It’s one thing for a government agency to engage a private business to help verify the identity of tens of millions of taxpayers (who use that agency’s website), and handle their biometric and personal data for that purpose. It’s quite another to let that private business replace the government as the de facto gatekeeper and owner of that critical data. That can trigger loud opposition, as the IRS recently found out.
The IRS had the right idea when it set out to block exten
From a very young age, Britney Winters had an interest in hair, but she never imagined she’d launch a game-changing wig company. In 2019, after leaving her job at Shell, she launched Upgrade, a digital platform that allows customers to create customized, high-quality wigs. “I realized that an online destination for hair and wig services was missing from the industry,” the Harvard Business School graduate tells Fast Company. “We’re the only wig retailer where yo
Every product should have a story, a narrative that explains why it needs to exist and how it will solve your customer’s problems. A good product story has three elements:
It appeals to people’s rational and emotional sides. It takes complicated concepts and makes them simple. It reminds people of the problem that’s being solved—it focuses on the “why.”
The story of your product, your company, and your vision should drive everything you do. I remember
Turning electrons into money can be a dirty business. Just ask the people who live near the Greenidge Generation power plant on scenic Seneca Lake in Dresden, New York. The decommissioned coal-burning plant, which was purchased by a Connecticut private equity firm in 2014, has been converted to run on natural gas. Since 2020, though, it has provided power not to local customers, but to nearly 20,000 crypto-mining computers running 24/7. It produced Bitcoin worth more than $100 million last year.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. I’m sharing with you today my tool kit for focused work. This isn’t for a typical workday, because those include lots of meetings, teaching, and other appointments. Consider it a window into my deep work tool kit, for days when I have time to focus. I hope you’ll find elements that work for you too.
9 a.m. Trello. Chec
And as Fast Company launches its sixth annual World-Changing Ideas recognition program—a celebration of bold innovations aimed at changing our future for the better—we’re already thinking about how we can again leverage partnership to help one of those many companies and concepts driving transformation and igniting good across industries, communities, and cultures have an even bigger impact. In 2021, through a new partnership between Fast Company and Genpact, the digital tra
Founded in 1997 by Bert “Tito” Beveridge in a 1,000 square foot shack in rural Austin, over the last quarter-century Tito’s has grown into one of the country’s most well-known vodkas—complete with a distinctive and approachable all-American brand identity. This year, Tito’s celebrates its 25th anniversary with a campaign that blends its central Texan-rooted heritage with immersive hi-tech—along with a standalone virtual reality (VR) experience set
So, you want to go viral on TikTok? Well, so does everybody else. “This is where consumers are,” Movers+Shakers cofounder and CEO Evan Horowitz says of the platform. “All of Gen Z, pretty much all millennials—this is becoming their dominant social app. If you want to reach them, they’re here.” Along with cofounder and chief creative officer Geoffrey Goldberg, Horowitz and his team have helped brands like e.l.f. Cosmetics go viral on TikTok, racking up 20
Back when Briana Gordley was a full-time college student, working at a part-time internship making about $15,000 a year, she took a rare trip to the mall and wandered into Forever 21. One of the employees told her that the company had just started partnering with a service called Afterpay, which would allow Gordley to buy clothes without paying the full cost up-front, instead paying it off in four installments. It was the first time she’d ever heard of buy now, pay later products that all
We’ve always known video doorbells could record video of people within its viewfinder range. But, it turns out that they can also record audio, too. Consumer Reports recently reported that the Amazon Ring Video Doorbell 3 and the Arlo Ultra video doorbells can record audio as well as video to a range of between 20 and 25 feet—a revelation that means audio surveillance can occur even when we can’t see the video cameras. This makes it hard for us to know when we are unde