2. Big Sugar knows consumers pay attention to nutrition studies. That’s why it’s funding them. (Candice Choi, Associated Press)
3. Solar energy in Chile is free, but that’s bad news for the industry. (Vanessa Dezem and Javiera Quiroga, Bloomberg)
4. Work at AOL. They know you don’t really want to work there, so they’ll fund your startup (Oliver Staley, Quartz)
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Nestle Tries To Go Both Ways
Big Food is certainly a thing, but it’s not monolithic, and big industries can change when they have to. We saw it this week when Nestle broke rank with its peers to support lower sodium targets for processed food (Quartz). The company is supporting the FDA’s efforts to reduce salt consumption and it’s even lobbying Congress on the matter. When you’re a company as big and long-lived as Nestle, change is complicated. The company may now be trying to sell you diabetes pills alongside its sugary snacks (Bloomberg), but its empire “is built on a foundation of sugar” and that’s a hard habit to break. The company is attempting to “be part of the solution” and redefine itself as a scientifically driven “nutrition, health, and wellness company” (there’s even a “Nestle Institute of Health Sciences”), but it has a long, rich history to combat and top executives eager to differentiate between “sugar addiction” (they say it doesn’t exist) and “sugar habituation” (well, maybe). The company may indeed be planning for a healthier future. For now, though, it wants to sell you the disease and the cure.
How to Rebuild a Neighborhood
The Philadelphia Housing Authority has a plan to revitalize a community by tearing down a failed apartment complex (NYT) and replacing it with a broader, more balanced set of structures, some residential and some commercial. It’s using the end of the Norman Blumberg Apartments as an opportunity to recreate the whole underserved Sharswood neighborhood so it can flourish and connect to the rest of the city. “We never really came up with a comprehensive approach that went beyond housing,” the Authority’s chairman said. “If you only focus on housing, what about the crime issues? What about amenities? What about the education?” Now Philadelphia may find out.
Uber Says It’s Growing Up
Uber wants the world to know it’s willing to change and that it’s learned something from class action lawsuits in both Massachusetts and California. In a blog post announcing a $100 million settlement, CEO Travis Kalanick admits the company wasn’t responding to many of its drivers’ concerns, and announced new policies intended to address Uber’s shortcomings. Wired was quick to publish an op-ed pointing out that the deal leaves the largest question — whether on-demand workers have the rights of full time employees — unresolved.
Mexico City Dips Its Toe Into Digital Self-Rule
What if they wrote a constitution and let the constituents write it? We could be heading in that direction. NewCo host Mexico City is deploying crowdsourcing to create a new constitution (Quartz). Using NewCo Change.org as its platform, the city is soliciting ideas and setting up procedures for potentially integrating them. Before you start singing hosannas to the new nirvana of digital democracy, note that this exercise only goes so far: the constitutional assembly, which has the final word on the new city’s basic law, isn’t legally obligated to include any of the citizen input. Nonetheless, using digital tools to include the public in writing their laws is an experiment worth following and learning from.
Stop Asking Tech to Fight Your Battles
Microsoft is suing the Department of Justice, a bold move you might not suspect from a company that is still smarting from a crushing defeat back in 2001. In his weekly column, NewCo founder and editor in chief John Battelle shows why Microsoft’s action is important to all companies, not just its comrades (and likely allies) in tech. His message to industry: Get involved and stop outsourcing the future of your business to the tech industry.
The Two Stories of NewCo Detroit
There are two stories in conflict in the Motor City: the optimistic story and the realistic story. Both of them are true, yet at NewCo Detroit last week we saw one of them hold sway over the other. We left the festival with a sense of a city with a rich history in all kinds of making that’s zeroing in on the future. Here’s what we saw.
The first ever NewCo Boston goes off in less than two weeks, and I’ve been studying the schedule and making my picks for the companies I most want to visit. The lineup is insanely great — Boston is brimming with innovative NewCos, 79 of which will open their doors on April 27th. Thanks to our partners at MassTLC — you guys really know how to do it right!
Tuesday, April 26th, 6 pm: VIP Kick-off & Reception @ Hatch Fenway NewCo Boston kicks off at Hatch Fenway, a NewCo incubator that was once an industrial hub. Mingle, swill, and get inspired by host company CEOs, city leaders, and VIP ticket holders alike.
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I’ve spent the better part of three decades writing about tech, launching publications devoted to tech, and investing in or starting tech businesses. I devoted almost every waking and working hour of my life to the technology narrative. I did this because I believed society’s adaptation to technology was the most important story of our age, and for years that story was either willfully ignored, poorly told, or deeply misunderstood by the mainstream press.
As one of Wired’s founding editors a generation ago, I was seized with a missionary fervor — to us, the story of tech’s impact on society was painfully obvious, yet precious few leaders in politics, business, or culture were even paying attention. That ignorance fueled our zeal. We had to get the tech story out — the world’s future depended on it!
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If your business focus is in technology or the Internet, as mine has been for nearly three decades, it’s quite possible you’ve never heard of the GLOBE Series, a global conference dedicated to sustainability in business. Until I was invited to participate this year, due in large part to NewCo’s core mission, I certainly hadn’t. What I saw opened my eyes and left me pondering the role of tech in the future of our planet.
The longest-running event dedicated to global environment and business, GLOBE draws more than 9,000 delegates to Vancouver from more than 50 countries around the world. There’s no shortage of government ministers, nonprofit leaders, and sustainability officers from huge companies like Nestlé, Lowe’s, and Citi. But if you peruse the speaker and sponsor lists, it’d be fair to conclude that sustainability simply isn’t a core issue for technology companies. They’re pretty much no-shows.
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But what happens when the insurgents hit headwinds? In the past year or so, we’ve begun to find out. The unicorn class has had its collective mane shorn. A quick spin through the “unicorn leaderboard” finds a cohort strewn with cautionary tales: Uber’s under continual attack by regulators and increasingly well funded competitors. Square and Box, both of which managed tepid public debuts, have consistently traded below their private valuations. Turn, SnapChat, Dropbox, and many others have been marked down by their largest investors. And of course, there’s the cautionary tale of Zenefits.
While this news has evinced a whiff of schadenfreude throughout the tech press, I think the reckoning is more fundamental in nature. The hardest part of running a company, it turns out, is actually running a company. Put another way: Growth can be bought, but growing up has to be earned.
Take Uber, for example. Once a poster child for a culture of “ask for forgiveness, not permission,” Uber is now taking a more traditional approach to new markets, meeting (and working with) local regulators, hiring seasoned pros, and learning how to play politics just like any other big company. It even gave itself a new grownup “haircut.”
Read MoreOnce “the largest SaaS company in history,” Zenefits successfully disrupted the human resources industry. Now it’s being treated as a cautionary tale, the kind of company elected officials bring up as the worst examples of “ask for forgiveness, not permission,” right up there with Uber or Airbnb.
News reports claim more than 80 percent of Zenefits’ salespeople in California and 60 percent in Washington weren’t licensed to sell the insurance that provides the company’s core revenue. Did Zenefits cheat its way to unicorn status? An investigation is underway, but the company appears to have used software to purposely deceive California insurance regulators.
By the company’s own account, problems run deeper than that. In the heady fast growth phase of Zenefits’ ascent, it lost control of its culture and its ethics. “The problem goes much deeper than just process,” new CEO David Sacks said in a blog post criticizing his predecessor Parker Conrad. One of the first changes made by Sacks: No more alcohol in the office. Sex in the building stairwell was an issue, too.
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