• Investment firm Azoria has delayed the launch of a Tesla ETF after Elon Musk unveiled his "America Party."
• Azoria CEO and ex-DOGE advisor James Fishback slammed Musk's move, saying he was undermining Tesla.
• Tesla investors are uneasy after Musk returned to politics despite saying he would focus on the EV giant.

Elon Musk's decision to set up a new political party is already proving a headache for Tesla.

James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, said on Sunday that the firm — which has stated its opposition to DEI targets and "woke" companies — will postpone its planned public listing of a Tesla ETF, which would invest in the EV giant's shares and options.

In a post on X, Fishback, who previously worked as an outside advisor to DOGE, said that the billionaire had "gone too far" with his latest plan to set up the "America Party" and take on both Republicans and Democrats.

Fishback, who included a letter to Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm in his X post, added that the new party "creates a conflict" with Musk's responsibilities as CEO of Tesla and "actively undermines" the company's mission.

"I encourage the Board to meet immediately and ask Elon to clarify his political ambitions and evaluate whether they are compatible with his full-time obligations to Tesla as CEO," said Fishback.

Tesla's share price was down as much as 7% premarket on Monday, as investors expressed unease over Musk's decision to dive back into politics.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a Sunday note that investors were feeling a "sense of exhaustion" over Musk's new political party.

The longtime Tesla bear said that Musk, who told investors in April that he would step back from his role in the Trump administration to focus on the beleaguered EV maker, was going in "exactly the opposition direction" to what Tesla shareholders wanted.

Ives also warned that the billionaire's extremely public falling out with Trump could create additional hurdles for Tesla in the future.

Other investors expressed similar frustrations. "Waymo has solved autonomous driving. Meanwhile, Elon is starting a new political party," wrote Tesla investor and regular Musk critic Ross Gerber on X.

An outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, Fishback told Business Insider in January he had served as an outside advisor to DOGE, and proposed the idea of a "DOGE dividend" earlier this year.

The investment banker, who has said that he owns Tesla stock and that the EV giant is Azoria's largest position, also accused Musk of being fixated on "sabotaging President Trump" and said the Tesla CEO was an "absolute failure" at DOGE in a series of posts on X.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment sent outside normal working hours.

• Lawyers have left the federal government as Donald Trump has targeted the nation's workforce.
• Some typical off-ramps have closed as Trump takes a light touch with corporate crime.
• Nine current and former government lawyers and recruiters told BI about the harsh legal job market.

Whenever a new president takes office, the revolving door between the federal government and the private sector starts to spin a little faster. Agency heads, their deputies, and their deputies' deputies typically exit to make room for the new president's picks, and take up jobs in C-suites and think tanks.

At elite law firms, the practice became so routine that it was the subject of a running joke. "Out with WilmerHale, in with Jones Day," law professor Orin Kerr tweeted when Donald Trump won in 2016, a nod to each firm's ideological reputation. In 2020, when Joe Biden won, he flipped the names.

In 2024, Trump and his allies made clear that they were going to do things differently.

It wasn't just Biden's appointees who needed to go; it was thousands of federal workers who the administration saw as roadblocks to its agenda. The goal, Trump aide Russell Vought said, was to "put them in trauma" and make them want to quit. The administration has also prioritized immigration, while de-emphasizing financial regulation and corporate crime prosecution — closing some of the usual off-ramps.

Now, the revolving door is jammed.

Recruiters and lawyers in and outside government told Business Insider that it's increasingly hard to move from public to private sector work: there's a large supply of job seekers, and comparatively low demand for their expertise and experience.

One federal lawyer who recently resigned said it took him months to find a new job despite working in a prestigious role, forcing him to stay at his job longer than he wanted. "I had a responsibility to my family to bring home a paycheck," he told Business Insider.

White collar slowdown

Typically, the roughly 40,000 lawyers who work for the US government can parlay their experience drafting, interpreting, and enforcing a dense thicket of laws and regulations into well-paid jobs for law firms and large businesses.

Over the last few months, law firms across Washington and in New York have been inundated with résumés, and they're being choosy, especially when hiring white-collar criminal defense lawyers — many of whom are former federal prosecutors.

"White-collar demand is down across the board," whether it comes to recruiting from the government or poaching a partner with an established clientele from another law firm, said Karen Vladeck, the founder of Risepoint Search Partners, a legal recruiting firm.

"For your standard white-collar partner right now, they want to see twice as much business as they want to see from another practice." In other words, law firms are skeptical that hotshot criminal defense lawyers can reel in the kind of revenue that they used to.

Another headhunter told BI that only "very senior" lawyers coming out of US Attorney's Offices were getting interviews — and even those candidates were taking haircuts on compensation. The same job seeker who might have been able to get an offer for $1 million or $1.2 million in the past as a defense-and-investigations specialist might get $750,000 today, the headhunter said.

Another issue, said Jack Zaremski, who runs Hanover Search Partners, is that Big Law firms already have a deep bench of white-collar litigators — and a partner at a large law firm said there isn't much work to go around for colleagues who focus on that kind of work.

White-collar criminal enforcement has been declining since the Obama administration, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which compiles federal law-enforcement data. The number of white-collar criminal cases filed yearly fell from a high of more than 10,000 in the mid-1990s to about 4,300 today.

Though prosecutions were down, there was still work for Big Law's ex-prosecutors keeping their clients out of court. After the 2009 financial crash, banks needed outside help dealing with crisis-related investigations, the large law firm partner said. The 2012 Libor scandal and similar rate-rigging allegations led to even more work. That has pretty much dried up, the partner said, and banks' in-house lawyers can do some of the work that they used to have to outsource.

Trump, who was convicted of falsifying business records, has shown skepticism for white-collar criminal enforcement. His Justice Department has slashed its corruption unit and made moves to close its tax division and fold its responsibilities into other parts of the agency. One of his early executive orders paused cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans paying bribes to foreign officials to get business. (Several have since resumed.) He has also pardoned people and companies that collectively owed $1.3 billion for offenses like securities fraud and tax evasion, erasing their debts to the government and their victims.

Matthew Burke, a former federal prosecutor on the team led by Jack Smith that charged Donald Trump with keeping classified documents after his presidency and trying to subvert the 2020 election, said that while his experience deterred some potential employers, it attracted others. Scale LLP, a firm of about 80 lawyers that focuses on the tech sector, said in May that Burke would lead its investigations practice.

"There undoubtedly were doors that were closed to me because of what I've done, but there will also be doors that will be opened," he said. It's been "informative to know what doors have been closed and which have been opened," he added.

It's not just criminal cases where the administration's approach is being felt. Some financial regulatory lawyers are also stuck in a tightening job market, as the administration attempts to pare down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A former bureau lawyer said that among some people who have managed to stay employed, the common attitude is "They're gonna have to drag me out of here."

The Trump administration's efforts to reduce headcount at the Bureau have been put on hold by the courts. The CFPB employees' union said in an email that some of its members have taken other jobs, but "many more remain ready to get back to the work we were hired to do."

Job market challenges aren't universal

Some CFPB managers have been able to parlay their experience into jobs at financial technology firms, law firms, and banks or credit unions, the former bureau lawyer said. And some people leaving the Justice Department are still in high demand. Deep familiarity with international trade restrictions and export-control laws makes some lawyers valuable to tech companies worried about running afoul of US sanctions and trade restrictions. Antitrust experience is also a plus, Vladeck and others said.

Charles Cain, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's FCPA Unit, went to work at EY, according to a LinkedIn post. He was one of at least five lawyers who announced their departures from the unit at a meeting in late March, according to Mark Yost, a former member of the unit who was present.

Some former feds are having a much tougher time on the job market. Waves of civil rights lawyers have been fired or left the Justice Department and other agencies, like the Department of Education.

"There are only so many civil rights-related jobs out there, and a lot of people are competing for them," said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney who leads the networking group Justice Connection.

Despite competition for open roles, relatively few lawyers, regardless of where they work, are quitting or being terminated without something lined up. While the D.C. area unemployment rate has ticked upward, the national rate for legal occupations — a group of about 1.8 million people of whom 1.1 million are lawyers — was 2.1% in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, below the 4% average across the US workforce. For lawyers, a smaller group of workers for which estimates are less reliable, the first-quarter unemployment rate was about 1%.

Still, a glut of supply on the job market means lawyers will need to broaden their search. Vladeck tells job seekers to think of landing their next job outside government as a Trivial Pursuit pie, with each slice representing a more niche avenue for employment: boutique firms, in-house counsel roles, nonprofits, or legal-adjacent roles.

"In order to get a job in this market, you have to pay attention to each of those slices," Vladeck said. "You can't rely on the DOJ to Big Law path."

Have a tip? Know more? Reach Jack Newsham via email ([email protected]) or via Signal (+1-314-971-1627). Do not use a work device.

• Peter Deng, a former VP at OpenAI, said he looks at teams as if they were products.
• The most successful groups he's worked with had varied skillsets, he said on "Lenny's Podcast."
• Deng said he prioritized staffing his teams with a series of specialists, like the Avengers, rather than generalists.

When investor Peter Deng worked at OpenAI, he treated building a team like a puzzle. All the right pieces had to be in the right places.

"As a leader, you have to set up your team the right way," Deng, who previously was OpenAI's VP of consumer product, said on an episode of Lenny's Podcast. "You have to really think about your team as a product and what are the various pieces you need to really stretch the gamut of what you're thinking about."

Deng, now a general partner at Felicis Ventures, has previously contributed to a series of well-known features, including ChatGPT Enterprise, Facebook's Messenger app, and Uber Reserve.

The VC said the best teams he's worked with throughout his career were those composed of people with diverse skill sets.

"The teams that I've helped build are — the most successful ones are a team of Avengers that are just very different, have very different superpowers," he said. "But together, you as the leader are the one who's helping adjudicate any differences or any disagreements, but you know you're getting the best outcome when everyone's pulling and obsessing over a different thing."

Deng looks to staff his teams with a series of problem-solvers, he said. He thinks about needs that aren't being met, and then works to hire specialists who can close the gap.

"It's almost like you're playing an RPG where everyone has different sliders and you have to create this super team where everyone actually spikes in different ways," he said.

When Deng would search for new additions, he said he largely looked for two traits in applicants: the potential for autonomy and an appetite for continued improvement. Deng did not respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.

"I think the growth mindset thing is so important to me — that we build an org where people are self-reflective, and want to get better, and take that feedback, and give that feedback," he said. "And it just is this meta unlock that I found to be true."

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

A new FBI memo on Jeffrey Epstein and his rumored client list has implications for the royal.

• After a major heartbreak, I pack up and move to a new city — sometimes, even a different continent.
• It makes it easier for me to heal from the heartbreak.
• I've done this three times, and I'm not about to stop now.

Some people cope with a breakup by starting a new hobby, throwing themselves immediately back into dating, or finally giving in to those BetterHelp ads. Me? I pack up my life and book a one-way flight to a new city, sometimes even a different continent.

It started in 2014 after a brutal three-month run: a breakup, a messy rebound, and getting fired from a brand-new job. I was sitting at home in Johannesburg, doomscrolling on Facebook, when an email came through from an airline offering a deal on flights to Cape Town, South Africa. My interest? Piqued. My credit card? Ready to swipe. My impulse control? At an all-time low.

I booked a flight for the following week and immediately began boxing up my room at my mom's into three small boxes and sending out invites for farewell drinks at my favorite bar. Little did I know, this major life decision I had made in less than 60 seconds would go on to start a pattern of shaking up my surroundings to an extreme after heartbreak. I did it again in 2021, when I left Cape Town for Namibia, and last year, I said bon voyage to South Africa and moved to France.

Moving after a break-up means I get to break old habits

Is making a major move after a breakup a little dramatic? Absolutely, but there is a method to my madness. Every move forces me to confront the post-breakup identity crisis and answer the million-dollar question: Who am I without anyone else?

Starting over in a new place strips away all the relationship compromises, shared daily routines, and habits. The only thing left is me: my habits, my desires, and my identity beyond another person.

It gives me the space to figure out where I may have been performing in the relationship and identify where I lost myself. The crisis I had where I wondered whether I was changing my mind about having kids? It turns out I was never unsure about having children — I always knew deep down that it wasn't my path. I was just too scared to choose myself and lose my partner in the process.

During my last relationship, I stopped doing all the things I love: DJing, hiking, and going to festivals. It wasn't until it ended and I moved yet again that I realized how much I'd been missing out on when I found myself in Paris at a rave, cheezing so hard my cheeks hurt, asking myself, "How did I forget how much I loved this?"

It's taught me the art of being alone, not lonely

I believe my heartbreak wanderlust has helped me avoid the trap of using other people as emotional Band-Aids instead of processing the pain and grief after a break-up. My self-imposed exile gives me the space to sit with my emotions without any familiar distractions (after all, you can't call up your roster or ex when you're 7,000 miles away in France). It's a launchpad to a life of independence and self-confidence, where I'm showing myself every day how capable I am without someone else, each time I figure out something new.

That said, should everyone move to a new city after a break-up? If you have a remote career like mine and no responsibilities tying you to a specific location, I'd say go for it. Being in a completely different city soothes the sting of rumination because nothing is familiar.

The first time I moved after a breakup was on impulse. When I realized it was helping me process what had happened and improve my relationship with myself, I got curious and wanted to know why. I learned that when I create new memories and daily habits, I'm training my brain to form new associations that aren't tied to my ex. So when I move, I'm rewiring neural pathways, and I'm spending less energy stuck in a loop replaying the same old story.

But if you can't move cities, plan a solo trip for two weeks. You'll still get to reap the benefits of taking yourself out of the familiar and give your heart and brain the chance to reset and interrupt the emotional ties.

It's an incredible heartbreak cure, and reader, it's probably the greatest gift I've given myself.

• Joan Nguyen co-founded Bumo to help parents book last-minute childcare.
• The app features vetted childcare providers and works similarly to Airbnb.
• The pitch deck has raised $10 million so far, with another $10 million seed round coming up.

Modern life makes it easy to order late-night cars home, book spontaneous vacation rentals, and get lightning-fast takeout. But getting childcare on short notice? For many that's still a pipe dream.

Joan Nguyen founded Bumo, an app that allows parents to book empty slots at local childcare centers, after starting two childcare ventures during the pandemic.

From working with parents, Nguyen said she realized that they often needed what she calls "fractional childcare," such as when their nanny called in sick or something pressing came up at work.

"As a parent, I also felt the pain of not being able to get childcare when you absolutely needed it," Nguyen told Business Insider. "Why is it easier for me to find a dog walker than it is to find a sitter or a nanny?"

Launched in 2024 after raising $10 million, the Bumo app was co-founded by Nguyen and Chriselle Lim. It's a continuation of a joint co-working and childcare center they launched in late 2019, followed by BumoBrain, an online learning platform they created at the height of the pandemic to help working parents.

This week, Bumo is preparing to announce a $10 million seed funding round, led by venture capital firms Offline Ventures and True Ventures, Bumo shared exclusively with Business Insider.

The app, which has about 10,000 users and offers services in 200 locations within 13 states, works similarly to Airbnb. Parents can filter and sift through childcare options from drop-in daycares to summer camps, some of them offering same-day availability.

Nguyen said Bumo also fits in with the consumer demand "to want things instantly," now accustomed to quick bookings and deliveries. Meanwhile, "you see childcare as this kind of monolithic thing that hasn't really changed a lot," she said.

Filling a gap in childcare demands

Bumo aims to offer more convenience and fill a gap in the US childcare system.

Parents are more isolated than they have been in generations, not always being able to rely on family members to help them. Many also can't afford full-time daycare, but still need some part-time childcare options.

To ensure safety, Nguyen said every service listed on Bumo is licensed by their respective state and has a "digital footprint" including past reviews. Bumo staff also interviews with each facility at least once a year (sometimes virtually depending on the provider's location) to make sure that they're up-to-date on background checks and that all staff have proper certifications.

Nguyen said that Bumo only uses original photography and videos for each facility instead of stock photos. Parents can also upload photos in their reviews.

Bumo's next step is to keep expanding in other cities; right now, Los Angeles has the highest number of childcare offerings on the app. The goal is to increase Bumo's density in San Francisco and to introduce its service in New York City.

Read the 16-page pitch deck Bumo used to secure $10 million.

The Mercedes F1 team knows how to celebrate podium finishes - even when the spotlight isn't on their own driver.

McLaren driver Lando Norris was hit in the face after capturing his first win at Silverstone.

Blair and Brooke Harber were found holding rosary beads, their family shared in a GoFundMe.

Tesla shares fell sharply again Monday, as Elon Musk's split with the Trump administration deepened over his threats to launch a new political party.

Why it matters: Musk is personally out nearly $20 billion since breaking with President Trump last month, and his investors are out more than $100 billion on top of that.

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Catch up quick: Over the holiday weekend, Musk said he'd launch a new political party, the America Party, and suggested a strategy of targeting a few key House and Senate seats in 2026.

• Trump posted to Truth Social that Musk had become a "TRAIN WRECK," and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — long a Musk foe — told CNN he expected the boards of Musk's companies would be opposed to his activities.

By the numbers: Tesla shares fell about 7% in pre-market trading Monday.

• They're down about 14% since early June, when Musk first publicly blasted the "big, beautiful bill," which quickly spiraled into a full split with the administration.

Yes, but: This coming Sunday is the one-year anniversary of Musk endorsing Trump — and Tesla shares are still up more than 20% since then, even with the recent sharp declines.

The intrigue: Tesla's problems aren't just Musk's politics, though.

• The company reported last week that deliveries fell almost 14% in the second quarter.
• Late Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report on the company's mounting problems in China, noting that its local employees complained its cars were falling badly behind competitors.
• The WSJ story also noted that the Chinese government no longer considered a Musk relationship as much of an asset, given his falling out with Trump.

The bottom line: "Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that most Tesla investors want him to take during this crucial period for Tesla," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, one of the company's most outspoken supporters on Wall Street, posted to X on Sunday.

President Trump's tax and spending bill sets in motion nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and other health policy changes that could loom over the midterm elections.

• But the real effects likely won't be felt until well after the ballots are cast.

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Why it matters: Despite negative polls and headlines, bill supporters could be insulated from political blame by a slow drip of policy changes that will play out over the next decade — a contrast to when the GOP tried to repeal Obamacare in 2017.

• "Republicans backloaded a lot of the Medicaid and ACA cuts," said Larry Levitt, executive vice president at KFF. "There will be few tangible effects in health care from this bill before the midterms."
• That creates a messaging challenge for Democrats, he added. "There's not going to be a day where everyone wakes up and all of a sudden ... more people are uninsured."

What's inside: Medicaid work requirements, which account for many of the nearly 12 million people projected to lose coverage under the bill, generally won't kick in until 2027, and some states could get extensions.

• Though beneficiaries will get warnings ahead of time, able-bodied recipients ages 19 to 64 wouldn't actually be dropped from program rolls for failure to meet or properly report the required 80 hours a month until after November 2026.
• The bill also increases the frequency of Medicaid eligibility checks to every six months, starting on Dec. 31, 2026. People in the Medicaid expansion population who retain coverage under the new system could have to pay up to $35 in cost-sharing per service starting in October 2028.

The phasedown of Medicaid provider taxes and state-directed payments, which states use to help fund their share of program costs and which hospitals in particular have come to rely on for funding, only begins in 2028.

• The legislation's $930 billion cut to federal Medicaid funding will likely force states to make corresponding cuts to their programs or pick up a greater share of obligations, but those wouldn't take effect right away, either.

Yes, but: People covered through the Affordable Care Act exchanges will see changes more swiftly. The bill does not extend the Biden-era enhanced premium subsidies, which are set to expire on Jan. 1, 2026. The GOP-led Congress still can do so, but has shown little appetite so far.

• Obamacare premiums would increase by more than 75% on average for enrollees next year without the enhanced subsidies.
• That would give Democrats "a very potent talking point going into the midterms," Levitt noted.
• Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood will also be cut off for next year under the bill — a change the family planning organization said could result in the closure of nearly 200 clinics.
• Restrictions on which lawfully residing immigrants can access Medicaid will go into effect on Oct. 1, 2026, just before the primaries.

Reality check: Hospitals and clinics have to plan ahead and already are making contingencies for the Medicaid cuts and coverage losses. That could translate into facility closures or the elimination of some services.

Case in point: Community Hospital in McCook, Nebraska, announced last week that it's closing as a result of uncertainty over the upcoming Medicaid cuts, per Nebraska Public Media.

What to watch: Patient advocates and provider groups will likely press Congress to further delay the provisions, or stop them from taking effect.

• Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who argued against the steep health insurance cuts before voting for the package, said he would "do everything in his power" to reverse the future Medicaid cuts.
• "The fact that this all plays out over a period of time creates an opportunity for opponents to try to delay and overturn," Levitt said.
• Democrats, meanwhile, plan to launch the first fusillade of ads about the cuts in swing states this week, and want to turn the August recess into a referendum on the bill at town halls and through mobilization efforts.
• "House Democrats will spend every day of the next 16 months making sure moms, dads, seniors, and veterans know that Republicans took away their health care, raised their energy bills, and hiked their grocery costs," Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts said in a statement.

The bottom line: If nothing changes, it will take nine years for the effects of the bill to fully play out.

• To put that in perspective: Former President Barak Obama was still in office nine years ago.

Millions of Americans got a confusing email from the Social Security Administration over the weekend, celebrating the passage of the "big, beautiful bill."

Why it matters: It's unusual for the agency to blast an overtly political message to its massive email list, which includes retirees and those who've signed up at their website.

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• Tax experts, former agency leaders and advocates for the agency are criticizing the email for spreading misinformation.

Zoom in: The email claims that the spending bill "eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries."

• It says this elimination is in addition to providing "an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned."

Reality check: The big bill does contain a big temporary tax break for seniors, who get an enhanced deduction on their federal income tax for the next four years. That will mean fewer seniors will pay taxes on benefits until 2028.

• However, the bill does not eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits — though President Trump and the White House keep claiming it does.
• "There is no provision in the budget bill that directly 'eliminates' or even reduces taxes on Social Security benefits," Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told the Washington Post.

By the numbers: The email appears to have gone out to everyone who is signed up for a "My Social Security" account — that's 71 million people.

What they're saying: While the agency has sent out press releases, or tweets, from time to time that could be viewed as political, sending a mass email like this to this large a list is something new, say experts.

• "The Social Security Administration's communications shop has been politicized," wrote Nathan Osburn, a former deputy commissioner for the agency, on LinkedIn.
• "I agree," replied Leland Dudek, who was the acting commissioner of the agency, appointed by Trump, during the first few months of the year.
• The email confused some people who aren't used to hearing from the Social Security agency, says Kathleen Romig, a former senior adviser at the agency.
• "I've gotten a lot of correspondence from people who never hear from SSA except an annual notice to check their account," said Romig, who is now a director at the liberal Center on Policy and Budget Priorities. Some of them thought it was a scam, she added, claiming the email was "unprecedented."

The other side: A Social Security official tells Axios that the agency was just trying to communicate helpful information.

• "The deduction would apply to many of our beneficiaries, and we wanted to share that information with our beneficiaries so that they can take advantage of it," the official said.
• If we find the email "requires clarification, then we're certainly happy to clarify that," they said. "That hasn't presented itself so far."
• The agency has sent out information like this before on its various channels, they said.

• $6 billion New Holland Capital has started a new unit to recruit internal investment staff.
• The firm had previously invested in external funds in a structure similar to a fund-of-funds.
• Former North Rock Capital COO Omar Qaiser was hired to lead the new platform named Plum Island.

The competition for top investing talent is higher than ever.

Megafunds like Izzy Englander's Millennium, Ken Griffin's Citadel, and Steve Cohen's Point72 offer moneymakers tens of millions in potential payouts and top-tier perks. Up-and-coming funds and new launches such as Verition, Walleye, and Jain Global are constantly scouring the landscape for investors. Explosive growth in private market assets means PE funds and new private credit firms need head count.

In short, it's a labor market that favors the employee, not the employer. Englander himself called it a "talent bubble" in 2023.

Despite this dynamic, $6 billion New York-based New Holland Capital is expanding from its traditional, fund-of-funds structure with a new unit focused on bringing investment talent in-house. Plum Island Partners, named after a small spit of land off Long Island discovered by Dutch explorers in the 17th century, will be run by Omar Qaiser, according to a note sent to clients seen by Business Insider. Qaiser is the former COO of investment platform North Rock Capital.

"While the majority of our platform will continue to be composed of external teams, we've now established Plum Island Partners to serve as New Holland's internal trading and operations arm," the note reads.

"While our focus on niche, capacity-constrained strategies will not change, this evolution allows us to expand the universe of potential PMs to include those who have no interest in running a business," the note adds.

When it comes to potential payouts, small platforms cannot compete with firms like Millennium and Citadel. But there are investment strategies that can only manage a certain amount of money — say $100 million — that are not of interest to the biggest players because the potential returns are too marginal to make a difference, several smaller platforms have said.

Some tenured investors are also looking for more customized risk parameters, which the largest funds struggle to offer given their organizations' size.

It's why places like New Holland, among other smaller funds, have decided to bring more talent in-house even as bigger firms like Millennium increasingly allocate to external managers.

"We're trying to be indifferent — we want to find good talent and have a home for them," said New Holland CEO Scott Radke, who noted that he still expects most of the firm's investors to be external.

He said the manager has more than 40 external managers right now, while Plum Island has one internal PM, an equity capital markets investor. The new unit expects to add several more this year, but has no set goal.

New Holland began as an investment advisor for Dutch pension plans and has since become independent. Last month, it hired former Brevan Howard executive Stephan Brohme as its chief risk officer.

• Eli Lilly has outpaced Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk in the race to develop new incretin drugs.
• The company is set to capture 50% of the $95 billion obesity market by 2050.
• We got a glimpse into Eli Lilly's upcoming menu of metabolic drugs to treat obesity, preserve muscle, and more.

In sports, the best athletes compete against themselves. In the world of weight loss drugs, Eli Lilly is quickly becoming that all-star player that bests the competition every time.

"Lilly is the king. They're the king of the mountain," Deutsche Bank's James Shin, director of biopharma equity research, told Business Insider.

Investors are increasingly buzzing about the world's most valuable healthcare company, the one that they say has left its rivals in the dust.

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, the company that developed Ozempic, initially seemed unbeatable in the new market for injectable diabetes and weight loss medications. But ever since 2022, when Eli Lilly's tirzepatide was first approved for use in the US, Lilly's been steadily gaining ground.

Now, the company is developing a menu of other obesity drugs that could cater to anyone. There's a pill for weight loss instead of an injection. There are drugs that tap into new appetite-regulating hormones; an antibody injection to protect muscles while burning up excess fat.

"Investors are starting to talk about Lilly on their own cue, rather than in the context of Novo," Asad Haider, Goldman Sachs's lead analyst for US pharmaceuticals, told BI. "They are at the forefront of almost every existing as well as emerging mechanism across anti-obesity, and it's going to be really hard, in our view, to leapfrog them."

So, we caught up with Eli Lilly Executive Vice President Ken Custer, the man overseeing it all. Custer is the new president of Lilly's cardiometabolic health division, and in a recent one-on-one with BI, he shared the strategy behind the company's success so far and how they plan to maintain their big lead in the long run.

Eli Lilly is set to dominate the market by 2030

Eli Lilly's tirzepatide, the drug currently leading the charge, is the strongest weight loss drug available so far. While Novo's Wegovy supercharges one of our hunger hormones (GLP-1), Lilly's Mounjaro has two (GLP-1 and GIP), making it a more powerful weekly shot to control appetite and blood sugar.

One recent head-to-head study showed patients who spent a year on tirzepatide lost, on average, about 15% of their body weight, while those on semaglutide (the drug in Ozempic) lost just 8%.

By 2030, Goldman is forecasting, conservatively, that Lilly will capture nearly 50% of the $95 billion anti-obesity medicine market. That forecast includes the injectable drugs we have now, like Mounjaro and Ozempic (for diabetes) plus Wegovy and Zepbound (for obesity) but may also extend to new drugs in the pipeline, both at Eli Lilly and coming from other drugmakers with smaller portfolios. But right now, Lilly seems to be ahead of the competition in just about every category.

In June, at the American Diabetes Association's big annual research conference (ADA), Lilly's updates from ongoing trials were "incrementally better" than investors had expected, Haider said.

"Then on the other side of that, a lot of their late-stage competition — specifically Novo Nordisk, but also Amgen — the updates that you got from them at ADA had a little bit more hair on them, and were frankly met with more disappointment."

1. Speed: 'This ratchet mindset' drives Lilly to develop drugs faster and faster

Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks shared some of the secrets behind the big speed up that's shifted the company from an 11-year average time to market (when he first became CEO in 2017) to a six-year average now.

"We really track things very carefully on speed," Ricks said in an interview last October on the "All-In" podcast. "The big idea is like this ratchet mindset that every time we beat a timeline, that becomes the new norm. We just re-benchmark internally."

Case in point: It took about two decades to get Trulicity, Eli Lilly's first GLP-1 drug, on the market. Tirzepatide? About eight years — "blistering speed," Custer said.

2. Convenience: a cheap(er) pill to rival Ozempic

Eli Lilly is in the late stages of developing the first Ozempic-like pill, designed to be just as strong as Novo's injectable drug. The drug, orforglipron, could be available as early as 2026.

There are only about 8 million people currently on Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound in the US, which speaks to both the high cost of the injectable drugs and the supply bottlenecks.

"The injectable GLP-1s are wonderful medicines, but manufacturing those medicines is hard," Custer said. "The factories that you have to use to do the sterile filling of the vials, the syringes, the devices, the cartridges are extraordinarily hard to build and operate."

Custer believes a daily pill could completely change the game — opening up this new class of hormone-mimicking weight loss and diabetes drugs called incretins to hundreds of millions more people across the globe.

"I think we're at a defining moment in our company's history," Custer said. He added that he sees this as "a generational opportunity that is probably close to what was seen with the early days of vaccines and antibiotics."

Eli Lilly is already manufacturing hundreds of thousands of orforglipron pills, just to make sure it will be able to meet the demand if the drug is approved for use in the US next year. That's a somewhat risky move, considering that the company's final Phase 3 clinical trials that the US Food and Drug administration requires to evaluate the drug aren't even done yet. If approved, orforglipron should also (thankfully) have a more pronounceable brand name.

Expect the cost of the pill to rival a "fancy gym membership," Shin said, meaning maybe around $300 for one month — a quarter of the cost of some injectable weight-loss drugs.

Other companies' attempts to develop a new weight loss pill have been lackluster. Pfizer ditched its obesity pill candidate earlier this year, while Novo Nordisk's pill version of semaglutide, called Rybelsus, is not nearly as effective as Ozempic: Most patients on the pill lose less than 5% of their body weight, while people using the weekly shot can often achieve 10-15% weight loss, or more.

3. Creating a laundry list of new options to get ahead

The north star of Eli Lilly's strategy now is variety — developing a broader range of options for consumers than any of their competitors.

"If you have a billion people around the world or more living with overweight or obesity, they're not all going to be helped by one medicine," Custer said. "We see this segmenting it into several logical categories."

The shift is already underway to find new weight loss options that will harness different hunger hormones (like amylin), use new routes of administration (pills or IVs instead of just injection pens), and have different dosing schedules (daily, weekly, or monthly).

"They're trying to address every type of patient," Shin said.

Here's the menu, beyond orforglipron:

• Bimagrumab: Looking to protect muscle while you lose fat? This is an Eli Lilly drug which may become available after orforglipron, if the mid-stage trials go well in the next couple of years.

  In the most recent trial results, the company shared on bimagrumab at ADA, patients on the drug achieved 100% fat loss, essentially preserving all their muscles. This idea of making sure patients lose the right kind of weight — not compromising their strength just to slim down — is the holy grail in incretin drug development right now, generating tons of buzz and investment.

• Retatrutide: If it's more powerful drugs you're after, then there's the "king kong" triple agonist that the company has been working on. It won't likely be ready to approve until late 2026, at the very earliest, but in clinical trials, it has shown weight loss on par with bariatric surgery, and some patients have lost more than a third of their total body weight, requiring entirely new wardrobes.
• Eloralintide: Finally, there's Lilly's investigational drug that mimics amylin, another metabolism-regulating hormone. It's still early days for eloralintide and for amylin medications in general. So it's possible that competitors like Novo Nordisk or Amgen could develop a compelling amylin drug before Eli Lilly does.

"What's exciting is we feel like we're leading in most, if not all of those categories, but we'll come up with new categories," Custer said. "It is really about tailoring. I think bimagrumab and eloralintide and retatrutide and orforglipron are really the first part of that story, but of course, we have other ideas we're working on as well."

Investors want in on that action. Both Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank sent BI disclosure statements for this story, because they each have a financial relationship with Eli Lilly (I challenge you, dear reader, to find a major investment bank that does not).

In the long run, Eli Lilly is thinking ahead to a day when this class of medications could even treat conditions beyond metabolism and heart health, including dementia, inflammation, substance abuse, and pain. (Scientists are starting to study whether incretin drugs might treat migraines, for example).

"It may be even in the future, when you're checking out at Kroger, in addition to the 'get your annual flu vaccine,' you see a sign that says 'get your annual metabolic shot,'" Custer said.

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CEO Bob Jordan has been explaining that the change marks a major shift.

• A consulting firm found that tech companies are "strategically overpaying" recruits with AI experience.
• They found firms pay premiums of up to $200,000 for data scientists with machine learning skills.
• The report also tracked a rise in bonuses for lower-level software engineers and analysts.

The AI talent bidding war is heating up, and the data scientists and software engineers behind the tech are benefiting from being caught in the middle.

Many tech companies are "strategically overpaying" recruits with AI experience, shelling out premiums of up to $200,000 for some roles with machine learning skills, J. Thelander Consulting, a compensation data and consulting firm for the private capital market, found in a recent report.

The report, compiled from a compensation analysis of roles across 153 companies, showed that data scientists and analysts with machine learning skills tend to receive a higher premium than software engineers with the same skills. However, the consulting firm also tracked a rise in bonuses for lower-level software engineers and analysts.

The payouts are a big bet, especially among startups. About half of the surveyed companies paying premiums for employees with AI skills had no revenue in the past year, and a majority (71%) had no profit.

Smaller firms need to stand out and be competitive among Big Tech giants — a likely driver behind the pricey recruitment tactic, a spokesperson for the consulting firm told Business Insider.

But while the J. Thelander Consulting report focused on smaller firms, some Big Tech companies have also recently made headlines for their sky-high recruitment incentives.

Meta was in the spotlight last month after Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said the social media giant had tried to poach his best employees with $100 million signing bonuses. 

While Business Insider previously reported that Altman later quipped that none of his "best people" had been enticed by the deal, Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, said in an interview with CNBC that Altman "neglected to mention that he's countering those offers."

• Elon Musk started a new political party after conducting a poll on his social media platform X.
• But this is not the first time Musk has outsourced his decision-making to social media.
• Musk had run polls on whether he should sell his Tesla stock or step down as X's CEO.

Elon Musk announced the formation of his new political party a day after conducting a poll on his social media platform, X.

But this isn't the first time Musk has outsourced his decision-making to social media.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has conducted several polls on X over the years. Musk has asked users whether he should sell his Tesla stock or if he should reinstate President Donald Trump to the platform.

Here's a list of some of the polls Musk has done, and what happened after.

Selling 10% of his Tesla stock

On November 6, 2021, Musk posted a poll on X asking his followers if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

"I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes," Musk added.

Musk's poll received over 3.5 million votes, with over 57% of them supporting the sale of his stock. Then, on November 10, 2021, Tesla said in an SEC filing that Musk sold about $1.1 billion in Tesla stock.

In its filing, Tesla said the sale of Musk's shares was "automatically effected" as part of a trading plan that was adopted on September 14, 2021. It added that the trading plan was in relation to Musk exercising stock options that were set to expire in 2022.

Musk had talked about the planned sale during an interview he gave at the Code Conference in September 2021.

"I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year, so a huge block of options will sell in Q4. Because I have to or they'll expire," he said.

Buying Twitter

Months before buying Twitter in late 2022, Musk conducted several polls on the platform, asking his followers about their views on it. These polls took place while Musk had been quietly purchasing the company's stock since the start of the year.

On March 25, 2022, Musk asked his followers if Twitter "rigorously adheres" to the principle of free speech.

"The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully," Musk added.

Musk's poll received over 2 million votes. Over 70% of them said the platform did not adhere to the principle.

"Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?" Musk wrote in a follow-up post on March 26, 2022.

"Is a new platform needed?" Musk added.

Earlier, Musk had conducted a separate poll asking his followers if Twitter's algorithm should be open source. That poll received over 1.1 million votes, and nearly 83% of them voted "Yes."

Then, on April 4, 2022, Musk asked his followers if they wanted an "edit button" on Twitter. The poll obtained over 4.4 million votes and nearly 74% of them voted "Yes."

Musk eventually acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and renamed it X in July 2023.

Reinstating Trump's Twitter account

Shortly after buying Twitter, Musk polled his followers on whether Trump should be reinstated to the platform. Trump had been an avid user of the platform but was banned in January 2021 after the Capitol riot.

Musk's poll drew over 15 million votes, with nearly 52% supporting Trump's reinstatement.

"The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated," Musk wrote on November 19, 2022, a day after he had conducted the poll.

"Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Musk continued, using a Latin phrase that translates to "the voice of the people is the voice of God."

Musk had talked about reinstating Trump even before his acquisition of Twitter was complete. In May 2022, Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times that he would "reverse the permaban" on Trump, calling it a "morally bad decision" that was "foolish in the extreme."

Stepping down as Twitter's CEO

A month later, Musk conducted another poll, this time he asked his followers if he should step down as Twitter's CEO.

"I will abide by the results of this poll," Musk wrote on December 18, 2022.

Shortly after acquiring the platform, Musk laid off more than half of the company's employees. Musk's takeover also saw several celebrities such as Elton John opting to quit the platform over misinformation concerns.

Musk's poll received over 17.5 million votes, and nearly 58% voted "Yes."

"I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams," Musk wrote in a follow-up post on December 20, 2022.

In May 2023, Musk announced that he had hired Linda Yaccarino, an executive at NBCUniversal as X's new CEO. Musk said Yaccarino would "focus primarily on business operations" while he dealt with "product design and new technology."

Starting a new political party

Musk's most recent poll took place on July 4, when he asked his followers if they wanted him to start a new political party. Musk had floated the idea of starting the America Party after criticizing Trump and the GOP for the "One Big Beautiful Bill."

The poll received over 1.2 million votes, and over 65% of them voted "Yes."

"By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!" Musk wrote on X a day later.

"When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom," he added.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.