Key Takeaways Junk Teens hit $3 million in revenue in 2025 and is projected to reach $5 million this year. The brothers have implemented a series of systems to grow the business and eye future scale. Junk Teens also relies on an app vibe coded by one of its teenage employees. In 2024, when Entrepreneur first connected with brothers Kirk McKinney, 22, and Jacob McKinney, 21, their Greater Boston-based junk-removal business, Junk Teens, was still a side hustle, albeit a $1.2 million one. Image Credit: Junk Teens. Kirk McKinney, left, and Jacob McKinney, right. The then-teenaged brothers launched Junk Teens…
Author: Staff Writer
Key Takeaways Brendan Foody is the CEO of Mercor, an AI talent and data-labeling platform. In a post on X, Foody said that he received “too many” job applications from young people who were “serial job hoppers.” These candidates “jump to the hottest company every year” without building “something extraordinary,” he said. Brendan Foody, the 23-year-old CEO of AI talent and data-labeling platform Mercor, thinks that young job candidates should stay at companies for longer stretches of time. When reviewing young applicants, Foody found that average tenure was shorter than he expected; they were staying at jobs for a year…
Everyone is obsessed with Japan as of late. People want to travel there, watch the movies, eat the food, and wear the fashion. But it appears the fascination has since trickled down, and now even AI can’t stop talking about Japan. Ask ChatGPT what culture intrigues it, or Claude what country it considers its favorite. Odds are, they will in some way or another reference Japan in their responses. The seemingly random fixation that LLMs develop on specific cultures has become widespread enough that it has caught the attention of researchers at the University of the Basque Country and Cardiff…
To keep accounts safe from malicious intruders, having various passwords and authentication steps has become the norm. With that comes an oh-so-common predicament: doing such a good job securing an account that even you can’t get back in. A new Google feature aims to solve the problem. Today Google announced a new sign-in method: Selfie Video. Essentially a live video selfie, the feature is designed to help users access their account when they forget their password or don’t have their usual phones and computers readily available, which Google also uses to authenticate logins. To set it up, users record and…
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X @thesullivan. An OpenAI model escaped its sandbox and hacked into Hugging Face during a security test During a routine model evaluation, a group of OpenAI models worked together to escape…
Scott Winters turned to ChatGPT to explain his dizzy spells that once forced the Florida pastor to stop mid-sermon. Over time, the chatbot stopped recommending he see a doctor and instead told him his symptoms were “not something dangerous,” even telling him to trust that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail.” Winters spent weeks stuck in a recliner before he was hospitalized in July 2025 with a life-threatening pulmonary embolism, the New York Times reports. He’s now suing OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in San Francisco Superior Court, accusing the company of negligence and the “unauthorized practice…
Pickleball? That’s so 2022. The new craze is padel, a doubles game played on an enclosed court that blends squash and tennis. It drew 1 million US players last year, and public courts have grown from 227 to roughly 1,000 in just three years, the Wall Street Journal reports. Entrepreneurs from outside the sports world are paddling for a payout. Ballers founder David Gutstadt, a former Equinox executive, has opened clubs in a converted Philadelphia power plant and in Boston, with Los Angeles next. Bluestone Lane coffee chain co-founder Jon Krieger runs a New Jersey padel club, and Kith founder…
A product manager I know got a four-word message from her boss last month: “Do more with less.” She had the AI tools. She had a shrinking deadline. She also had a kind of dread. She is good at her job. She works hard. And she is watching that job change shape while she is still doing it. That feeling is everywhere right now, and SaaS leaders in B2C and B2B are both sensing and naming it. John Maeda leads design and AI at Microsoft. His mantra is simple, and he shared it in a podcast: Lower the floor, raise…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways A single compromised registrar login can redirect your website, hijack your email and let attackers impersonate your leadership — all without touching your actual product or infrastructure. Locking down MFA, transfer locks, DNS access and offboarding isn’t extra security theater — it’s what separates a minor incident from losing the business. Founders love to talk about their moats. Product. Distribution. Community. Brand. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: none of it matters if you lose control of your domain.I’ve watched companies spend years building trust, only to see it evaporate in a…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Rick Reeno has spent more than two decades beating boxing media to the punch. In 2003, that meant building BoxingScene into a round-the-clock news operation. Today, it means taking center stage as CEO and public face of The Ring. For fight fans, The Ring carries weight no other outlet does. Founded in 1922 and nicknamed “The Bible of Boxing,” it has ranked fighters, crowned champions and documented the sport from Jack Dempsey to Naoya Inoue. Since Turki Alalshikh acquired the publication from Golden Boy Promotions in 2024, Reeno has helped bring it…