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Gary Binkow
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gary Binkow, a former Hollywood producer who gave up his multimillion-dollar career to start a new business in the longevity industry. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I got into the movie business because my one talent as a kid was that I was really good at watching TV and movies β I mean, I just inhaled everything I could.
The way my brain works is that I would watch TV shows and movies and try to unravel what it was about them that moved me and how the storytelling worked. And so then, when I found out you can go major in moviemaking, I decided to do that. I went to Columbia University and majored in film because, frankly, I thought it would be easy. I'm always looking for the path of least resistance.
I started working for MTV in New York in 1980 and, after moving to California, worked my way up from an assistant working at 20th Century Fox to a development executive, then eventually a producer, mainly based at Miramax Films.
I had a long career in Hollywood. I made about 30 films on the independent side and had a successful run at Miramax. At the top of my career, I produced a movie calledΒ "Finding Neverland," whichΒ came out in 2004,Β won a bunch of awards, and got nominated for several Oscars.
Even though I had been successful, I still found my creative ideas blocked by industry gatekeepers like Harvey Weinstein, who repeatedly passed on them even though they'd made millions with other studios.
I decided I didn't want to be in a system where I couldn't control my own destiny and realized I was really an entrepreneur. When you make 30 independent movies, you are essentially building 30 independent companies. So, I decided to use those skills to start my own company in 2005, Collective Digital Studios, a new media company offering services like content production, brand management, and distribution.
Everybody in the movie business told me I was an idiot and crazy for leaving. But in the early 2000s βΒ the early days of internet virality β we worked with content creators and comedians like Logan Paul and King Bach before they'd made it big and created a massive platform leveraging their expertise in hooking audiences with short video clips. As we expanded, we helped Katt Williams license his iconic comedy special "The Pimp Chronicles" to HBO in 2006 and produced thousands of YouTube videos, driving strong profits βΒ but something felt like it was missing.
I decided I'd rather do something more powerful. I was good at helping people connect with audiences and telling better stories, but I wanted to do it with a purpose and a mission. So I left. In 2019, we sold the company, which is now known as Studio71, for a healthy exit to ProSieben, and I decided I wanted to use the same skill set in health and wellness.
So, my partner and I moved out of Los Angeles and onto an organic avocado farm in the beach town of Carpinteria, California. We've been working to rehabilitate it, and in 2020, I started The Swell Score, a membership-based online marketplace for holistic and clean supplements and other household products.
I've been interested in holistic health for my whole life. I'm always looking for more natural ways to stay healthy and out of the sick-care system. But there is a lot of misinformation and skepticism in the wellness space β and I understand that because I'm just as skeptical. So, at The Swell Score, we partner with medical experts to review wellness and beauty products and work with customers to teach them how to improve their health and live longer, happier lives.
The Longevity Lab, which I opened in October in Carpinteria, is an expansion of that. It's a retail space where you can buy these products and see the difference for yourself. We offer everything from non-toxic mattresses and housewares to wellness supplements, beauty products, and bath items.
So far, the wellness space has been good to me βΒ it's not nine-figures good yet, but I have no interest in going back to Hollywood; the movie-making business is totally broken. I plan to keep building in this industry, and people have been really responsive. I think part of that is because I took some of the tactics of storytelling and brand building that I learned from the other company and applied them to health and wellness.
Now, when I get asked to advise people and help them hone their business stories and strategies, the one thing I tell anybody who's getting started is that I would think of yourself as a media company first, not a product company. You know, with just one video, you could create your billion-dollar business.
Getty Images
Defense tech firms Palantir and Anduril are in talks with Elon Musk's SpaceX, Sam Altman's OpenAI, and others to form a new group in Silicon Valley to bid for Washington's lucrative defense contracts, according to a new report.
Palantir and Anduril, some of Silicon Valley's most notable defense companies, have held discussions with around a dozen firms to create a group that can take a larger share of the US government's roughly $850 billion defense budget, the Financial Times reported Sunday.
The group, which could announce strategic partnerships next month, would seek to bring Silicon Valley-style disruption to an industry dominated by so-called "prime" contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
Musk, who is leading a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency under the direction of President-elect Donald Trump, used X last month to criticize Lockheed Martin's crewed F-35 fighter jets. He has previously advocated for autonomous drones.
The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people.
β Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2024
This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes.
And manned fighter jets are⦠https://t.co/t6EYLWNegI
"We are working together to provide a new generation of defense contractors," one person close to the group told the Financial Times. Others involved in the group include A16zβbacked startup Saronic and AI data firm Scale AI, the report said. The consortium could announce agreements with some tech firms as soon as January, the report said.
The move to form a group involving rival firms would mark one of the most coordinated efforts in Silicon Valley yet to edge further into the defense sector and shake-up a system that tech leaders have criticized for being too slow to adopt new technologies.
Palantir, cofounded in 2003 by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, has previously won several government contracts. In May, the Pentagon awarded the firm a $480 million contract to use its data analytics platform on Project Maven, an AI tool for analyzing battlefield data.
Discussing his new book in a conversation with investor Stanley Druckenmiller at JPMorgan's Asset Managers CEO Forum this month, Palantir CEO Alex Karp argued that Silicon Valley needs to work more closely with the US government.
Defense startup Anduril, founded by Palmer Luckey β the tech mogul who founded and sold virtual reality startup Oculus to Meta β has also won contracts for its autonomous and air defense systems.
Palantir, Anduril, SpaceX, Saronic, Scale AI, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment outside regular working hours.
Photo credit: Joy Sowell
I love visiting with family and friends, gift-giving, and all that comes with the holiday season. Most years, though, as this time of year approaches, I'm filled with a sense of contradiction: excitement for what's ahead and an unavoidable subtle sense of dread.
As a mom for over 13 years now, I've finally pinpointed exactly the problem. I've been in the habit of saying, "Sure," "Yes," "I'll be there," or "I can help" too many times during the season, even if I didn't have the time or energy. It's left me frustrated, hurried, stressed, and downright exhausted.
The first time I vowed to seek more rest for myself during the holidays was 13 years ago. After several hours of travel and multiple stops to visit family, all with a newborn in tow, I knew the pace could not be kept. I will never forget the trauma of trying to find a quiet place to nurse my baby amid the chaos of family members I barely knew.
Little by little, each year, I've pulled back on our Christmas Day travel. This might be the biggest and happiest change I've implemented for myself and my family. I'm saying "no" to hours of travel time this year, and we're staying home for Christmas.
Miraculously, grandparents and family members have all been understanding. In fact, many of them lamented the same issues with travel on Christmas Day and are choosing to stay home, too. The good news is my door is open, and if anyone wants to see me or my immediate family on Christmas Day, they'll know exactly where to find us.
But still, over the years β even as I've created more boundaries around travel β I've gotten in the habit of doing too much, and it's affected my ability to enjoy the holiday season.
Last year, and for most years in the past, my husband would volunteer to cook the turkey for my side of the family for the Thanksgiving meal. But this year, we said we couldn't. We'd already planned a road trip for my son's birthday, so the time we had to spend on a homemade dish was significantly shorter.
We simply didn't have the time to fry a large turkey and encouraged my family to have someone else cook it. My mom ordered one, and it was just as juicy as any home-cooked bird. It lightened the load, and I vowed to keep the momentum going.
Leading up to Christmas Day last year, kind neighbors dropped off homemade items on our doorstep. We adore our neighbors, and the homemade goodies were a delight each time we opened the door. But each time I discovered a homebaked treat, I felt pressure to make or bake my own gift to reciprocate the kind gesture.
In a panic, I whipped up some last-minute treats and hauled them to each neighbor's home. I love to cook, but there wasn't much joy in the process under the pressure. Looking back, I realize there was a better way, so I'm handling it differently this year. I now see that my neighbors actually don't expect a gift in return, let alone something homemade. So, to split the difference, I'm purchasing my favorite brand of store-bought shortbread cookies, plopping a bow on top, and wishing them all my merriment without baking anything.
Volunteering at my sons' schools has always been a page from the same story. As with many parents, in years past, there's been the tug for me to attend the holiday sing-along, organize the holiday party snacks, or brainstorm and collect materials for a festive craft.
While I do love attending and being involved at my sons' schools, the issue is that with work, appointments, and my own holiday goals of reading more and sitting by a fire more often this year, I'm just not raising my hand first to head it all up. Instead, I've opted to send in supplies or choose the events I truly enjoy being at. My sons are older now, and I'm resting easy knowing they're more concerned with the football game at recess than the reindeer craft they created during the holiday party.
While my desire to do it all came from good intentions and expectations from myself and others, I didn't want the stress I had felt in the past by giving too during past holiday seasons. I realize now I do have a choice in the matter.
I'm saying "no" more than ever in an effort to protect my time and my family's time, and I'm enjoying more that makes me happy: fireside reading time, a cup of coffee with extra whipped cream, and the twinkle of the lights on my own Christmas tree this year.
Apple is working on the next generation of AirPods Pro, and they may have some new health features, according to Bloombergβs Mark Gurman β although itβs a rumor we heard before, back in 2021.
The company has reportedly started testing features like temperature sensing and heart rate monitoring for the earbuds. Apple has found that the Apple Watch still does the latter better, but the AirPods βarenβt terribly far offβ in their readings.
The company may have also revived its idea of putting cameras into AirPods, a rumor weβve heard a few times over the last year. But itβll still probably be years before any camera-equipped AirPods appear.
β Mat Smith
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The biggest tech stories you missed
Intelβs Arc B580 is a rarity: A $250 GPU that delivers solid 1080p and 1440p gaming, even with a bit of ray tracing. Faster than a Radeon 7600 and RTX 4060 from the dominant GPU players, and Intelβs XeSS upscaling works well, even if itβs not as well supported as DLSS 3. According to our review, itβs a clear win for Intel β until we see whatβs new from AMD.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon and Barbara Broccoli, the producer who inherited the franchise from her father and film producer Albert βCubbyβ Broccoli, are in the middle of a fight thatβs halted production on the next Bond film. Apparently, Barbara doesnβt trust Amazon with her familyβs famous film franchise.
Broccoli was quoted telling some of her friends that the people who run Amazonβs media empire are βfβing idiots.β When Amazon purchased MGM, executives started thinking of ways to expand the Bond film franchise to other mediums like a Moneypenny spinoff series for Prime Video or a separate spy film or TV show in the Bond universe. Broccoli refused to let any of these projects go forward. She also took umbrage with Amazon entertainment executive Jennifer Salkeβs use of the word βcontentβ to describe new James Bond projects. (I love that.)
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121512095.html?src=rssΒ©
Β© Billy Steele/Engadget
Nebraska's Republican Gov. Jim Pillen was injured and transported to a hospital on Sunday after he was bucked off a horse.
Pillen, 68, is expected to be hospitalized for several days.
The first-term governor was riding horses with his family when he was thrown off a new horse and suffered injuries, according to the governor's office.
ILLEGAL MIGRANTS IN NEBRASKA TOWN BRINGING 'STRESS' TO SCHOOLS, PUBLIC SAFETY
Pillen was rushed to Columbus Community Hospital in Columbus, Nebraska, before he was transported, out of an abundance of caution, to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
"The Governor is alert and is in continuous touch with his team," Pillen's office said.
DRONE MISHAP DURING ORLANDO HOLIDAY AERIAL SHOW SENDS CHILD TO HOSPITAL
Pillen's office did not detail what injuries he suffered or the severity.
The GOP governor was elected in 2022, running in the gubernatorial election that year because former Gov. Pete Ricketts, also a Republican, was term-limited.Β
Pillen then appointed Ricketts to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat vacated by former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who resigned in 2023 to become president of the University of Florida. Sasse has since stepped down as the university's president.
Pillen worked as a veterinarian and owned a livestock operation before he was elected as governor.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Courtesy of Terri Peters
I'm a frequent traveler, but until recently, I'd never been to London. The Big Smoke has long been on my bucket list, so I planned a solo visit full of touristy activities like visiting Big Ben and touring the London Tower Bridge. While I wished my family could have gone along, my husband is often unable to take time off work and my teenagers have busy schedules of their own. I knew it would be a while before I could visit if I didn't take a solo trip.
Armed with a list of things I wanted to do, like visit a London pub and shop for quilted jackets in Notting Hill, I booked a flight and hotel and started packing. Here's what it was like to play tourist in London for three days, and why I have no regrets.
Courtesy of Terri Peters
While I knew I'd be doing touristy activities like snapping photos in a red telephone booth and riding a double-decker bus, I tried to balance the trip with some off-the-beaten-path things, too. I made a rule that I wouldn't eat at chain restaurants, and instead of booking pricey tours, I'd walk the city on my own and really dig into exploring everything I wanted to see.
I stayed in London's Stratford neighborhood because it was within walking distance of a major tube station and near Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, home of the 2012 Summer Games. In fact, I spent my entire first day in London exploring the Olympic Park, grabbing lunch inside, and checking out the Olympic-sized swimming pools used during the Games, along with other structures.
Courtesy of Terri Peters
Indian food is my all-time favorite cuisine, and when I told friends I was going to London, each of them said I had to try the Indian food there. "Curry in the UK hits different," said one. And they were right. I spent my first evening on Brick Lane, home to many curry restaurants, and it was pretty empowering to wander out to dinner in a new city on my own and explore a bit.
I had other things on my London to-do list, too, like seeing Big Ben, shopping in Notting Hill, and eating the TikTok-famous chocolate-covered strawberries from Borough Market. Going into the trip with a list helped, and I was glad I'd done my research in advance.
Courtesy of Terri Peters
I haven't had any alcohol for the last year, but British pubs are such a fabled part of the culture in London that I knew I had to check a few out. To my surprise, pubs in the UK had just as many alcohol-free beer options as bars in the US. I could walk in, order a booze-less beer, and feel right at home while checking out the scene.
And yes, British pubs are as much fun as they sound. I loved watching everyone gather in beer gardens, cheers'ing with their friends, and laughing. There were live bands at some, and DJs at others. All of the pubs were thriving, full of life, and just as much a part of the culture as they sound in all the chick-lit I've read. Sober or not, seeing something I've heard about my entire life was very cool.
Courtesy of Terri Peters
I toured London's Tower Bridge, took photos in front of Big Ben, and visited Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Yes, much of what I saw in London was touristy, and I'm OK with that. As someone who woke up early with her mom to watch Princess Diana's funeral and grew up hearing about the Royal Family and their lives, it was surreal to see so many places I'd only ever seen on a news broadcast or movie screen.
I felt the most out of my element when I attended an evening show of Abba Voyage, an AI-generated Abba concert that makes the band members appear as if they are much younger and actually performing onstage. The show was an incredible and unique experience, but I realized I was not nearly as much of an Abba fan as the locals when I was among a crowd of young women, dressed up in sequins and belting out the words to "Mama Mia" with gusto.
Courtesy of Terri Peters
I'm so glad I took the time to spend a few days in London, and touristy or not, my itinerary was truly the stuff my dreams were made of. With some online research, I created a full list of must-see items for my trip before I went, and I did it all. But there's so much more I want to see.
London is such a bustling city, and while I think I got a lot done for a first-time visit, I cannot wait to go back and do more. Next time, I hope to take my family along, and because I've spent so much time checking out parts of the city, I'm excited that I'll be able to play tour guide when they do visit.
Courtesy of Deel
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Aaron Goldsmid, a 44-year-old from San Francisco about mistakes he made early in his career. Business Insider verified his previous employment at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I had a somewhat atypical journey into tech. My parents were Broadway performers, and I was the first person in my family to go to college.
I became interested in computer science in high school and broke into tech straight after studying computer science at Columbia.
Through the college recruiting process, I got a job at Microsoft in 2002 and spent nearly six years there, largely working in the security space.
During the 2010s, I held tech roles at Amazon from 2011 to 2012, Facebook from 2012 to 2014, and Twitter from 2014 to 2015, as well as working at several smaller companies.
I've been fortunate to work at some of the most iconic tech companies during interesting periods. I've taken tools from each opportunity and now apply them to my current job as the head of product for Deel, a payroll and HR platform.
Because my parents didn't have 9-to-5s, I sometimes struggled to determine how to succeed in the corporate world. I didn't have anyone telling me about things like checking boxes to get to the next level in my career and how frictional relationships can impact the workplace.
Now that I have two decades of career experience under my belt, I understand how to avoid some of the mistakes I made early on and plan a career more intentionally.
When I informally coach folks about careers, I usually advise them to think two jobs ahead.
Instead of thinking about what you dislike about your current job and whether your next role will solve that, think two jobs ahead. I tell early career techies to ask themselves how their next role will get them to the role after that.
After leaving Microsoft, I moved from Seattle back to New York, where I grew up. I wanted to secure a job in the city, and because the tech scene wasn't as mature in New York in the early 2000s, I took a role at NBCUniversal, helping build their video streaming service.
I did good work in that role, but I'm not sure it necessarily advanced my career. I then joined a startup because they gave me a very fancy title, but I ended up leaving before completing one year because I felt there were problems at the company, and I realized I'd chased a title instead of thinking things through.
As I advanced in my career, I knew I needed to focus on the skills I needed to acquire rather than the prestige of a position.
When I joined Kiva, a microfinance nonprofit, in 2018, I didn't view it as a permanent job. I took the job to gain skills outside a product and engineering capacity.
During my time there, I learned about business development and communicated with UN officials and central bank leaders. Not only did I get to experience the challenges faced by other teams, but I also got to know different contours of the product, business, and customer experience.
When I moved into my next role, a general manager at the communications company Twilio, I had a broader scope of experience and could operate more effectively.
You can accelerate quickly into a senior role, but taking a less fancy role and diversifying your experience might mean your upside long-term is much higher. If you're thinking two jobs ahead, evaluate what opportunities will help you more in the long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Early in my career, because I didn't know how corporations worked, it was easy to think that everyone in a company was aligned and felt the same way, which is foolish.
When I worked at Twitter on their growth team, my job was to play in other people's sandboxes and tweak things. The company was having a difficult growth time, and we had to be hyper-focused on hitting our OKRs. This sometimes came at the detriment of my team's relationship with the rest of the product engineering org.
We had to step into other team's territories and move quickly. I felt I needed to hit a goal at all costs, and the problem was "at all costs." We often weren't on the same page as that team and had to go back and repair relationships afterward. In hindsight, I needed to do a better job of explaining why we were doing something from the outset.
Not everyone is trying to achieve a company's mission in the same way, and so by investing in relationships, you can more clearly communicate how you align with others in a company. Even if they don't align with you, they'll respect your process.
Early in my career, I didn't have a role model in the corporate environment, so I questioned what "good" looked like and how I should show up.
Folks who are early in their career will often look at people who they think are successful and think, "I want to be just like them."
But sometimes, early-career workers have a hard time distinguishing the reasons for a person's success from their bad habits. They might not know things that the company has been willing to work around or that hold that person back.
Early in my career, I over-indexed on emulating senior leaders. For example, I'd see some of them making sweeping statements like "This is the future, or, this isn't the future." They can get away with that because they've proven themselves, but I'd do the same, and it would fall on deaf ears. I hadn't yet earned that level of credibility and still needed to "show my work" before I earned that trust.
As a senior leader at Deel, I'm very conscious about how I present myself to early career folks. In larger meetings, I remind myself that there will be people on the call who view my role through a limited set of interactions. I don't want to pass on any bad behavior or shortcomings for them to emulate.
Do you have a career story you want to share with Business Insider? Email [email protected]
Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty
Generative AI has been the talk of tech for a while now, but tune into your favorite business podcast and you'll probably hear a different phrase tossed around: "agentic" AI.
So what's the difference?
The two are closely related. You couldn't have agentic AI without generative AI. Definitions vary, but in general, agentic AI refers to AI technology that's capable of performing agent-like behavior that can autonomously accomplish complex tasks on your behalf.
Companies working on AI agents say they are intended to one day be digital coworkers or assistants to human workers in fields spanning from healthcare and supply chain management to cybersecurity and customer service.
Here's how some Big Tech companies explain the concept:
Some leaders in the field say agents are ushering in a new frontier in AI.
"In just a few years, we've already witnessed three generations of A.I.," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told The New York Times earlier this month. "First came predictive models that analyze data. Next came generative A.I., driven by deep-learning models like ChatGPT. Now, we are experiencing a third wave β one defined by intelligent agents that can autonomously handle complex tasks."
Salesforce, which launched its Agentforce suite earlier this year, has said it plans to have more than 1 billion AI agents in use for companies by the end of next year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently said the company has been "investing in developing more agentic models" over the last year. (He defined agentic AI as being able to "understand more about the world around you, think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf, with your supervision.") The company made agentic AI a major focus of its Gemini 2.0 launch this month.
OpenAI plans to launch an AI agent code-named "Operator" in January that would be able to use a computer on a person's behalf to do things like write code or book flights, Bloomberg reported last month, citing two people familiar with the matter.
The company previewed its latest AI model, o3, on Friday as the final announcement of its 12 days of "Shipmas" campaign.
Prospinity
When they were freshmen at Yale, Aarya Agarwal and his roommate, Samvel Antonyan, struck a handshake deal.
If either of them ever started a company that went supernova, they would sign away 10% of their income to the other.
"We shook hands, and at the moment, it was a bit of a joke," Agarwal said. "But we realized the deal actually made a lot of economic sense. It was a way to multiply by two times our chances of doing something super improbable."
Now, their startup, Prospinity, allows college students to enter into similar contracts. Through its platform, smart young people can join "success pools" of other smart young people who put a few percentage points of their annual income into a shared pot. Each year, the pot gets distributed evenly among the group. The idea is that if one of them becomes the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, they will all succeed.
Just a year old, Prospinity is already used by students at Yale, MIT, Princeton, and Harvard, with job offers at firms like Blackstone, Bridgewater, and Amazon. Now, Prospinity has raised $2 million in a round led by Slow Ventures managing director Kevin Colleran to reach more students beyond the Ivy League.
Prospinity and Slow Ventures declined to comment on the valuation. Patrick Chung, a managing partner at Xfund and an investor in Sam Altman's first company, Loopt, also joined the round.
Slow Ventures has explored income sharing as an investment strategy before. It set aside $20 million from recent funds to buy equity in influencers, taking a percentage of their future profits for a set amount of time in exchange for upfront capital. Regulatory filings show Slow is now raising $275 million across two new funds, which Fortune first reported.
When Prospinity rolls out to a new university, it researches the student body and selects a handful of high achievers to create or join a success pool. They can hop onto Prospinity, check out the profiles of existing members, and filter by university or industry. Prospinity is now recruiting students from the University of California, Berkeley, to join the platform.
Prospinity says the contracts are legally binding and can ensure everyone pays their fair share over the agreement's term, typically 10 years. Pool members can also set a minimum income; if someone's earnings fall below the threshold, they're excluded from that year's distribution. Prospinity takes a 5% distribution cut in exchange for providing the technical and legal infrastructure to execute the contract.
While the company's hundreds of members are mostly still in school, they can start collecting distributions as other pool members contribute.
Agarwal, who studied computer science and economics at Yale before he dropped out to focus on Prospinity, said the company's premise is loosely based on the power law, a principle in venture capital that describes how a small number of investments often create the majority of returns, while the rest either break even or fail.
"As markets get more efficient, you're going to see more and more of these distributions where a few people make it big, and then everyone else tends to be left behind," Agarwal said. "I think success pools are going to be a very important way to hedge against that sort of uncertainty."
The company's founders, Agarwal and Antonyan along with Andrea Zanon and Andrea De Berardinis, belong to a larger success pool that agreed to share 2% of their income over a 10-year horizon.
Hassaan Qadir, a Yale senior who took a semester off to start a company developing software for biology researchers, joined a Prospinity pool. He later folded the startup and accepted an internship at AppLovin, a Palo Alto company that provides marketing services to mobile app developers. Qadir plans to start another tech company someday and said being part of an income-sharing agreement with other founders gives him more chances of hitting the entrepreneurial jackpot.
Law school students, finance associates, and aspiring entrepreneurs compose his success pool of about 30 members.
"Theoretically, someone that you know is going to become really successful," Qadir said. "It's not totally up to who works the hardest."
Aron Ravin, another member of that same Prospinity pool, hopes to capture some potential upsides of being an entrepreneur as he climbs the corporate ladder. He joined that Prospinity pod during his senior year at Yale and now works as an associate at a prominent hedge fund. Ravin stands to make good money in finance, although he said he may not hit the jackpot as someone starting the next Uber or Palantir might.
Ravin declined to share how much of his income he's contributing to the pool but said it's between 1% and 5%. At a Prospinity mixer in New Haven, Connecticut, he mingled with some international students working on a sustainability venture, which got him thinking.
"It's a little promiscuous of me," Ravin said, "but maybe I'll join another pool in the future. Share the love."
Nudphon Phuengsuwan/Getty Images
The healthtech sector will see more private-equity-backed M&A and a fierce battle between AI-scribing startups next year, according to thirteen investors in the healthcare VC market.
At the beginning of the year, healthcare venture capital appeared poised for a rebound. Investors hoping to do deals again after a two-year funding drought watched as healthcare startups flooded back to the market to grab more cash.
Those VCs raced to break out their checkbooks for hot new AI startups in the first quarter, from scribing startups like Abridge to automated prior authorization players like Cohere Health.
A confluence of macroeconomic factors β from still-high interest rates to fundraising struggles for venture firms to the uncertainty of a looming presidential election β dampened the anticipated resurgence. 2024's funding appears to be, at best, on pace with 2023 levels, with $8.2 billion raised by US digital health startups in the first three quarters of this year compared to $8.6 billion through Q3 2023, per Rock Health.
Now, with interest rates expected to drop and a new administration on the way, VCs are anticipating sunnier skies in 2025.
After a slow year for healthcare M&A, investors want to see more deals in 2025.
With interest rates expected to come down β and investors facing pressure to deploy capital β private equity buyers should be more active in 2025, said .406 Ventures managing director Liam Donohue.
And Flare Capital Partners' Parth Desai said he's already seeing private-equity-backed healthcare companies looking to buy smaller startups. Their goal, as he understands it, is to make tuck-in acquisitions in 2025 that improve their growth stories as they look ahead to potential IPOs in 2026.
"Maybe they're not phenomenal outcomes, but at the end of the day, they'll create some liquidity," Desai said of those acquisitions. "I expect that to be one of the first exit windows starting to manifest in 2025."
Investors were hopeful but unsure that the IPO window would meaningfully reopen for digital health startups in 2025, despite startups like Hinge Health and Omada Health signaling their intentions to test the public markets.
Venrock partner Bryan Roberts said he expects the healthcare IPO market to remain relatively quiet. LRV Health managing partner Keith Figlioli suggested we won't see IPO activity kick off until the second half of the year after other exit windows open.
VCs said they're mostly looking for smaller deals next year, from mergers of equals to asset sales. Figlioli and Foreground Capital partner Alice Zheng said we'll see even more consolidation and shutdowns in digital health next year as startups run out of cash.
"Investors will have to make tough decisions on their portfolio companies," Zheng said. "We want to support all of them, but we can't indefinitely."
Foreground Capital
Healthcare startups using AI for administrative tasks were easily the hottest area of healthcare AI investment in 2024. Investors think the crop of well-funded competitors will face increasing pressures next year to expand their product lines.
ICONIQ Growth principal Sruthi Ramaswami said she expects the group of AI scribing startups that landed big funding rounds this year, from Abridge to Ambience Healthcare to Suki, to scale significantly next year using the fresh cash as hospitals scramble for solutions to the healthcare staffing shortage.
As these startups scale, however, they'll face pressure to expand beyond ambient scribing into other product lines, like using AI for medical coding and billing, said Kindred Ventures managing partner Kanyi Maqubela. Scribing technology could become a commodity sooner than later, with many providers trying free off-the-shelf scribing software rather than contracting with startups, Maqubela said.
"It'll be a race to who can start to build other services and build more of an ecosystem for their provider customers," he said.
Kindred Ventures
Some AI startups, like Abridge, have already been vocal about their plans to expand into areas likeΒ codingΒ orΒ clinical decision support. The best-funded AI scribing startups may be able to acquire smaller startups to add those capabilities, but other scribing companies will be more likely to get bought out, Maqubela said.
Flare Capital Partners' Desai suggested that healthcare companies already focused on RCM will try to pick up scribing solutions as the tech becomes a must-have for hospitals. He pointed to Commure's $139 million take-private acquisition of Augmedix in July.
Ramaswami said that demonstrating a high return on investment would be critical for these startups as hospitals pick their favorites among various AI pilots.
Iconiq Growth
While many VCs quietly celebrated the potential for more M&A and IPOs in 2025 following Trump's election in November, the incoming administration could bring some big shake-ups for healthcare markets.
Trump could move to boost private health insurers, including Medicare Advantage plans, in his second term, Venrock's Roberts said. That could be a boon for young insurers like Devoted Health and Alignment Healthcare fighting for Medicare Advantage market share, as well as startups contracting with insurers to improve healthcare payment processes.
He suggested the new administration may even roll back changes made in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' latest reimbursement model for Medicare, which went into effect this year and resulted in lower payments for many Medicare Advantage plans in the agency's attempt to improve payment accuracy.
Brenton Fargnoli, a general partner at AlleyCorp, said he expects to see health insurers respond to these risk adjustment changes and move to control higher-than-expected medical costs over the past year by launching a bevy of new value-based care partnerships in 2025 for specialties, including oncology, cardiology, and musculoskeletal care.
AlleyCorp
Some healthcare experts are also concerned that the federal government could cut funding for Medicaid plans. These changes could force states to scramble for new strategies and potentially new partnerships to control healthcare costs for their Medicaid populations.
"If there is a significant shift in direction at the federal level, I think you're going to see certain states do much more than they have in the past to try to continue to address health disparities," said Jason Robart, cofounder and managing partner of Seae Ventures. "As it happens, that creates opportunities for private companies to leverage their innovative solutions to address the need."
Similarly, Muse Capital founding partner Rachel Springate said that while investors in reproductive health startups will be closely watching state-level regulatory changes that could impact their portfolio companies, those startups could see surges in consumer demand as founders step up to fill gaps in reproductive care access.
Some of the Trump administration's proposed moves could stunt progress for health and biotech startups by stalling regulatory oversight. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick to lead Health and Human Services, has said he wants to overhaul federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Marissa Moore, a principal at OMERS Ventures, said the promised audits and restructuring efforts could lead to major delays in critical NIH research and FDA approvals of new drugs and medical devices.
Muse Capital
In 2025, AI will be an expectation in healthcare startup pitches, not an exception, said Erica Murdoch, managing director at Unseen Capital. Startups have pivoted to position AI as a tool for improved efficiency rather than as their focal point β and any digital health startups not using AI, in turn, will need a good reason for it.
With that understanding, investors expect to see plenty more funding for healthcare AI in 2025. While many tools made headlines this year for their ability to automate certain parts of healthcare administration, .406 Ventures' Donohue and OMERS Ventures' Moore said they expect to see an explosion of AI agents in healthcare that can manage these processes autonomously.
Investors remain largely bullish about healthcare AI for administrative tasks over other use cases, but some think startups using the tech for aspects of patient diagnosis and treatment will pick up steam next year.
"We will begin to see a few true clinical decision support use cases come to light, and more pilots will begin to test the augmentation of clinicians and the support they truly need to deliver high quality, safe care," said LRV Health's Figlioli. He hinted the market will see some related funding announcements in early 2025.
Moore said she's also expecting to see more investments for AI-driven mental health services beyond traditional cognitive behavioral therapy models β "for example, just today I got pitched 'the world's first AI hypnotherapist."
Dan Mendelson, the CEO of JPMorgan's healthcare fund Morgan Health, said he's watching care navigation startups from Included Health to Transcarent to Morgan Health's portfolio company Personify that are now working to improve the employee experience with AI. The goal, he says, is for an employee to query the startup's wraparound solution and be directed to the right benefit via its AI, a capability he says he hasn't yet seen deployed at scale.
"These companies are racing to deploy their data and train their models, and we'd love to see a viable product in this area," he said.
Latimer AI
Bias is in the eye of the beholder, yet it's increasingly being evaluated by AI. Latimer AI, a startup that's building AI tools on a repository of Black datasets, plans to launch a bias detection tool as a Chrome browser extension in January.
The company anticipates the product could be used by people who run official social media accounts, or anyone who wants to be mindful of their tone online, Latimer CEO John Pasmore told Business Insider.
"When we test Latimer against other applications, we take a query and score the response. So we'll score our response, we'll score ChatGPT or Claude's response, against the same query and see who scores better from a bias perspective," Pasmore said. "It's using our internal algorithm to not just score text, but then correct it."
The tool assigns a score from one through 10 to text, with 10 being extremely biased.
Patterns of where bias is found online, are already emerging from beta testing of the product.
For instance, text from an April post by Elon Musk, in which he apologized for calling Dustin Moskowitz a derogatory name, was compared to an August post from Bluesky CEO Jay Graber.
Latimer AI
Musks' post scored 6.8 out of 10, or "High Bias," while Graber's scored 3.6 out of 10, or "Low Bias".
Latimer AI
Latimer's technology proposed a "fix" to the text in Musk's post by changing it to the following: "I apologize to Dustin Moskowitz for my previous inappropriate comment. It was wrong. What I intended to express is that I find his attitude to be overly self-important. I hope we can move past this and potentially become friends in the future."
While what is deemed biased is subjective, Latimer isn't alone in trying to tackle this challenge through technology. The LA Times plans to display a "bias meter" in 2025, for instance.
Latimer hopes its bias tool will draw in more users.
"This will help us identify a different set of users who might not use a large language model, but might use a browser extension," Pasmore said.
The bias detector will launch at $1 a month, and a pro version will let users access multiple bias detection algorithms.
picture alliance/dpa/Getty Images
The annual budget process can be a parade of lengthy meetings and red tape β so one CEO decided to try something different.
Since becoming CEO at Bayer, Bill Anderson has introduced a set of striking changes to the company, including an overhaul of its budget system, which he sees as the driving source of corporate bureaucracy.
"We all know that the belly of the beast of bureaucracy is the budget process, right," Anderson said in an interview with Business Insider. "Everybody knows that. Everyone hates it."
Every 90 days, Anderson reallocates budgets for the next cycle.
The executive said the decision to take the company "90 days at a time" was inspired by a "radical experiment" he helped implement at Genentech in 2016 before becoming CEO of the biotech company in 2017. After what he described as an unsuccessful attempt to de-bureaucratize the budgeting process at Genentech, Anderson said Genentech decided to "kill all budgets."
However, the plan didn't lead to lower spending, he told BI.
While company spending at Genentech went down in the first year, it shot right back up a year later, Anderson said. While the CEO didn't want to bring back the old process, he concluded he had to find something to replace it with.
Genentech declined to comment.
Anderson brought the lesson to German life science company Bayer, where, a month after becoming CEO in June 2023, he replaced annual budget discussions with 90-day cycles. Instead of managers spending five months setting targets and forecasting, Anderson said squads come together every 90 days to discuss whether the company achieved its goals, how it used resources, and what it needs to focus on next.
In a conventional budget process, Anderson said the team would be discussing what they're going to do in the third quarter a year ahead. The problem with that, he said, is "nobody knows" what they'll be doing that far in advance.
"That's a waste of time," Anderson said. "They're negotiating over budgets for Q4 next year. They don't even know what they're going to be doing."
The budget overhaul is part of a larger restructuring which the company refers to as "Dynamic Shared Ownership." In addition to flipping the budget system, the model also reorganizes staff every 90 days into "mini networks" made up of who is best suited to lead that specific project.
"So every 90 days, people can flow between teams, money can flow between teams," Anderson said. "And you're working on the most important things for the next 90 days."
In a press release announcing the new operating model in January 2024, the company said the structure would "reduce hierarchies, eliminate bureaucracy, streamline structures," and speed up the decision-making process.
A company spokesperson told BI that select groups called "frontrunner teams" transitioned to the new model in the summer of 2023. Now, most of the company has moved to the new structure. Along the way, managerial positions have changed, with some transitioning to individual contributors and others being laid off.
Since the beginning of the year, the company has cut about 5,500 roles, most of which were managers, shrinking its overall headcount from around 100,000 down to around 94,500. A spokesperson said layoffs are ongoing.
Anderson said some teams, like those that started the transition a year ago, "are racing ahead and doing great," while other groups are "still stuck in the starting blocks." He added that the company's voluntary attrition rate has gone down since transitioning to the new operating structure.
The company has embarked on a plan to cut costs by about 2 billion euros by 2026. Bayer's stock price is down 46% since the beginning of the year. In its third-quarter earnings, the company reported over $4 billion in net losses and shared expectations for a "muted outlook" and "declining earnings" over the next year.
The company has faced several recent headwinds, including the expected loss of exclusivity on the blood-thinning drug Xarelto. Anderson said the drug was once responsible for a significant amount of Bayer's profits.
The company has also grappled with legal battles over Roundup, a herbicide produced by Monsanto, which Bayer purchased for $63 billion in 2018. The product has been the subject of thousands of lawsuits alleging it causes cancer, and Bayer agreed to pay billions of dollars to resolve some of the litigation while it also appeals some of the court decisions.
"The litigation topic is a big overhang for our company," Anderson said, adding that "there's a lot of great things happening" but investors want the company to deal with the lawsuits, which it is.
When Bayer announced the new operating model, the company said its goal was to become "more agile and significantly improve its operational performance," and Anderson has already reported some positive results.
In Bayer's third-quarter earnings report, Anderson said Bayer's Pharma division outside Milan cut release time by almost 50%, resulting in less waste, improved cash flow, and lower inventory. Anderson said in the report that when he first asked about success stories, he would get the same two or three examples.
"Now, I'm hearing stories like these basically on a daily basis," Anderson told investors. "I'm confident that will translate into results for our investors, and a bright future for us and our customers."
Rita Harper/BI
Vera Steward, 64, earned over $60,000 a year at the peak of her career. But since having a stroke at 48, she hasn't returned to work and is just scraping by.
She's one of many older Americans who shared with Business Insider in recent months how an unexpected medical crisis derailed their retirement plans and what they wish they'd done differently. As of publication, over 3,300 readers between the ages of 48 and 96 have responded to an informal online survey or emailed reporters about their biggest life regrets. This is part of an ongoing series.
Rita Harper/BI
While many medical diagnoses are unpredictable, dozens of respondents, including Steward, said they wish they'd been better prepared financially. Their regrets include not being more cautious with spending or savvier with investments when they were healthier, not prioritizing routine medical appointments, not factoring medical expenses into retirement planning, and not having robust insurance.
Eleven said in interviews that a medical diagnosis at the peak of their careers led them to retire early, and as a result, they rely on federal government checks to get by.
We want to hear from you. Are you an older American with any life regrets that you would be comfortable sharing with a reporter? Please fill out this quick form.
Steward is one of them, despite having a master's degree and working since she was a teenager. After her stroke almost 20 years ago, she began receiving slightly over $1,000 in monthly Social Security Disability Insurance; she now receives $1,688 in Social Security after cost-of-living adjustments. Nearly half of her benefits go toward rent, and she only receives $23 monthly in SNAP benefits to help buy food. Some months, she decides between getting a haircut or buying groceries, and she's relied on her daughter for financial assistance.
"I've always been middle class, and now I guess I'm no class," said Steward, who lives in Columbus, Georgia. "I'm in this house almost 24/7. The only time I leave is to go to the doctor. I have nowhere to go."
Clancy Morgan/Business Insider
Anita Clemons Swanagan, 59, wishes she'd spoken up for herself more during her working years to be paid what she's worth. While employed at prisons and hospitals, she was on her feet all day often working 12-hour shifts β in addition to second jobs as a gig worker β so she could raise her three daughters.
Swanagan injured her back and developed arthritis. She had a stroke at 45 and worked again for a decade until she had a second stroke in 2021, which affected her walking, speech, and cognitive functioning.
In addition to wishing she'd asked for better pay and more health accommodations, she said she could have done more to grow her wealth, such as saving more and giving less to others. She also wished she'd prioritized her health and took more time off while sick, but she said there's little use looking back on what might have been. She lives in her SUV in rural Illinois on $1,500 a month in Social Security before Medicare deductions.
"People think they have enough money, but all they have to go through is one major illness that could wipe out everything," Swanagan said.
Swanagan is one of dozens BI spoke with who are battling health conditions, unable to work, and relying on government assistance to keep them afloat. Because of their medical conditions, most rely on two federal programs colloquially called "disability": Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income. Many said it isn't enough to pay their bills.
SSDI benefits are based on your work history. In 2024, the average monthly payment was $1,537, with a maximum payment of $3,822 a month. SSI, which is allocated to people with disabilities and limited incomes, will be capped at $967 a month for an eligible individual in 2025.
Retirees' reliance on these programs has risen while the benefits have barely kept up with the cost of living. The average inflation-adjusted Social Security payment for disability insurance in December 1999 was $1,413 a month; at the end of 2023, it was $1,537, SSA data showed. While 3.2% of workers covered by Social Security in 1999 were disabled workers who received Social Security insurance, this rose to 4% in 2023.
And it's becoming more difficult to qualify for these benefits, said Steve Perrigo, the vice president of sales and marketing at the law firm Allsup. SSDI processing times have doubled over the past few years while approval rates have fallen to historic lows.
In fiscal year 2023, 61% of disability claims were rejected initially, while 85% were denied in reconsideration, according to Social Security Administration data and information provided by Allsup. About 45% of people are approved in hearings, which come after denials of an additional application and reconsideration.
Perrigo said he encourages clients to try to find work before, during, and after receiving benefits if they're able to.
"We see individuals who have to go through foreclosure and tap into their 401(k) and bankruptcies," Perrigo said of the long wait times to receive benefits.
For some, including Paula Mastro, returning to work isn't an option.
Mastro, who's 65 and lives on just under $1,100 a month in Social Security benefits, worked part-time in restaurants and catering jobs while raising her daughter and spent years as a full-time caretaker for her parents. She told BI she regretted working odd jobs that didn't provide a pension and not contributing to a 401(k). She also said it was a mistake to not properly document some of her income on tax forms, which hurt her Social Security allotment.
In 1991, Mastro received about $200,000 in aΒ divorce settlement, most of which she spent on a home and car. She said often lived paycheck to paycheck and didn't prioritize investments.
Mastro developed back problems in the late 1990s after a car accident and was diagnosed with fibromyalgia over a decade ago. Earlier this year, she developed an inflammatory skin disease that prevented her from returning to work.
She said that last year, her public assistance covered only a fraction of her medical expenses, putting her thousands of dollars in debt. She lives in a low-income condo she inherited from her sister and barely has anything in savings.
"You expect in your golden years to be traveling, going on vacation, bringing your grandchildren to the theater," Mastro said. "I didn't do any of that because I couldn't. I should have saved up for retirement."
Rita Harper/BI
Jan Lovell, 73, said she should have learned more about finances during and after her marriage. Lovell, who lives in Warren, Michigan, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2005. As the disease progresses, it further complicates her financial planning.
Lovell spent 25 years as a church secretary, earning a modest salary. She only contributed about 5% to her 401(k) and let her husband handle most of her finances. An unexpected divorce in 2004 put Lovell into "float through life" mode, during which time she didn't have a financial plan and did what she could to pay her bills. Over her career, she accumulated seven retirement funds she never combined, totaling $160,000.
She went through a foreclosure in 2010, and she worked for another decade until retiring in January 2020.
She lives off about $3,300 monthly gross income from Social Security pre-deductions and a pension, but medical expenses, such as contributing $3,500 for a wheelchair, have put a dent in her wallet. After a recent hospitalization, she's planning to move to a senior living facility that she expects will deplete her savings by 2027.
"Most places I've looked at now are $3,000 a month for a 400-square-foot unit, which is twice the cost and half the square footage of a regular apartment," Lovell said. "The 'assistance' is an additional charge, depending on needs, and I'll likely need the most expensive level, at about $2,000 a month."
Rita Harper/BI
D. Duane MaGee, 78, thought he prepared well for retirement, but after losing thousands in the 2008 market crash, he regretted putting too much faith in the market β and hasn't touched investments since.
MaGee made six figures as a manager at Ford. He retired in his early 50s as the plant shuttered. He'd saved money throughout his career, though not enough. To compensate for his reduced income, he worked in security at a hospital and in hotel management.
His wife had a quadruple bypass surgery three decades ago, and he became her caregiver in between his work shifts. His wife's medications ate up a portion of their savings each month. The 2008 market crash erased nearly $80,000 of their limited retirement savings β much of which was his wife's inheritance from her mother β and he wished he had been more proactive about saving while at Ford.
MaGee, who still cares for his wife, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease six years ago. He gave up his retirement job shortly after the diagnosis, and they rely on about $62,000 a year in retirement income from Social Security and a pension. Meanwhile, rising inflation has made them even more cautious about spending.
"I don't know how I'm going to get savings now because we're getting a lot older now, and so we have things facing us now where we don't know where the money is going to come from," MaGee said.
Are you an older American with any life regrets that you would be comfortable sharing with a reporter? Please fill out this quick form or email [email protected].
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Apple is reportedly working on bringing its facial recognition technology to home security.
The tech giant is developing a smart lock and doorbell that would allow residents to automatically open their home doors by scanning their faces, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.
The report said that Apple's doorbell system could work with existing third-party locks or the company could partner with one lock provider to sell a complete product. The technology is still in the early stages and could be released at the end of 2025 at the earliest, the report said.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
The smart lock adds to Apple's growing interest in the home devices market. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Apple is working on an artificial intelligence-powered, wall-mounted tablet. The iPad-like device could be voice-operated, serve as an intercom, and control home appliances. Earlier this year, Bloomberg also reported that the company is working on building home robots.
Not all these developments may come to life. This year, Apple scrapped its car project and stopped efforts to develop a subscription model for the iPhone.
The door device could give the company an opportunity for more cross-selling with its other home products and its existing lineup of devices, like the iPhone and Apple Watch.
It could also allow the iPhone maker to compete withΒ Google's NestΒ andΒ Amazon's Ring. These devices have doorbells with a motion sensor that activates the camera and records a video of the surrounding area.
Such a product could draw the company into new debates about balancing users' privacy rights and working with law enforcement. Through emergency requests, police departments have received videos from Ring without receiving consent from the owner.
Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, are known for prioritizing user privacy. In 2016, Cook refused to cooperate with the US government to unlock an iPhone used by a shooter in a mass shooting and attempted bombing in San Bernardino, California.
VCG/VCG via Getty Images
"Black Myth: Wukong," the high-profile video game that earned superstar status in China, has a new titular competitor on the market: a side-scrolling platformer in which the Monkey King bashes through monsters of ancient legend.
"Wukong Sun: Black Legend," published by Global Game Studio, is now listed for preorder on Nintendo's store for its Switch console β much to the chagrin of China's social media.
Posts deriding the Nintendo-listed game as a knock-off emerged on Monday morning and, within an hour, topped discussion rankings on Weibo, China's version of X, per data seen by Business Insider.
"Hey everyone, have you heard? The stunning 'Black Myth: Wukong' has actually been copied! This really makes you speechless," one user wrote.
"Since Nintendo has removed pirated games from its shelves, this should also be removed," wrote another.
Promotional art for the Nintendo-listed game, which is due for release on December 26 and retails at $7.99, bears a striking resemblance to that of "Black Myth: Wukong."
Screenshot/Nintendo Store and CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
But the new title's gameplay looks nothing like that of "Black Myth: Wukong," a 3D action game with spruced-up visuals and a famed boss system that's difficult to overcome.
"Wukong Sun: Black Legend" appears to feature 2D sprites that approach from the right of the screen as the player navigates from the left.
"Black Myth: Wukong," produced by Chinese developer Game Science, is based on characters from the 1592 novel "Journey to the West," one of the most famous literary works in the region and a cornerstone of Chinese popular culture and mythology.
The term "Black Myth" in the game's title refers to it telling a story that is not included in the original novel, which has served as the base for a hit 1986 TV show and a plethora of books, games, and other media.
On its Nintendo store page, "Wukong Sun: Black Legend" also references the novel, saying it would allow players to "embark on an epic Journey to the West" and battle characters from its mythology.
Weibo users aren't having any of it.
"Well-known games have been plagued by imitations for a long time," wrote Pear Video, a popular internet news account. "Malicious developers exploit the names of well-known games, reskin various small games, and put them on the shelves of big game stores with similar titles, deceiving uninformed consumers to buy and download."
"I wonder how Nintendo will deal with it," a popular millennial gaming blogger wrote.
Nintendo operates a marketplace that allows developers to publish games for Nintendo consoles. The company did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by BI.
Global Game Studio is listed as both the developer and publisher of "Wukong Sun: Black Legend." According to Nintendo's website the developer has also produced a soccer game, an extreme sports biking game, a "Farming Harvester Simulator," and a zombie shooter.
The studio did not respond to a request for comment in an email sent by BI.
"Black Myth: Wukong" is considered China's first homegrown AAA video game success, selling over 20 million copies on the marketplace Steam, per the data tracker Video Game Insights. The game retails at about $59.99 per copy, putting total sales north of $1 billion.
VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Its release dominated China's internet this summer and has garnered an ardent cult following. Earlier this month, the title's failure to clinch the coveted "Game of the Year" award from The Games Awards sparked a wave of dissatisfaction on Chinese social media.
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Anna Kim/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
Sarra Bounouh has worked at consulting giant Accenture and three Big Tech companies.
But she still deals with imposter syndrome, especially when talking compensation.
"Going into a negotiation is always, at least for me, a very uncomfortable discussion," Bounouh told Business Insider. "I just want to push through and ask for what I deserve."
She and four other tech employees from Meta, Google, and Cisco shared their salary negotiation tips before joining a company or when trying to get promoted. They have used these strategies to add tens of thousands of dollars to their original offers in recent years.
Sarra Bounouh
Avoid offering the first number. If you must, back it up with research, said Bounouh, a product manager who joined Meta earlier this year.
She suggested using resources like Levels.fyi or Glassdoor and selecting your role and geography to see recent offers and compensation that makes sense for that job.
"I personally don't like having detailed conversations about level and compensation from that first call with the recruiter because I want to meet the team, I want to meet the hiring manager, I want to get excited about the role," she said.
Bounouh prefers to negotiate her level and compensation once there's an offer on the table.
She said she often gets asked about salary expectations early in the process because recruiters say they want to save time for both sides.
She politely declines to share a number by telling the recruiter: "I don't have a number for your right now. I will need to do some research before getting back to you. At this stage of the process, I'm more focused on meeting the hiring manager and team."
Rehearsal is key for conversations about promotions or raises, she said.
Bounouh said she practiced her pitch for every job after Accenture and increased all three jobs' initial salary offers: Microsoft by 32%, Snap by 19%, and Meta by 37%.
Ketaki Vaidya
Internal transfers between teams or offices are also an opportunity to negotiate your compensation package.
Ketaki Vaidya, who moved from Oracle's India to California office in 2022, said she approached her negotiation with an "everything under the sun is negotiable" mindset.
First, Vaidya looked at Glassdoor and talked to people who'd made the move to gather salary data. She wanted to ensure she was getting a fair offer for the US' cost of living.
"I was being given this offer for the credibility that I had built in the organization. I felt like I had an upper hand in negotiating," she said. "I was much more confident in asking for the things that I deserve β so it ended up being a very smooth transition."
After negotiating her base salary up to $80,000, she discussed other compensation components, including the timing of her next review, sign-on bonuses, relocation costs, paid leave, and remote work. She negotiated a sign-on bonus of $15,000 and a relocation allowance of $15,000, which weren't part of the initial offer.
Now, her compensation is about $130,000 annually, including stock units and bonuses.
Varun Kulkarni
When Varun Kulkarni switched from consulting to tech to work on more artificial intelligence projects, he was careful not to come off as aggressive during his pay negotiations.
Once he had offers from Cisco and others in hand in 2022, he was transparent with recruiters and mentioned other offers, without introducing his own counter number.
He asked recruiters how high they could go and what they thought about other offers.
"You want to kind of not be too pushy" he said.
His offer from Cisco already matched the market rate and what several competitors were offering, but he managed to negotiate it by 5%, bringing his total compensation to $180,000.
Yung-Yu Lin
During his 2022 recruitment process at Google, Yung-Yu Lin used his employer at the time, PayPal, to land better offers from both companies.
He interviewed and landed jobs at several places β but their pay did not compare with Google's offer.
Lin decided to negotiate a retention package. PayPal countered with a 10% pay bump. He then renegotiated with Google.
Google offered a 20% raise on his original compensation at PayPal, which brought his offer to the $350,000 to $400,000 range as a senior product manager, including stock-based compensation.
Hemant Pandey
Hemant Pandey, a senior software engineer at Meta, used other offers and research in his most recent job search.
After two years at Salesforce, in 2021 he applied to Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and two other companies. He used offers from these companies to negotiate his compensation at Meta.
"Be very transparent that you have other offers. Even if you have interviews going on, mention those, because it's also leverage," he said. It signals to the recruiter that they have to move fast and work with your parameters.
Meta's recruiters matched the base salary and restricted stock units from the highest of all offers.
Aside from being transparent, Pandey said it is important to be proactive and research how compensation works in different companies. For example, candidates should compare how stocks are refreshed, he said. A refresher is when the stock option portion of an employee's compensation is updated.
"I also negotiated my sign-on bonus and said, 'Hey, at Salesforce, I'll be leaving my $30,000 to $40,000 of annual bonus if I join you. Can you help me accommodate that?'"
Pandey was offered $520,000 in annual pay, including stock options, in that 2021 move.
"The most significant thing happened in my career when I made the move from Salesforce to Meta, which was close to almost 80 to 90% hike" in pay, Pandey said.
Do you work in tech, consulting, or finance and have a story to share about your career journey? Please reach out at [email protected].
OpenAI announced a new family of AI reasoning models on Friday, o3, which the startup claims to be more advanced than o1 or anything else itβs released. These improvements appear to have come from scaling test-time compute, something we wrote about last month, but OpenAI also says it used a new safety paradigm to train [β¦]
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