Ameritrade saw its fair share of increases as well, peaking in March, with weekly spikes of 91% and 94% toward the end of the month.  Interactive Brokers, Fidelity and Schwab saw upticks as well, although far smaller, with the traditional players topping out around 50% in increases.  Online banking As the market turned volatile and layoffs mounted, one would expect banking websites to be a popular destination. However, the world's largest banks saw around a 12% decrease in traffic in late March compared to the same time period the previous year. That changed in April, with a spike the week of the 18th following the announcement of stimulus checks being distributed.  Overall, Bank of America nabbed the biggest increase in traffic among the group, achieving double-digit upticks in views every week in May. Wells Fargo also saw increases throughout May, albeit not as high as Bank of America. On the other end of the spectrum, Citi attracted lower-than-average traffic all but two weeks since the coronavirus pandemic began in the US in mid-March.   Job postings Arguably the most surprising datapoint in SimilarWeb's study was the decrease in traffic at job listings websites.  While the expectation might be that these sites would be flooded with traffic as unemployment rates began to skyrocket, the opposite was true. In fact, CareerBuilder, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, Glassdoor, and Monster have all faced double-digit decreases in traffic for a majority of the pandemic thus far. CareerBuilder has fared the best of the bunch, with a 19% and 12% uptick during the weeks of March 14 and 21. However, the rest of March, all of April, and the start of May proved lower-than-average traffic. Online grocery and food delivery As expected, grocery and food delivery sites have fared quite well during the pandemic. April proved particularly busy for grocery sites, with Walmart, Instacart, Publix, Peapod, and FreshDirect seeing weekly increases in average traffic as high as 800%. While those numbers have come down, they remain well above last year's weekly averages. During the week of May 16, both Walmart and Instacart saw 276% and 248% increases in unique visitors, respectively.  As for food delivery, DoorDash and Uber Eats have shown to be big winners, enjoying upticks in traffic around 90% throughout the pandemic. Some individual restaurants have also fared well, with Chipotle maintaining increases in weekly traffic as high as 120% at times.  That being said, Dominos and Pizza Hut have seen decreases in unique visitors. Not all food delivery has picked up, as Seamless has seen decreases in traffic throughout the pandemic.        E-commerce While Amazon traffic has continued to climb, the true standout amongst e-commerce companies has been Etsy. Perhaps as part of an increased effort among out-of-work people to launch businesses of their own, the website's weekly traffic is up 50% throughout May.  Alibaba and AliExpress both have come on strong in May as well, seeing weekly unique visits increase by 40% and 29%, respectively, for the week of May 16. Amazon has maintained double-digit increases in weekly unique traffic for all but two weeks during the pandemic.  eBay, meanwhile, was the lone lagger in the bunch, with only single-digit growth starting in mid-April.    Luxury It appears that the thing people buying luxury goods enjoy the most is being seen buying luxury goods.  Since about mid-March, a majority of major luxury labels tracked by SimilarWeb — including Chanel, Gucci, Saks Fifth Avenue, and more — have seen their web traffic decrease compared to last year, despite their marble-floored shops being closed to customers.  Three brands though seem to have pushed through and adapted quickly to the pandemic world: Dior, Prada, and Hermes. All three brands have seen online traffic surge, relative to past visitors, since the end of March, with Dior leading way. The week of April 25, for instance, saw 64% more traffic in 2020 than 2019, SimilarWeb states.  Web conferencing It should be no surprise that video conferencing platforms are the big winners of the pandemic. Zoom's stock has soared since people began using it to replace their favorite watering holes and dinner tables for happy hours and family gatherings. But the numbers are still striking as to how many more people are using the platform. Since the week of March 28, Zoom has had at least 1,300% more visitors every week than it did in 2019.  Other video sites, like Google's offering, Webex, and GoToMeeting, have also experienced a surge, but nothing like Zoom's explosion.  Beauty and fashion While people might be opting for more sweatpants-and-t-shirt looks these days, beauty brands have been surprisingly resistant to the pandemic, according to SimilarWeb. While Ulta's online traffic has mostly fallen since the outbreak, Sally Beauty's web traffic in April more than doubled, and Bath & Body Works saw a surge in traffic as well.   Department stores SimilarWeb saw a big split in what it calls its department store category. While websites for department stores like Nordstrom's and Macy's fell, the alt-data company also puts chains like Target, Walmart, and BestBuy in the department store category, despite their more diverse offerings.  The split is pretty clear in the data — for those shops that are mostly selling clothes, traffic took a serious tumble, with only Kohl's seeing any brief increase in traffic since the pandemic. Target, Walmart, and BestBuy however have been steadily seeing more and more people visit their websites since stay-at-home orders were issued — and that's not including Walmart's separate grocery delivery/pickup site.  Online real estate With people uncertain of where their next paycheck is going to come from, traffic to online real-estate sites like Realtor.com and Zillow have slumped despite some of the lowest mortgage rates in a decade. Renter-focused sites like Apartments.com, known for their quirky ads starring Jeff Goldblum, and New York-centric StreetEasy have also seen a dip in traffic, as stimulus money and unemployment checks have become the new income for many that were laid off during the pandemic.  Sporting goods People can only be cooped up for so long before they want to move around. As a result, companies that give you the goods to do so have cashed in. Peloton, the stationary cycling start-up that went public last year, has been one of the biggest recipients of the new interest in home gym equipment: The company has seen weekly web traffic double, triple, or even quadruple in the weeks since the pandemic broke out.  Companies like Dick's Sporting Goods, Lululemon, and Nike have also seen an uptick in visitors as gyms remain closed for the foreseeable future. 

A coronavirus vaccine faces several major challenges to actually end the pandemic, top pharmaceutical executives said Thursday.  Execs for four major pharmaceutical companies working on vaccines — Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline — outlined key problems. A vaccine needs to be tested, mass-produced and globally distributed to halt the coronavirus crisis. Each of these steps will require efforts that will test the world.  The companies plan to chase the virus around the world, package multiple doses into each glass vial, and work with global nonprofits on a fair distribution plan.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. A widely available coronavirus immunization faces a slew of challenges that will test the world over the next year, top pharmaceutical executives said Thursday.  Determining if a vaccine candidate actually works in humans is just the first step. Other significant hurdles include mass-producing an effective vaccine and then distributing it around the world.  Four leaders at some of the largest drugmakers in the world — Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline — revealed how they are now planning for these challenges at a Thursday press conference hosted by an industry trade group. Across the pharma and biotech industries, dozens of companies are aiming to develop a coronavirus vaccine in record time. There are 125 ongoing vaccine research efforts, with 10 now being tested in humans, according to the World Health Organization. A Business Insider review found nearly 30 experimental vaccines are slated to be in clinical trials by the end of 2020. In condensing the develpment timeline, these companies are now simultaneously thinking through issues that will arise from each stage of vaccine development: how to rapidly test a candidate in humans, how to manufacture hundreds of millions, if not billions, of doses, and how to distribute an effective vaccine to the world. Read more: The untold story of Moderna as the biotech's coronavirus vaccine faces a test that could make it one of the most consequential startups of all time  Problem #1: Chasing the virus First and foremost, researchers need to vet the potential vaccines to see if any of them actually work. A good vaccine will have to clear two bars. First, it will have to be safe and tolerable for healthy humans to take, without causing serious side effects. Secondly, it has to either prevent infection, or at a minimum, reduce the likelihood of severe disease.  In order to demonstrate a vaccine works, researchers need to test large numbers of people in areas where the virus is actively spreading. As clinical trials often require months to plan and run, that is turning into a major issue for testing a vaccine against a fast-moving virus.  "The problem we will all have, I think, is we are running against time a little bit," AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said. AstraZeneca has partnered on a vaccine candidate developed by University of Oxford researchers. Soriot added that there will soon be data available from the first phase of its UK-based clinical trial, which is now working to expand into a 5,000-person trial. Recently, the researchers running the UK study have warned there's now a 50% chance it won't be able to determine if the vaccine works because of the dropping rate of new infections in Britain.  "Very soon, the disease intensity will be low and it will become difficult, so we have to move quickly," Soriot said.  The Oxford candidate will also be tried in several other trials around the globe. Soriot said studies in Kenya, South Africa, Brazil and several other countries will start soon. A 30,000-person trial in the US will likely start in July, he added. The other executives also raised this concern, including Johnson & Johnson Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels. J&J, the largest healthcare company in the world, is aiming to start human trials of a vaccine in September to be ready for potential emergency use in early 2021. "We plan to do two large Phase 3 studies, as typically is required in the world to get to full approval," Stoffels said. "Hopefully that can be done in the north. If not, we'll have to go to the south." Read more: Scientists are racing to create a coronavirus vaccine that can halt the pandemic in its tracks. Here are the top 3 candidates from Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca aiming to be ready this fall. Problem #2: Running out of glass Before knowing if the vaccines work, the leading programs are already ramping up manufacturing capability. A critical constraint to producing hundreds of millions or billions of doses in such a short amount of time will be a final portion of the manufacturing process of putting the serum into glass vials.  Several of the executives raised concerns about simply running out of glass. Pfizer's Bourla said they are now talking with government officials to see if they could put five or 10 doses into a single vial. Traditionally, vaccines are delivered in single-dose vials.  Bourla said this could "resolve a significant part of the bottleneck in manufacturing." J&J's Stoffels added that it will "probably be essential" to put multiple doses into each vial.  "The capacity is not there to do it in the billions otherwise," he added. Problem #3: Distributing a vaccine, particularly to lower-income areas of the world In working through the first two problems, the world could have hundreds of millions, or potentially billions, of doses of an effective vaccine. But there still needs to be a plan on how it will be delivered to people across the world.  In particular, there's been a rising fear of 'vaccine nationalism,' where each nation's leaders will try to secure a vaccine for its country first instead of pursuing a global approach.  GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley said the drug industry is "committed to access," in particular by working with a new World Health Organization group called the ACT Accelerator. She emphasized the role of leading nonprofits like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the global vaccine organization Gavi. "That is going to be a mechanism with multiple stakeholders, whether it's heads of state or organizations like CEPI, and the Gates Foundation, Gavi and others, and the WHO of course, where we can actually look at these principles of access," Walmsley said.  But demand is still expected to vastly exceed supply for coronavirus vaccines. This will be an even tougher challenge for some vaccines that require cold storage.  Pfizer's Bourla said its experimental vaccine will likely go to the "Western world" first, mainly because it needs to be stored at -8 degrees Celsius (about 18 degrees Fahrenheit). "It's a technology that is not very convenient for Africa, for example, because they will likely lack basic infrastructure that can be applicable," Bourla said, adding Pfizer would work on a second wave of products that wouldn't require extreme temperatures.  AstraZeneca's Soriot said the US government has effectively placed an advance order for 300 million doses of its experimental vaccine, as part of $1.2 billion in funding made available to the company by the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Drugmakers are developing coronavirus vaccines in record time — but it will still be months before one is available

Density tracks how many people go into buildings and uses predictive analytics to recommend adjustments to meetings and cleaning schedules, and its product has seen a boom in sales because of the coronavirus pandemic and the need for social distancing.  Marriott, the University of Notre Dame, and hard-hit meat-packing facilities are using Density's over-the-door sensors and Safe, its recently released software.  Tech heavyweights, such as former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and the well-known angel investor Jason Calacanis, are involved with the startup. The baseball legend Alex Rodriguez recently invested in the startup because he believes it "has the power to completely change how quickly we get back to normal." Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The people-counting startup Density has had explosive sales growth, including Fortune 500 customers, and reeled in a famous investor as it addresses one of the most pressing issues in the world: how to safely bring people back from COVID-19 quarantine to work and public spaces while maintaining social distancing and privacy. The 50-person San Francisco startup makes sensors that can be installed over doorways to count people as they come in and out, allowing organizations to easily follow reduced-capacity requirements as spaces start to open back up. Density has raised $25 million from Founders Fund — the venture-capital firm led by billionaire Pay Pal cofounder Peter Thiel — as well as the well-known angel investor Jason Calacanis and others. It has also recruited former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo as an adviser. More recently, it received an investment from Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees slugger who won three MVP awards and says the startup "has the power to completely change how quickly we get back to normal." Density recently released a software product called Safe that allows customers and employees to check a monitor outside a building or room that lets them know the current capacity and if they can enter while still maintaining responsible social distancing. Safe also sends notifications to business proprietors and workplace managers to let them know if an area is getting too crowded or has emptied out and now needs cleaning. It also provides detailed analytics reports showing the flow of people across a property. As areas of the US emerge from shelter-in-place mandates, demand for Density's product is spiking: Its sales are up 560% quarter over quarter. It recently signed on an Indiana meat-packing plant (a type of facility hit hard by COVID-19), which joins existing customers like Marriott and the University of Notre Dame. They use Density's sensors and screens to monitor capacity on their properties, according to the startup. This month, several states have reopened businesses but capped occupancy at 25%, guidelines that Density can help them meet. While Density's over-the-door sensors monitor people's entrance and exit of buildings and rooms, the company also uses predictive analytics — a type of artificial intelligence that processes data from the past to suggest needs in the future — to help companies better use their office space, schedule cleaning and deliveries, and guide employees toward underused meeting rooms. For example, grocery stores and other essential retailers are using Density to prevent crowding and track when to clean key areas after a rush. The startup is also studying ways to offer more detailed monitoring of interior social distancing. "A bunch of companies are coming to us to be a solution that both keeps people safe but also is not invasive," Density CEO Andrew Farah said. Farah said Density's sensors, which never record people's faces or any other identifiable personal information, are vastly different from camera surveillance systems: "We're anonymous by design, meaning if you compromise our system, you can't get access to personally identifiable information because it isn't there," he said.    Farah called safety "a two-sided problem" that consists of making a place safe and convincing people that a place is safe. "As an employee coming back to work, I want to know, 'How busy is that space? How many people are there and on what floors?'" he said. "I want to feel secure in knowing that there's going to be adequate room for me." Density was founded six years ago by six coworkers in Syracuse, New York, who created a digital system to show them remotely when their favorite coffee shop was crowded. From there, they set out to simply help businesses use commercial real estate more effectively. But after the pandemic hit, the need for their product shifted from a long-term strategy to immediate safety. Farah was careful to point out that he's not excited about the pandemic, even if his business is booming. "I think the only silver lining is that we can use our technology to help keep people safe," he said. "The amount of devastation COVID has had on industries, individuals, families, businesses, and so forth is difficult to reconcile with a growing business. Right now it's about safety, and as far as I'm concerned Density is a safety company for the next 12 months. Afterward, we can help organizations use their spaces more wisely, which can be a huge cost savings."  The change to long-term remote work will reshape the commercial-real-estate business, and data will be critical in making decisions about office space and on-premises needs such as cleaning and food services, according to Density.  Density's position as a highly relevant startup in the middle of a pandemic has made its all-star supporters crucial, Farah said. He's received guidance from partners at Founders Fund and Costolo, who has been an important adviser when it comes to building a team and growth of the company. "Density is a solution that will help keep us safe in the post-COVID era while allowing us to maintain our pre-COVID privacy rights," Costolo said.  The company also has an enthusiastic cheerleader in Rodriguez, the 14-time American League All-Star. "I've been investing in real estate for over 20 years: Density is how all buildings should operate," he said. "Especially as people are trying to get back to their work safely, knowing whether or not it's safe to go in, whether or not a building has enough space to keep people safe. These are the kinds of things that Density can do while still protecting our personal rights because they're anonymous."SEE ALSO: Japanese tech giant NTT is making a $230 million bet on upending healthcare with 'digital twins,' an exact virtual replica of a person that can be used with AI to explore new treatments without risking the patient Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Tax Day is now July 15 — this is what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

The attractiveness of US assets relative to the rest of the world is brewing a bubble in the stock market, according to equity-derivatives strategists at Bank of America.  They formulated a cheap strategy designed to profit from limited gains in some of the worst-performing stocks.  Click here for more BI Prime stories.  Stock-market rallies do not have to be as monumental as the dot-com boom in order to qualify as bubbles.  For equity-derivatives strategists at Bank of America, the forces lifting the market higher are powerful enough to potentially make stocks vastly overpriced. None of these catalysts is hard to dismiss — even for bearish investors who doubt that the economy will quickly recover from the coronavirus crisis in a V-shaped manner. Most importantly, the US has provided more monetary and fiscal support than any other country during this downturn and made the appeal of its financial assets irresistible. The concern shared by Bank of America is these gains could prompt investors to dust off a playbook that worked after the 2008 financial crisis: buying price dips and betting that weaknesses will be short-lived. Quant investors who are insensitive to price and willing to add more risk to their portfolios then join the buying, creating a marketwide fear of missing out that fuels the market higher.   "A major risk therefore is the formation of a US equity bubble as fundamentals take a backseat to investors' need to allocate capital to what's arguably the safest risk asset left," said a team of strategists including Gonzalo Asis in a recent note.  The backdrop for this bubble scenario is the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, which investors appear to be tossing to the back seat. But the strategists' study of every contraction since 1929 led to the conclusion that a a sustained rebound from the March low would be a historical anomaly.  And so, we're left with two competing risks. Investors who are skeptical that this time is different may need to capitulate and buy a market that just keeps flying higher. And on the other hand, stocks may simply be staging a classic bear-market rally that collapses.  Bank of America's recommendation is not to pick one of these sides. Instead, the strategists devised a strategy that would help investors hedge the bubble risk while participating in its upside. They view it as a cheap way to "rent" rather than own stocks that might rise. The team's apparatus involves call spreads, designed to bet on limited price gains. It is executed by simultaneously buying and selling an equal number of call options. The strategists screened for stocks in industries with the worst performance since the market peaked in February 19, as these have more upside room. Also, the chosen stocks have a historically flat call skew, meaning traders are not paying a premium to bet on price increases.  "Call spreads on Delta, Wells Fargo, United Airlines, MGM Resorts, and Aflac offer significantly higher payout ratios than typical over the past 10 years," Asis said. SEE ALSO: Bill Miller and 5 longtime value investors share 10 stock picks they're betting on right now — and explain why these are the best companies for the crisis recovery Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Why Pikes Peak is the most dangerous racetrack in America

The music artist Eminem has joined the text-marketing app Community, announcing to fans this week that they can text him at 313-666-7440. The rapper appears to be using Community to promote a new line of merchandise he's releasing to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his album "The Marshall Mathers LP." Here's what you should know about how Community works, and why the platform has taken off recently among celebrities and influencers alike. Click here for more BI Prime stories. On Monday, the music artist Eminem tweeted out a phone number to fans with the instructions, "text me, ill hit you back."  The rapper's listed phone number (313-666-7440) isn't his personal digits, even though its Detroit area code suggests it could be. The number was created by Community, an invite-only text-marketing startup that works with celebrities and influencers to offer what is essentially a text message version of a standard email-marketing tool like Mailchimp. Community gives each celebrity a unique phone number that they send out to their followers. Fans can sign up to receive texts from a public figure like Eminem by filling out an informational form, similar to how a brand or media company might ask customers to opt in to receiving promotional emails or newsletters. In the case of Eminem, the artist appears to be using his Community phone number to promote merchandise and new music he's releasing in celebration of the 20th anniversary of his album "The Marshall Mathers LP." Setting up Community to boost sales of "merch" is one of several use cases celebrities and influencers have tested out on the app, which has drawn a mix of early users including music artists like Paul McCartney, The Jonas Brothers, and Jennifer Lopez and influencers like Jake Paul. "I've only been promoting it a little bit, and I've got around 10,000 people on my text platform," Joshua Weissman, a food influencer who's been testing Community, told Business Insider last month. "I sent out a text message and it went out to 9,900 [people]. It had a 98% open rate." How celebrities and influencers are using Community so far While Community can serve as a promotional tool for public figures to push direct-to-consumers sales, the app also allows its users to respond directly to texts from fans and send out things like personalized birthday messages. Weissman told Business Insider that he'd been leaning into the app's birthday notification feature. "If it's like 10 people's birthdays that day, I'll just take 30 minutes and I'll send a video selfie message of me saying 'Happy birthday' to that person," he said. In addition to collecting data on a fan's date of birth, Community asks for a user's name, gender identity, city, and email address (optional) when they sign up. An opted-in user also agrees to the company's terms of use and privacy policy, which highlight some of the ways that they will end up interacting with a celebrity through the app. Community notes in its terms of use that it's possible that not all texts will be sent directly by the influencer or celebrity who originally shared their phone number. "A message sent by a Customer may actually be sent on his/her behalf by a public relations or other social media representative," the company says. The company also outlines in its terms that any texts that a user sends back to a public figure like Eminem can be used by his team and Community for "developing, producing, and marketing products and/or services," with the ability to "publish in searchable format." While Community is still a relative newcomer to the influencer-marketing world (the company launched last year), its direct-messaging format ties in well with a broader trend toward more direct-to-consumer interactions between celebrities and their followers.   The app's major selling point is that it offers celebrities and influencers access to a fan's cell phone number, which — unlike social media accounts or even email addresses — people tend to hold onto for years. Whether Eminem chooses to use the app outside of this initial 20th anniversary promotion is unknown. Read a full breakdown of how the Community app works for influencers and its celebrity early adopters. For more stories on how influencers are turning to startups and tech platforms to grow their businesses, check out these other Business Insider Prime posts: Meet the startup helping YouTube creators earn millions in extra ad revenue by reposting their content on Facebook and Snapchat — including $68,000 from a single video: Posting videos across YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat can be a headache for creators. Startup Jellysmack is trying to streamline the process. Marketers share what it's like to use TikTok's invite-only tool for finding the right influencers to hire for brand deals: TikTok is growing up as an influencer-marketing platform with the release of new audience-data tools for both creators and brands. Inside YouTube's secretive Google Preferred program, which can boost a creator's income and signal they've 'made it': Business Insider spoke to creators and individuals familiar with how Google Preferred works to learn more about YouTube's top-tier ad product. What influencers should know about Facebook's new app for video creators, Creator Studio: Facebook created a new mobile app version of its publishing and analytics tool, Creator Studio, as it continues to make moves to compete with YouTube. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

Brex, the fintech startup that sells primarily to other startups, just shared its framework for handling customer support during the economic crisis. Many startups have been advised by investors and advisors to cut costs and extend their runway, but without clear guidance on how to do so while maintaining customer relationships. In an analysis of startup data, Brex found that those with the best chance of successfully retaining customers, and therefore retaining revenue streams, was to standardize the customer experience process. See the playbook and guidelines Brex just released together with HR startup Zendesk. Click here to get BI Prime's weekly 'Trending' tech newsletter in your email inbox. Fintech startup Brex has advice for other startups struggling through the economic crisis: It may be difficult to sell your wares to new customers right now, but there are things you can do to get more from the customers you already have. Brex, which provides credit cards to startups, analyzed data from its own customers and worked with HR company Zendesk to produce a set of customer service and support guidelines. The idea of the project, which the companies presented this month in one Brex's ongoing series of webinars, is to provide insight and actionable tips that can help young businesses jolted by the coronavirus pandemic.  According to Brex and Zendesk, customer service is a vital skill that more startups would do well to focus on. "We really have to change our mindset in this moment away from selling and towards retention by trying to find growth, if possible, through that existing customer base that we have," Zendesk vice president of startups Kristen Durham said. That's important because sales prospects are bleak for a lot of startups, especially those that cater to sectors hard hit by the virus. "One of the things that really has been striking for us is some of this data around the fact that businesses are no longer selling," Durham said. "Sales teams are sending about 50 percent more emails to prospects than they were pre-COVID but the responses just keep dropping." The drop in raw sales numbers is a scary situation for startups that have been advised by their investors to cut costs and extend their runways. Without much guidance on how exactly to make that happen, startup founders are walking something of a tightrope — if revenue drops off, they might have to resort to executive salary cuts or layoffs just to stay upright. Keeping customers happy is as important as keeping employees happy, Brex chief customer officer Roli Saxena said, and requires founders to employ similar tactics to sales, such transparent communication. Overall, startups need to have a standardized plan in place to make it through the rough waters ahead, and out the other side, Saxena said. Here is the customer service and support strategy Brex developed with Zendesk.SEE ALSO: See the deck that top growth-stage investor Insight Partners is using to prepare its founder network to weather a prolonged economic downturn

Current economic conditions are forcing many people to change careers. We asked experts who have made their own transitions — two coaches and a startup founder — for advice on doing it effectively. They mentioned the value of using other people as sounding boards and remembering that your next role doesn't have to be your last. Click here for more BI Prime stories. Joe Casey left his phone at home while he went running one Saturday afternoon in 2008. When he got home, his wife mentioned that the president of Merrill Lynch, where Casey worked in human resources for 24 years, was calling him nonstop. Merrill Lynch, Casey learned, was merging with Bank of America. Casey was offered the option to stay on or to take an early-retirement package. Casey thought about staying on, but within a few months, he knew he didn't want to stick around much longer. He interviewed for an HR role at another organization, then backed out at the last minute. "My heart's not in this," he remembered thinking. Casey had already been considering a transition to career coaching. He worked with an executive coach at Merrill Lynch and found the experience valuable. "If I'm really serious about coaching," Casey told himself shortly after the merger, "Why not do it now?" A year later, Casey started work as an executive coach. Today, at 62 years old, he runs his own coaching firm, Retirement Wisdom. From his office in Princeton, New Jersey, he works primarily with people who are retiring and helps them plot the next steps in their careers. Casey prefers to keep his business on the smaller side: In mid-March, he had 25 clients, including corporate partners. (Business has been slower in the pandemic.) Casey's trajectory is a prime example of how to spot opportunities for advancement when your career plans are foiled by factors outside your control. And there's never been a greater need for instructive stories like his. In the nine weeks ending mid-May, nearly 39 million Americans filed for unemployment. Layoffs are sweeping nearly every industry, thanks largely to a global pandemic and the beginnings of a deep recession. Many people who have lost their primary source of income — and their hopes of finding another — may feel as though they're living out a professional nightmare. But it helps to look at the situation differently. The next few months are an opportunity to take risks you wouldn't have otherwise, and to tap into skills and interests you didn't know you had. You may even find greater success in your new career path, or in entrepreneurial pursuits. NYU professor Scott Galloway previously told Business Insider that the best time to start a business is at the depths of a recession. Business Insider spoke to three business owners — two career coaches and one founder who runs a career-development startup — about their transitions, and what other people can learn from them. Ask other people what they think your strengths are When Casey guides clients who aren't sure what to do next, he tells them introspection will only get them so far. It can be hard to look objectively at your own strengths, so it helps to ask people who know you well what they think your main values and skills are. (On the precipice of retirement, one of Casey's clients went back to his college roommate and asked the person, "What did you think I was going to become?") Alison Heisler, now a flow and clarity coach for individuals and organizations, used a similar tactic when pivoting to coaching. Heisler spent nearly two decades in magazine publishing when she started working part-time with the executive coaching and advisory firm Talentism in 2010. In the years that followed, as she was exploring her interests and considering her next move, she asked people who knew her well — including friends and former clients — what they considered her unique strengths and skills. They helped her recognize how much she enjoyed the interpersonal aspects of her work, and that she was drawn to more entrepreneurial environments. Other experts recommend using friends and family as sounding boards when considering your next career move. Tasha Eurich, for example, an organizational psychologist and the author of the book "Insight," previously told Business Insider that everyone should have a group of "loving critics" who will be honest with them about their shortcomings in a way that helps them get ahead. Self-awareness, Eurich said, is key to professional success — and most people are lacking in it. Spencer Rascoff, meanwhile, founder of real-estate website Zillow, previously told Business Insider's Alyson Shontell that his wife is his "career mirror," helping him clarify his hopes and frustrations about work. "Every career decision I've made has been because my wife told me to, because she's held up a mirror to me," Rascoff said. "She said: 'Look, you're unhappy. You may not realize it, but you're unhappy doing this thing.'" Know your personal tolerance for risk and uncertainty When Heisler started coaching part-time in 2010, it wasn't exactly an ideal time to make a drastic career move. The US economy was just coming out of the Great Recession; Heisler had four young kids at home; her husband was changing jobs, too. "My reality was just that I needed to at that point stay in an income-earning position," Heisler said, and "stay within a space where I knew that I had a lot of equity and connections." That didn't mean she was stuck. Heisler identified the aspects of her career that excited her (networking and one-on-one training) and the areas where she wanted to grow, like learning about the mind-body connection. She took some positive psychology courses and enrolled in certification programs for coaching and teaching yoga. These were all ways to look for "evidence" of her skills and passions, she said, versus focusing on what she felt she "should" pursue. More recently, Heisler took the opportunity to pursue coaching full-time when her employer consolidated and she was one of a number of employees who were laid off. She was able to make that move only because she spent the better part of a decade preparing. Heisler's transition was markedly different from Dave Fano's experience launching Teal, which provides the tools and technology to help people build meaningful careers. Fano was the chief growth officer at WeWork; he took paternity leave in April 2019 and decided not to return to his job. Fano, 39, had already built several startups (one of which was acquired by WeWork, which is how he ended up there). He knew he wanted to pursue something entrepreneurial, but wasn't sure what. "I'm very comfortable with risk," Fano said; he was that way even earlier in his career. "It doesn't necessarily mean you'll succeed" at whatever you're pursuing, Fano added, especially if you're too comfortable with risk. But, he said, "I'm excited by the early, malleable nature of very young companies. It's a very energizing experience for me and I really enjoy it. What for some may be overwhelming and daunting, those are actually super exciting for me." Remember that your next role doesn't have to last forever Heisler tells all her clients that the most important component of a career change is adopting an "experimental mindset." That means you're trying out potential paths and gathering data, as opposed to making a single, drastic move that you'll have to stick with for years. Knowing that the next job doesn't have to be "forever," Heisler said, "takes some of the stress out of it." That's practical advice, to be sure, since you may not find your ideal role in a recession. But it also helps free up some mental space. Heisler's foray into coaching was part of her (ongoing) experiment in figuring out what she's great at and how she can best help other people achieve their goals. That mindset left room for "unexpected possibilities" in her transition, she said. For Casey, experimentation meant talking to already established coaches about their career paths, as a way to ensure this was something he wanted to pursue now that he'd left Merrill Lynch. Casey said some 21 of the 23 coaches he approached were glad to speak with him and share their experiences. "People were very generous with their time," Casey said. Now, Casey calls these conversations "life design interviews," a term coined by the Stanford professors who wrote "Designing Your Life," a 2016 book that's influenced Casey's coaching practice. According to the professors, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, everyone should conduct life design interviews before changing jobs. It involves asking someone who's achieved what you hope to achieve to tell you how they got where they are today and what it's like to have their jobs. Casey was careful not to ask any of the coaches he interviewed for a job lead, and he recommends clients don't either, since they're still in the learning and discovery phase. But in the current economic circumstances, people in your network will likely understand if you're looking for work and need their help. Fano's advice for someone who's just lost their job is to leverage their network. "Tell the world," Fano said, and get over the embarrassment. "Right now the world wants to help more than ever." But if you don't ask for anything, "then they can't help you." As for his own transition from WeWork to Teal, Fano said it was helpful to have a "pausing mechanism." In his case, that pause was paternity leave, when he had a chance to think big-picture about his work life. In someone else's case, it could be a layoff. Even if you need financial stability right now, meaning you need to take another job immediately, being thrown off course can give you a chance to reconsider what you really want out of your career. "I'm usually quick for action," Fano said. "So I intentionally forced myself to take a breath, process it all, and say, 'What do I really want to do? This is going to be a big commitment.'"SEE ALSO: The NYU professor who predicted Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods says the best time to start a business is during the depths of a recession Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

One-click login and checkout startup Fast just raised a $20 million Series A led by the $36 billion fintech giant Stripe. Fast's one-click login product is live, and in the coming weeks, it will roll out it's checkout product. Fast's existing investors include Global Founders Capital, Index Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins.  Fast's co-founder and CEO Domm Holland told Business Insider that the key to a pitch deck is to keep it simple, go sparse on text, and leave opportunities for investors to ask questions. Here's the 15-slide pitch deck the startup used to raise its Series A. Check out Business Insider's Pitch Deck Library here. Password management and online checkout have always been pain points for online shoppers. Fast, a one-click login and checkout startup, is looking to solve that problem. And it just raised a $20 million Series A led by the $36 billion fintech giant Stripe.  "The issue that we're actually solving is that there's basically a missing layer of the internet, which is the identity layer," Domm Holland, co-founder and CEO of Fast, told Business Insider.  Fast integrates with online merchants to offer customers the ability to log in and checkout with one click. The first time a consumer sees the Fast checkout button, they can sign up for free. After that, they can check out with one click everywhere they see the Fast button. So to grow its user base, Fast will look to integrate with as many online merchants as possible, from e-commerce retailers to online media companies. While Fast's one-click password product is already live, with this latest fundraise, it will now roll out one-click payments and checkout features. "Much of our growth over the next 12 months is basically putting the button on as many websites as possible," said Holland. Part of that growth will come through its partnership with Stripe, as starting next month, all of Stripe's merchants will be able to integrate Fast into their checkouts. Long-term, the startup will look to build more online shopping products for consumers, like order tracking and returns management across different online stores, Holland said. To be sure, Fast isn't the only one looking to solve this problem. PayPal, for one, offers a one-click checkout product, and credit card issuers like Visa and Mastercard have partnered up on a one-click checkout, too.  But Holland says that a key differentiator for Fast is its platform-agnostic approach. Apple Pay, which also integrates into merchant check-out windows, is Fast's biggest competitor, Holland said. But its checkout product can only be used by iPhone users and when shopping online, only on Apple's Safari browser. Fast's Series A, which closed at the end of March, comes at a time where venture investors are shying away from early-stage companies, focusing much of their capital on existing investments. But founders could take this opportunity to meet with as many people as possible, albeit virtually, realizing that relationships may take longer to build, Holland said. For founders looking to raise, keeping potential investors in the loop is also key. "You want to be lines, not dots, and you want to show traction," said Holland. "The first thing I always say to anyone who's going to be fundraising is start putting out investor updates and send them to everyone who you would want to have in the round." And while it's easy to try and answer all possible questions in a pitch deck, Holland instead advises to keep it light on text. "You should be structuring a pitch deck in a way that you actually know what question they're going to ask you because it's missing a bit of information that you expect that they will want," Holland said. Not only will this keep investors engaged, it will also demonstrate the founders' ability to articulate the pitch and answer questions live, Holland added. Stripe's funding comes just months after Fast's November seed round, which was led by Index Ventures with participation from Global Founders Capital and Kleiner Perkins. Here's the 15-slide pitch deck it used to raise its Series A.SEE ALSO: Startup QuadPay is dramatically expanding its reach by partnering with payments giant Stripe to offer shoppers the ability to buy now, pay later at any store SEE ALSO: $35 billion fintech Stripe just inked a deal with hospitality PoS-maker Lightspeed — and it's a case study in navigating the tricky world of payments SEE ALSO: 4 top VCs explain why Stripe, Square, and Finix are going to be big winners in a post-COVID-19 world

Over the past two years, Citigroup has given its investment-division an overhaul — reorganizing its structure and appointing new leaders.  Business Insider identified and mapped out 40 of the most powerful people in the bank's new-look Banking, Capital Markets, and Advisory group, which produced $5.2 billion in revenues in 2019. To report this project, Business Insider spoke with insiders, consultants, and other industry experts. Click here for more BI Prime stories. Over the past two years, Citigroup's investment-banking group has undergone a major face-lift.  It started in earnest in September 2018, Citigroup overhauled its investment-banking operations. Unlike most rivals across Wall Street, Citi had long had separate divisions for capital markets — raising debt and equity for corporations — and strategic advisory work on mergers and acquisitions and other deals.  The reorganization merged those two groups under one roof called Banking, Capital Markets, and Advisory, with the notion that it would create a simpler structure and foster closer collaboration between bankers. It's just one of an array of divisional face-lifts Citi has undertaken in the past two years.  Citi has for years had ambitions of ascending the industry investment-banking league tables, and while it has grown revenues — they hit $5.2 billion in 2019, up 15% from 2015, according to public filings —  the bank has been lodged firmly in the No. 5 spot in global investment banking market share for several years, according to Dealogic. Along with the reorg came changes in the power structure. BCMA leadership was tasked to Tyler Dickson, previously the US-based global head of capital markets origination, and Manolo Falco, the European-based head of corporate and investment banking. Ray McGuire, the global investment banking head for 13 years, shifted to a chairman role and continues to manage relationships with top corporate clients.  Other changes have followed since the inception of BCMA. New debt capital markets and regional heads were named several months later, and in 2019, new global coheads of equity capital markets were appointed.   A little over a year ago, Jamie Forese resigned his role as chief of the Institutional Client Group — the broader division that BCMA sits under — and global markets head Paco Ybarra succeeded him.  In its quest to grow market share, the firm has also made some splashy outside hires — including adding a trio of senior Deutsche Bank dealmakers as well as several from Goldman Sachs last summer.  Business Insider has mapped out the power structure in the Citigroup's investment bank, capturing all the fresh faces that have been ushered into top roles. We spoke with insiders, consultants, and other industry experts to gain insight into the reporting structure within the new-look division. We've focused on front-office execs that bear the primary responsibility for driving the group's revenue — no back-office roles appear in our chart. Citigroup declined to comment.  Read on to check out our organizational chart featuring 40 of the most powerful people leading Citigroup's Banking, Capital Markets, and Advisory group.  To see more leaders within a particular group, click the "division leadership" buttons.    Have more information about the organizational structure within Citigroup? Contact the reporter at amorrell@businessinsider.com or via encrypted chat with Signal or Telegram. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

Joe Farrington, 18, lives in the UK and posts fitness videos to his YouTube channel "Joe Fazer" with 139,000 subscribers.  Farrington told Business Insider that he treats YouTube like a full-time job and earns money through sponsorships and ads in his videos.  YouTube creators like Farrington earn money off the platform through YouTube's Partner Program, which lets creators monetize their channels with video ads. On average, Farrington's YouTube channel earns about $560 a month from the ads that play in his videos, he said.  In response to the coronavirus, and taking college classes from home, he's thought about potentially taking a year off from University this fall to focus on his YouTube channel, he said.  Click here for more BI Prime stories. How much money YouTube pays creators with 100,000 subscribers each month varies based on the video content and audience the channel attracts.  Joe Farrington, 18, lives in the UK and posts fitness videos to his YouTube channel "Joe Fazer" with 139,000 subscribers.  Farrington started his YouTube channel in 2012 and created multiple different channels throughout the years, he said. Today, he treats YouTube like a full-time job and earns money through sponsorships and ads in his videos, he told Business Insider. "Before I started this channel I got into fitness," he said. "I posted my transformation – which a transformation will always get a fair amount of views – and after I posted it, it went absolutely viral with 26 million views."  Creators on YouTube earn a certain amount of money for a video from Google's AdSense program based on their CPM rate, or cost per 1,000 video views. CPM rates vary between creators, and no creator consistently has the same rate. CPM depends on a number of factors, from the place in the video where viewers normally drop off to the type of advertisers the video attracts. Many creators have ad-placement strategies for earning the most money possible. Advertisers pay more for an informative business-related video than a vlog-style video. The rate also depends on seasonality, with lower CPM rates at the start of the year and higher ones toward the end. Some videos that contain swearing or copyrighted music can be flagged by YouTube and demonetized, earning hardly any money for the creator (or none at all). One of YouTube's biggest stars, David Dobrik, recently said in an interview that he earned only around $2,000 a month from AdSense, despite weekly videos gaining an average of 10 million views. He makes most of his money on custom merch, Dobrik told The Wall Street Journal in March. After posting his "1 year body transformation" video 2 years ago, and seeing how well the video performed, Farrington decided to post more fitness-related content and continue sharing his journey with his growing audience. That video (with 26 million views) earned over $8,000 in AdSense, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.  "The viral video definitely helped," he said, adding that he gained around 60,000 subscribers from that one video. "But there's a difference between subscribers and subscribers who actually want to watch you. Some people find a video, subscribe, but then they don't watch the rest of your videos. Because I've been consistent I've gained more subscribers who actually watch my videos."  Monthly, Farrington's YouTube channel earns about $560, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.  "I'd say it's about a 70/30 spilt," he said about his sponsorship revenue compared to his ad revenue. "Sponsorships 70, YouTube 30."  Farrington has a long-term partnership with the popular UK protein powder company, My Protein, he said. He earns revenue when his followers use his discount code.  How influencers like Farrington make money online  Many influencers are getting smart about finding ways to diversify – especially in recent weeks with the ad business hurting for influencers due to the coronavirus pandemic.  Recently, YouTube creators experienced a decline in direct-ad-revenue rates from the platform in April, likely because of shifting ad budgets. Some creators have larger business ventures outside of ad-supported revenue models, like YouTube creator Preston Arsement who is also the CEO of the digital-media studio TBNR, which Forbes estimated earned $14 million before taxes from June 2018 to June 2019. Others sell consumer products like makeup, merchandise, or books that have the potential to become New York Times bestsellers. These types of revenue streams are more important than ever for influencers, as brand deals and AdSense revenue fall dramatically.  "I'm getting double the amount of views now, but half the revenue," Farrington said about his YouTube channel in recent weeks.  In response to the coronavirus, and taking college classes from home, Farrington said he's thought about potentially taking a year off from University this fall to focus on growing his YouTube channel. "I'm debating whether I should take a year out and focus on YouTube," he said. "And if that doesn't work out then the next year I will go back to University and do YouTube on the side."  Sign up for Business Insider's influencer newsletter, Influencer Dashboard, to get more stories like this in your inbox. For more on the business of YouTube creators and influencers check out these posts on Business Insider Prime: How much money YouTube pays for 1 million views, according to 5 creators: YouTube's Partner Program allows influencers to earn money off their channels by placing ads within videos.  5 YouTube creators break down their monthly incomes from the platform: YouTube creators are paid out monthly and Business Insider spoke to 5 influencers who broke down how much they'd earned in a month from the platform.  How to get in contact with top influencers using Instagram direct messages, according to a CEO who has landed clients like TikTok star Addison Rae with a simple DM: Unlike LinkedIn or Twitter, on Instagram users can direct message anyone – no matter how famous they are. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Ryan McCarthy is a former digital marketing specialist who founded Imouri, an online retail company that creates custom anime designs.  In an interview with Business Insider, McCarthy shared how he grew his side hustle into a six-figure business that earns him $500,000 a year.  Knowing where your customers congregate online can make or break your business, he said. McCarthy's apparel brand didn't get much traction until he started running digital ads on Facebook groups.  Click here for more BI Prime stories. Ryan McCarthy was a 22-year-old college graduate working a full-time tech job when he had an idea for a business. He and his friends were on the hunt for clothes that would reflect their passion for anime, or a style of Japanese animated art, film, and television that has become more prominent on US streaming platforms over the past few years. When they went online to search for anime-themed clothing, they found options were limited. They were looking for original, possibly custom-made apparel, but most websites used popular, licensed characters, and lacked original designs, McCarthy said.  "Generally, a lot of the anime fashion involves a popular character from an anime comic or TV show, and they just put it on a shirt or a hoodie," he said. "But for me, it was more so about the art style of anime than the famous characters. I wanted to take an approach where I can incorporate the design style — not the literal design — to make original pieces."  McCarthy had a knack for web and graphic design, so he decided to begin creating his own original anime and t-shirts. In 2015, he founded Imouri, an online retailer that makes original, anime-themed clothes and consumer products. And though Imouri is an apparel company first, McCarthy explained that anime art still remains the driving focus for his company.  "I thought 'What if I were to combine my passion for anime with online retail,'" he said. "I just kind of took the idea, ran with it, and never looked back." McCarthy turned his side hustle into a full-time gig once he started earning a similar level of income as his day job in 2017. Now, he makes $500,000 a year from Imouri and receives up to 500 orders a month. McCarthy has made more than 100 original designs, and he still manufacturers his own products at home, with the occasional help from freelancers. But the 26-year-old added that quitting his day job and pursuing his side hustle full-time was definitely a risk. "I was getting too busy trying to juggle between my day job and my company, and it just started to become overwhelming for me," he said. "That's when I started to think about taking a chance to actually do it. I had enough money put away where I could live on for a few months. It was at the point where I realized things were getting too overwhelming, and that I just got to go one way or the other." Here's how McCarthy turned his bootstrapping side hustle into a six-figure career in five years.  SEE ALSO: The 10 best side hustles to start that will earn you 6 figures or more, and how to get them off the ground quickly from experts who have done it SEE ALSO: Here's how a lawyer launched a personal finance coaching side business that brings in $20,000 a year on top of her 6-figure salary He assessed his strengths and weaknesses before starting the business. It took McCarthy a full year to build his business.  "It was a battle in the beginning because there were so many avenues to approach it from," he told Business Insider. "I first had to figure out the logistics — like if I could even print all my apparel at home, or if I could handle the behind-the-scenes things that need to be done to get the actual product to customers."  The 26-year-old further explained that his area of expertise was in digital marketing and coming up with original product designs, but he didn't have much knowledge about finding suppliers for manufacturing materials, shipping products to customers and guaranteeing delivery, and keeping track of inventory or bulk orders.  "If I really want to grow my business and grow it right, I knew I had to focus on what I'm good at," McCarthy said. "That's what really led me to a print-on-demand model." A print-on-demand business means that McCarthy would only start manufacturing and designing products once he's secured a buy. That way, he wouldn't have to store unsold inventory. McCarthy gets all his manufacturing, shipping, and inventory services from Printful, an ecommerce platform that helps retailers with product management. Printful is an on-demand printing and warehousing company. It's handled the sale of more than 17 million items since 2013, and Printful's sellers have also sold nearly $400 million-worth of products since 2013, the company shared with Business Insider.  His fabric materials and supplies also come from Printful. By having a third-party handle the shipment of Imouri products, McCarthy was able to focus on his creativity and designs, which are his favorite parts about working a side hustle, he said.  He sought out customers in large online anime communities. McCarthy officially launched Imouri's website in 2016, after a full-year of planning in 2015. Most of his first orders were from family, friends, and people within his professional network, he said. But more orders started coming in when he engaged with anime fans on social media.  "It was very easy for me to approach my business because it's something that I'm truly passionate about," McCarthy told Business Insider. "I was basically my own audience. I knew where to market my products because I was essentially advertising to people like me." McCarthy said he subscribed to anime YouTube channels. He left comments under videos to promote his business. He was also part of Facebook groups that he used to advertise his business, he said. McCarthy ran digital ads on those platforms, and that generated more internet traffic to his website.  "A lot of it came down to reflecting on my own experience within the anime world," he said. "I was able to really go to the right places — the right corners of the internet."  McCarthy encourages people who are either working remotely or out-of-work as a result of COVID-19 to consider starting a side hustle.  "There's such minimal risk when it comes to starting an e-commerce business," he said. "It doesn't cost you anything to do some research, look up what's trending on Google, and develop a business idea that's worthwhile." 

Pawan Uppuluri left a stable job at Amazon after 14 years to become chief technology officer at Glossier. The tech veteran was excited by the opportunity to widen the digital sales channel at the beauty startup. Glossier's website could get a new look under Uppuluri's reign. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Pawan Uppuluri wasn't looking for a job when Glossier reached out to her to fill the position of chief technology officer. "I hadn't heard much about the company," Uppuluri, who has worked at the beauty startup since December, said of Glossier. "The more I did my research, the more it grew on me." Before taking the leap, the tech veteran had worked more than 14 years at Amazon, where she spearheaded such efforts as the retail giant's food-delivery service and customer experience for Alexa. While working at a tech goliath affords a certain level of job security, Uppuluri said she couldn't pass up the opportunity at Glossier to "invent the digital channel" for beauty, as Amazon has done for virtually everything else. The beauty category lags many other industries in one key way: A mere 15% of beauty products sales were made online before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to research by McKinsey. Now, with retail stores including Glossier's affected by the pandemic and the lockdowns, Uppuluri's task at the company may be more important than ever. "Since joining the company, I am even more convinced that Glossier has laid the groundwork for the emergence of a totally new era of e-commerce," Uppuluri told Business Insider in March. Glossier sells its barely-there skin-care and beauty products in stores and online, and has amassed an arsenal of nearly 3 million Instagram followers and influencers that spread the brand's gospel on social media. Last year's funding led by Sequoia Capital valued the six-year-old startup at $1.2 billion. The beauty startup has an enviable customer feedback loop Uppuluri, who is originally from India, near Hyderabad, asked her friends and mothers of teenage daughters what they liked about Glossier before she accepted the top technology job. Their excitement was contagious, she said. “Sleepy selfie taken early this morning ft. #Futuredew layered on top of my regular serum, moisturizer, and SPF✨” —@melineas A post shared by Glossier (@glossier) on Oct 22, 2019 at 7:22am PDT on Oct 22, 2019 at 7:22am PDT   Glossier's social media pages are filled with product photos and self-portraits shared by their followers, and even the company's employees — a strategy that helps signal to potential customers that people like them love the products. The company mines for new product ideas in Instagram comments, product reviews, and an independent r/glossier subreddit. For years, it ran a focus group out of a Slack group, populated by its most engaged community members. 😂 A post shared by Glossier (@glossier) on May 24, 2019 at 10:27am PDT on May 24, 2019 at 10:27am PDT   Uppuluri said the conversation online happens "with the customer as well as between the customers," which is critical for a direct-to-consumer brand whose customers look to their peers to make beauty-purchasing decisions. "When I look at Glossier and what they've been able to do so far — how the community is created, what the experience is like in the physical retail stores — it's clear to me that this is a different kind of e-commerce," she said. "This is not about like reinventing the digital channel. It's about inventing it." Glossier's website could be getting a makeover under Uppuluri's reign The company has only four stores and has long avoided wholesale retailers, with the exception of pop-ups locations. Glossier's founder and chief executive Emily Weiss has said the company will never sell its products on Amazon. Emboldened by her experience at Amazon, Uppuluri hopes to widen the digital channel at her new post. Glossier's website is typical of any retailer. It shows beauty products photographed on a stormcloud-gray background and has them grouped by categories like skin-care, makeup, and body. While the product pages include user reviews, customers have less prominent placement on the website than they have on social media. "We are a digital-first company. We think about the company holistically in terms of experiences: digital, physical, and offline. We've created incredible physical experiences for our customers through products; and incredible offline experiences through our amazing retail environments," Uppuluri said. "Now, the way we've been thinking about it is: The big opportunity in front of us is to bring the magic you see in Glossier's stores, or happening in our Instagram comments with our community, to our website," she said. We sent Bubblewrap to @lizhew before it launched to get her thoughts. Here’s what she had to say: “It has the nicest feeling formula! It’s great to layer under makeup or on its own and keeps your delicate eye and lip area 💧hydrated💧 It contains hyaluronic acid and peptides along with blueberry extract (which is a great antioxidant!) and lastly it feels super lightweight and non-greasy as it’s fast absorbing, so say bye to any makeup pilling!” A post shared by Glossier (@glossier) on May 5, 2019 at 10:31am PDT on May 5, 2019 at 10:31am PDT     Uppuluri did not give specifics on how Glossier's website might look different in the future, but she said the work has a new sense of urgency as more people are doing their shopping from home. The effect of COVID-19 The beauty industry shut down almost overnight in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Glossier closed its stores in mid-March, and it's unclear when they will reopen. A leaked company email sent to retail employees on April 17, which was seen by Business Insider, said it expects stores to remain closed through at least the end of May. Swipe to read a letter from our founder and CEO @emilyweiss on our decision to temporarily close all Glossier retail stores. It’s a time to join us online and on Glossier.com, which is always open! 📲❤️✨ A post shared by Glossier (@glossier) on Mar 12, 2020 at 7:53pm PDT on Mar 12, 2020 at 7:53pm PDT   The store closures, and those of beauty-product outlets like Sephora and Ulta, give Uppuluri's task new significance. While sales of beauty products were down in the first quarter, the pandemic has triggered a boom in online shopping, according to the McKinsey report. The industry can expect e-commerce sales to increase 20% to 30% above their pre-coronavirus levels. For Uppuluri's part, Glossier will need to create an online shopping experience that parallels the joys of shopping in its stores, to help offset a drop in revenue. "Given COVID-19 and its impact on our ability to gather in person, this work is even more important," Uppuluri said. "We're evaluating new, creative ways to foster community and connection when we can't be together in real life."SEE ALSO: Glossier store workers brace for layoffs after company tells employees it may stop paying them at the end of May if stores remain closed, leaked email reveals Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: All the ways Amazon is taking over your house

Office utilization data, collected with movement-tracking sensors, has been a key part of forward-thinking office operators' arsenals.  Office sensor platform VergeSense announced Thursday that it has raised $9 million in a round led by Allegion Ventures, the corporate venture fund of security and access control company Allegion. The round also included investments from proptech heavy-hitters MetaProp and JLL Spark. VergeSense has also unveiled new tools that are designed to monitor the safety of offices on the eve of the slow return back to office work.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Before the pandemic, density was king.  Companies looking to minimize their real estate spend, while maximizing the amount of employees they can bring into the office, packed employees closely together. Cost savings were part of the equation, but another major goal was promoting the sorts of accidental interactions that can connect people from different parts of the business. Companies used sensors to track movement and occupancy in the workplace, and used the data to better understand how their space was being used, and how it could change to become more efficient financially while also providing a fertile bed for corporate culture. This data was essential to WeWork's design, and helped them to become the exemplar of densification driving a more collaborative corporate culture. Now, coronavirus has turned the densification trend on its head, but that building utilization data is more essential than ever as a tool to reshape offices for the era of social distancing. "The market has been pulled forward by five years," Dan Ryan, CEO and co-founder of building sensor startup VergeSense, told Business Insider.  The three-year-old company has raised a $9 million venture fund, VergeSense announced Thursday. The fund was led by Allegion Ventures, the corporate venture fund of $8.7 billion access control company Allegion, and included investments from real estate tech heavy-hitters MetaProp and JLL Spark, as well as Y Combinator, Pathbreaker Ventures and West Ventures.  VergeSense raised a funding round at the end of 2019 from Bolt for an unspecified size, and had raised $1.62 million in two seed rounds in 2018 and 2017. The company works with 40 Fortune 1000 companies, such as Shell, Cisco, and BP, and its sensors cover 20 million square feet in 250 office buildings across 15 companies. This new funding will help VergeSense to scale its business to meet the onslaught of new demand as corporations look to make their offices safe. The company is projecting sales to increase 500% quarter over quarter.  Ryan walked Business Insider through the ways that the company has added new social-distancing and coronavirus specific features to its software platform, with the addition of everything from a social distancing score to a smart cleaning planner that provides real-time cleaning plans based on office utilization. See the presentation on its new technology below. SEE ALSO: The office as we knew it is dead SEE ALSO: Here's which real-estate tech startups will soar and which will flop in the new normal of how we occupy space, according to 7 top proptech VCs SEE ALSO: Global firms are cutting down on their real-estate footprint as CEOs across industries are considering a permanent switch to remote work While COVID-19 has totally flipped the demands of office operators, sensor technology may be more important than ever. One of the main goals of VergeSense's software before the pandemic, Ryan said, was facilitating "workplace collisions," the formal term for informal interactions around the water cooler of in the hallway.  "Everything has been turned upside," Ryan said.  Now, density is verboten and workplace collisions have turned from the organic petri dish growing a corporate culture to a potential transmission site.  Still, demand for office sensors is soaring. The earliest adopters already have the tech, but he's seen clients in the midst of adoption cut their timeline to full adoption in half. Other clients were just beginning pilots with the technology when the pandemic started, but they're now already committed to using it.  VergeSense developed all of these tools after the lockdown orders, as it became clear what the offices of the future would require. Ryan got his first sense of the true scale of this pandemic from the company's supply chain. VergeSense manufactures its own sensors in the US, but sources some of their components from China. While they had an early start to make sure their business was safe, it took a little longer to develop the new tools. A couple of weeks after the initial lockdown orders, when it became clear that this would have a lasting impact on the office, VergeSense started hearing from customers who wanted to know how the company could help them adjust their own offices.  Ryan said the company called every customer to find out what they needed. Once they collected the info, they got to work building tools for the pandemic.   The hardware tracks where people are in the office, and the software is able to compile that info to highlight the riskiest areas in the office. VergeSense uses ceiling-mounted sensors to count the number and location of people all around the office in an anonymized way (the company doesn't actually take high-quality photos or videos which would allow for individualized data collection).  The hardware has always been grabbing information about utilization around the office, but there wasn't any use case in the past to show the utilization of every part of the floor. Now with social distancing, that information is extremely valuable.  The slide shows one way to use that data: an overhead map view that can highlight areas where social distancing violations are happening currently, or where they happen commonly over time.  This information can inform ever-evolving office designs, and highlight areas that facilities managers should be focusing on.  VergeSense developed a Social Distancing Score that provides a single number to judge overall social distancing. The number has a range of inputs: the average distance between people in the office, the minimum distance between people, and the total number of unsafe interactions.  The concept is that a single key performance indicator will make it easier to track success over time and will simplify the data. The dashboard will also bubble up areas in the office that have significantly more unsafe interactions.  The software allows building operators to set new capacities for conference rooms or areas, preventing overcrowding. This tool tracks compliance with new, lower occupancy standards that companies are putting into place to make social distancing possible. The user can add these new occupancy standards to the system, which can provide real-time alerts about usage or information about trends overtime.  Daily occupancy reports give an overview of areas and times when occupancy levels were exceeded. This information can be used to make changes to areas with consistent violations, such as removing chairs or to change protocols and employee guidelines about the top offenders, like a lunchroom.  The occupancy information can also alert office managers about violations in real time. Ryan said the real-time alerts about occupancy aren't as popular among their clients as the overviews that highlight broader trends. However, some companies are looking to hire employees for a new job, "floor ambassador," who looks out for social distancing violations. The occupancy alerts would allow them to dispatch to the parts of the office with the worst violations.   VergeSense's software can also create a cleaning planner, dispatching cleaners to focus on the most critical areas. Hygiene and cleanliness are top-line concerns for the return to the office.  "Most of our customers are increasing their budget from three to four times from before," Ryan said.  Occupancy data can make sure that those additional cleaners are focusing on the most important parts of the office. The smart cleaning planner highlights areas that do and do not need cleaning, based on usage, and can even provide a schedule directly to cleaning workflow systems.  Additionally, the smart cleaning planner can be used to ensure that conference rooms are cleaned thoroughly between each use. VergeSense can connect to booking systems and actually make it impossible to book rooms until they're cleaned. The sensors can also facilitate hands-free check-in to conference rooms. Some of the more technologically advanced offices have been placing tablets outside conference rooms to allow on-premise booking and check-in. Those kiosks have significantly reduced functionality in a touch-free, pre-vaccine world.  "Touch is the enemy," Ryan said. With sensors, VergeSense can actually connect to booking systems and allow booking or check-in by walking into a room.   A list of some of the integration partners that work with VergeSense. They range from real-estate service giant JLL, whose JLL Spark fund is an investor, to Teem, the workplace software an analytics company that WeWork acquired for $100 million in 2018 and then sold to iOffice in January of this year. While the collection of data is essential to keeping the office safe, VergeSense makes sure to anonymize information. VergeSense is only able to count the presence of a person in a space in a binary way, and is unable to track people identities.  "Relative to other tools in the workplace, an employer can't get much about a persons' identity in our system," Ryan said.  Ryan said that he has never actually heard a customer ask for this information in the office world. Instead, they're strictly focused on office utilization data. 

Becky Frankiewicz, president of one of the largest staffing firm in the US, said the coronavirus pandemic has brought about not only unprecedented job loss, but also drastic changes in the demand for jobs. Frankiewicz said workers who got laid off from hospitality and food service sectors possess the soft skills needed for new jobs opening up, like contact tracers and social distancing monitors. Women, who made up 60% of those who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic, might be uniquely qualified to fill these new roles, Frankiewicz added. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic — but there are new roles opening up to aid the post-pandemic society.  Though nearly 39 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last nine weeks per the US Labor Department, there are still 5.7 million open roles, according to data from ManpowerGroup, the eighth-largest workforce staffing and recruitment firm in the US.  Manpower data suggests that the pandemic has not only brought about unprecedented job loss, but also drastic changes in the job market, the company's President Becky Frankiewicz told Business Insider. When the US first began grappling with the crisis in March, job growth centered around those that would get us "through the crisis," like healthcare gigs to treat COVID patients and delivery drivers to help families self-quarantine. Now, job demand has skewed to favor those that will get us "out of the crisis," such as cybersecurity and cloud engineers that will grow virtual workplaces, Frankiewicz said, citing Manpower data. Plus, companies have created entirely new jobs, like contact tracers who track exposure to COVID-19 across the country.  Some experts predict jobs in hospitality and food services, the sectors hardest hit by the crisis, may never return. Even if that's true, Frankiewicz argued that may not spell disaster for laid-off workers, as these people have soft skills that are crucial to building the post-pandemic society. Take some of the new jobs opening up, such as contact tracers and social distancing monitors, who ensure people stay the CDC-recommended six feet apart in public areas. Frankiewicz said communication skills are critical for a social distance monitor, as the role will be a conversational one that requires someone who has dealt with conflict and has communication skills. "Someone in hospitality would be perfect for that," she says. "What we're saying is don't define yourself by the title that you had, like a front-desk clerk at a hotel," Frankiewicz added. "Define yourself by your skills and in that way you can go into different fields of work." The growth in jobs that require these communications and social intelligence skills can particularly help women, who made up 60% of workers laid off from the coronavirus pandemic, she said. The Pew Research Center finds women on average tend to occupy jobs that require higher levels of social intelligence, meaning they might be uniquely qualified to work contract tracing and other new post-pandemic gigs.  "I'm hopeful for women," Frankiewicz said. "We have the curiosity and ability to position ourselves, in the communication perspective, for new jobs."Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

Small business owners who applied for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) have a chance to have the loan forgiven by filling out the recently released Loan Forgiveness Application.  Despite the new documentation, some business owners are in the dark about the process given the length of the application and stringent requirements.  For one, borrowers will be ineligible for forgiveness on unspent capital — but the timing for spending it is more flexible.  Make sure you document everything, including what you used to pay yourself alongside payroll information. Click here for more BI Prime stories. Last week, the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Treasury released the Loan Forgiveness Application for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Small business owners across the country who received funding from the SBA through the PPP were anxiously awaiting this documentation to get confirmation on important details surrounding loan forgiveness, especially borrowers who were funded in the first weeks of the program back in early April. The forgiveness application and its accompanying instructions came with quite a few unexpected developments for small business owners. The whole process is nothing less than a "ticking time bomb," according to Parker Conrad, CEO of payroll provider Rippling.  "We had a tremendous amount of interest in the PPP loans, companies that were downloading the reports, that were applying for the PPP loans on Rippling," Conrad told Business Insider. "They were told there was a way to get this loan forgiven, and we'll get you some guidance later. And then the guidance comes out and says that in order to get the loan forgiven, you have to have already spent it, and I think a lot of people are saying that it's just not fair."  Uncertainty still surrounds PPP forgiveness following the release of documentation Conrad said that due to the amount of uncertainty surrounding the process, many of his customers are uncomfortable spending their PPP funds without further and more specific guidance. Yet the application is clear that without having spent the capital, borrowers will be ineligible for forgiveness on at least a portion of the loan. Additionally, the length of the forgiveness application is likely to be a stumbling block for many small business owners, in Conrad's view. "The application is like a tax return. It's very long and complicated — it's not like the 1040EZ, it's like the 1040 long and hard," Conrad said. "For us, we're doing a lot of this for our clients, so it's a business opportunity for us, but at one point this was presented as a very simple loan application, and now it's become very complicated." Adding to that complication are a host of issues for which no answers exist as of yet. One example Conrad cites is the fact that the government expects borrowers to submit IRS Form 941, the Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return, as part of the forgiveness application, which many businesses will not have in their hands due to timing issues. "For most businesses, their 941 forms aren't available until after the end of the quarter, so the government is encouraging them to submit draft 941s," Conrad said. "But for any business that is doing this through a payroll company, there's no such thing as a draft 941 — the payroll company submits it electronically to the government after the end of the quarter and provides them an as-filed copy."  In a press release that accompanied the release of the forgiveness documentation and instructions, the SBA noted that it will provide further regulations and guidance to assist borrowers "soon," but did not indicate a more precise timeline.  So, with the loan forgiveness application in hand, what do PPP recipients know, and what's still left up in the air? Here's what legal and financial experts told Business Insider.  One clear improvement: Flexibility is introduced For businesses that are starting to reach the end of the eight-week timeline for spending the proceeds from their PPP funds, or for businesses just beginning to allocate loan monies, the release of the forgiveness documentation did provide a bit of welcome flexibility on timing.  In the original language of the PPP, borrowers had eight weeks beginning from the day they received funding — what the forgiveness application refers to as the "Covered Period" — to spend the money they received, whether or not this timeline was in compliance with their pay periods. Now, the program's "Alternative Payroll Covered Period" allows companies on a biweekly or more frequent payroll schedule to begin their Covered Period on the first day of their first pay period following receipt of the loan. Limits regarding workforce and pay decreases appear to have been set aside In the original terms of the CARES Act, borrowers were required to meet guidelines regarding rehiring a certain percentage of their workforce by June 30 and, separately, not reducing pay by more than 25%.  "This application changed that," Johnny Wang, a St. Louis partner at the law firm Stinson LLP, told Business Insider. "Let's say that you let everyone go on February 15, you got your PPP loan and hired back half of your employees, and then the payroll period before June 30, you hired back the rest of your employees. Normally, that would have reduced your amount of loan forgiveness. This application seems to say that loan forgiveness reduction based on the FTE levels wouldn't occur."  Wang said that the application sets out the same basic premises for pay reductions: As long as employees' pay is brought back up during the covered period, borrowers are not subject to loan forgiveness reduction.  "Some of these changes could be as a result of nonessential businesses getting this PPP loan money and not then being able to spend the money because they weren't able to operate,"  Wang said. "Because of that, their expenses would be occurring toward the end of the eight-week period, and it would reduce their loan forgiveness amount without these accommodations."  Owners must report payments made to themselves Owners are required on the forgiveness application to identify the total amount they've received from PPP funds. This stipulation was not previously alluded to in the program documentation, and Wang said he believes this is designed to control the potential misuse of funds.  Owners who max out their compensation from PPP funds, taking the full $15,384 available (what $100,000 breaks down to for an eight-week period) will attract an audit and possibly other attention if they didn't receive compensation in 2019 or claimed significantly less in compensation last year than what they've assigned themselves. "This instruction is likely intended by SBA to relate to the certification of need by owners to ensure employee retention — not lining their own pockets," Wang said. When all else fails, create a paper trail With a great deal still left to be decided, and SBA guidance forthcoming that could change even that which has been determined to date, keeping plenty of accurate documentation of each dollar of PPP funds spent is the best strategy to maximize forgiveness, Nick Kolbenschlag, the cofounder and managing partner of the financial-services firm Crown Wealth Group in Charlotte, North Carolina, told Business Insider. "If you have a separate bank account, when you make a contribution to a 401(k) plan, move that exact amount over so that you have that perfect flow. Then, print out the transaction from the bank account, print out the transaction from your retirement plan provider. Capture each of those steps as they are cleared," he said. "It might be overkill, but it might also make it really easy on you when the time comes."SEE ALSO: Amazon sellers share the 3 strategies they used to ramp up shipping and customer service during the pandemic NOW READ: The legal and tax implications of taking your company remote permanently Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence