Fencing is one of the oldest sports in Olympic history. It’s also one of the least watched domestically. Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, is on a mission to change that, and with the 2028 Los Angeles Games on the horizon, he’s running out of time. In a masterclass in scrappy brand building, he shares how he’s building a sports brand with almost no budget and no marketing playbook, cold-calling CMOs, crashing Comic-Con, and convincing Snoop Dogg and Flavor Flav to pick up a sword. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former…
Author: Staff Writer
Do your social media accounts feed you content that reflects your core beliefs and guiding principles? Our new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the algorithms supplying your feeds may be prioritizing content that clashes with your values. That’s because the algorithms heavily weigh online posts that you reply to, and more often social media users tend to comment on content they take issue with than on content they agree with. Notably, our study of the X social media platform shows that although the X feed algorithm promotes content to both Democratic and…
For a long time, the biggest hurdle for a small business was simply finding capital. Today, the challenge is choosing the right kind. Tech vendors, payment processors, and e-commerce platforms have stepped up to meet the demand for rapid funding. By offering direct financing or partnering with nonbank lenders, these platforms can deliver funding decisions in hours and deposit cash by the next day. Having more options is a net positive for the small business economy. But at First Women’s Bank, we see how the appeal of immediate funding requires entrepreneurs to carefully weigh speed against long-term costs and support.…
Prediction markets already get a bad rap online from some social media users, and now a new app that blends livestreaming and live betting is unleashing a new wave of social media outrage. In a poll earlier this year, 29% of Americans said they viewed the growing popularity of prediction markets as negative, compared to just 19% who felt it was positive. Another poll found that 61% of Americans see betting in a prediction market as closer to gambling than to investing, while overall gambling activity continues to decline in the U.S. Despite it all, prediction market usage is steadily…
With most Americans still feeling the pinch of persistent inflation, President Trump wants to make one pricey grocery staple cheaper. “Today, I concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families,” Trump said in a Truth Social post shared on Friday. In the deal, Trump says that the U.S. will exempt 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported over the next 90 days from the out of quota tariff, a higher tax rate that applies to imports beyond a set limit. Trump also announced that the newly imported beef would be sold…
A fundraiser for the family of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mom and former nurse who is on trial for the 2023 strangulation death of her three children inside their home, has raised over $1 million as of Friday. According to the campaign’s description on GoFundMe, donations will go to help Lindsay Clancy’s parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, in order to help them with their financial burden, which is a result of the ongoing court proceedings. “They have not walked away from their daughter,” it explains, “and they have never been unclear about why: they love her. Nothing about this…
Moviegoers will often flock to the cinemas for one of two reasons: in response to viral clips on social media, like in the case of Obsession, or because of the draw of a star-studded cast and director, like for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. But as summer comes to a close, Chinese animated film Niu Lai has become an unexpected hit for bringing people to theaters for another reason: its terrible quality. Whether driven by a little bit of “so bad it’s good” irony or appreciation from AI skeptics that the movie’s visuals are so bad they couldn’t possibly have been…
Heather (a pseudonym) was a senior leader at her firm, one level below the C-suite. And the C-suite had some really big personalities. Heather was excellent at reading those personalities. She understood them, anticipated what they needed and often served as the go-between among these higher-ups, playing emotional regulator for them independently and as a group. These roles made her indispensable, but they were not actually part of her job and they took up a lot of her time. The whole team functioned much better because she was doing these things. But it was never part of her performance review…
I used to schlep from my office to a 6:30 p.m. Soul Survivor class, shower, and make dinner by 8 p.m. Every week. The waiting lists were insane. The bike you got mattered. Thirty-four dollars for a cycling class and nobody blinked. That wasn’t about fitness. SoulCycle was always about selling a version of yourself back to you, one you could embody if you worked hard enough. The brand said as much itself. Its tagline was never about the workout: “Take your journey. Change your body. Find your soul.” That’s a self-transformation pitch with a bike attached to it. When…
Below, Claire Stapleton shares five key insights from her new book, Don’t Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape From Big Tech. Stapleton spent 12 years at Google, joining straight out of college in 2007 and rising to become a senior communications leader at YouTube. In 2018, she co-organized the Google Walkout—in which 20,000 employees protested the company’s handling of sexual harassment—and left Google shortly after. Don’t Be Evil is her memoir about that journey. What’s the Big Idea? Almost all of us spend our waking lives inside institutions of one kind or another. We navigate their promises, absorb their…