This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. This report is exclusively available to enterprise subscribers. To learn more about getting access to this report, email Senior Account Executive Jeff Jordan at jjordan@businessinsider.com, or check to see if your company already has access.

Although competition in the US wireless carrier market remains fierce, the price war among the Big Four US carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint — began to cool over the past year.

In an attempt to avoid further competition on price, carriers began shifting their focus to adding value to their mobile plans with new offerings to differentiate from the competition. This helped average revenue per user (ARPU) start to stabilize across all carriers in Q1 2018, after declining over the last two years.

The Big Four have now begun reshuffling their unlimited plans to lure subscribers by providing more options. This strategy has been unrolling in two flavors: introducing new, expensive unlimited plan tiers loaded with an array of features and choices, while also catering to price-sensitive customers with more affordable plans that strip away extra perks like free digital content and international coverage. As a result, a new battleground is emerging, with differentiation now coming down to the value loaded in their mobile plans.

Looking forward, the US carrier market will see competitive pressure pick up due to a number of trends: 

• The US smartphone market is creeping toward saturation. Penetration in the US hit 85% in 2018, up from 82% in 2017 and 77% in 2016.
• eSIM technology is making it easier for consumers to switch carriers. eSIM technology is a nonphysical SIM card slot that pairs with the physical SIM card to enable dual-SIM functionality — allowing customers to switch carriers without changing to a different SIM card or device.
• And cable mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are edging in on US carriers' share of wireless adds. Cable MVNOs, such as Comcast's Xfinity Mobile and Charter's Spectrum Mobile, are expected to snag roughly 50% of total wireless customer net adds, or about 2.2 million subscribers, by 2020.

All of this means fostering loyalty and winning over new subscribers is more important than ever for the Big Four, making it crucial for these mobile carriers to understand consumer sentiment around their services.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence uses consumer survey data from our proprietary panel, collected during 2017 and 2018, to evaluate which features are most important to consumers when selecting a mobile provider, as well as to determine which features would convince them to switch to the competition. It contains insights that can help telecoms guide strategic investment and marketing decisions to win and retain customers in this increasingly competitive space.

The companies mentioned in the report are: AT&T, Amazon, Apple, Charter, Comcast, Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, Sprint, T-Mobile, Tidal, and Verizon.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• T-Mobile came out on top again, outpacing the rest of the Big Four US carriers on value, loyalty, and satisfaction. T-Mobile customers want to see coverage improvements, though. 
• Verizon customers don't see much more value in its offerings than a year ago.
• AT&T was the only carrier to show declines in all capacities. 
• Sprint is still a good deal, but it doesn't offer much else.
• When it comes to features, subscribers still value the basics most. However, demand for international coverage is growing.
• 5G is the next major battleground for the Big Four, and the winner of the 5G race has the potential to leap ahead in customer volumes. 

 In full, the report:

• Determines the features that are most important to consumers when selecting a mobile provider.  
• Identifies which features are nice to have or essential in consumers' willingness to switch carriers. 
• Examines consumers' feelings on emerging technologies and trends in the mobile industry, such as 5G, new network-connected devices, and the T-Mobile-Sprint merger.

SEE ALSO: 5G in the IoT: How the next generation of wireless technology will transform the IoT

Join the conversation about this story »

• Microsoft plans to shut down its video streaming service Twitch, its answer to Amazon's popular Twitch, by July 22. 
• Microsoft spent tens of millions of dollars on Mixer, particularly within the last year as it lured top streamers like Tyler "Ninja" Blevins from Amazon's Twitch with big-money exclusivity deals.
• Business Insider spoke to six former Mixer employees, including the service's cofounder, to find out what happened. They described issues from technical fumbles, to business miscalculations, and allegations of a "toxic" working environment.
• Are you a current or former Mixer employee or insider? Contact these reporters via email at astewart@businessinsider.com and bgilbert@businessinsider.com,
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On June 22, seemingly out of nowhere, Microsoft announced plans to shutter a critical component of its Xbox ecosystem: The video streaming service Mixer, the tech titan's rival to Amazon's Twitch. 

Some Mixer employees only found out moments before it was announced to the public. "We didn't know this was coming," Mixer program manager Tara Voelker said on Twitter. "We found out right before you." Tuning in to live streams on Mixer, it was evident that the service's lifeblood — its video streamers — were finding out in real time, too.

It was especially shocking given that Microsoft had signed exclusivity deals with top streamers Tyler "Ninja" Blevins and Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek less than a year ago — deals that are said to be worth $30 million and $10 million, respectively. Both Ninja and Shroud are now back on the market as free agents. 

So, what happened?

Six former Mixer employees who spoke with Business Insider, including cofounder Matt Salsamendi, described years of issues — from technical fumbles, to business miscalculations, and allegations of a "toxic" working environment — that precipitated the ultimate decision to shut down the service.

The former employees said the pricey decision to bring on Ninja and Shroud, intended to make Mixer more competitive with Twitch and YouTube in a hurry, ultimately didn't pay off in the form of a vibrant, enduring community around the site.

They also described a cultural mismatch between Mixer and the larger Microsoft organization: Microsoft would assign managers with limited to no experience in the gaming industry to Mixer, former employees say, exacerbating long-running internal clashes over the direction of the platform.

Some of the employees asked not to be named to protect their business relationships, but their identities are known to Business Insider. Microsoft declined to make gaming chief Phil Spencer available for an interview, or provide information for this story beyond saying the company is "committed to redeploying people and technology across our team wherever possible" and sharing comments Spencer made in a blog post.

This is how Microsoft's Mixer went from promising acquisition to suddenly shuttered in just a few years.

Mixer was always a long shot in a market dominated by Twitch and YouTube.

Mixer was founded by Matt Salsamendi and James Boehm as a Seattle-based startup called Beam, an upstart rival to Twitch that prided itself on its low-latency streaming technology.

Salsamendi was just 18 years old when Microsoft acquired the startup in 2016 for an undisclosed amount. Not long after the acquisition, Beam was renamed to Mixer, even as Microsoft integrated it with the Xbox One games console and Windows 10 operating system (though the Windows 10 integration was removed late last year).

But Amazon already had a significant head start by the time Microsoft got into the live streaming business. Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014 for $970 million, and the service grew into a behemoth in the following years. It is the de facto standard in video streaming services, despite well-funded competition from the likes of Facebook, Microsoft, and Google-owned YouTube.  

That reality wasn't lost on Mixer's founders. "We knew we were against the odds," Salsamendi told Business Insider in a phone interview. 

"Twitch had a huge first-mover advantage, and YouTube Gaming had a second-mover advantage," Wedbush managing director Michael Pachter said. "They were trying to 'me, too' in a market that already had two strong players."

Despite years of trying, Mixer never managed to garner enough viewers to compete with Twitch. Across the last 12 months, Mixer rarely exceeded 50,000 concurrent viewers while Twitch consistently had over 1 million and topped 2 million multiple times, according to streaming statistic website TwitchTrack.

The competition from Amazon's Twitch was a foundational issue that Mixer never overcame. 

Mixer shifted away from cultivating its own talent, and towards attracting big talent.

The problem with competing with an incumbent like Twitch is getting the would-be audience to shift their viewing habits. To do that, you need top streamers that are worth tuning in for. But it's difficult to convince that kind of talent to leave Twitch or YouTube for a service with a smaller audience, resulting in a sort of cyclical problem.

"One of the big challenges is you're fighting the chicken and egg problem," Salsamendi said, "where bringing streamers over is dependent on them having an audience and vice versa." 

Former employees said that Mixer tried two different strategies for increasing viewership:

1. Create a better platform than Twitch, in terms of performance and features, thus attracting streamers who could cultivate their own community on the site.
2. Pay millions of dollars to secure exclusivity deals with high-profile streamers, thus bringing their viewers to the platform.

Early on in its existence, Mixer focused on the first strategy: former Mixer employee Wes Wilson told Business Insider the company brought in an expert in online influencers in the summer of 2017 to deliver an internal lecture called "Why not just hire PewDiePie?"

The upshot of the lecture was that it would be both better and more cost-effective for Mixer to invest in helping smaller streamers cultivate their audiences, rather than shell out for deals with established superstars like top YouTuber Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg. 

Just months after that lecture, though, that approach apparently fell out of favor at Mixer, even as viewership plateaued, Wilson said. He said that the company shifted gears to focus on landing big streamers who could bring over a large audience quickly.

In 2019, the company spent tens of millions of dollars on two particularly high-profile exclusivity deals with two of the highest-profile streamers: Tyler "Ninja" Blevins and Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek. 

Microsoft did not comment on the lecture or any change in strategy.

Bringing on Ninja and Shroud didn't have the desired effect on Mixer's community.

Despite luring Ninja and those other top streamers, a report earlier this year suggested Mixer's viewership in January increased less than 2% compared with the previous year. 

Milan Lee, a Mixer employee who worked for the company between May 2018 and May 2019, said that in the end, luring Ninja and Shroud to the platform never had its intended effect. 

"The platform never technically grew," Lee said. "The addition of Shroud [and] Ninja...was supposed to ultimately bring over their communities and help grow the platform from the top down." Instead, those communities came for the big names and left when those big names weren't live. "Their communities never really stayed," Lee said.

Looking back, Salsamendi — who left Mixer in October 2019 — said that the big-money deals were a tactical error, and that the company should have invested in shoring up the communities that were forming organically on the service. 

"It's kind of like putting a skyscraper up in the middle of a desert," he said. "You have to build infrastructure around it, from a community standpoint, for those occupants of the skyscraper, right?"

"We were never going to win by trying to 'out-Twitch' Twitch," Wilson said. "You can't just copy a platform and expect to win market share. That's not the way it works. If people want YouTube, they are going to go to YouTube."

Former employees say Mixer was plagued with technical issues.

Meanwhile, those streamers who took a chance on the upstart service were often faced with technical issues.

Streams would break and become unable to be viewed, former employees said, with Mixer itself sometimes experiencing outages. Rather than prioritizing the technical fixes necessary to address the problem, former employees said, the company instead focused on the interactive elements of the service — allowing viewers to vote on what the streamer should do next, for instance, or even to take control of some aspects of the game. 

"A lot of decisions were made about cool new features rather than the infrastructure, so the site went down frequently," the former employee said. One such example was a feature that enabled users to use images called stickers within chats. "While the stickers are really cool," they said, "if you have to reload the site or the stream, you don't care about stickers."

Wilson, who worked for Mixer from December 2016 until his termination in September 2018, outlined similar criticisms in a September 2018 email he sent to Microsoft's gaming chief Phil Spencer and CEO Satya Nadella. Wilson shared that email with Business Insider this week.

In the letter, he said Mixer's platform suffered from reliability issues — video delays, chat issues, and frequent bugs — and that "Mixer has been spending preposterous numbers on non-domestic streamers that do not translate into platform growth."

He expanded on that note this week. "We had a lot of very creative and scrappy engineers eager to keep our tech ahead of our competition," Wilson told Business Insider. "Sadly, instead of capitalizing on those people, they sidelined them. Then they focused on creating bells and whistles rather than increasing stability and reliability."

Morale inside Mixer was low after a leadership exodus.

The former employees say that over the years since the acquisition, Microsoft had re-tasked several managers to various areas of responsibility at Mixer, resulting in a series of culture clashes and disagreements over the future of the platform. 

Many at Mixer saw the growth of community on the site as the key measure of success, while the transfers from the larger Microsoft organization were sometimes more focused on the bottom line, sources said. Several of those transplants held managerial roles, but had little experience in the gaming industry, the former employees said, exacerbating the friction.

So when several leaders and both of its original founders left Microsoft in late 2019, morale at Mixer plummeted, sources said. 

"And with that, a lot of the excitement and passion left," another former employee who asked not to be named said of the leadership exodus. 

Signs of the morale issues at Mixer surfaced publicly earlier this year in a video of a Mixer town hall-style team meeting where Shilpa Yadla, appointed general manager and overall chief of the Mixer division in December, told employees to stop acting so negative about the state of the service. 

"I'll ask all of you to decide where you want to be. Either you want to complain and nag or whatever and feel negative about everything," Yadla said in the video, as reported at the time by Business Insider. "Positivity is what gets us anywhere," she said elsewhere in the video. "I cannot tolerate negativity."

Microsoft confirmed the authenticity of the video to Business Insider at the time, but declined to offer more details.

Some former employees say the environment at Mixer was 'toxic.'

Some of the former employees have also said Mixer had a "toxic" workplace environment. 

The afternoon before the announcement of the shutdown, Lee, the former Mixer employee, who is Black, wrote a public post in which he said Microsoft failed to take action after investigating complaints he made to human resources and management, particularly about a director in the Mixer division, who he alleges made racist comments.

He told Business Insider he met with Spencer after sharing his story, but Mixer's shutdown had already been announced by that time. 

Wilson, the former employee who wrote a letter to Nadella and Spencer, said Microsoft refused to investigate his own complaints about the same director and overall "toxic working conditions," which he said led to his termination from the company. He told Business Insider that he never received a response from Microsoft about the letter. 

A former employee who asked to use only her first name, Marisa, penned a public post describing negative interactions with the director, which she said ultimately led to her own termination from Mixer. Mixer, she told Business Insider, "became far too corporate and ignored the needs and the voices of the community."

"We do not tolerate any form of discrimination and thoroughly investigate all employee concerns. We do not discuss the details of such investigations," a Mixer spokesperson told Business Insider on Monday.

Spencer has publicly stated that the decision to shutter Mixer had been in the works even before the allegations raised this week came to light. But some, at least, believe that the cultural issues at the division contributed to the final outcome. 

"At the end of the day, Xbox will protect itself and the company. And Mixer might have been just too much trouble," the unnamed former employee who spoke about the leadership exodus said. "But closing it down is a way to sweep the problems under the carpet. The problems are real and they should be part of the solution no matter what."

Do you have information about Mixer? Contact these reporters via email at astewart@businessinsider.com and bgilbert@businessinsider.com, message Ashley Stewart on Twitter @ashannstew and Ben Gilbert on Twitter @realbengilbert, or send Ashley a secure message through Signal at 425-344-8242.

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• When iOS 14 arrives this fall, it will bring with it some small but meaningful changes to help navigate a cluttered iPhone. 
• Apple added a tool called App Library, which allows you to sort through a catalog of your apps rather than having several app pages on your home screen. 
• The new iOS will also allow you to pin conversations to the top of the Messages app so you can find them more quickly. 
• There's a new emoji search function as well, which will more easily surface the exact emoji you're looking for, and the ability to add searchable captions to photos. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple unveiled its latest iPhone software this week, and with it, some useful features that will help navigate even the most crowded of iPhones.  

When the iOS 14 software arrives this fall, it will contain major changes to the iPhone's home screen — including redesigned and movable widgets — along with a new translation app, privacy improvements, and the ability to start your car using just your phone. 

But in a time when iPhones can top out at 512 GB of storage, your phone can quickly become filled with hundreds of apps, photos, messages, and more. With the new update, Apple seems to have realized how difficult it's become to find the thing you need when you need it. Tucked inside the new update are some small but helpful new features that seem to be aimed at making your iPhone easier to use and quicker to navigate. 

Here are four small but meaningful new features that should help cut through the clutter. 

App Library

The advent of the App Store in 2008 sparked an exponential growth in apps for the iPhone — these days, iPhone users have around 1.85 million apps to choose from, according to Statista estimates from last month. All that choice means our iPhones are more crowded than ever, with individual apps for everything from your local food delivery service to the nearest hospital. 

Apple seems to have realized this, adding a new tool to iOS 14 called App Library. The new feature will automatically organize your apps based on type, allowing you to hide pages and pages of apps and reduce clutter on your device. The App Library will also automatically show you apps it thinks you might need.

You'll be able to see your App Library by swiping to the end of your home screen pages. Plus, when you go to search for an app, iOS 14 will sort them in alphabetical order, which will hopefully make the specific app you need easier to find. 

Searchable photo and video captions

With more storage has come the ability to hold more photos and videos on our devices — that also means it can be difficult to find the exact image you're searching for. And while the Photos app already had a search function, it's not always foolproof. With iOS 14, however, you'll be able to add captions to your photos and videos, which will be helpful for two reasons: to add context to an image so you no longer wonder, months later, "Why did I take this photo?"; and, more importantly, so the caption will show up when you search for specific keywords. The captions will also sync through iCloud and show up on all your synced devices. 

Pinned conversations

In another time-saving move, Apple will now let you pin your most frequently active conversations to the top of the app, allowing you to access them more easily. When someone is typing or you receive a message in one of the pinned conversations, it will appear above the person's bubble, meaning you won't have to scroll down through you messages list to see it. 

Emoji search

Each year, the Unicode Consortium approves dozens of new emojis, which typically arrive on iPhones in the fall. But each new batch means our iPhones are getting more and more crowded, and finding the exact symbol you're looking for can be challenging — while emojis are sorted into type, it's not always easy to remember which category each characters falls under. In iOS 14, that problem will be eliminated: Apple is adding emoji search to the iPhone keyboard, so you can type in what you're looking for and the corresponding emoji will pop up. 

Apple typically releases its latest iPhone software in the fall, so iOS 14 will likely arrive for the iPhone 6S or newer in September. 

SEE ALSO: Apple just unveiled the next version of its iPhone software, iOS 14. Here are the biggest changes coming to your iPhone this fall.

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• Facebook faces a growing advertiser boycott over its failure to curb hate speech on the social network.
• Unlike many previous scandals that Facebook has weathered, this directly impacts its bottom line.
• The company has announced a bunch of new rules and changes intended to appease its critics.
• But some civil rights groups say it's not enough, and the situation will only get more heated as the 2020 US election approaches.

Coca-Cola. Verizon. Unilever. Honda. The North Face. Patagonia. REI. The list keeps growing.

Over the past week, growing numbers of high-profile brands have signed on to boycott Facebook's advertising throughout July, in protest at its perceived inaction on hate speech. The Silicon Valley-based social networking giant has faced angry brand boycotts before — but never on this scale.

Facebook is now scrambling to make peace, announcing a slew of new rules and features around safeguarding elections and tackling hate speech, while seeking to reassure advertisers that it is committed to tackling the societal issues to which it has been accused of contributing.

For years now, Facebook has stumbled from scandal to scandal, from its role in spreading hate speech that fueled genocide in Myanmar to political firm Cambridge Analytica's misappropriating the sensitive data of tens of millions of users.

But these crises, while reputationally damaging, have never been enough to stop the company's revenue figures climbing inexorably higher — or to convince significant numbers of users to leave the service.

The July ad boycott is something else, though: a reaction to Facebook's crises that may actually hurt the bottom line in a meaningful way.

Of course, the boycott has significant limitations, as Gizmodo reporter Shoshana Wodinsky pointed out on Friday. Some of the brands are only suspending their ad spend in the US, while others are refusing to comment on whether they'll continue to spend ad dollars on the Facebook Audience Network — an off-site advertising network that Facebook also operates. It's not going to put Facebook out of business, in other words.

But it still illustrates a growing commercial toxification of Facebook's brand that is now powerful enough to convince major international brands to publicly distance themselves from the company — generating a fresh round of negative publicity and damaging Facebook's reputation further in the process.

On Friday, Zuckerberg took the unusual step of broadcasting part of his weekly Facebook-wide team meeting publicly, announcing several new changes aimed at placating the growing disquiet from advertisers, users, and his own employees. 

Facebook will now label posts from politicians that it would normally take down for breaking its rules but have been left up because of their newsworthiness — an abrupt reversal on Facebook's earlier opposition to such a feature. Twitter recently affixed warnings to tweets by President Donald Trump that it said glorified violence. Facebook declined to, sparking the biggest internal employee protest in the company's history.

It's also tightening up its rules on hate speech and advertising, prohibiting ads that present immigrants and refugees as inferior. (It's a change that raised some eyebrows as to why such ads weren't already banned. As Sheera Frenkel, a reporter with The New York Times, tweeted: "Every time [Facebook] announces changes to their polices on hate speech ... I find myself wondering HOW WAS THIS ALLOWED UNTIL NOW.")

The features announced on Friday seem insufficient for tamping down the frustration among advertisers and civil rights group. 

Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, one of the civil rights organisations behind the boycott campaign, tweeted: "A few minutes into the statement, Mark Zuckerberg has already said that he won't be fact-checking politicians' claims. Already, this is nowhere near enough ... What we've seen in today's address from Mark Zuckerberg is a failure to wrestle with the harms FB has caused on our democracy & civil rights. If this is the response he's giving to major advertisers withdrawing millions of dollars from the company, we can't trust his leadership."

Particularly troubling for Facebook is that Unilever — one of the world's largest advertisers and owner of top consumer brands such as Hellman's mayonnaise, Lipton tea and Axe body spray — didn't just agree to boycott the social network in July. It is hitting pause on all advertising on Facebook and Instagram until the end of 2020, a full six months. (It is also pausing ad spend on Twitter.) "there is much more to be done, especially in the areas of divisiveness and hate speech during this polarized election period in the U.S.," the company wrote in a blog post. "Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society."

Facebook is now in an unenviable position. It faces employee unrest, negative sentiment among advertisers, and constant attacks from politicians on both the left and the right in the US. The 2020 presidential election draws closer, with the promise of ever-more heated political rhetoric, set against the backdrop of a resurgent pandemic and economic devastation. Things seem unlikely to improve.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

SEE ALSO: Facebook is going to start labeling posts from politicians that break its rules but are 'newsworthy' enough to remain on the platform

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

• North Carolina healthcare system Novant Health is using drones to deliver PPE.
• The deliveries, using drones from Zipline, are the first long-range drone logistics flights approved by the FAA.
• Zipline is also known for its drone deliveries in Ghana and Rwanda. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

San Francisco company Zipline is using drones in new ways in healthcare to face the threat of coronavirus. Through a partnership with Novant Health, a non-profit healthcare system in North Carolina, Zipline has used long-range drones to deliver PPE to providers.

Zipline got a special FAA waiver for these trips, which are the first of their kind in the US. As more routes are approved, the company has plans to expand deliveries to other clinics and even to patients' homes. It also carried out similar work in Ghana and Rwanda, using drones for contactless transportation of COVID-19 test samples from rural areas to cities with labs to get results in a timely fashion. 

Drones have been used for medical deliveries in the US before. In May, UPS began delivering CVS prescriptions throughout one retirement community in Florida, but these were short deliveries of only about half a mile to a central location in the community. On the other hand, Zipline is carrying out the first long-range deliveries, right to the locations where they are needed.

Here's how it works. 

SEE ALSO: The rise and fall of the Segway, the oft-mocked 2-wheeler that was supposed to revolutionize the way we get around cities

So far, the FAA has approved two routes, totaling between 20 and 30 miles round trip.

Zipline drones operate out of an emergency drone fulfillment center in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

All drones take off and land at the fulfillment center.

The six foot long drones are autonomous, with an 11 foot wingspan.

Deliveries are dropped from the sky, where the drone drops to a safe height when it reaches the destination.

The box of PPE is attached to a small parachute at the designated drop off location.

The drones have a range of 100 miles round trip, meaning they can deliver PPE to 30 facilities in the area as routes are approved by the FAA.

The Zipline drones can travel up to 80 miles per hour, and carry four pounds of cargo.

From the Zipline fulfillment center, drones can cover an area of nearly 8,000 square miles.

They can micro-target deliveries within that area, delivering up to two tons of medical supplies each week.

Zipline and Novant Health plan to continue and grow their partnership over the next two years.

Eventually, their goal is to rethink health logistics and enable contactless delivery to businesses, healthcare facilities, and even patients' homes.

North Caroline Secretary of Transportation Eric Boyette said that he hopes drone delivery can help the overburdened supply chain. "We're living through an unprecedented situation, and we're going to need innovative solutions like this to get us through it," he said.

Before starting this partnership with Novant Health in May, Zipline was already involved in anti-coronavirus efforts in Ghana and Rwanda.

Beginning on April 17, Zipline drones were used to transport COVID-19 test samples.

Drones were used to collect test samples from 1,000 rural locations in Ghana to transport them to labs in the country's two largest cities.

Some flights were as long as 70 miles.

Zipline says these daily deliveries will continue as long as they are needed in Ghana's COVID-19 response.

All samples are packaged according to WHO guidelines and disinfected upon arrival.

The drones have the ability to detect in-flight issues and return to the fulfillment center if necessary.

In case of an emergency where a return isn't possible, each drone has a parachute to make an emergency landing by slowly gliding to the ground.

Drone delivery has improved COVID-19 testing in Ghana, reducing wait time from hours or days to just a single hour, and cutting the chances of damaged samples due to broken cold chain storage.

• Amazon Web Services just launched Honeycode, a no-code tool that makes it easy for users to build apps from a spreadsheet without having to write code. 
• Analysts agree that this was a step AWS had to take to stay competitive as no-code and low-code tools are becoming key for cloud companies to have in their product portfolios, but it will face stiff competition from Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce, and even smaller vendors like Smartsheet or Mendix.
• AWS's core audience has long been more technical developers, but analysts say Honeycode can attract the next wave of developers and business users who will want to build apps without having the technical skills to do so with code. 
• AWS is entering the low-code and no-code market at a time when it's poised to see rapid growth. As businesses digitize and adopt remote work more permanently, there will be a greater demand for apps to help manage work, analysts say.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon Web Services is making moves into the red-hot market for tools that let nontechnical users build apps with little to no code. Its new no-code tool, Honeycode, allows users to build apps from a spreadsheet without having to touch any code at all — similar to tools like Airtable or Appsheet, which Google acquired in January. 

Tools that let non-developers build apps are seeing increased demand in the remote work era, as businesses have a greater need to digitize but not enough developers to build tools from scratch. A Gartner report published in March estimated that 75% of large enterprises will be using at least four low-code development tools by 2024 — both within their IT departments and for projects undertaken by non-engineers within the company. That will likely be accelerated now due to the pandemic, analysts say. 

AWS had to create a no-code tool to compete with its competitors, as such products become a key part of other cloud portfolios, those analysts said. They also warned that AWS is entering a crowded market with competition from both big players like Microsoft and Google and smaller startups, too, though some said that because the market is growing so fast, there's room for AWS to make its mark despite the late start. 

Until now, Amazon was one of the only large cloud vendors that hadn't yet invested in the space. Microsoft's Power Platform product has been gaining traction, Google acquired AppSheet which lets users build apps using Google Sheets, and Salesforce has long had no-code and low-code tools in its platform. Honeycode is AWS's bid to grow its customer base beyond its typical developer user base and target business users. 

"As more and more industries are relying on software as part of what they do, there's more and more demand for developers," KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, industry analyst at RedMonk, told Business Insider. "One thing that no-code and low-code promises to do is allow folks who do not necessarily have in depth coding skills to build applications that their organizations need."

AWS has typically appealed to developers but doesn't have many products that appeal to non-technical users. It will will be going after a totally new customer base with Honeycode, some analysts added. 

"The low-code, no-code movement is really removing a layer and expediting the process of building applications that can help companies solve problems faster," Dan Newman, an analyst at Futurum Research said. "Amazon or AWS getting into this space, shouldn't surprise anyone."

AWS's Honeycode is taking on Microsoft and Google Cloud

Many analysts see two main competitive challenges for AWS as it enters the no-code market. The first is that it doesn't have a productivity suite or business applications where it's already built a customer base, unlike both Microsoft and Google. Its second challenge is that it doesn't have business applications it can connect to Honeycode to pull data from. 

Honeycode is similar to a lot of existing no-code tools and uses a spreadsheet interface that many non-technical users are already familiar with using. However, that means that, on the surface, there's not much to differentiate it from other tools on the market like Google's AppSheet, Airtable, or Glide. 

On top of that, Amazon doesn't have any existing products that would draw in a large non-technical customer base and provide a backbone for the no-code tool, said Jason Wong, an analyst at Gartner. "Why is this better than what users can do on Power Apps or AppSheet or dozens of other tools already out there?" he asked.

Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Valoir, echoed those thoughts and added that Amazon's primary buyer is in IT: Those users are not typically interested in low-code app development tools. She thinks it will be a challenge for Amazon to make itself more appealing than other low-code tools that have built a business audience. 

She also adds that Microsoft and Salesforce already have business applications for sales, services, and financial and resource management, which users can pull data from for the no-code or low-code tools they offer. 

"The advantage of the low-code is that I can expose application data, get access to application processes quickly for business users," Wettemann said. "If it's just a spreadsheet behind it without the integration of application data, it's limited in its value as an app."

AWS's larger ambitions with Honeycode

Despite the competition, many analysts agree that this was a step AWS had to take to stay competitive with companies who started investing in no-code and low-code tools earlier. 

It's a way for AWS to try to expand its business, which has long focused on developers. Given how simple Honeycode is, this is likely Amazon's way of testing the waters, Wong said. 

Honeycode was released in a trial mode and has a free version that up to 20 users can access, so Wong sees it as a data gathering exercise. AWS will see what kind of traction it gets and use that data to inform where it takes the tool next. That AWS chose to build a no-code tool in-house, versus acquiring a startup, means it probably has plans for integrating it with other AWS tools down the line like AppFlow, which integrates data between various cloud tools, Wong added. 

To differentiate itself from other tools already available, Wettemann said she thinks AWS may acquire a business application that handles enterprise resource management or supply chain management that can connect to Honeycode. Saying "we have it too" won't be a compelling enough reason for people to turn to AWS for a no-code tool, she said, but an app integration could add some additional value. 

Maribel Lopez, principal and founder of Lopez Research, sees Honeycode as a way for AWS to expand its core developer audience. Most of its users are technical, but Honeycode takes "the concept of app coding to the masses," she said, and could attract a second or third wave of users by making it easy to develop apps. 

"Is Honeycode going to revolutionize Amazon's business? No," Lopez told Business Insider. "Is it something that's going to create more stickiness and potentially broaden their base of people who use their app dev tools? Yes, and that's important."

Amazon is betting on the no-code, low-code market at a time when it's predicted to grow rapidly

Ultimately, analysts say that AWS is entering the low-code and no-code market at a time when it's poised to see rapid growth. As businesses digitize and adopt remote work more permanently, there will be an ever greater demand for apps to help manage work. 

"AWS understands that in everything — from AI, no-code, to automation — speed is going to be one of the biggest differentiators of business in the future," Newman said. "How quick can you take an idea and turn it into a reality?"

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said although competition will be intense, he doesn't think it will be a winner-take-all market.

For smaller startups to succeed, they will have to specialize in certain industries like financial or healthcare. Meanwhile, large players like Microsoft are taking the approach of meeting all of a company's application needs, from no-code to developer tools, and others like Google will take a predictive technology approach that helps suggest to users what data they should be connecting and building apps from.

Raúl Castañón-Martínez, senior analyst at 451 Research, also says it adds competition for smaller vendors like Smartsheet and Mendix, even if AWS is later to the game than others. 

"It's definitely a bit of interesting news," Castañón-Martínez told Business Insider. "On one hand, it might seem like they're a little bit late. There's a lot of competition from different types of players. On the other hand, we have to take them seriously given the reach."

Cloud giants are looking for ways to help customers address the lack of developer talent, and Honeycode is Amazon's own shot at doing that. 

"These are tools that will help knowledge workers become a software developer of their own day-to-day work and activity," Castañón-Martínez said.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: Bessemer VCs expect massive exits for cloud startups in the coming year, as the average valuation for top companies has soared 58% over four years

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NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

• Google has transformed more than any other Silicon Valley company in the last decade – and a trip back to its old corporate website reveals just how much.
• A look at the website from 2009 shows just how much the company has transformed, from around 20,000 full-time employees of the time to more than 120,000 today.
• "Google is not a conventional company, and we don't intend to become one," it read more than a decade ago. But employees say Google has become a much more corporate company.
• Do you work at Google? You can contact this reporter securely using encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 628-228-1836) or encrypted email (hslangley@protonmail.com).
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A lot has changed in the past decade – take a trip back to Google's website circa 2009 and you'll appreciate just how much.

Google has arguably seen the biggest transformation of any Silicon Valley company in the last decade. In fact, Google isn't even in charge of Google anymore – it lives under parent company Alphabet.

But the changes haven't been only structural: as Google has grown in size, its company culture has shifted dramatically. As of last count, there are 123,048 full-time employees on Google's payroll. In 2009, there were around just 20,000.

This week, we journeyed back in time, via the Wayback Machine, to Google's old corporate information pages, and it reveals a lot about how the company has changed over more than a decade.

"Google is not a conventional company, and we don't intend to become one," read the description on the company's Life at Google page back in 2009.

"True, we share attributes with the world's most successful organizations – a focus on innovation and smart business practices comes to mind – but even as we continue to grow, we're committed to retaining a small-company feel."

But many employees believe this "small-company feel," which Google tried to hold onto for so long, no longer exists, as it inevitably shifted to a more corporate culture over time.

When cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially stepped down last year, it marked the end of an era for Google, but the culture change had been happening for several years – and insiders say 2018 was a major tipping point.

Google's old website also had a list of the "Top 10 Reasons to Work at Google." Check them out:

Some of these still ring true today, particularly the office perks, which have always been one of Google's great talent magnets – although employees have had to forego almost all of these while working from home during the pandemic.

But while Google could boast about its great benefits for all employees in 2009, today the company has an enormous shadow workforce of contractors and vendors which outnumber full-time employees, yet don't enjoy many of the same benefits – something that the pandemic has further highlighted.

'Don't be evil'

Take a look at Google's philosophical guidelines and things start to look even more dated.

Take, for example, Google's rule that "you can make money without doing evil" – a nugget of corporate philosophy Google more famously codified as "don't be evil." But since 2018 Google has moved away from this motto, which no longer prefaces the company's code of conduct.

It's also interesting to see how Google once described its internet-indexing PageRank technology. "This technique actually improves as the web gets bigger, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted," it read under commandment number 4: "Democracy on the web works."

In the time since, Google's technology has grown so extraordinarily that it's now facing the possibility of multiple antitrust lawsuits being brought against its search and advertising business for using its monopoly power.

There are plenty of other great nuggets that highlight how much Google has changed over the years, and we recommend you to go back and look at some of these pages yourself.

Pay particularly close attention to the Google corporate management list which has changed considerably, not only in the names featured but in the corporate structure.

You might notice a few of the old guard who have stuck around long enough to find a place inside CEO Sundar Pichai's list of direct reports.

SEE ALSO: Meet the 15 Google execs who report to CEO Sundar Pichai and are leading the internet company's most critical businesses

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NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

• Major advertisers like Unilever, Verizon, and Honda said they would halt ads on Facebook after civil rights groups called on the social platform to better police hate speech and misinformation.
• The moves by big brands is unlikely to make a big dent in Facebook's $70 billion advertising business since most of its advertisers are small to midsize marketers.
• Meanwhile, these boycott statements are temporary and vaguely written, which could make it easier for brands to resume spending after July while winning goodwill in the meantime.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Friday, a parade of advertisers including Unilever, Honda America, and Coke said they would temporarily quit Facebook, citing hate speech on the platform.

They joined nearly 100 advertisers like The North Face, Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's, that have responded to the call to boycott Facebook.

Facebook has faced pressure before for letting toxic content spread, but there are differences this time. The boycott grew out of a widespread movement against police brutality that has employees calling on their employers to take a stand. Company boards are now getting involved as well, marketing veteran Rishad Tobaccowala said. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for advertisers to use their power to hold Facebook accountable.

But most experts agree: Facebook's $70 billion ad business will be just fine, at least for now.

Take Unilever. The packaged goods giant is one of the world's biggest advertisers but only spent $42.4 million on Facebook ads in the US last year, according to data from analytics firm Pathmatics cited by The New York Times.

Most of Facebook's advertising comes from small companies that can't afford to turn off the channel. Smaller brands that join the boycott could risk losing up to 80% of their monthly revenue, said Devin Whitaker, director of performance marketing at ad agency Good Moose.

Meanwhile, advertisers like Coke can come off looking virtuous by pulling their ads with statements that increasingly upped the ante.

"There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media," Coca-Cola CEO and Chairman, James Quincey, said in saying it would pause ads not just on Facebook but all social platforms.

"It's a good PR move," said Jonathan Mendez, a longtime ad tech entrepreneur and now adviser to Telephónica. "There's a sensitivity for brands around social causes, and brands want to be on the side that's good. There's very little margin for error. Part of the natural outgrowth of that strategy is a need to become more sensitive. That's why they're coming out against Facebook."

Plus, a lot of advertisers spend less in the summer and in an election year anyway because sales are slow and there's so much noise to break through.

Also, the boycotts are temporary and follow carefully scripted language, which enables the companies to resume advertising in a few weeks or when their CMOs' vague conditions are met.

Honda America said it would stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram "for the month of July." Verizon said it was "pausing our advertising until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable" but didn't give specifics. 

"It would be great if Verizon would say what an 'acceptable solution' was," Mendez said.

Not everyone has publicly joined the boycott, either. Top advertiser Procter & Gamble told Business Insider that it was reviewing all platforms on which it advertises for objectionable content, but would not publicly name any from which it might pull ads. 

"We will not advertise on or near content that we determine is hateful, denigrating or discriminatory, and if we determine that occurs, we will take action up to and including stopping spending," P&G's chief brand officer Marc Pritchard said.

Facebook is taking some steps to address advertisers' concerns

Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his deputies have been making the rounds with top advertisers to assure them it's making progress on tamping down hate speech. On June 26, Facebook announced new policies around using hate speech in ads.

Zuckerberg said that the company would expand its ad policy to prohibit claims that people with a specific race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion are a threat to anyone else. Facebook will also begin labeling content deemed "newsworthy" like a speech from a politician — even if it violates the company's policies.

"In the same way that news outlets will often report what a politician says, we think it's important that people should generally be able to see it for themselves on our platforms, too," Zuckerberg said during a public livestream of the company's town hall meeting.

"We invest billions of dollars each year to keep our community safe and continuously work with outside experts to review and update our policies," said a Facebook spokesperson. "We know we have more work to do, and we'll continue to work with civil rights groups, GARM, and other experts to develop even more tools, technology and policies to continue this fight."

But some civil-rights groups slammed Facebook's most recent updates. Color of Change president Rashad Robinson tweeted that the changes that Zuckerberg announced don't go far enough. 

"Labeling 'newsworthy' content so the public can judge for themselves is not a new policy," he wrote. "It's more of the same, and it won't cut it."

The boycott movement has long-term risks for Facebook

Pressure on social platforms has been gaining steam for years. Back in 2017, advertisers like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase, and Verizon pulled ads off YouTube after well publicized incidents of objectionable videos. For advertisers, the risk of seeming to support pedophilia or other extreme content with their ads outweighed any potential short term loss in sales.

But advertisers had grown dependent on these platforms to reach customers, and eventually came creeping back.

There are headaches to boycotting Facebook, too, even if it's just a month. Advertisers have to reallocate the money they spent on Facebook, which they love for its ease of buying and targeting.

And if your sales are slow in the coronavirus, it feels like the worst time to stop advertising in a place that you know works.

One CMO of a major national corporation, requesting anonymity to speak freely, said it's been a constant fight to cancel Facebook advertising because internal stakeholders are convinced it will kill their sales.

But while Facebook might be fine in the short term, Tobaccowala believes it will see a loss in spending in a year or two as companies start to take steps now to untether themselves from the platform.

"They have to figure out: How do I sell stuff now, show I'm taking this seriously, but most important, how do I make sure a year in a from now, I'm not in the same hole?" he said. "It takes time for large organizations to recalibrate."

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NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

• Spot, the four-legged robot from Boston Dynamics, will soon have an additional robot arm.
• Boston Dynamics also said that it will be available for home use "someday."
• Spot became available for commercial sale earlier in June, listed at $74,500.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Spot, Boston Dynamics' famous four-legged robot, is getting another upgrade. Founder Marc Raibert said that the company will start selling Spot with a robot arm, Emil Protalinski at Venture Beat reported. Raibert said that the arm will be available "in a few months."

"Once you have an arm on a robot, it becomes a mobile manipulation system. It really opens up just vast horizons on things robots can do. I believe that the mobility of the robot will contribute to the dexterity of the robot in ways that we just don't get with current fixed factory automation" Raibert said.

Spot just became available for commercial sale earlier this month. For $74,500, Spot is ready for use by "developers eager to explore how flexible mobile robots can be adapted for tasks ranging from industrial inspection to entertainment."

Currently, Spot is only available to US customers, and they can expect orders to be fulfilled in six to eight weeks after a $1,000 deposit.

The company suggests several uses for the dog-like robot: "Inspect dangerous, inaccessible, and remote environments," "automate data collection on your site," and "carry payloads on unstructured or unknown terrain." The addition of an arm could potentially expand these uses. 

Previously, companies used Spot as part of the"Early Adopter Program," which meant they could lease the robot under certain conditions. If customers violated the agreement, Boston Dynamics could reclaim the robot and end the relationship. Now, interested customers can buy Spot directly. 

Raibert also told Venture Beat that Spot will eventually be available for home use, using the example of a Spot model putting away laundry in a home. For now, Boston Dynamics' terms and conditions clarify that Spot is not safe around children or in a home.

Even without the addition of an arm, Spot has already found many uses. Boston area hospitals started reaching out to Boston Dynamics in early March asking for robots that could help minimize staff exposure to COVID-19. Spot robots were equipped with iPads and two-way robots to worth with COVID-19 patients at the hospital. Using this setup, doctors could talk to patients and evaluate symptoms from afar.

In New Zealand, Boston Dynamics' Spot partnered with another company, Rocos, to herd sheep and collect agricultural data. Rocos said that its software will make Spot more useful on remote missions, and make the data collected by Spot more useful and accessible to remote teams.

Spot was also used in a park in Singapore to encourage social distancing and tell people to stay at least one meter apart. It has also been used on construction sites, by Massachusetts State Police, and in other projects.

SEE ALSO: A Las Vegas apartment complex added an esports lounge as an amenity and says its the first of its kind in the US — see inside

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NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

• The early 20th-century was a period of rapid innovation.
• 120 years later, innovation has given way to consolidation: the automobile, the airplane, and stuff like nuclear power and computers are valued as legacy investments.
• Tesla isn't. The company's value confuses everyone because they're trying to think of the firm in 2020 terms.
• They should be thinking of Tesla in terms of the radical innovations of the early 20th century.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

One of the more vexing developments for Tesla critics is the company's stock-price surge of nearly 350% over the past 12 months — and more than 30% since the beginning of the year, as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged auto sales worldwide.

General Motors, for example, has seen its shares decline 30% since the beginning of 2020. But the carmaker has actually turned in better-than-expected sales, thanks to the durable popularity of big (and profitable) pickup trucks.

For roughly the past five years, as Tesla's stock has fluctuated wildly, plunging to $150 but rocketing to more than $1,000, the debate about what's going on has typically been framed as Tesla-the-tech-company vs. Tesla-the-car company.

Numerous bulls argue that Tesla is, in fact, an innovative tech firm — a new Apple — that merits a Silicon Valley valuation. Bears counter that Tesla is, at base, a car company and should, someday, be valued accordingly.

I used to be in the latter camp, but the past year and a half has changed my mind. I don't, however, think that Tesla is a tech company. Instead, Tesla is a throwback — but a throwback squarely aimed at the future. For various reasons, we can't figure Tesla out because what it's doing is reminiscent of the nascent businesses of the early 20th century.

Tesla isn't mining tech or automotive — it's creating a new industry. The markets have figured this out and are pricing the company's stock accordingly. 

Here's how Tesla is doing what hasn't been done for over 100 years:

FOLLOW US: On Facebook for more car and transportation content!

The 19th century was defined by transportation technologies that revolved around the horse ...

... Railroads ...

... And the transition from the age of sail to the era of steamships, ocean liners, and later ships powered by oil.

Speaking of oil, "black gold" was worthless before the arrival of 20th-century technologies that spurred the development ...

... Of the automobile (Thanks, Henry Ford) and a wide array of modern technologies, including ...

... Plastic!

The 20th century also gave us powered, human flight, in 1903.

The pace of innovation was staggering. Less than a century after the Wright Brothers' flight, we had Boeing 747 jumbo jets.

We also had nuclear power ...

... nuclear weapons ...

... and a man on the Moon.

Tesla's beginnings were rather humble. Until 2012, it was selling exactly one all-electric car, and not very many of them.

But by 2019, Tesla has sold over 250,000 vehicles and dominated the EV market worldwide.

Tesla also sold power-storage technologies ...

... Solar roofs ...

... Autopilot semi self-driving systems ...

... And the company was constructing new factories at an industry-leading rate.

Tesla's grand ambition was to achieve CEO Elon Musk's goal of accelerating humanity's exit from the fossil-fuel age.

And just in case, he's also running SpaceX, with the objective of colonizing Mars to make humanity "multiplanetary."

When you add it all up, Tesla is more than the sum of its parts. It's a means to an end, and that end is as visionary as what happened 120 years ago with the first automobiles and airplanes.

• Ex-Googler Tabitha Salomon poured her life savings, as well as money from family and friends, into her dream company, a party-supply startup called Party Dash.
• It launched in February 2020, and weeks later, the pandemic hit. Parties were cancelled and she was facing financial ruin.
• As a black female founder, VCs had already turned her down. 
• But she was determined to succeed, no matter the circumstances.
• The solution came in part from her actress sister. The two realized they could match out-of-work teachers and performers with parents desperate for childcare and home-schooling help.
• And her new startup was born: Dash Camp, a virtual live summer camp, featuring high-level talent.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tabitha Salomon is the kind of meticulous overachiever who was born to be a party planner.

A Harvard MBA who spent four years at Google, she always dreamed of running her own company. 

After four years at Google with little career advancement, she realized, "I can't work in a place where someone else is determining my destiny."

So in February 2019, she quit her Google job —  over the concerns of her parents and childhood friends — to found a party supply startup.

"When I left Google, everyone called me crazy, right? It's the number one best company to work for in the world," Salomon said. She spent months pitching Silicon Valley VCs to raise the capital she needed to build her website, buy the stock, do the marketing, she said, all of whom took the meetings thanks to her Google resume, and then promptly turned her down, she said. 

As a black female founder CEO, Salomon felt like investors were imposing a higher bar on her for the level of homegrown growth they wanted to see before they wrote a term sheet. But she took it in stride.

"I just didn't get frustrated. I said, okay, it's different rules of engagement for me. So I'm going to go out and do what I need to do to come back with the numbers and the traction that is required," Salomon said.

So she raised funds from family and friends and a few angel investors that she politely declined to name, who invested an undisclosed amount. "But it wasn't like the millions of dollars that I saw some of my peers do," she says.

It was enough to pay a CTO, a UX designer, a marketeer and an intern and to buy stock.

The startup, Party Dash, launched on February 2020. Click a button and get everything you need to throw a space-themed party (or safari, unicorn, rainbow, etc) including cake, biodegradable serving utensils and decorations.

Salomon nabbed some early customers and thought she was on pace  to "disrupt" the $6 billion party-supply market, she says.

But the euphoria didn't last long. In March, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and everyone scurried into quarantine. Parties were dead.

"I invested in my entire life savings. I had secured investments from friends and family who all believe in me and my vision to help people celebrate better. And then the pandemic happens. It wasn't just me, but the party-supply industry dropped by more than 50%. And there was really no end in sight," she said.

People started ordering Party Dash supplies as a way to thank hospital workers and essential workers, but that wasn't enough of a revenue stream to really save the company.

And if fund raising from investors was impossible before the crises, it was a pipe dream now.

Determined not to lose everything, Salomon hit the phones, talking to her customers and target customers to find out another way to serve them.

Their unanimous complaint: balancing child care and home schooling while working their jobs. How could she possibly pirouette her party-supply company into a business that would solve that?

Discussing that with her Hollywood-actress sister, Nhadya Salomon, held the key. Salomon, has appeared in shows such as NBC's Chicago Med, Netflix's Orange Is the New Black, and was lamenting how the quarantine had put all of her actor and performer friends out of work.

So the sisters hatched a plan: what if they had the out-of-work performers entertain the kids? And Dash Camp was born.

In a matter of weeks, they had a curriculum, hired teachers, athletes and performers and through word-of-mouth, had a waiting list.

So they doubled down to add more teachers, more classes and, for the second time this year, Salomon, with her sister as cofounder, opened her startup to the public.

Dash Camp charges $99 per week for a two-week camp, delivered virtually, with live classes from 10-noon ET and same-day replays available from 1-3ET.

Meanwhile, as the economy reopens, her party business is showing sings of life, too, she says. So instead of going under, she's now running two companies. 

"There will always be parents who have some need, with kids at home, instead of them popping on TV or YouTube" Salomon says. Ultimately, she's got a vision to marry the two, where parents can order live or virtual entertainment as part of their party packages.

SEE ALSO: The two Black employees who took on Pinterest explain why they quit, their fight for pay, the death threats, the private investigator: 'It was a torturous experience'

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NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

Egon Durban, the co-CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, is a newly-minted billionaire drawing comparisons to Warren Buffett, with membership in some of golf's most exclusive clubs and an inside track to the Oscars.

A Texas native who made his name acquiring and then selling Skype, he has rapidly become the lead dealmaker on investments spanning entertainment, media, and technology. 

Under Durban, Silver Lake's name has recently been associated with pandemic-era investments into social media platform Twitter, home-for-rental company Airbnb, and travel site Expedia. Those deals and others have led some Silver Lake insiders to wonder if Durban may be flying too close to the sun.

The investments are flashier than the staid but dependable investments upon which Silver Lake made its name, backing the operations of software and hardware companies.

Silver Lake is almost finished raising its latest fund — one source said it could settle on as much as $18 billion — making it one of the largest buyout funds focused exclusively on tech investments, with the opportunity to reshape entire industries. 

Business Insider interviewed more than 40 people close to Durban and Silver Lake, including those who do or have worked directly with him and across from him, to understand his management style and how he's been able to amass his power inside the notoriously media-shy firm. 

YOU CAN READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE ON BI PREMIUM: We talked to 40 insiders about the meteoric rise of Silver Lake's Egon Durban, the tech-focused PE firm's top dealmaker who's about to get $18 billion more to invest

SEE ALSO: Hollywood's top talent agencies may need a bailout from their PE backers as the coronavirus hammers big bets on live sports and studio production

SEE ALSO: Silver Lake has been plowing money into bets like Airbnb, Twitter, and Waymo. Here's a look inside why it's being called the Warren Buffett of tech.

SEE ALSO: Silver Lake just added to a string of bets in the struggling travel sector by leading a $108 million investment in vacation property startup Vacasa

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NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

• With iOS 14, Apple is finally making big changes to the iPhone's home screen and how we interact with apps.
• The update will allow you to customize the home screen with widgets and introduces a new way to manage apps by automatically sorting them into categories.
• iOS 14 also brings App Clips: a feature for using part of an app when needed without having to fully install it.
• It shows that Apple is acknowledging that the smartphone experience is in need of an update, especially as more become used to accessing the internet more immediately though wearables and smart-home speakers.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The iPhone has changed in many ways since its debut in 2007, evolving from what was essentially an iPod touch with a cellular connection to becoming one of the most advanced personal computers in the world.

But there's one thing about the iPhone that hasn't changed much: its home screen.

Apps have always remained arranged in a grid of icons identical in size. Using them often means tapping an icon to launch an app and pressing the home button or swiping up from the bottom of the screen to exit.

That's about to change in some important ways when iOS 14, Apple's next major software update, rolls out this fall. Apple is implementing a slew of changes to the iPhone's home screen and the way apps work that will make the iPhone's home screen more customizable and dynamic than ever before.

There are three major changes coming in iOS 14 that will make using your iPhone feel different:

• New widgets that come in different sizes, show more information, and can finally be pinned to the main home screen.
• The App Library, which is essentially a smart folder Apple creates that automatically organizes and sorts your apps into categories.
• App Clips, a feature that will let you use one specific part of an app without having to install or launch the full program.

The iPhone's home screen finally gets an update

The improved widgets may be one of the biggest ways in which the iPhone's interface will change with iOS 14, as it will better optimize the iPhone's software for quick, glanceable interactions much like the Apple Watch.

Not only are Apple's new widgets available in different sizes, but they also have a refreshed design that shows more information. In iOS 14, you'll be able to drag these widgets over to your main home screen so that you can make your home screen more than just a grid of apps — similar to Android. 

That means you'll be able to see information like weather forecast or progress toward your activity goals just by looking at the home screen rather than swiping to the "Today" view or opening an app. 

Apple is also attempting to make the iPhone's operating system a little more intuitive thanks to its Smart Stack widget, which as its name implies includes multiple widgets piled on top of one another that you'll be able to swipe through.

What's most interesting, however, is that this "stack" can alternate the widget shown on top depending on the time of day based on the information that Apple thinks is most relevant to you. You might see calendar appointments during the workday in the afternoon, for example, and then the activity widget toward the end of the day.

No more digging through your apps to find the right one

Apple is also introducing a new feature called App Library in iOS 14, which intelligently sorts your apps into buckets arranged by category like entertainment, social, and recently added, among others. The apps you use most will also remain at the top of the folder so that you can access them with just a tap rather than having to dig through these categories.

The addition should make it much easier for those with dozens and dozens of apps to find what they're looking for without having to manually sift through them. Currently, the most similar feature offered is Siri Suggestions, which recommends apps that you may want to use based on how often you use them, among other factors. 

The other major update that will change the way you use your iPhone is called App Clips, which is essentially a tiny portion of an app that you can use whenever you need it. The idea is to avoid having to download apps that you may only use once or on occasion. 

Apple offered some use cases for App Clips at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. Instead of downloading a specific app to pay for parking, for example, an App Clip would appear when holding your phone near the payment machine.

In addition to real-world use cases like paying for parking or buying a cup of coffee, App Clips will also work on the web and in iMessage. If a friend sends you a link to artwork purchased on Etsy, an App Clip could enable you to buy the painting without having to download the full app to purchase, for example.

The concept isn't entirely new. Google offers a similar feature through Android's Instant Apps, and the concept of using a real-world activation point to trigger an app or smartphone feature has existed for years through QR codes. But the introduction of App Clips, if widely embraced by developers and consumers, could make these types of interactions the norm rather than the exception.

A step forward for the iPhone's software

Taken together, these changes make it feel like the iPhone's software is finally catching up to the ways in which many people use their smartphones and other tech devices today. 

At a time when many are used to glancing down at a smartwatch to check the weather or asking Alexa to place an Amazon order, the notion that some of these tasks may still be several taps and swipes away on our smartphones has started to feel a bit dated.

Put bluntly, the rising popularity of wearable devices and smart home speakers over the last five years has allowed for even more immediate access to the internet than smartphones have provided, and iOS 14 may be Apple's way of catching up. Simply being able to download and launch apps won't be enough; the next evolution of the smartphone will likely involve our phones being more proactive about serving up the right information when we need it.

It's a goal that both Apple and Google have seemingly been building toward for years, and iOS 14 is the iPhone maker's next big step in that direction. 

SEE ALSO: Apple just announced its big plan to create its own Mac chips, signaling a radical new direction for the company's computers. Here's everything we know about it so far.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

• Platform.sh CEO Fred Plais decided to run his startup remotely back in 2016, to help recruit enough employees to turbocharge the company's growth.
• The gambit succeeded: Platform.sh went from struggling to find enough candidates to receiving thousands of applications, allowing the startup to pick the top 0.6% applicants to fill just 80 positions at the startup.
• As startup founders debate giving up their office leases permanently, Plais cautions founders to weigh the benefits of going remote against the cons of losing employee culture or team unity, and adjust their management tactics accordingly.
• "Remote's not a religion; you have to adapt to the specificities of the employees that you're going to hire," Plais told Business Insider.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Months of shelter-in-place orders have prompted both startups and big tech companies to consider downsizing their office spaces and making their remote-work policies permanent. These moves are welcome news for the tech workers who have long complained about the San Francisco Bay Area's high cost of living and its housing crisis.

But the shift can also be a big boon for startup companies, according to Platform.sh CEO Fred Plais. 

The French startup founder took his six-year-old company remote in 2016, after struggling to recruit enough qualified candidates for open positions in Paris. Platform.sh helps developer teams test and release code more efficiently.

Pivoting the company to a remote-first model helped boost the profile of the DevOps company – which helps teams of developers manage their software projects —  beyond Plais's expectations.  More than 14,000 prospective employees flooded the startup with applications from all over the world, allowing Platform.sh to pick the top 0.6% to fill its 80 available jobs. Plais claims that the company would not have attracted that interest back when it expected employees to show up at the office.

Besides access to talent, the global distribution of the workforce across time zones means that a team of engineers is available for a customer emergency at all times of the day. It's a strategy that is vital for companies with global clients, like Pinterest and Johnson & Johnson. 

Plais has also discovered some personal advantages to the shift. For one thing, employees can no longer pull him into meetings and disrupt his agenda at any given moment. There's also less "water-cooler" banter throughout the day, allowing him to stay focused.

"You don't get distracted the same way. You can manage your time very very well," Plais told Business Insider in a Zoom interview.

'Remote's not a religion'

Platform.sh now has 180 employees on its payroll, and its workforce is spread over 150 countries. The startup has just a single office in Paris, where fewer than 15 employees work every day.

But before startups give up their expensive office leases to follow his company's example, Plais says, founders need to figure out a strategy to compensate for the loss of an office life.

After all, tech companies have spent years perfecting their office perks, which often become the stuff of legend. Traditional offices were replaced by sprawling campuses, free cafeterias, shuttle buses, ping-pong tables, and more.

The average startup employee, often fresh out of college, may still look for a buzzy office culture. But Plais thinks that his own target employees tend to be settled with families. They value the ability to move to a suburb with space in the backyard, and they need to make sure that half their day isn't wasted in a commute.

Even for prospective employees who fall into this category, though, there are still subtle things that a remote-first startup needs to consider to build team unity while most workers are outside the office. 

Employees may not be meeting face-to-face on a daily basis at Platform.sh, but Plais says that video check-ins with teams, concentrated around timezones, are still vital. The company also holds an annual retreat, where employees fly in and spend the week together. Smaller gatherings, based on where employees are located, also occur frequently.

The company has also fine-tuned its onboarding process, complete with a buddy system, so new hires getting their first impression of the company don't wind up lost or confused.

'Remote's not a religion; you have to adapt to the specificities of the employees that you're going to hire," Plais told Business Insider.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Pikes Peak is the most dangerous racetrack in America

• The investment and venture capital industries have provided few opportunities to entrepreneurs or investors who are women or people of color.
• Daryn Dodson has a theory about how to change the industry and make it more inclusive.
• Dodson has formed an investment company called Illumen Capital that backs venture and other investment funds; as part of its investments, Illumen gets fund managers to sign agreements to work with it to promote diversity.
• The firm also works with its own investors to help them understand implicit bias and how past discrimination has led to current disparities in wealth and opportunities.
• Dodson's contention is that his fund and others that follow his recommendations by emphasizing diversity will post outsized returns and spur the rest of the industry to follow their path.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The investment industry in general, and the venture capital wing of it in particular, have a poor track record when it comes to diversity.

Daryn Dodson has a theory about how to change that, and in the process provide more opportunities to women and people of color to be fund managers, CEOs, and founders of venture-backed startups. To put his theory into practice, Dodson formed his own investment firm, Illumen Capital. But instead of having Illumen directly back or buy companies, Dodson has designed the firm to serve as a fund-of-funds, investing in private equity and venture capital funds as a limited partner.

His thesis is that by working with those funds, and with the investors who have backed Illumen, Dodson can help bring systemic change to the industry.

"I think this is quite new, and it is quite different," Dodson, Illumen's founder and managing partner, told Business Insider in an interview earlier this month. "We're looking at a structural problem," he continued. "Creating a structural solution is essential."

Illumen, which started making investments a little more than a year ago, is putting between $5 million and $15 million into each fund it backs. As part of each investment, the fund managers sign a side agreement with Illumen committing themselves to working with Dodson's firm to address and reduce implicit bias in their investments. Illumen works with fund managers to find and back minority and female CEOs and board members for portfolio companies, and hire and retain employees from such under-represented groups.

With the amount of assets it has on hand, Illumen can have a much broader impact by investing in other funds rather than directly backing companies, Dodson said. Rather than trying to influence a dozen or so companies itself, it can indirectly promote diversity in many times that number, because each of the funds it's backing — it has invested in seven so far — is putting money into 10 to 50 startups. Dodson didn't disclose the total size of his fund.

"The systemic leverage point is at the [fund] manager level," he said.

Dodson has experience influencing industries

Dodson has a long history of trying to positively influence industries. In his first job out of college, he was a lobbyist for the Self-Help Federal Credit Union's Center for Responsible Lending. While there, he helped collect data that showed that Black and Hispanic homeowners were being charged substantially higher rates for loans than their white neighbors with similar risk profiles. That work led to the passage of laws in 18 states that bar such predatory loans, he said. 

Following that, he served as a consultant for Calvert Investment Management, one of the largest asset managers that focuses on socially responsible investing, managing a portfolio of dozens of funds.

"The idea of influencing an entire industry is part of the way that I was trained," he said.

But the idea of reforming the industry has taken on an added urgency in the wake of the alleged killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Floyd's death sparked national protests and ongoing discussions about addressing systemic racism, not only in police forces but in all aspects of society.

Among those areas is the investment industry. The problem Dodson is seeking to address there is multilayered, multifaceted, and years in the making. Investment managers collectively oversee more than $70 trillion in assets globally, according to Boston Consulting Group. But less than 5% of that amount was managed by women- or minority-owned firms, according to a report sponsored by the Knight Foundation.

In the venture capital industry, more than two-thirds of all firms don't even have a single female partner, and African-Americans and Latinos each made up just 3% of all partners, according to the National Venture Capital Association and Deloitte in a report last year.

To put those numbers in perspective, women represent more than half of the US population, African Americans more than 13%, and Latinos 18%.

If global assets were spread out more equitably, at least $35 trillion would be managed by women or people of color, Dodson said.

The lack of diversity is leading to underperformance

But the lack of diversity is important not only for equity reasons, Dodson said. It's also important because it's leading to significant underperformance.

The Knight study indicates women and minority fund managers often outperform their white male counterparts. Meanwhile, a peer-reviewed study Dodson himself helped direct found that asset managers tend to rate white investors more highly than Black ones even when they had the same strong performance records. The study suggests that asset managers are systematically undervaluing and underestimating Black investors solely because of their skin color.

Because they haven't addressed this bias, the managers of pension funds, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, and university endowments who are the main backers of the private equity, venture, hedge, and real-estate funds are violating their fiduciary duties, Dodson said.

"What we're on right now is a precipice of $35 trillion in under-managed, underestimated assets," he said. "By systematically not selecting top performing black managers and managers of color within their investment processes," he continued, "they're depleting the future earnings of their respective pools of capital."

And there's at least one more follow-on effect. Because of their own related implicit biases, those largely white fund managers aren't investing in companies run by women or people of color. In the venture industry, for example, only  9% of venture-backed founders are female, just 1.8% are Latino, and a paltry 1% are Black, according to a study released last year by RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC.

That lack of investment can perpetuate existing disparities in wealth. It can also sustain racial and gender biases in everything from healthcare to education, in the way products and services are designed, and who they serve, Dodson said. Many of the people who have money invested in pensions haven't taken a close look at exactly who is managing their money or how it's being managed, he said.

They haven't "added up the fact that 97.8% of that money is managed by white men and asked critical questions about how that leads to pensions underperforming and reinforcing some of the very systemic racism that they experience in almost all facets of their life," Dodson said. He continued: "They're facing the results of their asset managers not working to reduce their own biases every day."

Dodson is hoping to influence his own investors

Dodson sees an even bigger opportunity to influence the financial system in a direction toward diversity than just by backing other investment funds. That's why Illumen is also focusing on its own limited partners, which collectively manage more than $1 trillion in assets.

Ilumen has cofounded an organization called Impact Experiences that offers education sessions and experiences for asset managers. It has offered a training session on implicit bias for such investors, and has taken some on field trips to places such as Montgomery, Alabama, to help them see the connections between racial discrimination and terrorism under segregation and the systemic racial disparities in the financial system today.

"If we shift the mindset of a trillion dollar asset allocator 10%, then we've chipped away at the $35 trillion problem," he said. "That's the way we create influence," he continued, "is we enable our LPs to go on a journey with us."

The track record of implicit bias training is mixed at best. Such sessions can help raise awareness of unconscious attitudes towards women and people of color. But studies indicate that traditional training courses have done little to promote diversity in hiring. And the spread of racial bias training among police forces seems to have done little to change policing practices that treat people of color differently than white people.

What Illumen is doing is different than regular diversity training

Dodson is aware of such shortcomings. He himself used to lead diversity training sessions. He argues that what Illumen is doing is different.

The problem with traditional diversity training is that it is short term, he said. Companies or organizations offer a one-day or several-hour training session. Diversity consultants offer recommendations on how to reduce bias and promote inclusion. But after that, there's often little follow-up, and typically those leading or promoting the training have no way to put the recommendations in place or monitor their implementation, Dodson said.

By contrast, by the very nature of Illumen's structure as an investment fund, it's going to be working with both its limited partners and the fund managers it's investing in for up to 10 years. And it plans to keep close tabs on its fund managers' progress toward meeting diversity goals, he said.

"This is long-term stuff. Because these systems were built over hundreds of years, it takes time," Dodson said. The best diversity training programs might last six months, he continued. "I have 10 years to do it."

And the quality of diversity training sessions can vary widely, he said. Illumen is consciously focused on rooting its approach in the best social science out there, including the study he helped direct.

"Having evidence-based approach is a really important aspect to our model," he said.

His method may not work, he acknowledged. But if it does, it could make a huge impact, not only on the funds and firms Illumen is investing in or on its backers, but on the wider investing world. If the fund and those following its recommendations post outsized returns, other investors will be pressured to follow its strategy.

"We'll see if we are able to do it, but ... the key question and central question is, 'What is it worth if we do?,'" Dodson said. "And that is a massive amount of undervalued capital based on the problem we're trying solve."

Got a tip about diversity in the tech industry? Contact Troy Wolverton via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about how the tech industry is wrestling with its lack of diversity:
• The moment might be right for the venture capital industry to finally address its lack of racial diversity — but only if it learns the right lessons from the #MeToo movement, advocates say
• Every venture firm can take these quick steps toward greater diversity, says one of Silicon Valley's few black VCs. What the steps have in common: Reach out.
• One of Silicon Valley's few black VCs says the industry has a systemic problem with race, but he's hopeful the George Floyd protests are finally going to spark real change
• A diversity consultant says real change may hit the tech industry due to the George Floyd protests and the coronavirus crisis. Silicon Valley hasn't changed much after past scrutiny, but this time could be different.

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley billionaires are lining up to condemn racism. But the tech and VC industry has a shameful, decades-long history of ignoring and perpetuating inequality.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

• Lemonade, the SoftBank-backed online insurance company that's preparing for a public offering, is trying to pitch itself as a tech company.
• In its IPO paperwork, it mentions the words "technology" or "technologies" more times than did Casper or WeWork, two startups that also tried to boost their offerings by pretending to be tech companies.
• The company also touts its use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other buzzy technologies.
• But it has little reason to be considered a tech firm — Nearly all of the company's revenue comes from selling insurance; technology development is only a small portion of its expenses; and it holds no patents.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Online insurance company Lemonade is pitching itself as a tech company and hoping public investors will value it like one.

It's not, and they shouldn't.

The SoftBank-backed startup, which is preparing for its initial public offering, certainly uses technology in its business — most notably AI Maya and AI Jim, its chatbots that help customers sign up for service and file claims. But it has few of the markings of a real technology company. Instead, it bears much more of a resemblance to the Allstates and State Farms of the world.

"That is the wool they're trying pull over the financial community's eyes, that this is a tech company as opposed to an insurance product," said Hugh Tallents, a senior partner at management consulting firm cg42 who focuses on the insurance industry.

Whether Wall Street sees Lemonade as a tech company or an insurance firm will likely make a big difference in its stock price and valuation. Public investors tend to place a premium on tech companies because they typically have high growth rates and, over the long term, they often generate fat profits. So tech companies generally have a higher market capitalization than companies with comparable sales or earnings.

At least in the private markets, Lemonade has been given something like a tech premium. Last year, in its more recent funding round, investors gave it a $2.1 billion valuation. That would value the company at more than 24 times its sales over the last 12 months. By contrast, insurance giant Progressive is valued at little more than 1 times its sales from the last year.

Already, analysts have expressed skepticism about the company and investors may be indicating they have some doubts. Lemonade this week provided a proposed price range for its offering that would give the company a market capitalization that was at least 25% below its $2 billion private valuation.

Lemonade talks a lot about "technology"

In its IPO paperwork, Lemonade, which offers renters' policies and homeowners' insurance, tries to make the case that potential investors should consider it a tech company. Its documents are replete with buzzy tech terms including "artificial intelligence," "machine learning," "automation," "platform," and "big data." The latest filing uses the words "technology" or "technologies" 149 times. That's more than Casper or even WeWork, two other startups operating in old-line industries that tried to convince investors they were tech companies.

"Lemonade is rebuilding insurance from the ground up on a digital substrate and an innovative business model," the company said in its opening pitch in its IPO paperwork. "By leveraging technology, data, artificial intelligence, contemporary design, and behavioral economics, we believe we are making insurance more delightful, more affordable, more precise, and more socially impactful. To that end, we have built a vertically-integrated company with wholly-owned insurance carriers in the United States and Europe, and the full technology stack to power them."

Much of Lemonade's case for being considered a tech company is focused on its use of artificial intelligence. AI powers its two chatbots. The technology also underlies a system it calls CX.AI, which Lemonade uses to automatically answer certain customer inquiries and requests, such as when they need to change their policies because they've moved, according to the company's IPO documents. It also relies on artificial intelligence and related technologies including big data and machine learning to detect fraud, handle repetitive tasks, and automate formerly manual tasks, such as processing paper checks.

Lemonade's various chatbots and AI systems are linked to something it calls its Customer Cortex, where it collects and analyzes information about its customers. Those insights are then used by its chatbots and other systems when interacting with its clients.

The established insurance industry also depends on technology

Viewed in isolation and without context, Lemonade's technology seems very impressive and might persuade some that it was really a tech company. But it's almost certainly not as cutting edge and innovative as it would appear.

To an outsider, insurance might seem to be a technological backwater. But it's really not. Insurance companies for years have relied on sophisticated algorithms to determine their risks, for example.

"It's not like insurance companies are dumb," said Rob Siegel, a lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business. "They know how to crunch data."

The insurance giants have spent huge sums over the years upgrading their own technologies, some of which are visible to consumers. All the major insurers have smartphone apps. State Farm customers who want to file a claim can get help from the insurance giant's own chatbot. And consumers who visit Progressive's website can use the automated system to sign up there for car insurance without interacting with a live representative.

Lemonade's chatbots and use of artificial intelligence may be slightly ahead of the big insurance companies, but it's a difference of degree, not of kind, analysts told Business Insider.

Its use of such technology is "a piece of the trend we've been seeing in the industry over last 20 years," said Brett Horn, an equity analyst at Morningstar who focuses on the insurance business. 

"I don't see anything in the Lemonade materials that suggests they have some secret sauce AI, Skynet that's going to be able to do things that other apps aren't doing," said Robert Hendershott, an associate finance professor at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. "And I don't see how they'll get more data than the existing insurance companies that will allow them to do that."

Lemonade's business is built around selling insurance

Lemonade's financial details offer even better proof that its core business is insurance, not technology.

Nearly all of the company's revenue came from insurance. Last year, for example, Lemonade posted $67.3 million in sales. Of that amount, $63.8 million came from the premiums its customers paid for home and renters' insurance. Another $100,000 came from the commissions it made on offering insurance sold by other companies. The remaining $3.4 million came from investment income.

In other words, Lemonade makes its money by selling insurance, not software. 

But its financials offer more proof beyond the revenue line. Last year, Lemonade had $175 million in operating and insurance-loss related expenses. Of that amount, it spent just $9.8 million, or less than 6% of the total, on technology development. That was less than half what the company spent on general and administrative costs.

Its biggest expenses by far were sales and marketing — $89.1 million — and insurance losses and adjustments — $45.8 million.

Just by contrast, Zoom, the maker of the now-ubiquitous video conferencing software, spent $67.1 million, or about 13.5% of its total expenses, on research and development last year. That despite the fact that it too had a heavy marketing budget that ate up more than two-thirds of its total expenses.

Lemonade holds no patents

But perhaps the most glaring reason why Lemonade isn't a tech company is that it hasn't actually created any unique technologies — at least not any that were worthy of patenting. Patents are a time-tested way that of showing that companies are creating technological innovations. True tech companies file for numerous patents to protect their intellectual property, sometimes hundreds or more each year.

As of the end of March, though, Lemonade didn't hold any US or foreign patents, according to its IPO paperwork. Not only that, but it didn't even have any patent applications pending in the US or elsewhere. Again, just as a point of contrast, when Zoom filed for its own IPO last year, it had been issued two patents and had seven more applications pending.

Lemonade may want investors to put it in the same category as Zoom and other tech companies, but "they look more to me like an insurance company," said C. Gregory Peters, a financial analyst who focuses on the insurance industry for Raymond James. 

Got a tip about Lemonade or tech investing? Contact Troy Wolverton via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about Lemonade and tech investing:
• Lemonade's IPO plan will destroy one quarter of its $2 billion valuation. But analysts think the latest SoftBank startup could avoid WeWork's fate.
• 2 of the most important players in Lemonade's IPO are bots. Here's how the $2 billion startup is pitching investors.
• Here's why tech IPOs are starting to see a surprising, and sudden, snapback
• The $2 billion SoftBank-backed insurance startup Lemonade has filed to go public

SEE ALSO: SoftBank-backed startups are bleeding, as investors tighten up scrutiny over loss-making business models. Here's a running list of all the Japanese giant's major investments in tech.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

• The Philippines is investigating local businesses that partnered the collapsed German payments company Wirecard, the Financial Times reported.
• Wirecard went into administration and its former CEO Markus Braun was arrested after the firm claimed that more than $2 billion had disappeared from its balance sheet. Its auditor EY said the firm committed elaborate fraud.
• Wirecard had claimed the money was stored in two Philippine banks, which they both denied. Now the authorities will probe around five local businesses thought to be involved with Wirecard.
• Separately, a Filipino lawyer who opened bank accounts for Wirecard in the Philippines claims he's being framed for fraud.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Philippine authorities will probe local businesses thought to have connections to disgraced German payments firm Wirecard, which collapsed after admitting to a 1.9 billion euro ($2 billion) hole in its balance sheet, the Financial Times reported.

The investigation is the latest probe as authorities in Singapore, Germany, and Brussels attempt to unpick the firm's accounting irregularities.

According to the newspaper, the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation and Anti-Money Laundering Council will examine five businesses thought to be involved.

The FT named Centurion Online Payment International, PayEasy Solutions, and ConePay International, all of which the newspaper had earlier identified in a March 2019 investigation as partners of Wirecard. According to that investigation, Wirecard claimed hefty commissions from several of these businesses, which didn't appear to have the paperwork (or the physical offices) to back the financial claims up.

Separately, a Filipino lawyer who opened up six bank accounts for Wirecard has claimed he is being framed for the company's missing billions. Wirecard initially claimed its missing money was held in two Philippine banks, although both denied it.

Lawyer Mark Tolentino told Reuters that he was the "victim of a frame-up." Tolentino has not been charged with a crime, but Philippine authorities said they plan to question the lawyer as part of their investigation. Tolentino told Reuters he had opened accounts for a Singapore-based firm, but didn't know it was Wirecard.

"It seemed that all fingers were pointing to me to be the thief and manipulator of the missing money," he said. "I want to clear my name." Reuters noted that the lawyer declined to show documents that would clear his name.

Wirecard filed for insolvency on Thursday, shortly after the arrest of its former CEO Markus Brown in Germany on suspicion of market manipulation and false accounting practices.

The company was once the rising star of Germany's financial tech sector.

It earlier admitted than more than $2 billion had disappeared from its balance sheet, and then later said the money may never have existed. The company's auditor EY on Friday accused it of orchestrating "an elaborate and complex fraud."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

Digital transformation has just begun.

Not a single industry is safe from the unstoppable wave of digitization that is sweeping through finance, retail, healthcare, and more.

In 2020, we expect to see even more transformative developments that will change our businesses, careers, and lives.

To help you stay ahead of the curve, Business Insider Intelligence has put together a list of 30 Big Tech Predictions for 2020 across Banking, Connectivity & Tech, Digital Media, Payments & Commerce, Fintech, and Digital Health.

This exclusive report can be yours for FREE today.

Join the conversation about this story »

Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week. 

If you aren't yet a subscriber to Wall Street Insider, you can sign up here.

Accenture is cutting US staff, and top execs just warned of more pain to come as the consulting giant promotes fewer people and looks to control costs, Meghan Morris and Dakin Campbell first reported. Their story got a lot of attention this week, and for good reason. It could be an indicator for how the firm's own clients are weathering a downturn, and consulting likely won't be the only industry to feel the crunch.

We also took a look at who's most at risk once Wall Street kicks off the tidal wave of layoffs many banks had put on pause— and why boutique firms without a strong restructuring practice could be "dead in the water," as one recruiter put it. 

Dakin along with Casey Sullivan got an inside look at Egon Durban, who became co-CEO of Silver Lake Partners in December. They spoke with more than 40 people who have worked with Durban, or across from him on deals, to understand his rise at the tech-focused private-equity firm he joined as a young banker in 1999.  

Read the full story here: 

40 insiders reveal the meteoric rise of Silver Lake's Egon Durban, the tech-focused PE firm's No. 1 dealmaker who strong-armed his way to the top and is about to get $18 billion more to invest

Keep reading for a look at why one of the earliest forms of alt-data is breaking down; a rundown of Amazon's rapid-fire moves to scoop up warehouses; and a deep dive into the culture at BTIG. 

Have a great weekend, 

Meredith 

Inside BTIG

The financial-services industry has tried to clean up its image in recent years, but shades of an earlier era on Wall Street have lingered at the firm BTIG, a Business Insider investigation by Nicole Einbinder and Rebecca Ungarino has found. 

Read the full story here: 

Former employees say BTIG had a toxic party culture that was stuck in the '80s

Why alt-data fans are struggling

As Dan DeFrancesco and Bradley Saacks report, one of the earliest and most popular forms of alternative data is proving more difficult to handle these days. Investors like hedge funds have long leaned on credit-card data to uncover everything from new retail trends to the health of specific businesses.

But the pandemic has transformed shopping habits and made data unreliable. Vendors have been forced to do more hand-holding with clients, while banks are using techniques like post-stratification weighting and "swarming" to help make sense of the information. 

Read the full story here:

Credit-card data is broken. Here's how hedge funds and banks are being forced to rethink one of the earliest alt-data plays.

Amazon adds to its warehouse empire

As Dan Geiger reports, Amazon just signed its largest lease ever in New York City. It's also negotiating to lease a 620,000-square-foot office and warehouse space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that is under construction, a source with direct knowledge of the negotiations told Business Insider.

The moves mark the latest in a dramatic expansion of the $1.3 trillion company's logistics operations — which serve as the backbone for Amazon's booming e-commerce business.

Read the full story here: 

Amazon just signed its largest-ever warehouse lease in NYC. Here's how it's been making deals left and right to grow its massive storage and distribution network.

What's next for buy now, pay later fintechs

Buy now, pay later, also known as point-of-sale financing, has been surging as consumers shift their spending online. Fintechs like Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna are now looking to expand beyond their installment-lending roots. Affirm is exploring more financial products with the launch of a high-yield savings account, and Klarna just rolled out a loyalty program for users.

As Shannen Balogh reports, with growth comes new challenges, like managing consumer credit at scale. The fintechs could start looking for partnerships with banks, or find themselves to be acquisition bait.

Read the full story here:

From Affirm to Klarna, buy now pay later startups are booming. But experts warn juggling explosive growth with responsible lending is a tricky balance.

FA recruiting is transforming 

As Rebecca Ungarino reports, elements of virtual financial adviser recruiting will stay with the industry post-pandemic as wealth management firms have adapted during remote work. 

"All of this is going to be much easier to move advisers, clients; all of this happening together is going to support a whole lot more movement," one veteran adviser recruiter said. 

Read more:

On the move

Citigroup has poached a top exec from Wells Fargo to run operations and anti-fraud within its Global Consumer Banking division — a unit that has been remodeled over the past year with ambitions of growing revenues and better competing with other top US banks. 

Titi Cole, previously EVP and head of operations and contact centers for the consumer and small business division at Wells Fargo, will join Citi in August as head of global operations and fraud prevention in the consumer bank, according to memo from Jane Fraser, president of Citi and CEO of GCB. 

Banking

• Goldman Sachs designed its glitzy London office with tons of amenities, but little parking. In a post-pandemic world, it could be a big snag as the firm looks to bring workers back in.
• The 6 biggest US banks granted over 5,000 H-1B visas last year. Here's how firms like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are reacting to Trump's shutdown.
• Google Cloud just poached a long-time Citi exec. Here's why public-cloud giants keep adding Wall Street veterans to their ranks.

Deals

• We talked to Mastercard's incoming CEO about why the card giant is spending $825 million to buy financial-data startup Finicity and how it compares to the Visa-Plaid deal
• Simon Property is at the center of 3 big legal battles as stores finally begin to reopen. Here's what the future holds for the biggest US mall REIT.
• SoftBank's Vision Fund is scrapping an 'IPO readiness group' and telling its portfolio companies to handle the process themselves

Real estate

• Accenture backtracked on cutting its real-estate footprint — and now it's warning companies about ditching offices and going all-remote
• How flex-office players like Serendipity Labs and Convene are trying to win over remote workers.
• Washington DC's office market is normally recession-proof. Here's how things could play out this time as vacancy rates soar.
• WeWork is ditching a major Manhattan office, and it's the first big step in a turnaround that's put its entire real-estate portfolio under review
• New York's commercial real-estate industry is concentrated in the hands of rich white men. One of the few Black brokers to rise through the ranks says top brokerages should emulate the construction industry if they're serious about diversity.

Wealth management

• A UBS Americas wealth exec discloses that only 1% of the region's nearly 6,500 financial advisers are Black. Here are details from the firm's virtual town hall.

Hedge funds and investing 

• The head of Point72's Cubist quant-trading unit is joining one of billionaire Steve Cohen's top competitors
• Macro hedge funds are back in demand as investors look to ride out market volatility. JPMorgan lays out why the surge in interest won't be short-lived.
• Billionaire Bill Ackman says he thinks of Pershing Square more like a private-equity shop than a hedge fund when it comes to hiring staff
• Leaked email reveals SoftBank-backed Oyo is slashing most US staff. Read the full message laying out details on stock options and the hotel startup's 2021 outlook.
• Here's how a huge investment in big data is helping the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils make better decisions for their rosters, player development and coaching

Fintech 

• Meet Spin: A new US live-commerce startup partnering with influencers and retailers to bring window shopping to your phone
• Read the letter a fintech-focused VC sent investors laying out why 'hype rounds' that drove ballooning valuations just won't work anymore
• Here's why small businesses are ditching their banks and turning to fintechs like PayPal and Plaid to navigate the complicated process of PPP loan forgiveness
• Insurance startup Jetty has switched reinsurers after it slashed staff and paused writing new policies during the pandemic

Markets

• Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo tumble after the Fed caps dividends and bans buybacks
• Warren Buffett has warned about the dangers of speculating for years. Day traders aren't listening.

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