s0me th0ughts

It is widely known that the advent of social media brought along with it a handful of issues our society continues to grapple with. From instant gratification attributed to the apps’ addictive nature to mental health issues surrounding one’s follower count, social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram inserted themselves in our daily lives, creating problems we never thought would come with such an innovative creation. Though these platforms give us ways to communicate our ancestors never thought would be possible, social media companies need to begin to focus their efforts on the well-being of their users, not just growth of the platform for growth’s sake. Facebook is leading the charge. On September 27th in Australia, Facebook launched an initiative to hide the amount of “likes” someone gets on their post. Commenting on the recent endeavor, TechCrunch Editor Josh Constine says , “Facebook’s goal here is to make people comfortable expressing themselves. It wants users to...

Tensions have risen to a peak for WeWork, a co-working/office space sharing company that just recently delayed its IPO. Its valuation has been cut from $47B to approximately $10B, its CEO Adam Neumann has stepped down (along with his wife who is a co-founder of the company), and to make matters worse, the company has since reported it will stop leasing new office space with property owners nationwide. Though seen as an effort to lower operating costs for WeWork, this decision might have lasting ripple effects on the nation’s real estate market. The real question, though, is how we got to this point. How does the fastest growing startup in history wake up one morning to see itself worth half of what it was the day before, not once, but twice? I posit this is because Neumann is an incredibly good salesman, and it took the rest of us too long to separate the fantasy of WeWork from reality. WeWork’s underlying business model is not that complex – initiate long-term lease agreements for...

With billions of dollars pouring into the cannabis industry and the market positioned to grow over 3x by 2022, the emergence of new companies in the space has been ubiquitous. Though this growth has no stopping point in sight, given the ever increasing acceptance of marijuana use nationwide, mainstream media headlines about the perils of “vaping” are making some customers more cautious about their ingestion of the substance. While many think companies like Juul Labs, creator of the nicotine salt based Juul e-cigarette, are the main problem, a deeper look into the stories of hospitalizations and vape related lung diseases shows that the main problem is the presence and inhalation of Vitamin E acetate oil — a chemical predominantly found in off-brand cannabis vape pens, not necessarily their nicotine based counterparts. This outbreak of vape related lung diseases prompts the need for better testing of products before they hit the shelves, and that is just what the Santa Ana based comp...

Abstract In a world that has become increasingly focused on competition and innovation, finding the “next best thing” is a topic often discussed within the startup ecosystem. Founders of new companies strive to find solutions to global problems through the creation of new businesses that hope to fill the void some customers feel in the marketplace. Though innovation is often thought to be focused around business, we all discuss innovative creations in a multitude of spheres — everything from healthcare to politics to education. In this day and age, one can hardly go a single day without hearing the words, “I wish I had a way to do ‘X’.” With a societal philosophy of the grass being greener on the other side (ie. the future), it would be difficult for us to discount the importance of companies that have inserted themselves into our daily lives; these are companies with products we did not know we needed until they became available.  In the startup space, we call these tec...